We spent a lot of time studying King Benjamin’s sermon to the faithful people of Zarahemla. Because they were striving to keep the commandments and live good lives, the king was able to teach them even more. These quotes by modern day prophets expound on what he taught:
“Service is not something we endure on this earth so we can earn the right to live in the celestial kingdom. Service is the very fiber of which an exalted life in the celestial kingdom is made. Knowing that service is what gives our Father in Heaven fulfillment, and knowing that we want to be where He is and as He is, why must we be commanded to serve one another? Oh, for the glorious day when these things all come naturally because of the purity of our hearts. In that day there will be no need for a commandment because we will have experienced for ourselves that we are truly happy only when we are engaged in unselfish service (Pres. Marion J. Romney, Enisgn, Nov. 1982, 93).
*****
“How can we ever repay the debt we owe to the Savior? He paid a debt He did not owe to free us from a debt we can never pay. Because of Him we will live forever. Because of His infinite Atonement, our sins can be swept away, allowing us to experience the greatest of all the gifts of God: eternal life [see D&C 14:7]. Can such a gift have a price? Can we ever make compensation for such a gift? The Book of Mormon prophet King Benjamin taught ‘that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess . . . [and] serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants’ [Mosiah 2:20-21]” (Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, Ensign, May 2004, 43).
*****
“We are extremely ungrateful to our Father and to his Beloved Son when in all humility with ‘broken hearts and contrite spirits’ we are unwilling to keep the commandments. The violation of any divine commandment is a most ungrateful act, considering all that has been accomplished for us through the atonement of our Savior.
“We will never be able to pay the debt. The gratitude of our hearts should be filled to overflowing in love and obedience for his great and tender mercy. For what he has done, we should never fail him. He bought us with a price, the price of his great suffering and the spilling of his blood in sacrifice on the cross.
“Now, he has asked us to keep his commandments. He says they are not grievous, and there are so many of us who are not willing to do it. I am speaking now generally of the people of the earth. We are not willing to do it. That certainly is ingratitude. We are ungrateful. Every member of this Church who violates the Sabbath day, who is not honest in the paying his tithing, who will not keep the Word of Wisdom, who willfully violates any of the other commandments the Lord has given us, is ungrateful to the Son of God, and when ungrateful to the Son of God is ungrateful to the Father who sent him” (Pres. Joseph fielding Smith in Doctrines of Salvation).
*****
“King Benjamin makes it clear how we can . . . have our natures changed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. That is the only way we can build on the sure foundation and so stand firm in righteousness during the storms of temptation. [He] describes the change with a beautiful comparison, used by prophets for millennia and by the Lord Himself. It is this: that we can, and we must, become as a child – a little child.
“For some that will not be easy to understand or to accept. Most of us want to be strong. We may well see being like a child as being weak. . . . But King Benjamin, who understood as well as any mortal what it meant to be a man of strength and courage, makes it clear that to be like a child is not to be childish. It is to be like the Savior, who prayed to His Father for strength to be able to do His will and then did it. Our natures must be changed to become as a child to gain the strength we must have to be safe in the time of moral peril. . .
“We are safe on the rock which is the Savior when we have yielded in faith in Him, have responded to the Holy Spirit’s direction to keep the commandments long enough and faithfully enough that the power of the Atonement has changed our hearts. When we have, by that experience, become as a child in our capacity to love and obey, we are on the sure foundation.
“From King Benjamin we learn what we can do to take us to that safe place. But remember: the things we do are the means, not the end we seek. What we do allows the Atonement of Jesus Christ to change us into what we must be. Our faith in Jesus Christ brings us to repentance and to keeping His commandments. We obey and we resist temptation by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. In time our natures will change. We will become as a little child, obedient to God and more loving. That change, if we do all we must to keep it, will qualify us to enjoy the gifts which come through the Holy Ghost. Then we will be safe on the only sure rock” (Pres. Henry B. Eyring, Ensign, May 2006, 15-16).
*****
“Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, ‘astonished’! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fullness, it was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever imagined! No wonder an angel appeared to strengthen him! (see Luke 22:43).
“The cumulative weight of all mortal sins – past, present, and future – pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement. (See Alma 7:11-12; Isaiah 53:3-5; Matthew 8:17). The anguished Jesus not only pled with the Father that the hour and cup might pass from Him, but with this relevant citation. ‘And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me’ (Mark 14:35-36).
“Had not Jesus, as Jehovah, said to Abraham, ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14). Had not His angel told a perplexed Mary, ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible? (Luke 1:37). Jesus’ request was not theatre!
