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ICEBREAKER
We’ll start by studying one of the most famous and well-known sections in the entire Doctrine and Covenants. Section 89. And for an icebreaker I like to show my students the following slide and ask them to come up with their own “Surgeon General’s Warning” for the displayed products. I’m afraid that the official Surgeon General’s warning that we see on tobacco products just seems to be a bit of an understatement in my mind. So, what would you add? What other warnings would you give about smoking, drinking alcohol, or doing drugs? And then let your students share. I’m sure you’ll hear some great ones.
Now my great grandfather Jensen had a gift for writing and was once asked by a local bar owner in Idaho to write an advertisement for his business. My great grandfather agreed but warned him that he would only do it as long as he was ok with him telling the truth. The owner agreed and this is the advertisement my great grandpa wrote which I think totally puts the Surgeon General’s warnings to shame. He entitled it “An Honest Saloon Keeper”. Here’s how it goes:
Friends and Neighbors: I am grateful for past favors and having supplied my store with a fine lot of choice wines and liquors, allow me to inform you that I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers, and beggars for the sober, industrious, respectable part of the community to support. My liquors will excite riot, robbery, and bloodshed. They will diminish your comforts, increase your expenses, and shorten your life. I shall continually recommend them to multiply fatal accidents and incurable diseases. They will deprive some of life, others of reason, many of character and all of peace. They will make fathers, friends, wives, widows, children, orphans, and all, poor. I will teach your sons in infidelity, dissipations, ignorance, lewdness, and every other vice. I will corrupt the Ministers of religion, obstruct the gospel, defile the church, and cause as much temporal and eternal death as I can. I will thus accommodate the public. It may be at the loss of my never dying should, but I have a family to support - the business pays – the public encourages it and I have paid my license and the traffic is lawful and if I don’t sell it, somebody else will. I know the Bible says thou shalt not kill nor shall enter the kingdom of Heaven and I do not expect the drunkard to fare any better – but I want an easy living and I have resolved to gather the wages of iniquity and fatten on the ruin of my species. I shall therefore carry on my business with every energy and do my best to diminish the wealth of the nation and endanger the safety of the state. As my business flourishes in proportion to your sexuality and ignorance – I will do my best to prevent moral and intellectual growth. Should you doubt my ability, I refer you to the pawnshops, the poorhouse, the police court, the hospital, the penitentiary, and the gallows where you will find many of my best customers have gone. A sight of them will convince you that I do what I say. Allow me to inform you that you are fools and that I am ……. An Honest Saloonkeeper
Isn’t that great? I think that should be the surgeon general’s warning on every bottle of liquor sold.
Well, surprisingly, the saloon keeper loved it, and had it published. And did it have any effect on the saloon business in that community? Was there a sudden drop in liquor sales? Nope. Didn’t change a thing. Unfortunately, many are content to be willingly deceived.
BACKGROUND
Section 89 can help us not to be deceived. Here the Lord is going to give us a key to finding health and happiness. I like to display this picture that we just saw last week. If you remember, it’s the room where the organization called “the school of the prophets” was located on the upper floor of the Newel K. Whitney store. It was here that the early leaders of the church would frequently assemble to discuss the deep and glorious principles of the gospel. However, the atmosphere in the school of the prophets may surprise you. Brigham Young described it like this:
"The brethren came to that place for hundreds of miles to attend school in a little room probably no larger than eleven by fourteen. When they assembled in this room after breakfast, the first they did was to light their pipes and, while smoking, talk about the great things of the kingdom and spit all over the room, and as soon as the pipe was out of their mouths a large chew of tobacco would then be taken. Often when the Prophet entered the room to give the school instructions, he would find himself in a cloud of tobacco smoke. This, and the complaints of his wife at having to clean so filthy a floor, made the Prophet think upon the matter, and he inquired of the Lord relating to the conduct of the Elders in using tobacco, and the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom was the result of his inquiry." (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 12:158.)
So, there was something about that atmosphere that made Joseph think, “Hmmm, it’s really hard to feel the Spirit in this kind of an environment. I wonder why that is?” And I can picture the Lord up there saying “Joseph, I’m so glad you asked, let me explain. Now you’re ready for some added understanding and wisdom regarding these things.” That’s just how the Lord seems to manage things in the Church. He didn’t just lay things out for us unprovoked. He waits until we asked. That way, we are in a state of readiness to receive the revelation. Revelation grows out of real situations. I also love Emma’s part in the reception of the Word of Wisdom. How gross must that have been for her to clean up after these meetings. That was also part of the reason that Joseph went to the Lord because he agreed with Emma that it didn’t seem fair that she should have to clean up such a revolting mess. Thus, section 89 came to be.
