followHIM - Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 5-6 Part 1 • Dr. Jason Combs • Mar. 27 - Apr. 2

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

Just how many Herods threatened the life of Jesus? Dr. Jason Combs explores the many Herods, their effect on Jesus and especially on the life, and death of John the Baptist and the call to sacrifice for the Savior.00:00 Part 1–Dr. Jason Combs00:56 Introduction of Dr. Jason Combs04:19 How the Gospels relate to one another as testimonies07:18 Mark 6 and Jesus is the carpenter’s son09:46 John the Baptist was killed15:34 Josephus’s account of John the Baptist’s death17:44 Mark and intercalation–Markan sandwich21:47 President Faust story about Rafael Monroy and Vincente Morales24:12 Jesus departed by ship after hearing of John’s death26:47 Feeding of the 5000, Moses and Jesus’s name in Hebrew32:43 Additional details remind us of Exodus and Jesus as a New Moses36:58 Messianic Banquet and the Essenes42:00 Gentile vs. servant leadership43:16 Jesus walks on the water47:41 Commandment to be of “good cheer”49:57 Matthew emphasizes they know who Jesus is52:50 Mark shows Jesus’s divinity in subtle epiphanies55:17 Beliefs about ghosts in the First Century58:20 Matthew teaches us how Jesus is tutoring Peter1:00:26 Jesus and Peter walk on the water1:08:15 End of Part 1–Dr. Jason CombsShow Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.coFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & 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 Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-piano

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 and I'm your host. And I'm here with my co-host who I believe, and he won't agree with me on this, but who I believe pretty much walks on water. He is the greatest guy. And that's how you describe someone.

When they're that amazing, you're like, he practically walks on water. So, John, by the way, you practically walk on water to me. I think you misjudge me. I'm not nearly as buoyant as you think I am. John, we are going to study some famous stories, as our listeners can probably tell. And we needed someone to help us. Who is joining us today? Yes, we have Jason Combs here, and he's been with us before.

Do you remember when that was, Hank? Absolutely. That was our first episode of Isaiah, which I was nervous about, but Jason made it perfect. Yes, it was awesome. And just to refresh everyone's memory, Jason Combs was born and raised in Lakeside, California, which is about a half an hour inland from San Diego. He started attending church when he was 16 years old, was baptized at 18. He served in the Columbia Bogota North Mission. After returning home, met his wife,

Rose, at the Institute of Religion at Grossmont Community College. The Institute director had extra tickets to see Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is perfect for today's Matthew 14. Yeah. Encouraged him to take her. Hank, did you take anyone to Shakespeare on a date ever? I never did. I don't remember doing that, but that. It works. Yeah.

I can tell you. It worked. After they were married, they moved to Provo, say that they could complete his bachelor's degree in psychology. Then he switched his major to a degree in ancient Near Eastern studies, which started them on a very different trajectory. Jason went on to earn master's degrees in biblical studies from Yale Divinity School and in classical Greek from Columbia, as well as a PhD in New Testament and early Christianity from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's worked at BYU in the Department of Ancient Scripture since 2016. Of all of his current research projects, he is most excited about a book that just came

out this past November titled Ancient Christians, an Introduction for Latter-day Saints. It's a beautiful book full of images written in an engaging way, covers topics ranging from receiving Christ, atonement, grace, and eternal salvation, to church organization, priesthood offices, women's leadership roles, from sacred spaces and places of worship to becoming like God, incarnation, moral formation, and eternal progression. And Jason has two chapters in that book. The introduction called Understanding Ancient Christians, Apostasy and Restoration,

and another called Divine Nature, Father, Son and Holy Spirit that discusses the Trinity and the development of ancient Christians, councils and creeds. Sounds great. So, Jason, we're really glad to have you back. Thanks for being with us. And from all those places, Yale and North Carolina and Columbia. It was quite an adventure. And Shakespeare on a first date. Yep.

That's right. When I think of North Carolina, I think two great people came out of North Carolina, Michael Jordan and Jason Combs. Those are the two people that came out of North Carolina to me. I'm in good company. You are. He was great at basketball and you are incredible at scholarship. Yes.

When you first said that, I thought Andy Taylor and Barney Fife, but that was actually filmed in Hollywood, I think so. Okay. So it was supposed to be in North Carolina, but they actually were in California. Yeah. Mayberry is a mythical place. So Jason, we're glad to have you. Yeah. Jason, thanks for coming. Yeah. Happy to be back. We're going to have some fun today. From what I've read, we're glad to have you. Yeah, Jason, thanks for coming. Yeah, happy to be back. We're going to have some fun today. From what I've read, we're going to be in Matthew, Mark, and John.

Where do you want to start today? Matthew 14, Mark 6, or John 5 and 6? We are all over the place. Yeah. That's right. I'd like to start with none of those. Okay. I'd like to start with the Bible dictionary.

Oh, wonderful. Let's do it. Because I think it's helpful to remind ourselves how Matthew, Mark, and John all relate to each other since we are spending time in three different gospels today. Absolutely. In our Bible dictionary, in the back of the Bible, or you can find it online, there's a great entry under gospels. Under gospels. Yep. Describes how these gospels relate to each other. And I just want to read two different paragraphs from this entry. The first one starts, the four gospels are not much biographies, if you're following along.

I see that. Second paragraph. Yeah. So the four gospels are not so much biographies as they are testimonies. And in fact, I should add there that the Joe Smith translation, Joseph Smith changed the titles of these gospels to the testimony according to Matthew, the testimony according to Mark. So I think that's important to remember. So gospels are not so much biographies as they are testimonies. They do not reveal a day-by-day story of the life of Jesus. Rather, they tell who Jesus was and what he said, what he did, and why it was important. The records of Matthew, Mark, and Luke present a somewhat

similar collection of materials and have considerable phraseology in common, as well as similar main events, and thus are sometimes labeled the synoptic gospels, meaning see alike, or that they can be seen together. You can see that in the word. Syn, like synonym, optic, like eye, see the same. Yeah. Even so, each is unique and has much detail that is not shared by the others. John's record is quite different from the other three in vocabulary,

