“Have Ye Experienced This Mighty Change in Your Hearts?”
Through two sermons delivered to both faithful and wayward members of the Church, Alma shows us the path to repentance, the method to retain forgiveness, and the rewards for obedience.
I’m Mark Holt, and this is Gospel Talktrine.
Thank you for being with me again for Gospel Talktrine, your “Come, Follow Me” podcast. Today’s lesson is Alma 5 through 7, “Have Ye Experienced This Mighty Change in Your Hearts?”
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So that brings us to the subject of today’s lesson. And what’s interesting for me, you’re undoubtably familiar with Alma chapter 5 . And I don’t know why, but I’ve never fully understood, or realised, or I guess it never sank in, that this chapter that is so touching, that is so dear to the hearts of Latter-day Saints, it was originally delivered as a stern rebuke.
And so, as I was preparing the lesson, and as I was pondering this last week, I was thinking about why that would be. Why would it be that – and we have an interesting contrast to today’s lesson. So why would it be that one lesson out of the two that we will study today, resonates with us, and the other, Alma chapter 7, you’ve probably never heard of?
So Alma chapter 5 – “Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” “Have ye received his image in your countenance?”[ Alma 5:14 ] – it resonates with us. And yet, this is a message for sinners. Whereas the message in Alma chapter 7 , which was for the faithful saints who were maintaining their covenants, and walking in the ways of Christ, and Alma was pleased to find them in such a righteous state, I daresay you probably – before you began studying this week’s lesson – you probably couldn’t have told me the contents – or at least the vast majority of you – couldn’t have told me the contents of Alma chapter 7. I know I couldn’t have.
So that’s an interesting point, that the message for sinners seems to resonate more with us today, than the message for saints. And we’ll talk a little bit more about why that may be so. We’ll explore that question a little bit today.
What is the content of this lesson? So we’ll jump right into Alma 5. And just to leap ahead quickly, and then come back, at the end of this lesson, what happens to the Church in Zarahemla is that Alma is able to put it to rights.
So in chapter 6 we have an interlude between the two sermons that he’s going to deliver today. One to the people in Zarahemla, and one to the people in Gideon. So, the members of the Church, the people in Zarahemla who are receiving his talk, whoever they might be, they’re wicked. Or at least several of them are, many of them are. And the Church is in great need of reformation, or reform.
And those who are listening in Gideon – which is Alma 7 – they’re righteous. They need to hear the pleasing word of God. And in between is an interlude that talks about what happens. And after Alma 5, the talk he gives in Alma chapter 5, Alma sets the Church to rights. He expels the members of the Church who will not repent. He baptises those people who aren’t members of the Church who desire to repent. And so things are put in a state where the Church will feed – spiritually feed – those who attend and who associate with each other in that way. In other words, it will accomplish its desired purpose.
This sermon, in other words, in Alma 5, was very effective in getting people to repent. So that’s my point.
Before we begin talking about it, we should know that it worked. And therefore, if we want to know what will work in our own lives, it really helps to know that this was a sermon delivered to people who were in dire need of repentance. And serious repentance. Apparently, their sins were quite severe, as Alma relates to the members that he talks to later, in Alma 7. He tells them how much suffering he went through, how much suffering of heart he went through, to get the members of the Church in Zarahemla to repent.
So they were in severe need of repentance, and this was the sermon that brought them there.
So it’s very profitable for us to study it, and try to figure out why that might be. Not only for our own lives, but for others who… I don’t know how good each of us is, or all of us might be, at getting other people to repent, right? It’s such an individual choice. But it maybe that some of the lessons from Alma chapter 5 might help those we know who also are in need of repentance.
That is a subject that has to be approached carefully. You can’t just say, “Well, it worked for the saints of Zarahemla, it will work for my son, or my daughter, or my brother.” I wish it were that easy. Nevertheless, I think it is very profitable for us to be asking those questions as we’re reading.
And the first thing that Alma starts talking about is the miraculous intervention that God has performed on behalf of the Nephites forebears. And in their case they have – obviously in the case of any members of the house of Israel they have this wonderful example from history that they always use, which is the Exodus. If God could take us out of Egypt, if God could part the Red Sea, then why can’t he do what we need done today?
This is an example that has been used several times in the Book of Mormon, but also in the Bible, and in modern-day Judaism. And in Christianity to a lesser extent. The Exodus is a marvellous, marvellous example. Alma is fortunate in that he is one generation removed from a similar experience. And so it’s that much more powerful, because there will be those who either have it in their living memory, or they’ve heard it from somebody who directly experienced it. There will be many people who are listening to him, that have direct knowledge of what he’s talking about.