NOTE
A quick heads up here before we go any further. One thing you’ll notice that I’m not going to do here is to site a bunch of modern nutrition and scientific research that backs up the wisdom of the Word of Wisdom. For example, saying something like, nutritionists and scientists have found that tobacco is detrimental to our health and Wow! Joseph Smith revealed that a century before. And that’s great. That certainly shows that prophets are ahead of their time. But I’m always a little wary of continually propping up revelation with research. Because what do we do when the nutritionists come out and say things that are contrary to the Word of Wisdom? Do we place those studies on a higher pedestal than prophetic counsel? What do we do when the experts say things like “Drinking a little bit of wine every day is actually good for you”? It’s a healthy practice! Or green tea, or coffee. What are we going to trust and follow: Revelation or research? Hopefully we’ll stick with revelation.
PICK AND PONDER
But to begin, I like to divide section 89 into three parts.
The Why (1-4)
The Don’ts and the Do’s (5-17)
The Promise (18-21)
We’ll begin with these first four verses I label the “Why’s” and do a little activity I call “Pick and Ponder”. Ask your students to pick a phrase of their choice and ponder its importance in understanding the Word of Wisdom. Give them a couple of minutes to do that and then you can randomly call on some of them to share what they learned. Here are the four phrases they could choose from.
Let’s take a look at each of these ourselves to help you be prepared to discuss them.
89:2 To be sent greeting, not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom
The Word of Wisdom was not originally given by commandment or constraint. You might look at that and say, wait a second, I thought it was a commandment. You can’t go to the temple if you’re not living the Word of Wisdom. This happens to be a great example of line upon line, and the Lord’s understanding and mercy. It was initially given as wise counsel from a prophet of God, not a commandment. Now why do you think He did that? Why give this revelation as wise counsel instead of a hard and fast commandment? Joseph F. Smith had this to say about it:
“If [the Word of Wisdom] had been given as a commandment it would have brought every man, addicted to the use of these noxious things, under condemnation; so the Lord was merciful and gave them a chance to overcome, before He brought them under the law”
Joseph F Smith
(in Conference Report, Oct. 1913, 14).
Many of the early church members had already formed these addictive habits. To suddenly drop that on everyone and bring them “under condemnation” would most likely have caused some problems in the early church. The history of the development of the Word of Wisdom in the Church is really a fascinating subject. Brigham Young does make a formal statement about it and asks the general membership to commit to it in 1851 but it doesn’t really become a term of temple worthiness until 1921 under Heber J. Grant, and a lot of members really struggled with that, but I think the Lord had figured that by that time church members had had ample opportunity to adjust.
Keep in mind though, that much of the Word of Wisdom still falls into that category. Not by commandment or constraint. That applies to those things prohibited by the Word of Wisdom but there’s a whole lot more to this law than just the Don’ts. We’ll look at that as we go along.
89:3 A principle with promise
The Word of Wisdom is a principle with promise. There are specific blessings affixed to obedience to this counsel he’s going to give. I love the way the Lord is introducing this. It’s a great example of leading by persuasion. He’s not introducing this as a commandment, he’s not affixing punishment to it, but he’s promising them a great blessing if they’re willing to live it. We’ll be taking a closer look at that promise later in verses 18-21.
89:3 Adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints
Another phrase in verse 3. We learn that the Word of Wisdom is adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints. That’s an interesting revelation. The Word of Wisdom is a principle that should be able to be lived by even the weakest of saints. Now why would he say that? I think it’s because the body naturally rejects these things. You almost have to train it to become accustomed to them. The first time someone smokes (from what I understand) it’s not a pleasant experience. Drinking beer or alcohol is difficult at first. Even the weakest of individuals should know better and be able to resist. I agree. I really don’t think it’s that hard to live the Word of Wisdom. If you’ve never tried these things before and you’ve been taught to avoid them, there isn’t a lot of temptation involved. When I walk past a bar, I don’t have to tell my wife to hold me back because I’m afraid I might run in and have a drink. There’s no part of me that desires it. And I know that we often pride ourselves as members of the church by the fact that we don’t use these things, but really, if you’ve been raised in the church, this commandment shouldn’t give you a lot of trouble. Even the weakest saint should be able to live this law.