phraseology, and presentation of events. Now, skipping down to this is the last or second to last paragraph. In summation, Mark has the least amount of unique material being only about 7% exclusive. John has the greatest amount being about 92% exclusive. With the knowledge now available, it's not possible to create a perfect harmony of the four Gospels because the Gospel authors themselves do not always agree on chronological matters. So, I start with that because some of the passages we're going to be reading today have exact parallels in Matthew and Mark and, in fact, share similar stories to what we find in John, but don't agree on the order in which these events happened. Now, I don't mean that they don't agree historically. I don't mean that Matthew thinks that Mark told the history wrong, and so he's correcting it that way. Remember,

these are testimonies. And so Matthew is choosing an order that best reflects his testimony of who Jesus is. And sometimes he's choosing to include details or even add details or sometimes omit details that don't fit with his testimony. And we can see that right away when we look at these different accounts. So for instance, today, the manual has us looking at Mark 6 and Matthew 14. So if we begin in Mark chapter 6, Mark chapter 6 picks up right after the end of Mark 5, the story of Jesus miraculously healing Jairus' daughter. Miraculously raising her from the dead might be a more accurate description. In Matthew, however, Matthew picks up with Jesus has just finished sharing a whole discourse about parables in Matthew chapter 13. Mark 6.1 parallels Matthew

13.54. In both of those, Jesus has now come into his own country and he begins teaching in the synagogue. The reaction to both of those, to Jesus teaching in the synagogue, you can compare Matthew 13.55 with Mark 6.3, where the reaction is people saying, wait a minute, isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't this the son of Mary? And aren't his brothers with us? People are shocked by what Jesus is teaching and are trying to make sense of it. Now, we're going to see a similar reaction to that when we get to John in John chapter six, but it's a slightly different context. Now, of course, it's entirely possible that people were frequently responding to Jesus by saying, wait a minute, isn't this a

carpenter's son? Isn't this a carpenter? But it's interesting to see these things appearing in slightly different contexts. Yeah, different orders. Yeah. So we'll see why that matters in just a minute when we start to get into the meat of the story here. In Mark, Jesus calls his apostles to send them forth two by two. This is Mark chapter six, verse seven. Now he's going to send them forth two by two.

He gives them power over unclean spirits. He commands them in Mark six, eight, that they are going to go on this journey and only take a staff and no script, no bread, no money. And they're going to go forth and preach. Well, you probably already talked about that a week or two ago, Matthew chapter 10. So they have these events in slightly different orders. Now we're going to see in just a minute why this order is important to Mark's testimony. But let's get into the first main story we get in Mark here and in Matthew 14. This is how Matthew 14 begins. And we're going to pick up with Mark 6, 14. This is the death of John the Baptist.

So, Matthew begins with this very tragic story in Matthew 14. In Mark 6, 14 is where we get this account. And so, it begins by introducing us to the death of John the Baptist by telling us that the fame of Jesus has started to spread and Herod is a little bit worried. He's thinking, wait a minute, uh-oh, is John the Baptist risen from the dead? Is he coming back to get me? That's our segue into the story that introduces us to the fact that John the Baptist has passed away. He has been murdered, in fact. And we now get the story of how he died. Before we go on, real quick, there are a lot of Herods in the New Testament. Let's be clear which Herod we're talking about here. This is not Herod the Great. Herod the Great died long before this, around the time of the

birth of Jesus. So, this is one of the sons of Herod. This is Herod Antipas. And Herod Antipas has a brother, also a son of Herod the Great, named Herod Philip. Both Herods, but different middle names, different. Yes. And to make matters more confusing, we're about to find out the reason that John the Baptist gets himself into trouble with this Herod Antipas is because Herod Antipas has married his brother's wife, Herod Philip's wife, Herodias. Herodias. Yes. Let's read the account in Mark. If you wanted to follow along in Matthew, this is Matthew 14.3. But in Mark, we're going to pick up with Mark 6.17. This explains that Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon

John and bound him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife, for he had married her. For John had said unto Herod, it is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife. Therefore, Herodias had a quarrel against him and would have killed him, but she could not. And it then explains the reason she could not is because Herod feared John and he knew that John had a following. Herod has now married his brother's wife. And some of you may remember back in the Old Testament, in Leviticus chapter 18, verse 16, it says, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife. It is thy brother's nakedness.

Or Leviticus 20, 21. And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be childless. John is pointing to these passages in Leviticus and critiquing Herod Antipas for breaking the Jewish law, saying, you have gone against the law of Moses. Like a political scandal here. Yeah, absolutely. And Herodias and Herod are not fans of John because of this.

Because John has a big following. It sounds like Herodias is offended quite a bit she's upset about this yeah so then we find out in the rest of mark mark provides a lot more details in this account than we get in matthew mark tells us that what happens is herodias gets her daughter involved this is the fun and dysfunctional here. This gets a little odd. Dysfunctional family. Absolutely.

Okay. That's right. In this account, what happens is Herod has a birthday celebration. A lot of his friends have gathered, including lords. This is Mark 6, 21. Lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee. And Herodias' daughter comes in and dances for him. Which, and Herod, this is his niece, correct? Right.

But also his stepdaughter. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. I'm figuring this out. This is Salome.

And if you want to make things even more confusing, Salome ends up marrying one of the other brothers of Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. But we don't need to get into that right now. His niece, daughter, and sister-in-law. Yeah. Eventually. Right. My word. Okay.

So she comes in and dances. They're all very impressed. Herod offers to give her whatever she wants. In verse 24, Mark 6, verse 24, she goes and consults with her mother, with Herodias, and says, what should I ask? And the mother responds, the head of John the Baptist. He had offered half of his kingdom. I will give it to the other half of my kingdom. Should I take half the kingdom?

No, I want this. Goodness. Yeah. Pretty good dancing, I guess. Half my kingdom. It must have been. Did you said her name was Salome? Yes. Forgive my ignorance.