And that is, the liberation of the people of Alma from wicked King Noah. And so briefly to recap that story, Alma’s father, Alma the Elder, was a priest. He listened to a prophet Abinadi tell everyone how wicked they were, and he was touched by those words. He went off and founded a church in secret, and when the king found out about it, he persecuted them, and pursued them. And they had to escape into the wilderness; that was the first escape.
And in the wilderness, they were discovered. They tried to establish a civilisation based on peace; a little village of their own. And the Lamanites discovered them, and subjected them to bondage. The Lord then miraculously strengthened them so they could bear up their burdens and hardly notice the added weight they were carrying, the added burden that they were subjected to. And then eventually miraculously freed them, caused them to be able to walk out of their captivity without any conflict, any physical conflict.
And they escaped into the wilderness, and then he led them through the wilderness back to the land of Zarahemla, where they could re-join the rest of the Nephites.
This was the story he is now relating to the people of Zarahemla, in order to get them to see how great God is.
So I want to point out the pattern he uses. First of all, he talks about their deliverance from physical captivity. And then he says, he also delivered them from the horrible spiritual state they were in. This is a pattern used by the saviour himself.
In Matthew 9:6, Christ is presented with a man needing to be healed. And he says to the man, “Son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” And then the Pharisees who are watching, they are grumbling and marvelling within themselves, saying “How can he say this? This is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sin.”
And then Christ asks this question of them: he says, “Is it easier… which is easier to say to somebody: ‘Take up thy bed and walk, be healed’ or to say: ‘Thy sins are forgiven’? So I’m going to do this healing, so that you know that the Son of man, I, have power on earth to forgive sins. Son, take up thy bed and walk.” And then the man was healed. [ Matthew 9:2-6 ]
So Christ used his healing, he used a liberation from a form of bondage – physical bondage – as a demonstration of the power of God to redeem someone from spiritual bondage. It was a lesson he would repeat several times throughout his ministry. And Christ is the only person who can teach it in exactly that way, because he’s the only person given power to forgive sin.
However, Alma teaches it in a similar way, by relating a story about the physical redemption by God, and relating it to the spiritual redemption by God. In both cases, this redemption or liberation from captivity, physical captivity, political captivity, is only a symbol. It’s a testimony of God’s power to actually redeem us from our spiritual captivity, from sin and death, or from death and hell, as he puts it in chapter 5.
So Alma begins with a powerful testimony that everyone would have had within, at least one generation removed, from living memory. And he tells them, he shows them – by relating the story of this miracle that no-one can deny – he shows them that God has the power to redeem them from their sins.
So that’s an important thing to remember. For them, that is not a scriptural account. For them, this was a living account, this was very much part of their culture, that God had liberated Alma and his followers, first from Noah, and then from the Lamanites, and then from the wilderness, and this was a testimony to his willingness to perform miracles on their behalf.
And then Alma had established their church. All of them at one time had accepted the church, so they believed in Alma the Elder’s ability to found a church that was actually based on the authority and the doctrine from God. So at some point they had accepted this idea. And he is reminding them, “Look, the fact that God was able to liberate people, to free them from their physical – or I should say earthly – problems, is a testimony that he can redeem them from their spiritual problems as well.
And I guess my point is, this is one of the reasons why we read the scriptures. We remember God’s deliverance of our forebears, so that we will believe in his atonement. When we see what God has been willing to do in the past to involve himself in the lives of mortal people, to intervene. When we remember the ways in which he has intervened miraculously in our own lives, these are testimonies to us that God will actually perform his promises spiritually as well. Those are things, the evidence of which it is much harder to see.
It would be very hard for me to know – I don’t have some sort of progress bar to know – how forgiven I am of my sins, right? I have to take God’s word for it. There are times when the Spirit comes to me and lets me know that what I have done recently, it has met with God’s approval. And there are times when it doesn’t. But, the scriptures themselves, the stories within the scriptures, in between those times, that is a testimony to me of the power of God to redeem me and to forgive me, to change me.
And change is really what this chapter is all about. Alma talks about change when he says, “The people of Alma my father – Alma the Elder – they changed because… First Alma changed, because he heard the word of Abinadi, and then his followers, they changed, because he preached that word unto them.”
He describes a process; but the change in their hearts actually comes very early on in the process. First there is the word; the word is preached to somebody. And then their hearts change. Only after that does he mention humility, and then trust in God, and then enduring to the end.
So the process, as I have it here is: you hear the word; you change your heart; then you humble yourself; you trust in God; and then you endure to the end.
Isn’t that interesting? That the change in your heart comes because of the word. And not because of some lifelong commitment and endurance that pre-existed.
This is actually pointed to in one of the teachings of Jesus – the parable of the sower. The sower sows the word, and it falls on a variety of different types of ground, and this is what Alma is talking about. This chapter, Alma chapter 5, has a lot of similarities to the parable of the sower. And if you combine it together with Alma chapter 7, those similarities only increase. So think about that as we continue.
