followHIM - Amos, Obadiah Part 1 • Dr. Ryan C. Davis • Nov. 14 - 20

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

How do our trials allow us to turn to God? Dr. Ryan Davis examines the importance of covenants, prophets, and the essential nature of relationships.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/old-testament/Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/follow-him-a-come-follow-me-podcast/id1545433056Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYThanks to the follow HIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers, SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow Him. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host, and I am here with my co-host, who is a servant of the Lord. John, did you know that the name Obadiah means servant of the Lord? And when I learned that, I thought I might call John Obadiah, my co-host Obadiah. I think our listeners, they know by now that that Yah at the end of a name in the Old Testament means Jehovah, right?

So servant of the Lord, servant of Jehovah. That's what Obadiah means. Yeah, I think I'd call you Obi. Obi-2. I mean, Obi-1 has been taken. So I don't think I could take you Obi-1, but you'd be Obi-2. No, Obi-1's brother is actually mentioned in the Book of Mormon, in the Book of Jacob. Obi-wise, what can I say more? So there's Obi-wise and Obi-Wan's brother is actually mentioned in the Book of Mormon, in the Book of Jacob, Obi-Wise, what can I say more? So there's Obi-Wise and Obi-Wan. Yeah, they're brothers.

Oh, it never gets old. It does. And we do as well. John, we are in the books of Amos and Obadiah today. Probably not books that I would say our audience is super familiar with. So we had to bring in someone who could help us become familiar with this. Who is joining us today? Yes, we're so happy to have Dr. Ryan Davis with us today. He received a PhD in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. He specializes in the prayers and rituals of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia.

Since 2015, he's been an adjunct instructor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, teaching on both the Provo campus and the BYU Salt Lake Center, which is where I teach. So that's really fun. I've run into Ryan up there. His most recent publication was titled The God of the Psalms and the Broken. And that's published in Old Testament Insights, The Sacrifice of a Broken Heart and Contrite Spirit. That's edited by Ken Alford, Gay Strathern, Mary Jane Woodger. We've had a couple of them on the program here.

How interesting. The Prayers and Rituals of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia, and to get Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East from the University of Texas, your PhD. We're so glad to have you here, Ryan. Thanks for joining us. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Ryan comes highly recommended by his biblical scholar peers, especially one Josh Sears, who people love on our podcast. I asked Josh, hey, Josh, who do you know who can teach us about Amos Nobodi? And he said, oh, there's only one person I can think of, Dr. Ryan Davis. I was like, let's do it.

Yeah. You come highly recommended. So how do you want to go about this, Ryan? Is there anything our listeners need to know before we jump in? I think that there's value in just kind of jumping in right into the book of Amos. The nice thing about prophetic books is they always have a little bit of an introduction right in verse one to orient you a little bit of who's speaking and what the context is. Okay, let's do it. I think it would be great just to give us a timeframe that one of the things I think our listeners are getting now that's been so wonderful is, okay, I know about the Assyrian captivity and I know about the Babylonian captivity and one's in 721 BC, one's in about 587 BC after Lehi took off.

So where does Amos fall in that timeline of the Old Testament? So, right here in verse 1, it tells us that he prophesied in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and the days of Jeroboam, king of Israel. Jeroboam II, the king of Israel, he reigned from about the 780s to the 740s BC. That sounds like it's just before Isaiah. Yeah. So, Isaiah begins his ministry kind of the tail end of Uzziah's reign. Okay, Amos hands the baton over to Isaiah. That's right. And yet the book of Isaiah comes before this in the Old Testament. That's right. So, things aren't always chronological, and that's one of the things

that makes it a little bit hard to read. Yeah. So we're jumping back in time to when the kingdom was divided. Assyrians haven't come yet. Babylon hasn't come yet, but they are still divided. They have two kings. Let's talk about that divided kingdom just a little bit. So we've got Israel in the north, that political Israel, the country Israel, not the person, but the country Israel in the north, 10 tribes, and Judah in the south with mostly Judah and Benjamin. So we call

that the divided kingdom ever since the end of King Solomon. Good. I like reviewing. The repetition is the law of all learning, I think President Hinckley said. So yeah, I think it's good for everybody. Okay. So we've already covered one verse. Look at us, you guys. We're killing it. Ryan, you can call on us to read or you can read. Tell us what you want to do. Let's start with verse two. I'll go ahead and read this. And it says, and he said, the Lord will roar from Zion. So, this kind of sets up Amos' prophecies and it helps us think about the Lord or Jehovah as a lion. So this again makes me think about, you know,