Where do we learn that? Josephus. Because Josephus actually records some of these events. Josephus, who is not Christian, is a Jewish historian writing around 90 AD, and he is aware of John the Baptist. And he talks about Herod killing John the Baptist. And he tells us a little more about Herodias as well. So we'll read a little bit of Josephus in just a minute here. So Herod does, in fact, it says in Mark 6, 26,

for his oath's sake, this oath he made to her, he carries through with what she asked, has John the Baptist beheaded and brings the head to his stepdaughter who then takes it to Herodias. Yeah. Horrible, tragic death. Can I just say Herodias sounds out of her mind? Yeah, she sounds like if you could have anything you would ask for and that's your one wish, you've got, I don't know, we'll just say she has some issues. Yeah. Let me read to you a little bit of what Josephus has to say here. Josephus has a slightly different explanation for John the Baptist's death. In Josephus, he suggests that the reason is that Herod was worried about John the Baptist's popularity, that he's worried about a possible

revolt. So he kills John the Baptist for that reason. But a little bit after that, Josephus gives another description of another event regarding Herodias. And this is quite interesting. It turns out that a little bit later, one of the Roman procurators named Gaius appoints Herodias' brother Agrippa to the tetrarchy of her previous husband, Philip. So her brother gets promoted. Josephus goes on to say this, extremely jealous over the success of her brother, Herodias prodded her husband Herod, this is Herod Antipas now, to embark for Rome and petition for the kingship also. He resisted as best he could, but finally gave in and they sailed to Italy. And then it goes on to explain that this actually doesn't work out

in their favor and they both end up getting banished. It's interesting to see this one more detail about Herodias and her ambition, and in this case, her jealousy over her brother that ends up leading to her and Herod Antipas' downfall. They get banished to Gaul, to a place in modern-day France, so as far away from Judea as they could send them. That's incredible. She's got a history. I didn't know of that record in Josephus. That's really cool. Yeah. I have one more thing that I'd like to point out about this story of John the Baptist.

It's incredibly tragic. And Mark does something really interesting with this story that we end up losing in Matthew. Matthew does not do the same thing because of the way he rearranges the stories. One thing that Mark loves to do is called intercalation, which is a fancy technical term. It could also be called sandwiching. Okay. Mark loves to start a story and then interrupt that story with another story and then come back to that first story. And Mark does this in order to compel us to read those stories together. And he does that here. If we go back to just before Mark begins the story of the death of John the Baptist, if we go all the way back to Mark 6, 12, we get Jesus sending his apostles out to preach. Jesus had just finished explaining to them what their mission would be, endowing them with power to

complete that mission, and sending them out. So Mark 6, 12 says, And they went out and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many devils and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them. And then that story is interrupted by this story of John the Baptist's death. As soon as we complete the story of John the Baptist's death, in Mark 6 29, the disciples of John the Baptist heard that he has been killed. They come, they take his corpse, and lay it in a tomb in Mark 6 29. Notice what Mark 6 30 says, and the apostles gathered themselves together unto

Jesus and told them all things, both what they had done and what they had taught. So the apostles have now returned from their mission and they share with Jesus everything that happened. So Mark takes the story of the disciples' mission and puts right in the middle of it the story of John the Baptist's death. I think that part of the reason Mark does this is to help us realize what is at stake. That discipleship to Jesus sometimes literally means giving your life. Reading this account in Mark brings to mind that passage at the beginning of Moroni, where Moroni starts his final book of the Book of Mormon being chased around by Lamanites. And he says, I make myself not known to the Lamanites, lest they should destroy me.

For behold, their wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves. And because of their hatred, they put to death every Nephite that will not deny the Christ. And I, Moroni, will not deny the Christ. I think Mark is trying to convey a similar message here. He's trying to show us what is really at stake, that the stakes of discipleship are sometimes incredibly high. Sometimes it's not just giving your life, meaning committing your life to Christ. Sometimes it can even be literally giving your life. Wow. That's really cool to see Mark use that structure. He does that a few times in his gospel. What did you call it? You said sandwiching, but something with the word collation.

Yeah. Intercollation is the technical term. There was another example of that just before Mark 6. Back in Mark chapter 5, he did it also. He starts telling about Jesus on his way. Jairus comes to him and says, my daughter's dying, come help. And Jesus is on his way to do that. But then we get this other story of this woman who has suffered from this flow of blood that she has not been able to stop for years and no physician could help her. And she touches Jesus' garment and is miraculously healed.

And Mark makes us read that story in the context of Jesus going to heal this little girl, which reading those together, I think heightens the question. If you're reading Jesus on his way to perform what may end up being raising somebody from the dead, the greatest of all miracles, and on his way, a woman touches him and power flows out of him. I think you're left to ask, oh my goodness, does he have any power left to heal this poor little girl? And in fact, he does.

That Mark and sandwich there and how you highlighted what's at stake, what can possibly be at stake is giving your own life. It reminds me of a story from James Faust. Do you guys remember President Faust? My students don't remember President Faust, but I remember loving listening to his stories. And he talked about in the early days of the church in Mexico, two faithful leaders who were disciples of Christ became martyrs because of their belief. They were Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales. And it says during the Mexican revolution,

Rafael Monroy was the president of the small San Marcos, Mexico branch. Vicente Morales was his first counselor. On July 17th, 1915, they were apprehended by a group of people. They were told they would be spared if they would give up their weapons and renounce their strange religion. Brother Monroy told his captors that he did not have any weapons and simply drew from his pocket his Bible and Book of Mormon. He said, gentlemen, these are the only arms I ever carry. They are the arms of truth against error. When no arms were found,

the brethren were cruelly tortured, making them divulge where arms were hidden, but there were no arms. They were then taken under guard to the outskirts of a little town where their captors stood them up by a large tree in front of a firing squad. The officer in charge offered them freedom if they would forsake their religion. But Brother Monroy replied, my religion is dearer to me than my life.

I cannot forsake it. And they were then told that they were to be shod nessed if they had any requests. Brother Raphael requested that he be permitted to pray before he was executed. There in the presence of his executioners, he kneeled down in a voice that all could hear, prayed that God would bless and protect his loved ones and care for the little struggling branch that would be left without a leader. As he finished his prayer, he used the words of the Savior when he hung on the cross and prayed for the executioners. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. They were both then executed.