In today’s lesson, as in so many lessons, it helps if you have your scriptures open, and follow along with me. Sometimes I’ll mention exactly what verse I’m talking about, and sometimes I will just have it in my head, and so it’s hard for you to read my mind. So what I’m doing right now is I’ve started from the beginning of Alma chapter 5, and I’m taking the ideas as I see them.
And I’ve been reading between verses 1 and, let’s say, verse 18 up until this point. But I haven’t mentioned the verses individually. So if you’re kind of casting your eyes over the chapter as we go, you may be able to spot where the ideas come from that I’m talking about.
So I guess the point this far is: change leads us to believe in God. And then we believe in God, we choose to trust him.
Now Alma begins to talk about the day of judgement. So he wants us to cast our minds forward. “Can you imagine in the day of judgement, that you will be able to hide your sins? Can you imagine that you’ll be able to justify them? Can you imagine that your sins being unrepented of, and unforgiven, can you imagine that you’ll be comfortable in the presence of God?”
No. All of those things will not be true. So here is the blessed state of somebody who has repented. God will say unto you, “Come unto me, you blessed.” And everyone else will feel this terrible separation. The separation that has elsewhere been described as so painful that it’s like a lake of fire and brimstone. And brimstone, in case you’re not aware, is a naturally occurring flammable chemical, that is often present in volcanic eruptions, hot springs, other geothermal vents in the earth.
And so people associate it with great heat, and a terrible smell: obviously - it’s sulphur. So suffering. If you were to be cast in a pit of fire and brimstone, it’s like there’s a volcanic rent in the earth that’s opened up. And you’ve been thrown in and burned to death.
So Alma’s first tactic was talking about God’s miraculous interventions in the past. And his second tactic is to remind the members of the Church that at some point they’ve accepted the truth. And now they need to remember the day of judgement is a real thing. And obviously this is done with love. It is possible to tell someone – this is obviously true – it is possible to tell someone they’re going to hell, and not do it with love. But what Alma is saying is, “You’re all going to hell; you’re heading in the direction of hell as we speak. And I want you to consider the consequences of your actions.”
Now inviting someone to consider the consequences of their actions can be done with love. It can also be done with an agenda, it can be done with part love and part agenda, it can be done with expectations. The one thing we can be sure of, the result we can be sure of, is, if we do it to ourselves, then we know what our motivations are.
So if we invite ourselves to change, if we show ourselves the consequences of our actions, then that’s the time we can be truly sure where we are coming from. So really this sermon, in Alma chapter 5, is most helpful when it’s applied internally.
So Alma talks about the change that has come over the hearts. “Have you experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” And the mighty change – one of the aspects of the change, one of the characteristics of the change – is that we have received God’s image in our countenances. [ Alma 5:14 ]
Alma has a couple of important concepts from the creation that he brings forth in this sermon. And here’s one of them. Which is this idea that we are in the image of God. But we’re only in the image of God if we choose to be.
So God created Adam and Eve in his image, but after that they fell. It’s sort of an echo of an idea that I’ve only glanced on lately in the Book of Mormon. But you remember that the Lamanites have a curse put upon them. And we’ll talk about this a little bit later when we study the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. But the Lamanites have a curse put upon them. And it’s a curse of darkness. And many times this curse is interpreted as a dark skin. And one of the things that we’ll talk about – we won’t talk about it today – but one of the things we’ll talk about is that this may not have been a racial change at all. It may not have been as physically distinct as most people assume as they read the Book of Mormon.
Which is a fascinating idea, and I know that I’m making a very bold claim and I need to back it up. And I’m not going to do so today. So hopefully that tantalises you to keep listening!
The point is, the image of God, it sounds to us like the physical resemblance. And the image of God departed, at least to some extent, in the Fall. So the question that Alma has is: can you begin the process of walking back to the state we were in, in a state that God created us, which was when we had his image in our countenance?
You can see this isn’t a physical change. It’s an inward change, it’s a spiritual change, and it has to do with purity. So Alma is saying, “When you receive God’s image in your countenance, you are in a state that Adam and Eve were in when they were in the Garden of Eden, and looking to obey God in all things.”
Incidentally, what was the purpose of man in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall? What did God charge them to do? He charged them to reign over the earth, to have dominion, to exercise stewardship over everything in their environment.
Obviously, because they had the image of God in their countenances, then this was a righteous dominion. It was a faithful stewardship. And so paradoxically, or ironically you might say, the more we are able to give up our own will, and surrender that to God, the more control we can expect to feel about the circumstances in our lives. And the more blessed we will be, in having those unforeseen events and circumstances of life come within our understanding.