C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. We're thinking about Jehovah as a lion and he's roaring. And this immediately kind of makes us think, okay, why is the lion roaring? This also ties to other parts of Amos. So, if we kind of flip over to Amos chapter 3, this is where we kind of get the one scripture, if anyone knows any scripture in Amos, we get Amos 3.7. And in that chapter, in verse 4, it says, will a lion roar in the forest when he hath no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den if he have taken nothing? Amos begins to tell us that lions roar for a reason. So, if you hear a lion roaring, there's a reason he's roaring. This kind of sets us up to

think, okay, if God is the lion and he's roaring, then we need to wonder why. Pete Something is up. Pete Yeah, the lion is roaring. Something has happened or is about to happen. Pete I heard you give the most fascinating talk about a lion roaring once. Pete Oh, well. Pete How the volume of it was shocking.

Yes. There was one time, Ryan, I'm sorry to subject you to this story, but there was one time I decided there was a zoo and it had an open cage. It was bars instead of glass. You could see the lion in there and he could see you and he could hear, he could hear you and you could hear him. And I was a missionary at the time and I thought it'd be funny to lean forward as close as I could get to those bars. And I kind of went rawr just to see what it would do. And it was looking at me and it went back and forth along the bars. It was kind of rubbing along the bars. And every time it would come near me, I'd go, roar. Well, at one point, this thing stops. It was imprinted on my mind forever because it blew up its throat like a balloon and just roared. And it literally shook my body. It was so scary.

I remember falling down. I won't go into it. But it's an unbelievable sound up close. It literally shook my head. It shook my whole body. John, I can't believe you brought that up. You go past that so fast and the Lord will roar, but you've heard a roar before. Oh yeah. Within like 10 feet. Maybe those who were writing, maybe Amos, maybe others in his audience had heard a lion roar, and it's not the cat meows or the dog barked. It was insanely, it's so loud. So, I think that helps. That helps me make it real. This goes with Amos chapter 3, verse 7 and 8, and then we'll go back to our chapter 1, but it says, surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants,

the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? You hear when the lion roars, you have to respond. And that's how Amos feels, that he has been called by God, and that call for him is a roar, and he has to respond to it. So, in the same way, God is roaring to the people of Israel, and they're going to have to respond to what he's saying. Pete That's fantastic. And having had personal experience, I would say the same thing. The lioneth roared, who will not fear?

Oh man, if you were close to that, I promise you, you would fear. Tell us about Amos. We know Isaiah was a poet and a statesman and an advisor to kings, but here we've got Amos was among the herdmen. Is he just a simple farm agriculture guy? Yeah. So here in verse one, I guess we kind of skipped over that, but it says that he was a herdman. Is he just a simple farm agriculture guy? Yeah. So, here in verse 1, I guess we kind of skipped over that, but it says that he was a herdman of Tekoa. We get a little bit of background to who Amos is. He's from Tekoa, so he's from the southern kingdom of Judah. He is called to go to the northern kingdom and

prophesy to them, but he himself is from the southern kingdom. So, Tekoa is south of Bethlehem. And yeah, so it says he's a herdman here. And in chapter seven, we learn that he takes care of cattle as well as sycamore trees. So, there's fruit that grows on those sycamore trees and he takes care of them. He's involved in both agriculture, taking care of animals. So, a very rural lifestyle he's called and taken to go prophesy to the north. But of course, for him, his experience with lions is going to be a little different. If you're in charge of animals, lions are dangerous and they're a threat. Yeah, I like that. So, it's like, I