President Faust goes on to say, Some years ago, I went to Mexico to reorganize the state presidency. As I conducted the interviews, I was privileged to become acquainted with one of the descendants of Raphael Monroy. I was very impressed with the depths of this man's testimony and his commitment to the gospel. When I asked him what had happened to the rest of Brother Munroy's descendants, he said that many of them had been on missions and continue faithful in the church. I remember listening to that talk, and I was just struck by it. Like, really? It can happen in our day as well. It's the Saturday morning session of October 2006. And you're right, Jason, this is a

tragic, tragic story. And I'm sure it was hurtful for all of John's followers. I'm sure it was hard for all of them. So Mark emphasizes the tragic nature of it by surrounding it with these disciples' mission. Matthew does it slightly differently. In Matthew, the very next passage, Matthew 14, 13, says when Jesus heard of it, he departed fence by ship into a desert place apart. So in the context of Matthew, Jesus's departure seems to be a reaction to hearing about the death of John the Baptist and needing some time to be alone to deal with that. Mark 6, 32 also has them departing into a place privately, but that's after telling about the return of the apostles. So you don't really get the sense that that's

about John the Baptist there, but Matthew makes it clear that this is Jesus responding to the news. Fascinating to just point out that Jesus could have protected John, healed John, whatever he needed to do, and he doesn't. Sometimes we read so many stories in the Gospels, Jesus heals this person, this person, this person. And we don't see that there's times where he doesn't. Most New Testament scholars, Jason, would assume that Joseph, his father, dies sometime before his ministry. Presumably, because we don't hear much about Joseph in any of the gospels. And by the end of the gospel of John, Jesus is committing his mother to his beloved disciple,

which sort of implies the father is no longer around. So I don't know if it can be helpful or just it can be insightful to point out times where Jesus doesn't intervene, because that can be a listener's experience as well. And in both Matthew and Luke, you sort of sense that John the Baptist was a little bit worried about Jesus not intervening. He sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, are you the one, or do we wait for another? That could imply that John the Baptist is expecting that Jesus would intervene, that Jesus would free captives such as John the Baptist. It's a tragic end to John, but wonderfully, we know his ministry continues. That's not the last we're going to hear from John. That's right. This study this year has just, the fact that Jesus

would say among, there's not a greater prophet than John the Baptist. We get the sense the 12 were learning and growing gradually. John seemed to have hit the ground running. He had the Holy Spirit from the womb and everything. And didn't one of our guests call him John the Prophet Baptist or something like that, Hank, because he was a great prophet as well. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

So, Jason, where do we want to go next? Let's move right on to the next story we get in both Mark and Matthew. This is the miraculous feeding of 5,000, the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes. Once again, I'd like to focus on the account in Mark because Matthew leaves out some details and we'll talk a little more about what Matthew's up to in a minute. But first, let's see how Mark describes what happens here. Starting in Mark 6, 32, Jesus and his disciples have departed into a desert place by ship privately. People see them departing and they all gather to him. Then in Mark 6, 34, Jesus comes out, sees the peoples moved with compassion towards them. And, sees the peoples moved with compassion towards them.

And it explains he's moved with compassion towards them because they were as sheep, not having a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And then after he teaches them for a while, they realize that the people are probably starting to get a little hungry. He's been teaching for a while now. And they realize that this is a problem because they're sort of out in a desert place. There's not a lot of villages or cities around where they can buy bread. And even if they could, they don't have the money to buy bread for that many people. Continuing down, Mark 6, 38, Jesus says, how many loaves do you have? Go and see.

And they went and they find five loaves and two fishes. Continuing with Mark 6, 39, he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they all sat down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties. And when they had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up into heaven, blessed and break the loaves and gave them to his disciples, set them before them and the two fish divided among them and all eight and were filled. This miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes. I just focused on two passages that include some details that are not found in Matthew. Back in Mark 6.34, Mark includes that Jesus has moved with compassion towards these people, Mark says,

because they were a sheep not having a shepherd. And then down when Jesus gathers them into companies, Mark includes the detail that they sat down in ranks by hundreds and fifties. Now it's interesting that Mark includes these particular details because both of these details hint back at passages we read last year in the Old Testament. If you turn to Numbers chapter 27, beginning in verse 15, we get this. Moses spake unto the Lord, saying, Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in,

that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd. He uses that exact same phrase. The congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd. He uses that exact same phrase, as sheep which have no shepherd. And the Lord said unto Moses, take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thy hand upon him. So Joshua is then appointed to be Moses' second-hand man. Of course, Joshua ends up becoming, in a way, the new Moses. Moses is not allowed to lead Israel into the promised land.

It's Joshua who leads them into the promised land. This is actually really interesting because in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is promised, God promises that God will raise up a prophet like Moses. And that is fulfilled in different ways over time. But one of the ways that's fulfilled is through Joshua. And the reason we know that Joshua is a prophet like Moses is because Joshua does some of the sorts of things that Moses does. For instance, just as Moses parted the Red Sea to lead Israel out of Egypt, Joshua parts the River Jordan to lead Israel into the Promised Land at the beginning of the book of Joshua. So Joshua becomes this new Moses. Anyway, here's where it gets really interesting. Guess how you'd pronounce Joshua's name if it were written in Greek and then you were

turning it into English. It's Jesus. Jesus' Hebrew name is Joshua or Yehoshua, Yeshua for short. I had the experience in my graduate education to start reading the Old Testament and New Testament in Greek. So it's fascinating to read the accounts in Greek of Joshua and see it calling him Jesus. I'm used to only seeing Jesus in the New Testament when I read in English. And then you start reading the Old Testament and Jesus is parting the river Jordan and leading his way. Am I in the wrong Testament here?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that's significant for early Christians as well. If Joshua is the first prophet like Moses, then Jesus becomes this new prophet like Moses, and both have the same name. Already Mark in Mark 6.34 includes that detail that Jesus has moved with compassion towards them, Mark says, because they were a sheep not having a shepherd, which sort of suggests that Jesus needs to be this new Joshua, this new Moses, who is shepherding Israel. And it also makes us think about the Old Testament. It makes us think in particular about the story of Israel in the wilderness, a time when God miraculously fed Israel by providing them manna, bread from heaven in the wilderness. So these are details, miraculous feeding happening in the Old Testament

and now again in the New. Once in the time of Moses and Joshua, now in the time of Jesus. And Jesus connects those directly in John chapter 6, doesn't he? Yeah, we'll talk about that today. Also, Mark 6. 40, Mark includes the detail that they were arranged into companies. They sat down by ranks in groups of hundreds and fifties. That may also cause anybody familiar with the Old Testament to remember a time where Moses in Exodus chapter 18, verse 25, and Moses chose able men out of all of Israel and made them heads over the