Which is not to say – I don’t want to promulgate the myth that whenever you experience a trial, it’s because God is displeased with you. Nevertheless, there are temporal blessings that come from obedience. [Sound of hail falling.]
So you may be able to hear the rain, it’s actually hailing now. Interestingly enough, one of those early June hailstorms that often happens in Utah.
So the change that we undergo, it prompts us to believe in the day of judgement, and to summon that day in our imaginations, and to remember the concept of that day in our minds. And also, to hope for mercy, when it comes.
So the sinners are in the state of dreading the day when they can meet God again. And those who are constantly repenting of their sins, when they imagine the day of judgement, it is the day – as Christ taught us to pray – that we would call for God to hasten. We would say, “Thy kingdom come.” Let it come quickly, because I’m ready. And that is the state that Alma is trying to inspire us to put ourselves in, so we’re constantly ready, we’re constantly looking forward to meeting God, rather than dreading to meet him.
And then Alma asks a question: “If you’ve ever felt this way” – which he knows that most of them have; these are members of the church he’s talking to – “If you’ve ever felt this way, can you feel so now?” [ Alma 5:26 ]
Now this is really the main question of the chapter. Because everybody that he’s talking to has felt this way. And most people that I’m talking to have felt this way. And I know I certainly have. The real question that all of us face at any given time is – we’ve all felt to sing the song of redeeming love, but can we feel so now?
Then he gives us sort of a prescription: “If you can’t feel that way right now, let me tell you how it could be done. So first of all, remembering the day of judgement, remembering the miraculous interventions that God has done in the past, these are two things that we can remember, that help us.”
But then he gives us a few very specific admonitions. The first is, we need to be “sufficiently humble.” And he sort of combines that with being “stripped of pride.” Now he makes a little separation there, they’re in two different verses. I’m not sure how you see it, but I kind of see it as the same thing. Maybe it’s not. So that could be an interesting question, maybe a discussion for another day. What’s the difference between being “sufficiently humble,” and being “stripped of pride”? [ Alma 5:27-28 ]
But those are two very important things according to Alma, and then being “stripped of envy,” and refraining from “making a mock of our brethren.” [ Alma 5:29-30 ] Now, gosh. I think there are so many examples. We all think, “I would never make a mock of my brethren.” And yet, there are so many examples in today’s world where we speak unkindly to each other, especially when that conversation occurs when we’re not in person.
So our online conversations, maybe not in a voicemail or a phone conversation as much, but online, email, text messages, we’re all inclined – I know this is true of myself, maybe it’s true of you – I believe we’re all inclined to be more willing to ignore someone’s feelings. Or let me put it this way – we’re more willing to take offense. And when I know that somebody else is willing to take offense, and I say something anyway, then that might hurt them. Then that gives rise to offense. And sometimes we do it on purpose, and we try to pretend that we are not doing it.
These all happen on social media. We judge each other, we belittle each other, and we say it in a way, we do it in a way, that we would never do in person. Because when somebody is there present with us, the image of God is in their countenance. We would never de-humanise them by belittling them, by making a mock of our brethren. And yet, when it’s online, when we’re behind the safety of our computer screen, when we are in a hurry and we’re trying to get that text message out, sometimes we forget to be kind.
And so, as he’s writing this, you probably think it doesn’t apply to you. Who makes a mock of their brother? I know that I had, and probably still have, much to repent of when I was a teenager, of making a mock of my brother. And this is one of the reasons when I was in the Young Men’s organisation, I tried to get the young men to be kind to each other. Because there is a lot to repent of when we make a mock of our brother. And hopefully it’s something that only young people do, because they haven’t quite leaned what it‘s like to be on the other side of that.
And nevertheless, we all think of ourselves – we adults anyway – we think of ourselves as beyond that, or above that kind of behaviour. And yet, get us in front of a computer keyboard, and we’re right back to our adolescent or pre-adolescent selves, our immature selves, poking fun, displaying attitudes of mockery. I hope that’s not true. I think it is true to some extent, so it behoves us – at least according to the prophet Alma – to pay attention to what extent that might be.
So, remember the day of judgement, remember the miraculous interventions of God in the past. We need to be sufficiently humble, stripped of pride, we need to be stripped of envy, we need to refrain from mocking. Those are mostly found in verses 27 through 30 in Alma 5.
If we skip forwards quite a ways, we can find a couple more things that I think also can be included on this list. In verses 54 and 55 , Alma then admonishes them to refrain from persecuting believers. This is a little different than making a mock of your brothers, because you’re specifically targeting someone because they believe in God, and they’re trying to do what’s right.