“In this extremity, did He, perchance, hope for a rescuing ram in the thicket? I do not know. His suffering – as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity – evoked His later soul-cry on the cross, and it was a cry of forsakenness. (see Matthew 27:46). Even so, Jesus maintained this sublime submissiveness, as He had in Gethsemane: ‘Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt’ (Matthew 26:39)” -- Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, May 2985, 72-73.
**********
We learned about the Hebraic literary device called chiasmus. A young missionary in Germany in 1967 named John Welch found this style of writing in the Book of Mormon after having been educated about it himself. The first example of it is found in Mosiah 5:10-12. Back in Mosiah 1 when King Benjamin was giving instruction as to the preparations that needed to be made for his sermon to the people, he stated that one of his purposes for bringing them together was “to give this people a name” (verse 11). That name is included in the chiasmus he used following his sermon. Using introverted parallelism he taught them this: The name they (we) shall take upon themselves (ourselves) is Christ; They (We) should hear and know the voice by whom they (we) are called; Those who would not take upon themselves would be called by another name and find themselves (ourselves) on the left hand of God; They (We) should always remember the name; The only way the name could be blotted out of their (our) lives is through transgression; They (We) should be careful not to let that happen.
“Family members bear the family name; by it they are known and called and identified; it sets them apart from all those of a different lineage and ancestry. . . . And so it is that the children of Christ, those who are born again, those who are spiritually begotten by their new Father, take upon themselves the name of Christ. By it they are known; . . .it identifies and sets them apart from all others. They are now family members, Christians in the real and true sense of the word.
“They do carry his name and are obligated to bear it in decency and dignity. No taint of shame or disgrace, no sliver of dishonor must ever be permitted to attach itself to that name. . . .The saints of God must remember who they are and act accordingly” (Elder Bruce R. McConkie, The Promised Messiah: The First Coming of Christ [1978], 363).
**********
King Benjamin died. King Mosiah II (his son) reigned. Ammon left Zarahemla to return to the Land of Lehi-Nephi. After some intrigue upon Ammon’s arrival, King Limhi was happy to see him. It should be noted that this king was the son of Noah who was the son of Zeniff. Their communication continued through chapter 8 and then we had a flashback of about 80 years to the time of Zeniff. The record of Zeniff is found in chapters 9 thru 22 and we have begun our study of that time period.
“Service is not something we endure on this earth so we can earn the right to live in the celestial kingdom. Service is the very fiber of which an exalted life in the celestial kingdom is made. Knowing that service is what gives our Father in Heaven fulfillment, and knowing that we want to be where He is and as He is, why must we be commanded to serve one another? Oh, for the glorious day when these things all come naturally because of the purity of our hearts. In that day there will be no need for a commandment because we will have experienced for ourselves that we are truly happy only when we are engaged in unselfish service (Pres. Marion J. Romney, Enisgn, Nov. 1982, 93).
*****
“How can we ever repay the debt we owe to the Savior? He paid a debt He did not owe to free us from a debt we can never pay. Because of Him we will live forever. Because of His infinite Atonement, our sins can be swept away, allowing us to experience the greatest of all the gifts of God: eternal life [see D&C 14:7]. Can such a gift have a price? Can we ever make compensation for such a gift? The Book of Mormon prophet King Benjamin taught ‘that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess . . . [and] serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants’ [Mosiah 2:20-21]” (Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, Ensign, May 2004, 43).
*****
“We are extremely ungrateful to our Father and to his Beloved Son when in all humility with ‘broken hearts and contrite spirits’ we are unwilling to keep the commandments. The violation of any divine commandment is a most ungrateful act, considering all that has been accomplished for us through the atonement of our Savior.
“We will never be able to pay the debt. The gratitude of our hearts should be filled to overflowing in love and obedience for his great and tender mercy. For what he has done, we should never fail him. He bought us with a price, the price of his great suffering and the spilling of his blood in sacrifice on the cross.
“Now, he has asked us to keep his commandments. He says they are not grievous, and there are so many of us who are not willing to do it. I am speaking now generally of the people of the earth. We are not willing to do it. That certainly is ingratitude. We are ungrateful. Every member of this Church who violates the Sabbath day, who is not honest in the paying his tithing, who will not keep the Word of Wisdom, who willfully violates any of the other commandments the Lord has given us, is ungrateful to the Son of God, and when ungrateful to the Son of God is ungrateful to the Father who sent him” (Pres. Joseph fielding Smith in Doctrines of Salvation).
