0:00:00 - 0:00:22 This section is about the idea of by their works. In other words, in previous videos in this series, and you should watch the whole series if you haven't. Um It's important to understand the foundation of what we're getting out here. Um So we're going through Maroni seven and one of the ideas that was 0:00:22 - 0:00:47 brought up is this idea of learning about Jesus through those who know Him better than you do. That's, that's one of Moon's themes here. And um this section is some verses, they're actually earlier in the chapter, but I've moved them down subsequently. Um They deal with how to tell so by their works 0:00:47 - 0:01:05 , by their fruits, you shall know them. So this is what this is a critical idea because of what Moon says about the importance of these prophets and angels and how, what God teaches them about himself, how they are the vehicles for transmitting that to the residue of the people who have offended the 0:01:05 - 0:01:28 Holy Ghost by uh resisting and rejecting good and evil as shown to them. And uh they are reconnected to that Conduit of the Holy Ghost through repenting, which is to hear and obey the teachings of people that know Jesus better than them. And they come back into the gate or up to the gate, having reconciled 0:01:27 - 0:01:49 themselves to Jesus as far as they know him right now. And then they move forward in that path. And that's not really something he talks about uh tremendously in this, in this chapter, but that's, he's talking about the gate for the most part. Um So by their works, he, he says early on in this chapter 0:01:48 - 0:02:09 and now my brethren, I judge these things of you because of your peaceable walk with the Children of men. And this is like, what does that mean? Have you stopped to think about it and ask about that. So here's the deal. Those you cannot love God without loving your fellow men. It's coupled. If you love 0:02:08 - 0:02:38 God, you will absolutely love mankind. Not that you think that they're good, but you know that God is good and you are full to overflowing with a desire to manifest His goodness to them through being good yourself specifically as he said in John, um He told his disciples to love others as Jesus had loved 0:02:38 - 0:03:09 them. And he said by this, they'll know that you're my disciple. And um Mormon says to this congregation that he uh he can know something of their relationship with God because of their peaceable walk with the Children of men. So as you learn more about God, you will learn more about how and how much 0:03:09 - 0:03:44 he loves you because God is love. And as we'll get into here later, uh in the next video, the love of God is his most important attribute. So um as you learn more about God, you will also learn more about how to love others because as he shows you more about how He loves you. He's giving you instructions 0:03:43 - 0:04:11 on how to love others. And uh because those are the same thing how he loves you is how he wants you to love others. Like I said from John. So while the form of how you love others might change, um one thing does not change and that's the presence or absence of your concern for all other people. So, so 0:04:11 - 0:04:36 if you want to know what, what does change in an outwardly noticeable way is the level of sacrifice you're willing to give for others. And it goes all the way up to your life and beyond. And what I mean by that. So Jesus said, greater love hath no man than to give down uh lay down his life for his friends 0:04:36 - 0:05:06 . And um the thing is that our life is not just our mortal life and so uh for righteous men, some men are willing to die for the sake of a righteous man. Very few are willing to die for their enemies and even fewer are willing to give their eternal life for their enemies. But Jesus said love others as 0:05:05 - 0:05:40 I have loved you. And he came down from the presence of the father in glory. And he left all of that to come here and live as a man to be rejected and horrifically treated by those he loved and those he was sent to save. And that's what he calls us to. So uh being somewhere on that path, Mormon knew 0:05:40 - 0:06:09 something about his congregation and their character. And then he spent his whole sermon here trying to reveal to them a greater portion of how Christ is and how we become like Him, how we know more about that, we come to know more about Him. And um he, if you recall from prior videos, he talks a lot 0:06:08 - 0:06:31 about good and evil, but then he, he defines good and evil by their effects, not by specific actions or lack thereof. He doesn't give a laundry list and he doesn't say this is good and here's a laundry list and this is evil, but he makes very plain that everyone uh the understanding of each individual 0:06:30 - 0:06:55 can be closer or further away from God. There's variation there. And so he says, um I remember the word of God which sayeth by their works, you shall know them for if their works be good, then they are good also. But here's the thing. If you don't know what good is, how can you recognize a servant of 0:06:55 - 0:07:26 God as good or reject a purported fake servant of God as evil. Because the, the whole, the whole assumption is that the further away from God, we are, the less we know, we accurately know good and evil. So, um here's the key. What is good? If you had to sum that up in one word, what would it be? Well 0:07:25 - 0:07:52 , it would be God. God is the epitome of good and we don't know Him fully, but we do have a picture, an estimate of how he is. And that estimate varies person to person, depending on their level of understanding, right? But um, we have to be clear here because we use that measuring stick incorrectly 0:07:51 - 0:00:00 . And what happens is we think we have an understanding of good and evil. And then, you know, if you think about the book of Mormon Nephi from Healman comes around and he starts telling us things about ourselves that we don't want to hear. And he says, no, if you wanna repent and be more like Jesus, 0:00:00 - 0:08:40 here's what you gotta do. And we get angry and we