And I know this can happen in the Church. Somebody can be called a “goody-goody” et cetera, because a certain commandment is really important to them. And we need to be really sensitive to this. We need to watch for, when in our minds, we’ve rationalised something, or we interpret a commandment differently, to someone else. And so we want to pressure them to adopt our interpretation. And maybe theirs is stricter, and maybe that means we can’t participate in an activity together. We need to be patient with each other in these circumstances.
That is one very mild form of persecution. The Nephites were probably engaging in something more severe. And yet, we need to be sensitive to this one.
And then, share our substance with the poor. This can take a number of different forms. Hopefully you’re making generous fast offerings every month. And this is – Gosh, I can’t think of a better way! There are charities out there that are so wonderful, and I think we should all donate to them; and at the same time, don’t ever neglect your fast offerings. Make a generous fast offering. Because I believe that, look, the Church is never going to be perfect as long as it is staffed or peopled by imperfect people.
However, the welfare program of the Church does the best that it can to ensure that people are in the right frame of mind to receive; they are qualified before they receive; and then they receive towards a purpose of getting back on their feet. And nevertheless, they are in need, and they receive what they need. They receive food; they receive medical care; they receive possibly help with their rent and utilities. All of these things are given to those who are in need from fast offerings. And this is one important and very efficient way to impart of your substance to the poor.
And another thing that I would say about it is that efforts are made – this is an important concept, in fact – efforts are made to keep fast offerings close to where they’re given. And so the preference is that: first in your ward, then in your stake, then in your region, your fast offerings would be used. And only when there is a surplus there would it go to the Church as a whole.
So rich countries would eventually have a surplus, and send money to poorer countries, and the Church distributes this money. But as President Eyring has said when talking about fast offerings, the further the separation between giver and receiver, the more opportunity there is to feel entitlement. So the Church does a lot to try to bless the lives of those who give and those who receive, by the way they distribute these funds.
So I would encourage you – in addition to everything else we do, to retain a remission of our sins – to try to feel so now. When we want to have this song of redeeming love, we want to be motivated to sing this song of redeeming love, and we’ve had that mighty change in our hearts, can we feel so now? One of the ways we retain a remission of our sins is by imparting of our substance to the poor.
The final verse of Alma chapter 5 is Alma talking about the tree of life. He says, “Come and partake of the tree of life.” And for me, this casts my mind back to a lesson that we taught early on this year – not Nephi’s vision of the tree of life – but Lehi’s vision that preceded it. If you remember at that time – if you were following us then – I talked about the two narratives that will sort of dominate the culture of the Nephites for the next thousand years.
And the one narrative was that of the believers. So, if I’m a believer in the promises of God, and if I’m a believer that God can redeem me, then I see the narrative of the tree of life the way that Lehi saw it. Which is, that there is this tree that has fruit which will is desirable above all things to make one happy. And it is separated from this great and spacious building by an impassable gulf. The two can never occupy the same space. The gulf was never meant to illustrate the idea that people can’t pass between one and the other. But that the two can never stand on the same ground.
And anyone who wants, can come out of the building, or come out of the trackless waste that surrounds the tree, and come into the tree of life.
The tree of life, incidentally, is the other image that Alma pulls from the creation. And this is not just the tree that has the white fruit on it that Lehi saw. When Lehi saw it, the people who were listening to him – his posterity who were around, and then the people who read his description later on in their scriptures – they understood it to be the tree that existed in the garden of Eden, the tree that would give eternal life just by eating the fruit.
This was meant to evoke, in their minds, the imagery of the creation. So we have “Have you received God’s image in your countenances?” In other words, have you been able to take yourselves back closer to that moment of creation? And now Alma is culminating that question with this other question, “Can you come unto the tree of life, and eat from it?”
So the only way that Adam and Eve could eat from the tree of life was before the Fall. Remember that. After the Fall, there was an angel set there to guard the way to the tree of life. They couldn’t get back to it. Because once they were in their sinful state, their lost and fallen state, if they were to eat from the tree of life then they would have been locked into that state. And that would be a curse rather than a blessing.
So what Alma is saying is, “We can undo this curse. You can figuratively arrive at the tree of life and eat from it the way our father Lehi described.” So that’s one narrative. Anyone who wants to come unto this tree can eat from it, and it gives you joy. And it’s separated from sinful people.
So the idea behind the vision of Lehi was that there is as much room underneath the tree of life as there are people who are willing to arrive at the tree.
Now in that lesson I gave a competing narrative. I wanted to illustrate that not everyone accepts that God exists. Not everyone accepts that the tree of life is actually somewhere they want to be. So the best I could do at the time – and I think it wasn’t terrible – was the idea of an infinite chess board.
Some people don’t see life as arriving at the tree or not arriving at the tree. And they don’t see the dichotomy of life between whether God accepts you, and whether you have pleased him, as the important question to ask in life. A lot of people decide that they don’t want to believe in God. So therefore, they see life as a contest. And there are winners and losers. Not only that, but the winners take from the losers. In other words, there is a limited amount of resources, we all battle for them, and someone else’s gain is my loss.