didn't ask to be a prophet here. I was taking care of my herdsmen. But when the lion roars, what do you do? I have to respond. That's exactly right. This is one of the themes of Amos is about our relationship with God, that God does things and it's our choice to respond. And we're going to see in Israel's history in their covenantal story, these are acts of love and deliverance that he reaches out to Israel and invites them to respond. We've been talking about the lion's roar,

but at the same time, most of the time God is reaching out to respond. We've been talking about the lion's roar, but at the same time, most of the time, God is reaching out to us. This is to lift us up and to help us, and we respond. Amos, I think, is responding and going somewhere that he's not familiar with to a people that may be enemies, but he's doing this because of his relationship with God. He's willing to respond. It looks to me like he still uses the same parallelism though as Isaiah. Is that right? Looks like he says he repeats himself quite a bit. Yes. So still poetry. So we're going to see a lot of parallelism in the book of Amos. The lion has roared.

And so our question is, okay, what is the lion saying? What is God saying to the northern kingdom? And this is where we begin in verse 3. And what's interesting- Back in chapter 1. We're back in chapter 1. And Amos is not immediately addressing the northern kingdom. He begins by talking about the Lord's prophecies against the nations around

Israel. And we're going to see that this is a bit of a setup because he wants them to compare their behavior with the nations around them. And he also wants to lull them a bit of a false sense of security because... He's scolding everybody else. Yeah, and they might feel good about themselves, but it's going to turn on them and they're going to learn something about their own behavior. Okay, so in verse 3, it says, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. He begins by prophesying against Damascus. So, this is Syria. These are the Arameans to the north. This expression,

three transgressions and for four, this gets repeated throughout chapter one and chapter two. And the idea is they deserve what they're getting for three transgressions, but they've done four. So they even deserve it even more. And what they've done is it says, because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron. Gilead is a region on the other side of Jordan. And what the Syrians or the people of Damascus have done is attack them. And they've treated the people of that region like you would treat grain.

So it says they've threshed Gilead with threshing instruments. With threshing instruments, this is like a sledge. So a sledge is a sled that has iron spikes on the bottom. And after you harvest the grain and you put it on the threshing floor, you drag this sledge over the grain to separate the grain from the stalks. It's pretty violent because you're trying to separate these. It's brutal. What the people of Damascus have done is something so violent to the people of Gilead that they likened it to how they process agricultural food. And this also helps us understand that this is one of the problems with the nations around Israel is they treat people as either opportunities to exploit or obstacles to

eliminate. They're treating the people like they would treat food processing. This is something that you do in order to get more use out of them. We're going to see some of these other nations are also selling these people into slavery. This is how they're treating those around them. We're going to see some of these other nations are also selling these people into slavery. This is how they're treating those around them. Because of this, in verse 4, the Lord says, I will send fire into the house of Hazael, which is one of these kings of Syria, which shall devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad. So, that would make maybe the kingdom of Israel feel like, oh good, they're going to get theirs. Yeah. I mean, that's terrible. That's horrible. Of course they deserve what they're getting. Okay. Damascus is the capital city of Syria. We say that? Yes. And in verse six, we move on to another nation. We start hearing about the cities of the Philistines. So, it begins with Gaza.

It says, for three transgressions of Gaza and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. And we read that they carried away captive the whole captivity to deliver them up to Edom. So, here they've taken prisoners of war and they're going to sell them to Edom, which is another nation close to Judah. So very similar, the Lord's like, they're going to get theirs too. That's right.

Again, they're treating the people of Gilead as a commodity that you go and you harvest them and you sell them and you do this for gain. I've noticed that in my scripture study, in my study of the gospel through the years, that when you treat people like objects, that's one of the times the Lord is going to react. He's going to roar like a lion. For example, if you look at pornography, it's using people as objects and treating them as if they don't have a soul or a future or a past or parents. This seems to me that maybe we don't do things like this. We don't sell people.

We don't attack them. But we can sometimes use people as objects. And we've got to watch out for that. We don't do that. That's right. Right. I think that this is going to be one of Amos' message is that core to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to make people our focus. People are not a means to an end. People are the end themselves. That's what we're here to do is to take care of people.