*****
“King Benjamin makes it clear how we can . . . have our natures changed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. That is the only way we can build on the sure foundation and so stand firm in righteousness during the storms of temptation. [He] describes the change with a beautiful comparison, used by prophets for millennia and by the Lord Himself. It is this: that we can, and we must, become as a child – a little child.
“For some that will not be easy to understand or to accept. Most of us want to be strong. We may well see being like a child as being weak. . . . But King Benjamin, who understood as well as any mortal what it meant to be a man of strength and courage, makes it clear that to be like a child is not to be childish. It is to be like the Savior, who prayed to His Father for strength to be able to do His will and then did it. Our natures must be changed to become as a child to gain the strength we must have to be safe in the time of moral peril. . .
“We are safe on the rock which is the Savior when we have yielded in faith in Him, have responded to the Holy Spirit’s direction to keep the commandments long enough and faithfully enough that the power of the Atonement has changed our hearts. When we have, by that experience, become as a child in our capacity to love and obey, we are on the sure foundation.
“From King Benjamin we learn what we can do to take us to that safe place. But remember: the things we do are the means, not the end we seek. What we do allows the Atonement of Jesus Christ to change us into what we must be. Our faith in Jesus Christ brings us to repentance and to keeping His commandments. We obey and we resist temptation by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. In time our natures will change. We will become as a little child, obedient to God and more loving. That change, if we do all we must to keep it, will qualify us to enjoy the gifts which come through the Holy Ghost. Then we will be safe on the only sure rock” (Pres. Henry B. Eyring, Ensign, May 2006, 15-16).
*****
“Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, ‘astonished’! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fullness, it was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever imagined! No wonder an angel appeared to strengthen him! (see Luke 22:43).
“The cumulative weight of all mortal sins – past, present, and future – pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement. (See Alma 7:11-12; Isaiah 53:3-5; Matthew 8:17). The anguished Jesus not only pled with the Father that the hour and cup might pass from Him, but with this relevant citation. ‘And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me’ (Mark 14:35-36).
“Had not Jesus, as Jehovah, said to Abraham, ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14). Had not His angel told a perplexed Mary, ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible? (Luke 1:37). Jesus’ request was not theatre!
“In this extremity, did He, perchance, hope for a rescuing ram in the thicket? I do not know. His suffering – as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity – evoked His later soul-cry on the cross, and it was a cry of forsakenness. (see Matthew 27:46). Even so, Jesus maintained this sublime submissiveness, as He had in Gethsemane: ‘Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt’ (Matthew 26:39)” -- Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, May 2985, 72-73.
**********
We learned about the Hebraic literary device called chiasmus. A young missionary in Germany in 1967 named John Welch found this style of writing in the Book of Mormon after having been educated about it himself. The first example of it is found in Mosiah 5:10-12. Back in Mosiah 1 when King Benjamin was giving instruction as to the preparations that needed to be made for his sermon to the people, he stated that one of his purposes for bringing them together was “to give this people a name” (verse 11). That name is included in the chiasmus he used following his sermon. Using introverted parallelism he taught them this: The name they (we) shall take upon themselves (ourselves) is Christ; They (We) should hear and know the voice by whom they (we) are called; Those who would not take upon themselves would be called by another name and find themselves (ourselves) on the left hand of God; They (We) should always remember the name; The only way the name could be blotted out of their (our) lives is through transgression; They (We) should be careful not to let that happen.
“Family members bear the family name; by it they are known and called and identified; it sets them apart from all those of a different lineage and ancestry. . . . And so it is that the children of Christ, those who are born again, those who are spiritually begotten by their new Father, take upon themselves the name of Christ. By it they are known; . . .it identifies and sets them apart from all others. They are now family members, Christians in the real and true sense of the word.
“They do carry his name and are obligated to bear it in decency and dignity. No taint of shame or disgrace, no sliver of dishonor must ever be permitted to attach itself to that name. . . .The saints of God must remember who they are and act accordingly” (Elder Bruce R. McConkie, The Promised Messiah: The First Coming of Christ [1978], 363).
**********
King Benjamin died. King Mosiah II (his son) reigned. Ammon left Zarahemla to return to the Land of Lehi-Nephi. After some intrigue upon Ammon’s arrival, King Limhi was happy to see him. It should be noted that this king was the son of Noah who was the son of Zeniff. Their communication continued through chapter 8 and then we had a flashback of about 80 years to the time of Zeniff. The record of Zeniff is found in chapters 9 thru 22 and we have begun our study of that time period.
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