people, rulers over thousands, rulers over hundreds, rulers over fifties, rulers of tens. There's this other allusion here to Israel wandering in the wilderness. Good point. I remember in Aaronic Priesthood, see, I do have a memory sometimes, Hank, but they gave us this chart of Jethro talking to Moses and saying, you're trying to do all of this by yourself. And it had this organizational chart where Moses was in charge of everything in agriculture and army and farming and distribution and hiring and everything. And then Jethro set it up like this. And you get those ideas of over thousands and hundreds and fifties. And under this system, it took Moses this much time to get those ideas of over thousands and hundreds and fifties. And under

this system, it took Moses this much time to move the children of Israel. And I still remember that kind of funny graphic. So you're saying Mark is saying this going, hey, look, this is a newer Moses doing some of the same things. Oh, I love that. Matthew definitely emphasizes that Jesus is a new Moses. He does that from the very beginning of his gospel. And I'm sure you've already talked about that on here. And the truth is, even without those details about having a sheep without a shepherd and sitting down in ranks, those details that Matthew doesn't include, even without those, since Matthew has already set us up to see Jesus as a new Moses, you would read a story about a miraculous

feeding of 5,000 in the wilderness and think about the miraculous feeding of thousands in the wilderness. And in fact, you might even think about other miraculous feedings that happened in the wilderness stories. For instance, in Exodus 24, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu go up into the mountain with 70 elders of Israel, and they're before the God of Israel. And it says in Exodus 24, 11, they did eat and drink there. They saw God and did eat and drink. Having this large group meal in the presence of God, that also might help us to see new things in this passage in Matthew and Mark, that this is sort of a divine meal, a messianic meal with Jesus present. In fact, ancient Israel expected a messianic banquet. Ancient Israel expected that in the

end of times, either after this life or when God wrapped things up, that there would be a large celebration that they described as a large banquet. We often describe things in a similar way today. We sort of describe the afterlife or the end of time being a big family reunion. They did that similarly in the Old Testament and in the New, but they emphasize the food part of the family reunion. There'd be lots of food, lots of wine, lots of big banquet. A great example of that

is in Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 25, Isaiah 25 verse 4 praises God for being the strength of the poor, the strength of the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm and all of that. And then goes on in chapter 25, verse six, Isaiah says, and in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, full of marrow, of wine on the leaves, well refined. So this amazing large banquet at the end of time, this messianic banquet. You would miss all that if you weren't familiar with your Old Testament. Yeah. And most of these gospel authors fully expect that their readers will be familiar with the Old Testament. So they often will drop hints in there to help their readers see

that everything Jesus is doing is a continuation, if not a fulfillment, of all that was said and promised in the Old Testament. This is Mark's version of the visions and blessings of old are returning. Absolutely. That's what we sing. He's probably trying to say that now. There's one more thing that I'd like to point out about reading these accounts as a messianic banquet, and that is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we actually

have an account of what the community who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, what they imagined the messianic banquet would be like. And it's really interesting to compare how Mark and Matthew describe this miraculous feeding of the 5,000, a messianic banquet before the messianic age, a messianic banquet in the presence of Jesus, how they describe that in contrast to the way the Dead Sea Scrolls community imagines that their messianic banquet will be. Let me share a little bit of this with you. This comes from a document called the Rule of the Congregation. The technical label that scholars have put to this is one Q essay, two dots,

11 through 22. Okay. That's for all the nerds listening who want to go look it up in their copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Okay. But that just means it was found in the first cave in Qumran. And we'll do a shout out to Josh Madsen. Yeah,

there we go. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, there we go. So in this rule of the congregation, here's how they imagine a messianic banquet will take place. This is what it says. At the session of the men of renown, those summoned to the gathering of the community council, when God begets the Messiah with them, the chief priests of all the congregation of Israel shall enter and all of his brothers, the sons with them, the chief priests of all the congregation of Israel

shall enter and all of his brothers, the sons of Aaron, the priests summoned to the assembly, the men of renown, they shall sit before him, each one according to his dignity. There's the first thing I want you to note. They're imagining this assembly that includes men of renown, includes priests, includes brothers, sons of Aaron. So what I want you to notice here is that they're imagining this community being gathered together that has all of these dignitaries. It has the brothers and sons of Aaron. It has the priests of the assembly.

It has men of renown. And then it points out that they shall sit before him, that is before the Messiah, each one according to his dignity. And that idea, that concept that they need to be ranked according to their dignity comes up again and again. Now, this is different than what we just saw in Mark. When Mark mentioned rank, he just meant organization. It's not like those who were in groups of 100 were somehow better than those who were in groups of the 50s or 10s or whatever. But here, they are literally having them sit according to their rank. So those who have greater honor are sitting closer to the Messiah. Those with less honor are sitting farther away. It goes on to describe this. It says, after the Messiah of Israel shall

enter and before him shall sit the heads of the thousands of Israel, each one according to his dignity. It emphasizes that again, according to his position in their camps and according to their marches and all the heads of the clan shall sit before him, each one according to his dignity. Notice how it emphasizes that again and again and again. Then it gets down and describes the Messiah taking bread and says, afterwards, the Messiah of Israel shall stretch out his hands towards the bread, and afterwards, they shall bless all the congregation of the community. So this part's the same.

Jesus is the one that blesses the bread in Matthew and Luke. This community is imagining when the Messiah comes, he would perform the blessing on the bread to start the meal. So that part's the same. What's different is once again, it then emphasizes, and in accordance with this precept, shall all act at the meal when at least 10 men are gathered and so on, but each according to his dignity. Again and again, it's according to his dignity. To go back to the account in Mark and Luke, notice that the arrangement is not according to dignity. Everybody participates

equally. And notice that those who are serving the food are Jesus and his disciples. It is Jesus and his disciples, the leaders who are acting as the servants, as the waiters who are going around serving the bread and the fish to the multitude who are all equally distributed, even if they are grouped in different numbers for ease of distribution. That's fantastic. Is that going to come up again, do you think, when the disciples say, who is the greatest among us? Is that just something that was part of their culture? This is absolutely something that's part of their culture. It comes up again and again. Jesus has some teachings and some parables that emphasizes that you shouldn't seek the place of honor at the table. In fact, if anything,

you should take the place farthest away from the place of honor and wait to be invited to the place of honor. Jesus is constantly turning the cultural expectations on their head and saying that it's the least of those among us who are the most valuable. I'm looking at a couple of verses in Mark chapter 10, verse 42 and 43. But Jesus called them to him and saith unto them, You know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you, but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister.