89:4 In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days.
Our last phrase and one of the best phrases to help us explain why we have the Word of Wisdom. I’d like to introduce this phrase with a little story. When I was first married my wife and I decided to take a short cruise together. We saved up our money and took the trip. At dinner on one of the nights, the waiter kept trying to push alcohol on us, pushing past our initial rejections until I finally had to explain, “Sir, we don’t want any alcohol, it’s against our religion”. But man, this guy was so persistent, not even that deterred him. His rebuttal? What religion is that? Even Jesus drank wine. And that’s when I very forcefully told him to leave us alone. But his reason is an interesting argument. What do we do with that? Is it true? Did Jesus drink wine? Well, it seems that for years and years, there has been a bit of a church myth that has been (I believe) innocently propagated and repeated so many times that we almost accept it as fact. Every year I have a student that brings it up as an explanation. And that is that Jesus didn’t drink actual wine. It was just grape juice, and we say that because we have trouble with the thought of Jesus drinking alcohol. Because good members of the Church just don’t do that. I’m afraid though, that historically, and even scripturally, that just doesn’t make any sense. We have absolutely nothing we can base that claim on. You have many examples of people in the scriptures getting drunk from the wine they are drinking. When Jesus turns the water to wine, the master of the feast makes a comment that clearly suggests that it’s alcoholic. So, I’m afraid that, yes, Jesus drank real wine. Can we be ok with that? And how do we explain it? Why was it ok to drink an alcoholic beverage back then, but now it’s not? Did God change his mind? No. I don’t think that’s the explanation at all. The Lord tells us why in verse 4.
In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation.
God didn’t change his mind. The world has changed. Alcohol production, consumption, and abuse has reached an entirely different level here in the last days. The Word of Wisdom was given in consequence of the circumstances of the last days. There are evil, designing, and conspiring people out there that are actively trying to addict people, draw more into substance abuse, and make their products more and more difficult to resist.
Is there any evidence that that is the case nowadays?
The availability and low cost of alcohol has increased substantially in the latter-days. Over the years, there have been plenty of stories and reports of corporations specifically targeting young people with their products and striving to create lifelong addicts that could provide their businesses with a lifetime of revenue. You also have drug dealers, and cartels, and organized crime striving to accomplish the same end. You have clever advertising campaigns that masterfully associate these harmful substances with beauty, popularity, and athleticism. That last one is one that I’ve never really been able to understand--the connection between sports and alcohol consumption. Are great athletes really able to perform at their highest level at the same time they’re drinking alcohol, or smoking, or vaping, or doing drugs? Maybe, I guess I don’t exactly know, but the two don’t seem to really go together in my mind. Athleticism and substance abuse.
Also, I believe there are a great deal of other vices that go hand in hand with substance abuse. Partying, idleness, sexual indiscretion, negligence of family responsibilities, gambling and violence are all too often a part of the package with these products. Times have changed and have made alcohol, tobacco, and other habit-forming drugs a greater hazard to our health and well-being than in any other previous time period.
Well, because of these latter-day issues, our Heavenly Father, in his love and concern has given us this wisdom—that it’s just better for us to avoid these things altogether, since it’s gotten so bad. God didn’t change his mind. The world changed. From Joseph Smith’s day to now, we need the protective power of the Word of Wisdom to keep us safe from the influence and power of the devil. There are just too many evil, designing, and conspiring people out there.
Now there is a principle, as far as alcohol consumption is concerned that has never changed. Drunkenness has never been ok with our Heavenly Father. God loves agency and an excess of alcohol or drugs begins to take away that agency. On my mission, I frequently ran into people that were drunk or high on drugs and they had no idea what they were saying or doing. They had given up their agency to these substances and weren’t capable of making informed decisions. That’s why so many people that are under the influence end up making such foolish, dangerous, and even deadly decisions. They’ve yielded up their agency to the substance. No wonder Satan has pushed these things so strongly. He hates agency. God wants us to always be in control. Even Jesus himself lumped drunkenness in as an example of the kinds of actions the sinful do in Luke 12:45. Moderation was the key back then, but for us, abstinence is the best policy, considering the circumstances.