say, well, he can't be of God because uh I like how I am and he's telling me I'm not good enough. Well, let me give you a key to using that measuring stick correctly. Forget about everyone else for a moment and think about you and God and I want you to 0:08:40 - 0:09:01 imagine that God comes down to you right now. And he says, hey, let's look through your life and he knows everything. So, you know, from, from square one, there's nothing you can hide from him. What things is he gonna pick out in your life and show you, you could do better than this, you could do better 0:09:00 - 0:09:21 than this. You really know, you shouldn't do that. Why aren't you doing this? Couldn't you do more of that? Shouldn't you do less of this and so on, right. You already have that list in your head right now. You could probably lengthen it and add more details. But that's how that is. How wonderful these 0:09:21 - 0:09:46 machines he has given us are our bodies and spirits together. They are more than capable of enumerating the differences between us and our current best understanding of God. It's just we don't use that very often. Unfortunately, it's something you have to train yourself to do takes time. So I want you 0:09:46 - 0:00:00 to think about your list. Ok. Now we're not talking about anyone else except you and God on your list. You have several things that you are struggling with that. You know, you could be better at and you just haven't been able to do it yet. Ok? Now, when a pur purported messenger of God comes around, 0:00:00 - 0:10:38 I want you to fight the tendency to look at the other side of that list. All the things you think you do really? Well, you say like I go to church every Sunday and this guy doesn't, therefore he can't be a messenger of God or, well, let's talk about Jesus and then forget I just said that one. I was just 0:10:38 - 0:11:01 gonna go on kind of a random tirade. Um, let's talk about Jesus and let's think about why the Pharisees rejected him. They say this guy doesn't wash his hands before he eats. He can't be a messenger of God. This guy says he came down from heaven. He can't be a messenger of God. Um, uh, sorry, I'm, I'm 0:11:01 - 0:11:22 leaving out apart because I wash my hands before I eat and that's righteous and he doesn't do what I do. Well, therefore, he can't be from God. And I would never say I came down from heaven because I know I'm a sinner and that would be blasphemous. So when he says that he's a blasphemer and uh, oh, he's 0:11:21 - 0:11:47 , he's saying bad things about the Sanhedrin and the, and I would never do that because I'm righteous and that's what we're supposed to do and on and on and on, right? And yet all those things that Jesus did were more righteous than the people who rejected him. And so comparing your strengths, supposedly 0:11:46 - 0:12:15 , two, the supposed weaknesses of the messenger that doesn't pass the test. And what test am I talking about in all things where, where you, all of your worship, all of your patterns of how you are religiously. You should back test that against the life of Christ and against how other people treated 0:12:14 - 0:12:40 him. And if you find that there are ways that you are parts of the way you judge people and things that would cause you to reject Jesus if you were alive at the same time, he was, that's a pretty clear indication that you should change that. And I'm not sure why more people don't do this, but it's very 0:12:39 - 0:13:13 important. So, um, here is what you should do instead. So instead of measuring people against your strengths, measure them against your weaknesses. Now, why is that? Because goodness and holiness, what is true? What is good? All that comes down from heaven and it uh it cascades through the kingdom incrementally 0:13:12 - 0:13:43 down to the bottom rung all the way down through the tree, the, the true vine. And if you're the, the lower you are on that branch, the less capable your eyes are of seeing great light, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not perceive it and it doesn't receive it either. So we rely 0:13:43 - 0:14:06 on people that know God better than we do because we are more able to see their goodness than we would God's goodness. That's the truth. And so if you don't believe me, think about the New Testament and think about the struggles Jesus had in getting people to listen to what he had to say. And then think 0:14:06 - 0:14:31 about the success the apostles had after he died in getting people to believe what they said. Now, where was their message from? It was from Jesus. Why were they willing, more people were willing to listen more fully to the apostles than they were to Jesus. Why? Because the apostles were not as good 0:14:30 - 0:14:55 as Jesus. Now, they were fully reconciled to what they understood, but they did not understand as much as Jesus. So it was a lower rung in the latter and so on, it goes all the way down. John, the Baptist was much more popular than Jesus. He also had much less light, but he had a lot of light. And actually 0:14:55 - 0:15:15 there's some huge takeaways from the New Testament. If you go back and reread it without understanding and reread what Jesus said about John, the Baptist and how he condemned the people because they believed John and John's mission was to testify of Jesus, but they didn't believe Jesus. And so anyway 0:15:14 - 0:15:37 , so if you want to use this measuring stick properly, you kind of, you have to turn it around and use it the other way. And instead of thinking that you know something about what holiness is, which you don't flip it around and use it uh to measure what you do know which is, you know, something about 0:15:37 - 0:16:01 your own sin. That's something you do know about, right? You don't know about God's righteousness, but you do know about your own sin. So I want you to think about the things that you are tempted by. So the sins. You know, you commit repeatedly that you shouldn't and I want you to pay attention when 0:16:01 - 0:16:22 you find someone who is not struggling with those things who can tell you. Uh, I don't look at porn. I