Carl's talk on covenants

Carl gave a talk in sacrament meeting two weeks ago on covenants. I was really pleased with it; he had a lot of good stuff in there. The day he wrote it I started typing things up from it but it's taken forever so this morning I just finished it up and I'm posting it. I'm including the specifically Mormon stuff he said, but if you're not LDS but still Christian I think you can still read the rest of it and get good things out of it. So I'm paraphrasing.

The talk was based on this general conference address and this scripture, which reads:

I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.

Carl started us off in Matthew 7:21-23, which reads:

21 ¶Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

How is it that a person can prophesy of Jesus and do good works in His name, and yet still have the Lord not know him?

The answer lies in the original text of the Bible: in the original Hebrew, the word "know" is "yada," which can (and I think here absolutely does) imply a covenant. What the Bible is teaching here is that just loving the Lord and doing good works in His name is not enough: for Jesus to accept you, you need to have covenanted with him.

Interestingly, the Greek word for covenant is the same word as the word for testament (pronounced "dee-ath-ay-kay"). A covenant is a written agreement between two parties; a testament is basically a will, a document explaining what someone wants to have done with their legacy after his or her death. Depending on the circumstance, one translation may seem more appropriate than another, but in the end, what we know as the Old and New Testaments may be translated alternatively as the Old and New Covenants. This would make The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ to read instead The Book of Mormon: Another Covenant of Jesus Christ, which makes a lot of sense in the context of the scripture instructing us to "repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon."

In other words, our covenantal responsibilities and blessings are outlined in the scriptures--so it behooves us to study the scriptures and understand what our obligations are. It is only by first making, and then understanding and keeping our covenants that Jesus knows us and accepts us into the kingdom of heaven (as explained in Matthew 7).

Carl then turned to D&C 130:20-21:

20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—

21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

Carl explained that these verses show that covenants bring blessings you can't get any other way.

He then read the sacrament prayer, the prayer used to bless and sanctify specifically the bread in our church's communion/sacrament/Eucharist ceremony, whatever you call it:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.

Carl used the sacramental covenant here to explain that covenants help up exercise faith: we're making promises to God to exercise faith.

He also pointed out that when we make covenants, we're not promising to never ever mess up. We're promising that we are "willing" to take upon us the name of Jesus, and to always remember Him, and keep His commandments. In return we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. God knows that we will mess up, but the important thing is that we are willing to keep the covenants and that we do our best. When we do mess up, we have the opportunity to repent--and when we renew our baptismal covenant through the taking of the sacrament, our repentance can be complete.

At the end of his talk, Carl told the story from Alma 24, where a bunch of bloodthirsty killers become converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and covenant with God that they will never kill anyone ever again--and then they bury all their weapons. Their whole story is very cool but this blog post has taken like two weeks to write so I'm ready to be done now.

Suffice it to say, covenants are important, and when we make them and understand them and keep them we are blessed. And Carl's talk was good. The end.