THE DONT’S
The next part of this section we’ll all recognize. It’s the don’ts. So for an activity, have your students pick a color and mark all the things that are prohibited by the Word of Wisdom.
When they’ve done that, they should have marked:
5 That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father,
And later in verse 7, And, again, strong drinks are not for the belly,
Then verse 8. 8 And again, tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man,
Then verse 9. 9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.
Joseph Smith was later questioned on what he meant by “hot drinks”. One man recalled his reply:
The Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I understand that some of the people are excusing themselves in using tea and coffee, because the Lord only said ‘hot drinks’ in the revelation of the Word of Wisdom. . . . “Tea and coffee . . . are what the Lord meant when He said ‘hot drinks.’” (In Joel H. Johnson, Voice from the Mountains [Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1881], p. 12.)
Now that’s really helpful because someone may wonder if it’s ok to drink hot chocolate. Or, does that mean that cold coffee or iced tea is ok because it’s not hot. Nope, tea and coffee, hot or cold are prohibited by the Word of Wisdom. It’s not the temperature of the drink that really matters here, it’s what’s inside it.
You might notice that there is a big one missing from this list that is definitely prohibited by the Word of Wisdom. Illegal drugs are also considered prohibited by the Word of Wisdom. If someone were to argue with me over that because it doesn’t specifically say it in Section 89, I would gently remind them that we believe in living prophets and modern revelation. Section 1 taught us that this is a true and “living” church. Changing times have required updated instruction and knowledge from God. You may have noticed that verses 5 and 6 authorize the continued use of wine in church sacrament meetings. What’s going on there? Well, that’s true. The Church did use real wine throughout the 19th century in church meetings. It’s not until around the turn of the century that Church leaders discontinue the practice. And there have been more updates throughout the years. In fact, the church, even as recently as 2019, has released updated revelation concerning the Word of Wisdom. One portion of that most recent statement read:
In recent publications for Church members, Church leaders have clarified that several substances are prohibited by the Word of Wisdom, including vaping or e-cigarettes, green tea, and coffee-based products. They also have cautioned that substances such as marijuana and opioids should be used only for medicinal purposes as prescribed by a competent physician.
So, no, not all truth regarding the Lord’s laws of health is contained in Section 89. The Lord reserves the right to give additional understanding as time and circumstances change.
LIKEN THE SCRIPTURES
Before moving on, I like to ask a question:
Have you ever seen any evidence of the wisdom of rejecting these things?
Personally, I’ve seen ample evidence of it. I know a woman whose son was killed by a drunk driver. My wife worked at a women’s drug rehabilitation center for a time and some of the stories she told me about the struggles, and the relapses, and the effects on body and mind these women were suffering from are tragic. My grandpa, for many years drank and smoked and lived a very unhealthy, very “un-section 89” kind of lifestyle. Now he changed in his older years and quit all of that and he lived all the way into his eighties. But you know, one of the reasons people are told not to do drugs or smoke or drink alcohol is because they might kill you. And they do. Millions of people worldwide die every year due to substance abuse. But, perhaps another thing to consider as a warning is that perhaps they won’t kill you. Those last decades of my grandpa’s life, health wise, were in a lot of ways miserable. I remember him once joking that he’d had every disease in his life except breast cancer. His years of not living the Word of Wisdom took a heavy toll on his quality of life. Can you see the wisdom, in the Word of Wisdom?
THE DO’S
Now that’s usually our focus when it comes to the Word of Wisdom. The Don’ts. If I were to ask the average latter-day Saint to explain the Word of Wisdom, I can almost guarantee they are going to list off all the don’ts. But what about the do’s? There’s so much more to the Word of Wisdom. Read verses 10-17 to find and mark those things in a different color that we should consume. What do you find?
Wholesome Herbs-Which I would say is another way of saying vegetables
Fruits
Meat-although with a warning to eat it sparingly
And Grains.
I know the statement about only eating meat in times of famine or winter gives some members fits and there is a lot of debate as to what that means, and has been for many, many years. Forgive me, but I’m not going to take the time to dive into all of that here. Other places online deal with it in much more depth, but for me, if only eating meat in winter or famine were a major concern of church leaders, I imagine we would have heard more about it and received more clarification. I don’t see in these verses a call for vegetarianism as some do, and I also don’t see a total “free for all, eat as much meat as you want” message either. I would imagine the truth of it lies somewhere in the middle. Balance in all things.