am not an alcoholic. I am not addicted to painkillers. I don't want to commit suicide. Uh, I don't struggle to read my scriptures every day. In fact, I wish I had more time to do it and so on. Right 0:16:22 - 0:16:44 . That was just a list of maybe these things affect you. Maybe not, but you pick your own thing. You know what you struggle with. Go find people that don't struggle with that and learn why they don't because that is a gift to you to get closer to God. What about people who uh know something that you 0:16:44 - 0:17:04 don't know? Now, I'm not talking about things that you don't care about because there are an awful lot of those, what I'm saying is write down questions that you have that you would like to know the answer to from God but that you don't know the answer to and then go find people who say they have an 0:17:04 - 0:17:38 answer to that and the answer might be right and it might be wrong. But if it's right, they have a run to get you closer to God. What about people who are willing to sacrifice of themselves for others more than you are? So, uh I had a neighbor once who was uh wonderful in the sense of she was very much 0:17:38 - 0:17:56 um involved in this. She just did it on her own. I don't think she was coordinating with anybody but she made some deal with some grocery store or something. This is years ago. I don't remember the details, but she would get all the fruits and vegetables that they couldn't sell anymore but were still 0:17:56 - 0:18:12 good to eat. But they weren't the prettiest things in the world. She would get boxes and boxes of produce on a regular schedule. I think it was weekly. I don't remember. And then she had coordinate to connect that to people in need. No one told her to do it. She didn't make a production about it. And 0:18:12 - 0:18:33 I only knew because she did things for our family, like watch her dog when we were going away and whatever she was, she was a cool gal. She's not dead. She's still a cool gal. Um, but, uh, a lot of people look at that and say, you know, in my particular circumstances that would be a good thing to do 0:18:33 - 0:18:59 , but I just don't care. And so you said get the sense of how much people care about others because if someone loves others more than they love themselves, there might be some light in that person that might be good to get to know. What about those that have fewer limits with God than you do and what 0:18:58 - 0:19:18 I mean by this is, it seems like a whole lot of people have a long list of stuff that they are dead convinced that God would never ask them to do. And I don't want to go into that list because it's impossible to mention even one thing on that list without drastically offending massive numbers of people 0:19:18 - 0:19:38 . It doesn't matter which one you pick. But God does ask hard things of people all the time. Go read the scriptures. And when you think about what God could or couldn't ask you to do a good place to start is the super set or? That's a funny sounding word, but it is a mathematical, it's a real word. The 0:19:38 - 0:20:00 set of all things in the scriptures that God has ever asked anyone to do. That's a good starting point. And that list is not even complete because Jesus descended below that he did even more. And that's the actual bound of people say, well, God would God asked job, but he would never put me through what 0:20:00 - 0:20:31 he put job through. Why are you so sure? Where do you get that idea from? All right. I think you get the point. Uh So when you find someone who's closer to God, you should use that or, or when you're looking for someone that's closer to God than you are, you should use that, that idea. Not so much looking 0:20:30 - 0:20:46 at the things you're good at, but look at the things you're bad at. And that's not to say that things you're good at aren't good. It just means they're probably not the best they can be because while you have a list of things you're not so good at, you can guarantee that your list of things you think 0:20:46 - 0:21:12 you're good at are not as good as you think. You can guarantee that, you know, sin, residual sin in your life. It's like an anchor. It will absolutely limit how much you can come to know God. That's the whole reason He commands us not to sin. It's because He wants us to know Him because it's a key to 0:21:12 - 0:21:38 everything as the path, the path joy. That's a great segue to verse six. For behold, God has said a man being evil cannot do that, which is good for if He offer a gift or pray unto God, except He shall do it with real intent. It profiteth Him nothing for behold. It is not counted unto Him, for righteousness 0:21:37 - 0:22:02 . God doesn't care about all the good you think you do in your life while you still have things that you're doing that, you know are wrong. It's not enough. It still cuts you off from Him and from the Holy ghost. And that's the vehicle for Him to reveal more of Himself to you one on one directly. And 0:22:02 - 0:22:19 you know, people come out of the woodwork and they say, I want to go direct to God. I want to go direct to God. Don't talk to me about ministry of men. I want to go direct to God. Well, that's great. Go direct to God. The only problem is you're not actually doing that because you have all this sin in 0:22:18 - 0:22:42 your life that you know about that you haven't repented of, you're still sinning. Therefore, you absolutely cannot go directly to God till you clean that up until you clean that up. It's not gonna happen, but by all means, do it. Uh I, for the sake of time, this has gone on a long time and I need to 0:22:42 - 0:23:05 move on with my day. I think I'm just gonna skip the next few verses and there's a whole lot that could be said about this and there are things that I'm talking about in books that will come out. I, I think I've given you plenty to chew on already. Um So we'll leave it at that, so careful how you judge 0:23:04 - 0:23:14 purported messengers of God and the key that I'm giving you is judge them against the things you know that you're doing wrong, not the things you think you're doing. Right.