They're not a commodity. I think I've heard it put that you treat people like things and things like people. Here it is. Mormon 839. Why do you adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, treating things like people, and yet suffer the hungry, the needy, the naked, and the sick? And I want to add in my Book of Mormon who have life and the afflicted to pass by you and notice them not.

So I've got my margin. You treat things like people and you and notice them not. So, I've got my margin. You treat things like people and you treat people like things. And it sounds like that's exactly what Amos is saying here. So, Ryan, it sounds like he's going to keep doing this. He does it again in verse 9. He does it again in verse 11. Are these all nations around Israel and Judah? Yes, they're all the nations around them. And he keeps doing this and eventually he's going to get us to Israel. You see in Ammon, it talks about the violence of war, right? That they've killed pregnant women. That's chapter 1 verse 13. Moab. And this is also an interesting one. It says, for three transgressions of Moab and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof because he burned the bones of the king of Edom

into lime. What this seems to be talking about is that they've treated the ancestors of the Edomites this way, that they've gone into their tombs, taken their bones out and burned them. And it says they've done this into lime or plaster. So again, plaster is something you can use. And what's interesting is that for the nations around Israel, bones were sacred. For many of these nations, the state of the bones was connected with the state of the person in the afterlife. What's interesting is this even makes the Lord angry, the way the Moabites have treated the ancestors of the Edomites. This is something that makes him angry, their treatment of the dead. Pete That's interesting because none of these

people are Israelites yet, but the Lord is still talking about them. He's still concerned about everything they're doing. This is interesting to me that we're not just focusing right in on Israel as if you're the center stage here. He's not quite Israel. This is the southern kingdom. But it says, for three transgressions of Judah and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they have despised the law of the Lord and have not kept his commandments. Now, it doesn't elaborate and explain, well, but we're to understand that what's happened here is sort of on par with what he has already called out these other nations for doing. That they have taken people as slaves, sold them, mistreated, killed people, dishonored the dead. They've treated people this way and he's kind of equated not following the law of the Lord and not keeping his commandments with that. Immediately we think, well, what commandments?

What are they not doing that is so terrible compared to this? And that's where we get to verse seven, where we get, he turns to Israel and we're gonna hear exactly what has made the Lord roar in the first place. In verse six, he says, for three transgressions of Israel and for

four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof because they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. There's a lot of things happening here. One, we've heard about how all the other nations have treated other countries, how they've exploited them. But now we turn to Israel and we find out that Israel is doing the same thing, but not to a foreign captive. They're doing the same thing to their own people. When we hear about them selling the righteous for silver or the poor for a pair of shoes, we're thinking about debt slavery. So, in the ancient world, if you had to borrow money, there was no bankruptcy. If you couldn't pay back, you couldn't file bankruptcy. If you couldn't pay a loan,

then the consequences could be your family members being sold into slavery or you yourself being sold into slavery. At the end of that verse that they sell the poor for a pair of shoes. So, let's say you borrowed money, you can't pay back enough for a pair of sandals, which again, you're thinking you go to Old Navy and buy a pair of flip-flops for cheap. That's not a very large sum of money. And even if these people couldn't pay back that little sum of money, they would be sold into slavery. Because again, these people are seeing these people not as someone suffering that needs their help, but as someone to exploit, someone to get some use out of.

These are honorable, innocent people. I mean, it's not like they went and borrowed 10,000 talents from the New Testament. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. It sounds like all those sins against charity. Again, you're treating people like things. Yeah, that's the problem here is that the covenant people are not understanding their obligation to help take care of the people around them. And instead, they're seeing the poor. So, another way this has been translated is something similar to that they trample into the dust the head of the poor. So, again, they're either opportunities to exploit or obstacles to eliminate, right? If they're in their way, just trample over them, and they turn aside the way of the meek. The meek here can also be translated as oppressed, right? People that are suffering,

get them out of your way. If they're there, move them or trample over them. Yeah, and this is the Lord's covenant people. This is not good. They have not understood what they're here to do. In verse 8, we also hear that this translates into their relationship with God. And of course, your relationship with those around you and your relationship with God are very much connected. And it says in verse 8, they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. And so the word God there is lowercase in the King James Version, but it may as well, it may also be an uppercase G because the Hebrew word behind it is Elohim. They could be going to the altar or to the house of God, but the problem is that they're going and feasting.