But there you have it. If you wish to live a healthy lifestyle eat a good mix of fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats. Some basic Do’s when it comes to how we eat.
WORDS OF PRINCIPLE
However, I still don’t think we’ve really struck at the heart of the Word of Wisdom yet. I don’t think it’s merely a list of Do’s and Don’ts. Don’t get too caught up in the particulars. To me, the Word of Wisdom is much more about the principles behind it. What’s given here in these few 21 verses of scripture is just basic guidance. Like most of God’s commandments, he’s going to give us the big picture kinds of things. Like the famous Joseph Smith quote, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves”. Here’s a perfect example of that. I’ll give you a couple do’s, and a couple of don’ts, but for the rest of this and how you take care of your body, govern yourself. This is between you and God and the Spirit. So, there are a couple of Words that seem to jump off the page that capture, to me, the essence of this law, the principles with promise. I see six key words. These are the words that I hope will first come to mind when we hear the phrase “Word of Wisdom”. As an activity with your students, you can ask them: What individual “principle” words from the following verses do you feel capture the heart of the Word of Wisdom? And then let them share. And you know what? They might pick different words. And that’s ok. As long as they explain why they chose that word, it’s right. This doesn’t have to be “guess what I’m thinking” kind of activity. Validate their answers, and then you can share what you see. And I’ll show you the ones here that stand out to me.
:4, :8, :11, and :12
:4 in verse 4. The word is wisdom. It’s called that for a reason. When it comes to taking care of your physical body, this temple of the spirit, be wise with how you take care of it--with what you put into it, with how you treat it, with the risks you take. Just be wise.
:8 in verse 8, I see two. Judgment and skill. When making decisions about the care of our bodies, we should use judgment and skill. So, we do our research. We experiment. We make intentional decisions about what we eat and what we do. Hopefully, we become skillful in the maintenance of our health.
:11 Prudence is a key word. Some synonyms for prudence? Common sense, caution, judgment. This is what we need to have as we take care of our bodies. Does it make sense to eat and eat until you are stuffed full every meal? Does it make sense to eat greasy fast food all the time. Is it good judgment to eat junk food all the time and processed foods? No, that’s not prudent.
Another word in verse :11 that also appears in verse :12 is thanksgiving. Are we thankful for the food we have to eat? Remember that a large portion of people in this world are either starving or just have enough to stay alive. Do we express gratitude to God for the gift of our bodies and the means to nourish them? Are we grateful for clean water and access to good medical care?
And another word is verse :12, sparingly. There are some foods and drinks that are not prohibited by the Word of Wisdom but should be used sparingly. Another word for this would be moderation. Moderation in the amount of meat we consume. Moderation in the number of sweets and treats we indulge in. Moderation in the diet we choose. As in most things and principles of the gospel, extremes are typically unwise.
These six words are what I feel the Word of Wisdom is all about. These are the words that I hope come to our minds when someone asks us what the Word of Wisdom is all about. So that we’re no longer saying “Oh, it’s about not using alcohol, tobacco, tea or coffee”, but “It’s about using wisdom, judgment, skill, prudence, thanksgiving, and moderation in the way we take care of our physical bodies”. Use these words as guiding principles in making those decisions.
SLEEP
Now, as long as we’re talking about health and the care of our bodies. There is another verse that I’d like to add from section 88 for our consideration. It’s verse 124. How does this add to our understanding of caring for the body?
124 Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.
What’s the wisdom here? Don’t be lazy. Our bodies need action, movement, work, and exercise. Don’t be unclean so practice proper hygiene. Don’t judge others and look for the negative. That’s some good advice for our mental and spiritual health, and, very importantly, get enough sleep. Make sure that you are prudent with the amount of shuteye you’re getting. Oftentimes, problems with sleep can lead to problems with other things that are prohibited by section 89. There are addictive substances people turn to when they feel they can’t continue functioning without them. Usually, a little more sleep would be the best solution.
