3.200 One Ending and One Beginning

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It is a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

Have you ever connected the Old Testament and Book of Mormon kind of verse by verse before? That's an activity worth checking out as we wrap up our readings in 2 Kings 16-25. I hope this week you've gained a greater testimony personally of the power of scriptures in your own life.

The importance of having the Word of God to study and to use and to help us make better covenants and keep the commandments of the Lord. Those are the things that I've reflected on throughout this week as we've gone through our readings. As we get into our verse for today, I wanted to try and kind of help some of you.

Maybe you're familiar with the Book of Mormon, maybe you're not. I think most of my listeners are. If you're not familiar with the Book of Mormon, please go to Savory Salt season one and just start at day one, because that's a place that will help you over the next year read the Book of Mormon.

That's initially what Savory Salt was designed to do in season one. But here we are in season three. We've focused on the Old Testament, and we get to 2 Kings chapter 25, which is ultimately the connection to the Book of Mormon in terms of Lehi and his family.

Let's get to our verse for today. Let's take a look at the Bible and see if we can connect these two as we have one ending story here and one just beginning on the flip side. Our verse for today is in 2 Kings 25:9.

We have King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, coming into Jerusalem. Jerusalem's been kind of this holdout here. It's been kind of the Lord's last place to say, 'Look, I'll protect you if you'll follow me.' And now they've continually rejected the Lord, including Zedekiah, who has rejected the Lord as well.

And then we get into verse 9 as the captain of the guard fulfills his duties under Nebuchadnezzar. Verse 9 says, 'And he burnt the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. And every great man's house burnt he with fire.' Now that seems like a weird one to select for Savory Salt, as the idea of Savory Salt is for us to continue every day to be a little bit better, but what can we take from the burning of Jerusalem and the sacking of Jerusalem historically?

First of all, I want to connect this moment here: it's the moment that Lehi was warned about. It's also the moment that Zedekiah's son was warned about as he was able to escape and come over to the new world. This is the moment that Nephi sees in his visions and knows that Jerusalem has been sacked and destroyed.

It's right here inside of 2 Kings chapter 25. What does it mean for us today? Well, if we look here at the lessons that we've had inside of these chapters in 2 Kings, we've seen very clearly the power of scriptures and covenant keeping in our lives as we've read the verses here of those that have rejected the Lord, and then those that have attempted to repent and come back to the Lord, and then back to rejection, and then back to accepting the Lord.

My friends, I think we have an opportunity here to see the Lord's love in all of this actually. And you might go, 'Whoa, curveball, what's that one?' The way that I see it is this: If you feel like you made mistakes in your life that are beyond repenting; if you feel like you made mistakes and the Lord doesn't love you anymore, to return the children of Israel. The Bible says, That's all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith, and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope.