My beloved brothers and sisters, with the exciting new emphasis on increased gospel learning in the home, it is crucial for us to remember that we are still commanded to “go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day.” 9 In addition to making time for more home-centered gospel instruction, our modified Sunday service is also to reduce the complexity of the meeting schedule in a way that properly emphasizes the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as the sacred, acknowledged focal point of our weekly worship experience. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost. … “… Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. “Ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood. … To the Nephites, after His Resurrection, the Savior said of this: There would still be an offering, it would still involve a sacrifice, but it would be with symbolism much deeper, much more introspective and personal than the bloodletting of a firstborn lamb. Following His brief mortal ministry, this purest of all Passover sheep prepared His disciples for His death by introducing the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, a more personal form of the ordinance that had been introduced just outside of Eden. With such trials and troubles going on for centuries, no wonder the angels of heaven sang for joy when, finally, Jesus was born-the long-promised Messiah Himself. In any case, it didn’t last long enough to preclude fratricide, with Cain killing his brother Abel in the first generation. The moral resolve that should have accompanied those sacrifices sometimes didn’t last long enough for the blood to dry upon the stones. Unfortunately, as a symbol of genuine repentance and faithful living, this ritualistic offering of unblemished little lambs didn’t work very well, as so much of the Old Testament reveals. 6 Later, the wilderness tabernacle would become the setting for this ordinance and, after that, the temple that Solomon would build. By offering their own little symbolic lambs in mortality, Adam and his posterity were expressing their understanding of and their dependence upon the atoning sacrifice of Jesus the Anointed One. In the premortal councils of heaven, God had promised Adam and Eve (and all the rest of us) that help would come from His pure, unblemished Firstborn Son, the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world,” 5 as the Apostle John would later describe Him. “Wherefore, … thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” 4 Fortunately, there was going to be a way out and a way up. “This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father,” the angel said. Later an angel came to explain that this sacrifice was a type, a prefiguration of the offering that would be made in their behalf by the Savior of the world who was to come. 2 What were they to do? Would there be a way out of this plight? We are not certain just how much these two were allowed to remember of the instruction they received while still in the garden, but they did remember they were to regularly offer for a sacrifice unto God a pure, unblemished lamb, the first male born of their flock. Due to a transgression they had consciously chosen to make in our behalf, they now faced physical death and spiritual banishment, separation from the presence of God forever. Having opened the door to mortality and temporal life for us, they had closed the door to immortality and eternal life for themselves. Please indulge me in recalling just a little of that history.Īfter expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve faced a devastating future. He used the figure of a sacrificial lamb offered in atonement for the sins and sorrows of a fallen world and all the fallen people in it. No, John chose the earliest and perhaps most commonly recognized image in the religious tradition of his people. It is instructive that this long-prophesied forerunner to Jesus did not call Him “Jehovah” or “Savior” or “Redeemer” or even “the Son of God”-all of which were applicable titles. Reverently, but audible enough for those nearby to hear, John uttered the admiration that still moves us two millennia later: “Behold the Lamb of God.” 1 Looking up from water’s edge, past the eager crowds seeking baptism at his hand, John, called the Baptist, saw in the distance his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth, striding resolutely toward him to make a request for that same ordinance. Those tears are a more eloquent sermon than I could ever give. I was doing just fine until I saw the tears in the eyes of those young people in this choir.
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