So I put my margin Gentile leadership versus servant leadership. We've used that phrase in the church sometimes, servant leadership. And I remember a story of down in Central America somewhere where there was President Hinckley grabbed a mop and started cleaning up the chapel when he was visiting. Do you remember that story? And I thought, wow, that's so present. Where's a moth? Let's get to work here. Yeah. That's funny. I got to see that picture. So from there, we move into the story of those who like John, by the way, walk on water. We will say a little bit more about the miraculous feeding of the multitude when we get to the gospel of John. We'll also say

a little bit more about Jesus calming a storm and walking on water when we get to John. But for now, we're still focusing just on Mark and Matthew, since they say things so similar to each other. Turning to the passage about walking on water, we'll start again with Mark, and then Matthew adds something really important here that's not found in Mark, but let's start off with the account found in Mark. So in Mark, after this feeding of the multitude, they get in a ship and they're going to head across the Sea of Galilee. And Jesus has stayed behind. He's going to depart into a mountain to pray. In Mark 6, 47, when night has come, the ship was in the midst of the sea and Jesus is alone on the land. And in Mark 6, 48, and he saw them toiling in rowing for the wind was contrary unto them.

And about the fourth watch of the night, he cometh unto them walking upon the sea and would have passed them by or would have passed by them. But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit and cried out for they all saw him and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them and said to them, be of good cheer. It is I be not afraid. You think you'd be scared out there? Yeah. You can imagine what that would be like. And let's remember that we see paintings of this all the time, but they're painted as if it's in daylight sometimes, but it's the fourth watch. So that makes it even more frightening. You see this dark silhouette coming at you on the water.

Maybe that's frightening in the daytime too, but at night it just seems like even more. So when is the fourth watch? With every flash of lightning, he's getting closer and closer. Getting closer, man. And the fourth watch is what, between 3 and 6 AM or something? So the fourth watch is the end of the night. So there's probably a little bit of light in the sky, but just enough to start to make out figures in the distance, such as a person walking on the water. But then it's also stormy, and that would make it difficult to see. And just to put this in perspective, the disciples had been out this all night. Mark 6.47, it says, when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea. So, when night came, the ship is in the

middle of the sea. And now by 6.48, it's the fourth watch of the night. So when night came, the ship is in the middle of the sea. And now by 648, it's the fourth watch of the night. The night's almost over. So they've been doing this all night long. Toiling and rowing. When's the last time you got on the rowing machine for a good nine hours? Do you know what I love about this? The detail in Mark, I'm glad we started here because this is not in Matthew, as I recall, but I have underlined verse 48. He saw them toiling and rowing. Somehow because of where he was on that mountain, he could see them. And just knowing we can apply this, our trials, our problems, he sees us toiling and rowing in a contrary wind. Sometimes we wish he'd come faster, but he sees us. That's a nice way to think about that.

He sees everything you're going through. He knows what you're going through. And comes to us in the midst of the toil. He saw them. That's a really good detail to catch. That's important. You guys might remember Sister Susan W. Tanner, her husband, John Tanner, that served at BYU and everything,

but she was in the young woman's general presidency. And she said this, I know that the Lord's tender mercies and his miracles large and small are real. They come in his way and on his timetable. Sometimes it is not until we have reached our extremity. Jesus's disciples on the sea of Galilee had to toil in rowing against a contrary wind all through the night before Jesus That's really good. And Elder Holland says we should mark that verse 50 be of good cheer. He said, indeed, it seems to me we may be more guilty of breaking that commandment than almost

any other. We need to speak. Hopefully speak encouragingly, including about yourself. Try not to complain and moan incessantly. And then he jokes around as someone once said, even in the golden age of civilization, someone undoubtedly grumbled that everything looked too yellow. So the golden age.

Just to add to that, Hank, I think it's really important to notice that Jesus commands them to be of good cheer before the storm has stopped. In the middle of the storm. They're still in the midst of the storm, in the midst of toil. It's not until the next verse that when he gets into the ship, the winds cease. In the midst of toil, he commands them, be of good cheer. That's not a commandment that's always easy to fulfill. When I am in the midst of toil, being of good cheer is not the first thing that comes to my mind. You're strapping your life preserver on. That's right. And yet I think the message here is

not that we are commanded to be of good cheer on our own. We're not commanded to summon that on our own. We're commanded to be of good cheer because Christ has come, because he has come to us in our toil. I love that, Jason. Yeah. Our friend and a guest of the show, Brother S. Michael Wilcox has a whole talk. I think it's called The Fourth Watch. And it's just beautiful about this idea, kind of of God's timing. What does Elder Maxwell say? We who wear wristwatches want to counsel God on his cosmic calendar or something like that. Somebody said once, he doesn't come when you want, but he's never late.

Yeah. So there are a couple of other details here in the gospel of Mark that aren't found in Matthew that I think are worth pointing out. One is the end of the story. It points out in Mark 6, 52, that the disciples just didn't understand what was going on. At the end of Mark 6, 52, it explains their heart was hardened. And that's a theme throughout the gospel of Mark. Mark really points out that they just don't get it. They just weren't expecting Jesus to do, say, or be who he was. And they keep surprising them. And it's really, it's not until the end of Mark that a human being finally identifies who Jesus is. It's the centurion at the end of Mark

who finally says, truly, this is the son of God of all people, right? Not even one of Jesus' closest disciples. It's a Roman centurion hearing Jesus cry from the cross and pass away that identifies him as the son of God. He's always one step ahead of these disciples. And to their credit, whoever told Mark this, because John says the same thing, they're humble enough to say, we didn't understand. We were in the middle of it. We didn't see what he was talking about. Yeah. They're writing these gospels after the fact. And sometimes they're like, then they remember. Yeah, he did say that. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Matthew's a little more generous. Matthew changes it. At the end of

Matthew in Matthew 14, 33, Matthew says, then they that were in the ship came and worshiped him, saying of truth, thou art the son of God. He didn't like Mark's ending there. Yes. Matthew wants to emphasize that actually the disciples do understand who Jesus is. And of course, the truth is the disciples do. They learn step by step, line upon line. And if you're writing a two-part saga like Luke, then you can spend the entire gospel of Luke showing how the disciples don't quite understand and then spend the rest of the book of Acts showing how the disciples now do understand. Matthew, of course, did not write a second volume. And so, Matthew wants to show how the apostles do start to understand. He includes some of those details a little bit earlier. Whereas Mark's fine saying, nope, they didn't get it. Not until the very end, not until Jesus' death and resurrection.