So temples were also a place of celebration, of feasting. And what they're doing is they're laying down on clothes that are taken in a pledge. So if you borrow money, and sometimes you would need to put down some collateral to show that either you're gonna pay this back, or if you don't, that's gonna be taken. Someone that doesn't have very much

may even give you the shirt off their back. The person that has given their garment to their creditor, the creditor takes this and lays down on it and celebrates drinking wine and celebrating in the house of God, basically on the backs of the poor. Wow. This is a difficult situation. So Amos finds himself going to a nation where they are exploiting the very people that they're there to help take care of, a place where they don't take care of each other. This is a survival of the fittest kind of society where no one has each other's back,

where you're just looking to get what's yours and don't care about how this is going to affect the people around you. Could I share the first paragraph in the Come Follow Me manual? Because I love how it says this. God chose Abraham's seed to be his covenant people so that they would be a blessing to all people. But instead, by the time of Amos' ministry, many of the covenant people were oppressing the poor and ignoring the prophets, making their acts of worship empty and meaningless. True, the nations surrounding them were also guilty of great sins, but that has never been an excuse for God's people. So God sent a herdsman from Judah named Amos to preach repentance to the kingdom of Israel. So, just like you said, here's all these other nations, but look, you're doing this where you can know where people are at is by how they treat the

poor and the helpless. And that's what he seems to be calling them out about. Pete Yes. And the reason that Israel needs to be different, and this is where Amos pivots here, or the Lord reminds Israel why they should be different, is because of what God has done for them. And this is where we get to verse 9, that it goes to their relationship with God. He says, yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, meaning these are the Canaanites, whose height was like the height of cedars, and he was strong as the yokes, yet I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from beneath. And also I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you 40 years through the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. This reminds us that the way that God began his relationship with Israel was by an unearned act of love and deliverance, that he rescued them

out of Egyptian slavery, that they were in bondage, they were suffering, and God went to them because they needed help. He rescued them. He reached out to them, lifted them out of their trials and invited them to help lift other people up out of their trials. Jesus, he's the kid on the playground that saves us from the bully. And then afterwards says, will you be my friend? And will you help me rescue other people? Who are being bullied. And that's, I think, really the foundation of what it means to have a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ reach out to us in love and deliverance. And after they've rescued us, say, join with me, help me find people that are suffering and help them in the same way that i've helped you

don't wait for them to earn it don't wait for them to deserve it just go and help them no matter what what a fantastic lesson so far i mean yes everyone around you is doing these terrible things but you should be different you should be different you've received blessings that they haven't received. You're no different than they are at this point. You're treating people like objects. And then that example of I saved you when you needed me, when you needed help. And why aren't you doing this for others? Brian, that's a fantastic lesson from these first two chapters. I like that. Do what you've seen me do. I am the light, ye shall hold up. That which ye have seen me do.

The third Nephi 18. I like what you said, Ryan. The bully rescues you and then says, now do what I do. Let's go rescue others. Let's do the same thing. That's a good way to put it. And this reminds me a lot of basically what King Benjamin taught his people when he talks about our debt to God, that he does his best, King Benjamin tries to explain to them

all the things that God has done for them. And again, thinking about things in economic terms, because remember the problem is Israel is thinking about people in terms of dollars and cents. What can you do for me? How can you pad my pockets? And King Benjamin uses kind of a dollars and cents analogy when he says, you know what? You guys are unprofitable servants in the sense that God spends his life serving and blessing and doing everything he can to take care of us. And the question is, why? There's actually no economic benefit for God. Like, he doesn't get much out of it, right?