And that was where I came up with the name “infinite chess board,” because there is a number of players, there is not just two players, there is an infinite number of players, or many, many players on this game of life, and yet, as in chess, if anybody else gets more, or gets further in the game, it means I’m put back, or I get less. So this is a competing narrative, and it probably is not the one that Lehi would have used to describe Laman’s point of view, you might say.
But this is my attempt to get us to start understanding where someone on the Lamanite side, or one of these unrepentant members of the Church that Alma is talking to, on their side, how they might be choosing to see the world.
They’re not seeing the world in terms of a tree of life on one side of this filthy fountain that is pouring forth temptations, and then on the other side of the temptations there is this great and spacious building built on the air. They’re not really willing to look at the world in those terms. Even though those terms help us to arrive at the feet of God and partake of his blessings. That’s not their perspective. Because they can’t see it that way, they can’t really benefit from the vision.
The competing vision is a world in which a person has to count on him- or her-self. And you can’t necessarily share with the poor, because life isn’t about sharing. Life is about getting what’s yours. The point of life is not to receive forgiveness, and to come out at the end of it being approved by God; the point of life is to win.
So that’s the competing narrative, and you can frame it in whatever metaphor you want. I chose the infinite chess board. But it is directly at odds with Lehi’s vision of the tree of life.
So what Alma is saying when he says here, “Come out from the wicked,” he’s saying reject the narrative that tells you, you have to win at life, at the expense of other people. There is room under the tree of life for as many people as want to arrive there. We certainly know that as many people as choose to go into the great and spacious building are going to find a place there. So, why wouldn’t God make enough room under his tree of life for everyone who wants to partake of his fruit, to have shade in the branches?
So incidentally, Alma mentions the tree of life in verses 34 and 62, and he says, “Come out from the wicked,” in verse 57.
Now I want to point out something. We’re going to go back a little bit, because I think there is a powerful inflection point in this sermon, in the middle. And that is when what Alma talks about starts changing. So we’re going to go back to verse 38.
And this is when Alma says, “God calls you by his own name, and if you don’t know the name by which you’re going to be called, you have to be called by some other name. So God want’s you to come out from the wicked, and he’s going to call you by his name. And if he calls you by his name, if you’ve been attuned to listen for that name, then you can be changed. You can come out from the wicked.”
So in verse 38 he says that he’s going to call you by his name, and then in verses 39 through 41, then he gives this wonderful dichotomy between following God, and following the devil. He is setting up the rivalry between these two narratives, so that when he brings up the tree of life again at the end, then you understand where he’s coming from.
I mentioned when we taught about the tree of life earlier on this year, I said “These are the two competing narratives that basically fight for the souls of the Nephites through all of the history of the Book of Mormon.” And this is one of those examples, when we can see it showing up again.
So this is Genesis language, which I love, and another piece of Genesis / Exodus language is when he says, “God calls you by his own name.” Now the name that he gives, that Alma gives, in verse 38, is the name of Christ. But I want to talk a little bit about the name of God.
So, in the book of Exodus, chapter 3, when Moses is in front of the burning bush, God says to him… First of all, he says to Moses, “Go back and tell my people that you’re going to free them.” And Moses says, “Well what shall I tell them is your name, because they’re going to want some proof that it is really you that I talked to.” And he says, “My name is ‘I AM THAT I AM.’” [ Exodus 3:14 ]
The name that God gave Moses was a little longer. But then, he says “Go tell them that ‘I AM’ has sent you.”
So there are two names that God gives. The first one is, “Between you: Moses, and me: God, my name is ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ But when you talk about me to someone else, my name is simply ‘I AM.’”
The word Yahweh, the word YHWH, has been translated as Jehovah in our scriptures. And a lot of people say that this is a Hebrew word meaning “he is.” Or in other words, it is meant to convey the idea that God has always existed, and will always exist. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
When we studied – a couple of years ago – when we studied Exodus, I made a study of the name of God. I came up with a few things. Not all of this is my own idea, but I came up with a few ways in which I differ from what you may call the “mainstream view” on the name of God.
First of all, Yahweh is not the exact way you would say “he is.” It is a form of the verb “to be.” And it is in the masculine, third person, singular. So, in that sense, the word Yahweh is a verb that does in fact mean “he is.”
But in Hebrew there are what are called “stems.” And stems can change the meaning of a verb, they can change the use of a verb.
So there is one stem that is used as “indicative,” meaning “he is,” for example. There is one stem that shows it is causing something to happen; there is one stem that shows it is acting upon. And all of these stems change… the verb is conjugated differently in a different stem, and they change the meaning of the verb slightly, or subtly, or perhaps greatly.