I often think, what are these four gospel authors discussing in the spirit world? I can see Matthew, I was there. I'm right about this. I was there. Yeah. Mark also includes a couple of hints to passages in the Old Testament that help us to see what the disciples should have seen. So, Mark ends saying the disciples' hearts were hardened, they didn't understand, but Mark includes a couple of details that suggest that they actually should have understood. And these details are back in 648. So, let me read Mark 648 one more time. And he saw them toiling and in rowing.

We've talked about that passage. Then it continues. For the wind was contrary unto them. And about the fourth watch of the night, he cometh unto them walking upon the sea and would have passed them by. It's that final phrase that is in Mark, not found in Matthew. And that should sound a little bit strange. Yeah, he was just out for a walk. Right. Especially given everything we were just talking about, Jesus coming to them in their time of trouble. And that's definitely what Matthew is trying to emphasize. So Matthew cuts that part because

Matthew is trying to emphasize Jesus coming to them in a time of trouble. But that phrase, and would have passed them by, is not suggesting Jesus was just out casually for a stroll. Something that Mark does that is rather ingenious, there's an old German scholar, last name Debelius, that pointed out that Mark is a book of secret epiphanies, suggesting that Mark shows that Jesus is divine in very subtle ways. And this is one of those ways. There are a number of passages in the Old Testament that uses this exact same Greek phrase, describes somebody passing somebody by, and it's always in the context of epiphanies. Let's take a look at Exodus chapter 34, verse 5 and 6. This is an account of Moses. So the Lord descends in a cloud. He stands with Moses there and proclaims the name of the Lord. And then it says in Exodus 34, 6, and the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord,

the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. That's Exodus 34, 5, and 6. But that's not the only example. We could go to Elijah, the famous account of Elijah on the mountain, and the Lord was not in the storm, and the Lord was not in the quake, and all of that. 1 Kings 19, verse 11, and he said, go forth and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and great and strong winds, and so on and so forth. So, rent the mountains. So, this idea of the Lord passing by is one of the ways in the Old Testament that the Lord commonly manifests himself to his prophets.

Now, there's one more instance of the Lord going by that I think is incredibly relevant to what we just saw here, and that is in Job. In Job 9, verse 11, lo, the Lord, he goeth by me, and I see him not. He passeth on also, and I perceive him not. Now, here's why I think that passage is so relevant to understanding this. Just a couple of verses earlier in Job chapter 9, verse 8, it describes God as the one who stretches out the heavens and walks on the sea. In fact, Job 9, 8 in the Greek translation makes it even more clear how miraculous this is. Here's the Greek translation, translated into English, of course. Who alone has stretched out the heavens and walks on the sea as on firm ground? That's a description of the Lord in Job. And here in Mark, we see Jesus walking upon the sea and would have passed them by just like the Lord does time and again in the Old Testament.

So they should have seen what was happening and said, oh my goodness, Jesus is the Lord. But instead they cry out, it's a ghost. Now here's where it gets even more interesting. I did some research on this a number of years ago. This is the first academic article I ever published was actually on this verse right here, Mark 6, 48. And it was on the fact that the disciples respond to this by saying it is a ghost. And here's why it's interesting. In ancient times, ghosts often appeared at night. That's common in our time today. We sort of have this assumption that that's when ghosts show up at night.

In our time, we sort of imagined that the haunting hour would be midnight, that ghosts show up at midnight or something like that. In antiquity, ghosts often show up at twilight or just before dawn because the assumption was ghosts were material and so you needed a little bit of light to perceive them. Today, we sort of assume that ghosts glow or something like that. In antiquity, they assumed that ghosts needed a little bit of light out to be seen. You wouldn't be able to see them. Okay.

Yeah. The story starts to sound like the perfect time for a ghostly encounter. It's at night. It's the fourth watch, so there's a little bit of light. But then Mark adds one detail that shows up in absolutely no ancient ghost stories. The one thing that ghosts absolutely cannot do in antiquity is walk on water. Water actually forms a boundary for ghosts. Ghosts cannot pass over water. And in fact, this comes from Tales' Greek mythology of the dead needing a boat to ferry them across to get to the land of the dead.

So the one thing that ghosts cannot do is walk on water. But here the disciples are in this situation where they would rather believe the ridiculous, according to their cultural standards, the absurd that a ghost could walk on water rather than believing the reality that Jesus Christ comes to them as the Lord walking on water. Wow. Right out of the book of Job. I mean, that is quite a connection. That's really fun. And that's something, again, if we didn't have a scholar here, John, someone who knows the Greek, we would have passed by that verse. Yeah, that's good, Hank. Great to connect that to Job and this idea of they should have recognized

him. That's what we're saying. If they had this in their minds, they would have gone, hey, wait a minute. He just passed by. Hey, hey, them. I'm doing the math here. The only being that can walk on water is God. It's ghosts can't do that from their own scriptures and from their own culture. They don't think ghosts can do that. And yet they'd rather that their assumptions. Oh, it's a ghost. Instead of realizing the reality from their scriptures. It's a rule breaking ghost.