We don't make him richer in the cosmic sense. And I think about this in terms of our relationship with our small children. I have four daughters, 10 and younger. That's a lot of princess movies, I have four daughters, 10 and younger. That's a lot of princess movies, I bet, Ryan. That's right. Small children don't pad your bank account, right? They don't pay your mortgage. They don't help you sleep at night. They don't make your life less stressful. The question is, why? Why do we spend our entire life loving and serving and taking care of these little ones? And the answer is because we love them and it makes life meaningful

and beautiful. That's what life's about. And the same reason why does God spend his life serving us and loving us and taking care of us if we don't pay the mortgage, if we're unprofitable servants, is the reason is that he loves us and we make his life meaningful and beautiful. And when he has rescued Israel out of Egyptian slavery, when he's reached down to them, taken them out of a terrible situation, he's helping them step into a new world, right? I think this is what the Book of Mormon says or means when it says that we've been spiritually reborn,

that we step into a new world, a world where people love and take care of one another, not because of what that person can do for us, but because they need help and we're here. And because Jesus Christ has done that for us, what it means to be a covenant follower of Him is to do the same for others, that we look and we find people that are suffering, that need our help, and we rescue them, regardless of what they can do for us. Yeah, has been recently articulated and emphasized by President Nelson is the work of salvation,

doing the work of salvation. And we used to talk in President Kimball's time about the threefold mission of the church. And then President Monson added care for the poor and needy. And somebody pointed out this. I thought, oh, it's really true. Because right now, the way the work of salvation has been defined is to live the gospel of Jesus Christ, care for those in need, invite all to come unto Christ, and unite families for eternity. And somebody pointed out that the first one is personal, but all of the rest are focused on others. It's live the gospel. That's what I have to do. But then it's care for the poor and needy. That's others. Invite all to come unto Christ.

That's others. And unite families for eternity. That's kind of a temple work thing that's in this life and in the next. I appreciate that focus that we're supposed to have on others. That sounds like Amos is talking about here. And that's where they've kind of failed. Yes. One thing that's really struck me that I've learned from the Old Testament so much is the importance of relationships.

That it's their relationship with God that should inform what their relationship with those around them is about. And that relationship with God begins with love. It begins with taking care of someone because they need help. And that's how we need to relate with those around us. The two great commandments both begin with the same three words, thou shalt love. Yeah. And you can't love someone without a relationship, or at least loving someone is most beneficial to them when you're their friend. Really, the only thing that you can take with you into the next life are your relationships. That's why we go to the temple.

We make relationships with God through covenant, and we make relationships with our family members. Every day we think, what am I gonna do? How are my relationships with people going to be strengthened? And these two things are intertwined, right? You can't have a relationship with God unless you have good relationships with those around you,

that you need to take care of people. And this is one of the messages of Amos is that these people are often going to the temple, that they're often trying to do what we would consider kind of the outward relationships with God, but they've forgotten that if they really want to worship the Lord, they have to take care of people. Pete Wow, that's great. If you really want to worship the Lord, you have to take care of people. You think like Elder Holland, Ryan, in October 2014 General

Conference, in a talk called Are We Not All Beggars? Quoting King Benjamin, just like you did, Elder Holland says, down through history, poverty has been one of humankind's greatest and most widespread challenges. Its obvious toll is usually physical, but the spiritual and emotional damage it can bring may be even more debilitating. In any case, the great redeemer has issued no more persistent call than for us to join him in lifting this burden from the people. As Jehovah, he would say he would judge the house of Israel harshly because the spoil of the needy is in your houses. A little bit later, he goes on to say, in our day, the restored church of Jesus Christ had not yet seen its first anniversary when the Lord commanded the members to look to the poor and the needy and administer to their relief that they shall

not suffer. Note the imperative tone of that language, they shall not suffer. And then he says, that is the language God uses when he means business. I think we've hit the heart of this message here. And Ryan, I've noticed, he says, I brought you out of Egypt. I've raised up prophets for you. And look what you've done with them. You've gotten the Nazarites to break their vows. You've told the prophets, stop prophesying.

