3.234 I Love the Temple

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's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

Can we just start this one out by saying I love the temple for so many reasons, but one of them is inside of our verse for today. We going to let just call it what it is. It is crazy hard to try to pick from 40 different psalms, which ones we just going to choose six or seven to go over through the week.

Can we just address that? But I am trying to pick ones that matter to me, ones that keep that lens of Savory Salt and being a little bit better every day. And hopefully one that resonates with you and, at a bare minimum, invites the Spirit in your life so that you have an opportunity to feel the Spirit and the love of the Lord.

I hope that that what happens when you listen to Savory Salt. Our verse for today is inside of Psalm 24. So we're not getting very far in our readings here.

I think tomorrow we're gonna make this massive leap to 46, at least based on the planning that I've got so far here. But in Psalm 24, he asked an interesting question and he said, "Who's gonna ascend to the hill of the Lord? The holy place in the Temple of the Lord." So, who goes there?

And then we get Psalm 24, verse 4, in response to that: "He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." Now we get an interesting two-sided coin there, right? We see those that are going to go to the temple are going to have clean hands and pure heart. All of those, by the way, have footnotes absolutely worth your time and investigation, as well as Come Follow Me having a great reference to a quote from Elder Bednar.

But what I really want to kind of capture here, through the idea of this, is one of my favorite things about the temple: is that when you go in and you prepare to do any of the ordinances in the temple. So, this is whether you are youth and you go and do baptisms, or any of the adult ordinances that you can do as well. One of the things I love is the opportunity to get dressed in white and to sit amongst and serve amongst those others who are all dressed in white before the Lord.

That idea—this phrase in here that does not lift up his soul into vanity—I've been blessed to be able to visit temples in different parts of the world. And one of the things I love is that regardless of... Step forward in faith, and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.