Yeah. Yes. Well, this is one of the things that I love about the scriptures is there are things that are hidden in plain sight. This is just another one for that list. It's right there. Always been there in the book of Mark, a hidden in plain sight. And it's really fun to discover those. So thank you for that. Yeah. Now Matthew includes some things not found in Mark. In fact, Matthew includes a whole account not found in Mark. We get but what comes out that defiles. Matthew 16, Jesus teaches Peter that upon this rock, he will build his church and the gates of hell or Hades, the spirit world

will not prevail against it. That's in Matthew, not in Mark. Matthew 17, we get the people saying, why aren't you paying tribute? And Jesus has Peter go and catch a fish and in that fish's mouth is a coin to pay the tribute. That's in Matthew, but not in Mark. So Matthew has a lot more details about Peter. And that's probably in part has to do with what we looked at a minute ago with Matthew adding the detail that the disciples worshiped Jesus. Matthew's including more details about how Jesus is preparing his disciples and apostles to continue on after his death and resurrection. Yeah, there does seem to be in Matthew a tutoring of Peter, and it kind of goes up and down. Sometimes he's doing the right thing, and sometimes

he's called Satan, and then sometimes he's on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the other time he's done something that frustrates the Lord for some reason. It's hard to imagine Mark writing this, that Peter walking on water didn't make the cut. And at the same time, it wouldn't fit with one of Mark's emphases that the disciples don't understand who Jesus is until the end. And I think part of the reason Mark does that is he wants to help his readers realize that they need to be the ones to carry this on. It's a message for us. The disciples didn't understand during Jesus's life. Now we all understand we need to share this message. We need to carry the message forward.

So Matthew includes this whole account not found in Mark of Peter calling out to the Lord as he's coming to him walking on water saying, if it's you bid me to come and walk on the water. This is Matthew 14, 28 through 31. And Peter does. And again, the storm is still going on. This is still in the midst of the toil that we were talking about before. That takes a lot of faith. I think oftentimes we skip to the end where Peter sinks and Jesus says, oh ye of little faith, and don't realize how much faith it must have taken to take that first step to even get out of the boat in the midst of this storm and this toil. And so this is absolutely an example of Peter's faithfulness, even if he, in the end, still needed

to rely on the Savior. But I think that's a message for all of us. Whatever faith we have, ultimately, we are dependent on our Savior. And that's where our faith needs to lie. Do you know what I've always wondered about this is when Jesus stretched forth his hand in verse 31 of Matthew 14 and caught him, it just doesn't say what did they both walk back to the ship together? Did they get into the ship? Did they walk back to the shore? I just really want to see the video of what happened next because it doesn't say. Do you imagine they got back on the ship together? Well, it does.

In verse 32, they come into the ship. So they do get into the ship, but it doesn't give us a whole lot of detail. You're right. How do they get back over to the ship? Does Jesus pick up Peter and put him on his back and carry him over? How exactly does that work? Do they both walk over together? I mean, wow, what a spectacle that would be. And I've always just wondered Peter's, it wouldn't do me any good because I don't speak

Aramaic or whatever they were speaking, but just the tone of voice of Peter saying, can I do that? I mean, if it be thou bid me, I want to try that. I don't know if it's a faith. Lord, if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the water. I think it gives us a window into Peter that is interesting. And if we look at verse 30, it's interesting that it describes him as beginning to sink. You'd think if you're standing on water and you start to sink, that you would just immediately sink. The fact that it describes him as beginning to sink, to me, sounds like this is a gradual process. It sounds like maybe he didn't entirely lose his faith. He started to doubt a little bit, and that caused him to sink a little bit. Reading this carefully, we'd also have to ask,

how close is he to Jesus? How far did he get walking on water? Certainly he's close enough that when he begins to sink and cries out, Lord, save me, all Jesus has to do is stretch out his hand. It doesn't describe Jesus running to him on the water to stretch out his hand. It just says he stretched out his hand. I think reading this carefully makes us think about what exactly did this look like? How close was Jesus to the boat? How many steps did Peter take on the water? What does Matthew want us to imagine here? Yeah. I had a friend once point out to me that so often we attach the sinking to what the Savior says later, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And I just had a friend point out, he said, couldn't he be talking about, O thou of little faith, wherefore did you doubt that I would save

you? Save me? He's like, of course I'm going to save you. What do you think? I'm not going to leave you out here to drown? O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt that I would save you? It was a new idea to me that maybe it's not connected to Peter sinking his little faith. Maybe it's this. Maybe it's look what you did with just a little faith. You walked on water. In verse 30, it says, when he saw the wind boisterous, and I've often tried to apply this in a way about kind of a keep your eyes on the Savior type of a thing. And like one of my favorite verses, the section 19, verse

23, learn of me, listen to my words, walk in the meekness of my spirit. You'll have peace in me, not anything else, Martin Harris, not all the things he was going through. But anyway, Elder Holland commented on this and he said this, while Peter's eyes were fixed upon the Lord, the wind could toss his hair and the spray could drench his robes, but all was well. He was coming to Christ. It was only when his faith wavered and fear took control, only when he removed his glance from the master to look at the furious waves and the ominous black gulf beneath, only then did he begin to sink into the sea. So I like the idea of he looked over at the wind and went, uh-oh, maybe that's when he started beginning to sink instead of keeping his eyes on the saviors.

That was April 1998 end sign. And I think that's an important reminder to us that life is full of distractions. It can be difficult in the busyness of life to keep our focus on the savior, on spiritual things, especially in this age where there's so much to distract us. We carry around devices in our pockets to constantly distract us, right? And the distractions are quite scary sometimes. Yeah. I like to ask my class when I'm looking at this story, because I have a painting and there are a number of them of Jesus walking on the water. And if we apply it that way, look at the winds

and the waves, what are those? And we make a list. There are social issues, political issues. All these different things can distract us from keeping our eyes on the Savior where our power is. Elder Richard G. Scott said, I love short quotations that I can memorize. He said, Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. I think of the war chapters in the Book of Mormon. Let's decoy our enemy out of their stronghold. Let's distract them. Let's make them think this is something it isn't. Keeping our eyes on Christ becomes super important. Just a fun way to apply this story. Yeah, absolutely. And once again, brings us back to the primary answers, right?

It's faith, it's scripture study, it's saying our daily prayers, it's attending the temple, attending sacrament meeting. Those sorts of things help us maintain that focus. Yeah. If you're going to watch the news, keep your scriptures right next to you. There you go. So you can hold them up to block the news. Yeah. You won't be afraid.

Those are your weapons, right, Hank? Like those guys said. There you go. Please join us for part two of this podcast.