Prophesy not. That's verse 12. Yeah, it takes us back to the reason the lion is roaring god as elder holland said when he means business that's the language he uses and in here the lion is roaring because this is really at the center of the gospel of jesus christ is taking care of people it's not just something that you do on the side i think sometimes we think oh i can live the gospel in my bedroom i can read my scriptures say my prayers and do what i need to do but that's prelude to the work of salvation and the work of salvation is literally helping people

rescuing them out of hard times if we kind of skip over to Amos chapter 5, there's two words that are really important to what it means to live a covenant relationship with God. So, in Amos chapter 5 verse 7, we'll come back to this. We're kind of pulling this out of context, but he's addressing, of course, the northern Kingdom of here. It says, ye who turn judgment to wormwood and leave off righteousness in the earth. So, the two words we want to talk about there is judgment and righteousness. So, it says they've turned judgment. The word here that they're translating, I think it might be better to translate as justice. So, the word justice. And they've changed this to, rather than being something that is a blessing, they've changed it to wormwood, something that's bitter.

And righteousness. And rather than it being here to bless the world, they've instead neglected it or cast it down. These two words, justice and righteousness, they mean a little bit different in an Old Testament context than they do to us. So, in order to put this into a little bit of context, when we think about righteousness, we usually tend to just think, I'm keeping the commandments. And that's a part of righteousness, but righteousness in the Old Testament context means more to have right relationships with those around you, a right relationship with God and a right relationship with people. And the way that you have a right relationship is by taking care of people who are suffering, by helping them and

being there for them. And God is talked about a lot in the Old Testament as righteous. And the reason he's righteous is because he helps those who suffer. One of the ways to think about righteousness, and we're gonna jump out of Amos for just a little bit here. Hopefully that's allowed.

But if we go to Psalm 98 too. Let's check our follow him rule book just to make sure. Okay. What are the bylaws on that? Yeah. Where are we going? Did you say? Psalm 98 verse two.

One of the things that we're going to see is that righteousness is often paired with the word salvation. So in 98.2, it says, the Lord hath made known his salvation. His righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. And so you can see there's a couplet in that verse and it's separated there by our colon right after salvation. But the Lord hath made known his salvation. So, he's making it known. And then it says, his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the nations or the heathen. The two words righteousness and salvation are synonyms in that verse. The reason they're synonyms is because righteousness moves us to rescue and to save those who need help. And in the Old Testament, when you see the word salvation, they're not just talking about being saved at the last day.

They're talking about being rescued from any trial, any trouble, anything that we're going through. For God to be someone who is righteous means that he wants to rescue you and get you out of every situation that is difficult and where you're suffering. That's why God is righteous. Pete And these people are doing the exact opposite. They're exploiting those in these positions. No wonder the God is righteous. And these people are doing the exact opposite. They're exploiting those in these positions. No wonder the lion is roaring. They've forgotten what righteousness really means. In fact, I love the way in Psalm 34.

This is a well-known scripture. In Psalm 34, verse 18, it says, The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite or crushed spirit. Sometimes we think about this in positive terms, but to have your heart broken and your spirit crushed, you're someone that's in a real tough place. You're someone that's suffering and you need help. You need healing. But it says here in this verse that the Lord is nigh. He's close to those who feel that way. And that's because he's righteous. That's because he saves those kinds of people.

And that's what he asks his covenant people to do. He says, work alongside me. I am down here doing my best to bind up the brokenhearted, to setting free the captive, helping those who need help. And I need help. The field is white, all ready to harvest as the scripture says. There are people suffering right now that need us to help them. You don't need to wait three months until the harvest. There's people that need help. And that's what he asks us to do as his covenant followers, to work alongside him in bringing righteousness to the world. We don't do that by sitting on our thumbs. We do it by finding people and going out and doing our best to lift them out of difficult circumstances and being their friend, giving them love, hope, encouragement.