There is controversy about the meaning of the name Jehovah or Yahweh, because, first of all, the ancient scriptures don’t have vowels. So there is some question about what vowels we would put in there. There is, in fact, a way to make this tetragrammaton – as it is called, these 4 letters YHWH, the name of God – there is a way to make it accept different vowels in between those consonants. And that would change the stem of the verb “to be,” to have a different meaning of the verb.
Now I mentioned that I’m going to be posting more information on our website this week, on how to donate. I will put a link to that on the front page. And also I’ll put a link to the “posts” section of our website, which doesn’t exist yet.
But I wrote an essay at that time, two years ago, about what the name of God means, and why it is that we should accept that the name of God – rather than meaning “he is” – means “he will cause to exist,” or “ he will cause to become.” I don’t have time to go into the details of it today, but if you go on the website at gospeltalktrine.com , and look under “posts” – and that will be available in the next couple of days – you will see the essay that I wrote justifying that meaning for the name of God - Jehovah or Yahweh as it was originally – means “he will cause to become.”
And when God is operating – as God says in the book of Moses – he is operating in the world, his work and his glory is to bring to pass eternal life and immortality of man. The reason I’m bringing all this up is, we are here in verse 38 talking about God calling us by his own name, God is telling us, “I have something I want you to become.” Alma says, we have to find the image of God in our countenance. And God is calling unto us, “I want to change you. When I call you by my name, that is actually a promise. The promise is that I will turn you into my own image.”
So that’s a powerful message right there in verse 38, that when God calls us by his own name – and if we understand the meaning of the name of God, the word Jehovah, the word Yahweh, when we understand the meaning of that word – we can understand that every time God uses his own name, he is promising to change the world in some way, and bring it closer to him. To make it become what is was originally intended to become. Which was a reflection of his image.
And conversely, if we can’t respond to the name of God, then how can he change us? The name is itself God’s promise that he will change us. And so when we reject God, what we’re really rejecting is that promise. We’re saying, “I don’t want to be called by the name of God.” It’s exactly equivalent to saying, “I don’t want to let God change me, into anything, let alone the thing that he wants me to be, which is: a reflection of his image.” That’s one of the powerful messages of Alma chapter 5.
So as I mentioned, Alma chapter 6 is an interlude, where Alma sets the Church to rights, then goes on a journey to the land of Gideon, which is over the river and across into the next valley. Probably not to far away.
Now Alma is given a revelation during his speech, his sermon to the saints in Gideon. He’s given a revelation that they are more righteous than the saints that he left behind in Zarahemla. He expresses that wish, that hope at the beginning of his talk, and then half way through he realises that it is actually true.
So, first of all, what I would like you to do, as you go off and study these scriptures on your own, is I would like you to ask yourself the question: “Why did some messages make it into Alma chapter 5, and others make it into Alma chapter 7?” What would God tell me when I’m wicked and in need of repentance, and what would he tell me when I’m righteous and in need of hearing – as Jacob earlier put it in the Book of Mormon – the pleasing word of God?
And the main thing that I noticed is that chapter 5 is all about how to change. Chapter 7 is a chapter about rejoicing in Christ. Alma spends a lot of time in this chapter testifying of the mortal ministry and the atonement of Jesus Christ. He talks about what the promises are regarding the earthly birth, the life of Christ, what will happen when Christ performs his atonement, and what effect it will have on us.
And beyond rejoicing in Christ and preaching about his pleasing messages to all of us, what it means to us to have a saviour – that is obviously a very wonderful and important part of his message to Gideon – but what he would tell them, the instructions that he would leave with them when Alma is done with his talk, can really be summed up in verses 23 and 24 . And so I’ll read those verses to you:
I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.
24 And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.
So to me, how I read this is – first of all, I’m taking the second verse first – the choice that we make is to have faith and hope, and then charity may be a more difficult choice, but that’s when good works come. Really, good works come from God, is what he is saying. When we are willing to choose to have faith, hope and charity, then God will give us good works, as a reward for the attitudes that we choose.
That’s an interesting take. I may be a little bit off on that. Obviously, we choose our works as well. But it’s really hard to chose to do what is right when our attitude is bad. So Alma is saying here, “Choose the right attitude.” As he was saying in chapter 5, “Choose the right narrative,” now he is saying, “Choose the right attitude.”
The other part, the main thing I would take from verse 23 , is ask for what you need! How often do we think, “Oh, God doesn’t love me, he hasn’t given me everything that I want. All these desires that I have inside.” And then we ask, maybe we ask and maybe we don’t. Maybe we just think, “Oh, I give up on God, because he has either taken something away from me, or he hasn’t given me what I’ve asked for, or he hasn’t given me what he knows that I want.” And so we throw a little tantrum. And how many of you, if you have a child, are really anxious to give that child what he’s whining for, when he’s kicking and screaming on the ground? And saying, “You didn’t give me this.”
If the child came to you and said, “Mum, dad, would you please help me to have” – you know – “a treat.” Or, “help me to have something pleasant, help me to have some fun.” You would say, “Wow, my child knows the source of good blessings. He has asked humbly.” And then after you gave that blessing to your child, if your child said, “Thank you mum, dad, I really appreciate your help.” You would be stunned; you would be flabbergasted. And the next time they wanted something, you would move twice as quickly to make it happen.
This is Alma telling us, that really, that is an eternal concept that God wants us to learn. Is that it really is ok for us to ask for things, even those things that are temporal. But, making sure that we ask of them from God, with the right attitude, and then thank him for the things that he gives to us, for the answers that we do receive.
The final verse that I want to draw attention to is chapter 7:19 :
I perceive that ye are in the paths of righteousness; I perceive that ye are in the path which leads to the kingdom of God; yea, I perceive that ye are making his paths straight.
The idea “make way for the Lord, make his paths straight,” that is a quotation from Isaiah chapter 40. [ Isaiah 40:3-4 ] And Jesus actually quoted it, John the revelator, John the evangelist also quoted John the Baptist as saying that, quoted Jesus as saying that.
So what does it mean, “to make his paths straight”? That’s not a concept that we talk about much nowdays. Most people just think that it means “make straight the path that leads us to God.” Or in other words, travel a direct road, try to stay on as straight a path as you can, as you make your way towards God.
But this actually has reference to the way that ancient near-eastern peoples used to behave when they were expecting a visit from their emperor. So when one of the conquering emperors would come though that part of the world, heralds would go before them and say, “The Emperor is coming through this part of his empire. He’s going to make an inspection. And he has a huge retinue with him. It’s going to be armies, and it’s going to be diplomats, and it’s going to be servants, and all kinds of people are coming through here. And we need better roads than the ones we have now. These roads can’t wind around through the mountains, they have to cut straight through.”
It’s kind of like making – the modern equivalent would be making an interstate highway, as opposed to just a country road. When you make an interstate highway, there are certain requirements, as far as: how you can grade; how quickly you can drop in elevation, in other words; how quickly you can turn; the road has to have a certain standard of straightness, of smoothness and of evenness. It has to be level. So one of the meanings of this word straight – “make his path straight” – is to make it level. Because you don’t want the king’s cart falling off to the side.
So when Isaiah says, “make his path straight,” what he is saying is, “We are expecting a visit from our king. Our king is going to come to us. It’s not us trying to make this path straight so we can get to God. God is going to visit us. He will be here among us. And what kind of road do we want him to travel on when he gets here? Well, he has to be able to bring everything with him that he needs to bless our lives, and visit this part of the world, and see how his rule is progressing, in this place. And so therefore we will build him a road that is suitable for his feet, for his retinue, for his travel.”
So when Alma says, “I see that you are making his paths straight,” he may or may not have meant it this way, but this is actually what Isaiah meant, from whom he’s quoting, which is, “we expect the visit of our Lord.” We do have some evidence that Alma did mean this, because he’s talking about Jesus Christ coming to earth.
What Isaiah meant was, ‘We’re expecting a visit from our king. And when we make our paths straight, we are preparing the world for him to be among us. It will be a suitable place; it will be a journey he will enjoy. He won’t punish us because of the trouble it took him to get here. This will be the kind of place that he can do his work when he arrives.”
That is what it means to make his paths straight. It means we build him a road so that God can get around among us. He can travel here and enjoy the journey. That’s a powerful idea from near-eastern history.
So look, these two chapters, chapter 5 and chapter 7: one of the messages is for faithful saints; the other is for wayward saints. And here’s a good spiritual barometer. Which of these two kinds of messages am I noticing more in my life? When I hear a talk in conference, when I hear a talk in church, what is resonating more with me?
Is it the idea that I need to repent, and receive God’s image in my countenance? Is it the idea that I need to look forward to the day of judgement, and imagine myself on that day?
Or is it the message that Christ will come again one day, that I should be gentle and meek and temperate in all things, that I should always abound in good works, that I should have faith, hope and charity, that I should ask for what I need for from God, and then give thanks?
Depending on which of these chapters I’m hearing more, I’m noticing more, that’s a spiritual barometer for me, where I am. Am I one of the saints of Zarahemla, or am I one of the saints of Gideon? In either case, God has a message for us, and the end result is the same. Whether we choose our attitude, or whether we choose our narrative, we are in either case allowing God into our hearts, and he is the one who provides the change. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.