This is fantastic, Ryan. I want to go and ask my neighbors how they're doing right now. I want to go and go knock on the doors and say, hey, how are things? How can I help? This idea of righteousness being right relationships with God and with other people. I wrote that in my margin because I was thinking about just how King Benjamin's speech, again, was such a paradigm shift, maybe, for them to say, when you're in the service of your fellow beings, you're only in the service of your God. In other words, if we wanted to, we could say, you know, this world is so wicked and things are getting so dark and worldly. Let's hide. Let's take all of our holy

books and let's go build a fortress somewhere and hide. That's not righteousness. That's not serving anybody. That's not helping anybody. We can't be a light to the world if we're hiding from them. And so I love how King Benjamin would say, that's not how you serve God. The way you serve God is by serving each other and makes us know we've got to be in the world. We're not supposed to be of the world, but we're supposed to have right relationships with people. I appreciate what you added to my footnotes there, Ryan. Yeah, that was a fantastic insight. And it's interesting, as you were saying that, it reminded me, not only is the way that we

serve God by helping and taking care of people, King Benjamin also teaches us that's how we repent as well. He says in Mosiah chapter 4, verse 26, and now for the sake of those things which I've spoken unto you, that is for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God. So, I mean, we can think about retaining a remission of your sins and thinking about it as repentance. And he says, this is how you're gonna do this.

He says, I would that you should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally according to their wants. So, in that sense, if we're serving God, we're taking care of people. And that's also what repentance is. One thing I like about that is repentance isn't just thinking, oh man, I messed up and

what do I need to do differently? Repentance is thinking, what is going on in my family's life? How can I help them? What is going on in my neighbor's life? What can I do to be a part of the solution? What can I do to better work alongside Jesus Christ in lifting the children of God in this world?

Because repentance isn't just turning away from something, it's putting something in its place. And what do we put in its place? We put righteousness. And this is what righteousness is all about. Hank, I need to go repent. Why don't you guys carry on? Yeah, I've got some people to go take care of. Yeah. Yeah, what are we doing sitting around talking? Let's take a break and go mow some lawns and go rake some leaves. Anyway, great insights. Thank you. So, we've talked about the righteousness aspect of that word, but the other aspect is also

justice. We think about justice a little differently in our culture. We tend to think about justice in the sense of just punishing a wrongdoer. We call for justice. We usually think about somebody getting what they deserve. But justice is more than that. It includes that aspect, but it's more than that in the Old Testament. So, if we go to Psalms, and we'll get back to Amos, but this is a way for us to help understand the words that Amos is using to teach us. But if we go to Psalm 146, this is a beautiful Psalm. It talks about the things that the Lord does for us. And it sounds a lot like the list that King Benjamin just listed of what we ought to do

for other people. But if we go to Psalm 146, verse 7, and that starts out talking about the Lord which executed the judgment for the oppressed and that word judgment is our same word justice he executed authority does justice for the oppressed and of course we think about judging and these kinds of things in negative terms nowadays we say oh don't judge me. But in the Old Testament, to judge someone means to make sure that justice happens. So, if you're judging the oppressed or you're providing justice for them, you're protecting them. You're making sure that they're not abused or taken advantage of. We go back to thinking about Amos, where the nations around Israel are using

and abusing the people around them for their own benefit. But Israel is supposed to be different. Israel is supposed to protect. Israel is supposed to be the people that are looking out for the oppressed, that are looking out for the people on the margins that are not included, those that might be vulnerable and taken advantage of. And the covenant people of the Lord are supposed to be there to protect them and to make sure that they are not taken advantage of, to make sure that they are given righteousness. When I think about, again, when Jesus in the Beatitudes, when he talked about those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, we can also think about this in terms of somebody is waiting for someone to care about them. Someone is waiting for someone to show righteousness

to them. They are hungering and thirsting, looking for someone. And the reason Jesus says that blessed are you if you hunger and you thirst after righteousness is because this is what the covenant people of the Lord are here to do for the world. We're here to find those that are hungering and thirsting and to give it to them through our friendship, through our love, through our love,

through our service, being there for them as they need it. If you're hungry, we'll feed you. If you're naked, we'll clothe you. If you are sick, we'll heal you. And these kinds of things, this is what the covenant people of the Lord are here to do for the world. Please join us for part two of this podcast.