THE PROMISE
On to our final part of section 89. The promise. Earlier we learned that the word of wisdom was a principle with promise. Let’s take a look at it. What’s the Lord’s promise to those who remember to keep and do these sayings? Health in their navel and marrow to their bones. That’s a poetic way of saying physical blessings. Health and strength are a part of the promise of keeping the Word of Wisdom. Maybe that’s part of what the Lord meant back in section 84 in the oath and covenant of the priesthood by “the renewal of their bodies”.
But what do you say to someone who lives the Word of Wisdom, and then they get some terrible disease or they suffer some serious physical malady? A good friend of mine just lost a sister to lung cancer. And this woman had never smoked a day in her life. How do we explain that? I don’t think that the promise of the Word of Wisdom is that we will be invincible to all disease or injury or that we’ll live forever. That would be unrealistic. But if those things do come into our lives, at least we can rest easy knowing that it wasn’t because of our poor choices. Life brought those things to us, but not our own carelessness. All I think verse 18 is getting at is that we will experience physical blessings for living the Word of Wisdom—our bodies will have the best health and strength that they are capable of having. And I believe that’s true. Our bodies will run better for us, we will feel better, we will be happier if we live our lives guided by these principles. Members of the church that live the Word of Wisdom, on the whole, are healthier and happier and experience less disease and illness than those in the world that do not.
But there’s more! The blessings of living the Word of Wisdom are more than just physical. What else does God promise?
19 And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;
If we live the Word of Wisdom, we’ll have greater access to personal revelation. That seems to make sense to me too. If I’m getting enough sleep, and I’m not filling my body with harmful or mind-altering substances, and I’m eating sensibly and giving my body the nutrients it needs, then my heart and mind are going to be clearer and more receptive to the voice of the Spirit. It helps to clear the channels of divine communication.
There’s still more:
20 And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.
I don’t believe that this means that living the Word of Wisdom will guarantee that you can go out and run a marathon. Now, I feel there IS a physical element to that promise, that those who live the Lord’s law of health will have more endurance, more stamina, more strength. But there’s a spiritual aspect to that promise as well. The scriptures often speak of the straight and narrow path of discipleship. Living this law will help us to stay on that path and endure to the end of that path. We will walk it and not faint. As we mentioned earlier, many of the things prohibited by the Word of Wisdom can lead to other spiritual vices as well. Enduring on the path will protect from those things.
And, there’s still more:
21 And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen.
What’s the promise here? Protection. Protection from temptation and sin. Protection from disease. Protection from death. Protection from the consequences that so often accompany mismanagement of our bodies. Sounds like some powerful promises. Physical and spiritual health, physical and spiritual strength, physical and spiritual revelation, physical and spiritual endurance, physical and spiritual protection.
TRUTH
The truth then. If I live the Word of Wisdom, the Lord will greatly bless me physically and spiritually.
LIKEN THE SCRIPTURES
When have you seen one of these blessings in your life?
Then, as a handout you could give your students this quick application activity. Have them choose a goal from the list that they feel would help them to live the Word of Wisdom more fully. Or there’s the option to make their own goal.
CONCLUSION
I’m so grateful for the guidance of the Word of Wisdom. I believe that it was inspired and is great evidence of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. As members of the Latter-day Church, we are protected from so many modern problems by living this one law. So, let’s be wise, and prudent, and grateful, and moderate. I feel confident that a number of many of the problems we face in life could be solved by living the Word of Wisdom more carefully. Maybe we pray to Heavenly Father for a miracle to help give us more energy, more strength, more ability to stand up under the stresses and responsibilities of life, more happiness, and more freedom from disease. Maybe we complain about or pray for God to have fewer headaches, insomnia, or sickness. And I wonder if Heavenly Father sometimes throws up his hands and says, “I would love to help” (and at times I’m sure he still does, because he’s a merciful and loving God) but, many of these problems could be solved if we were just more wise in our diet, our exercise, our sleep—if we avoided or were more moderate in our consumption of unhealthy foods. And please don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not trying to be judgmental. I know that there are many who have no control over the health problems they suffer from. Some of these things are genetic, hormonal, or caused by disease or stem from psychological issues and many suffer poor health through no fault of their own. I’m not talking about that. It’s those things that we can control. We do have agency to choose what we put into our mouths. I believe that if we don’t have these three things under control, our diet, our exercise, our sleep, then we may face some difficult things because of it. And I know it’s hard. I struggle with these things myself. I wouldn’t consider problems with the Do’s of the Word of Wisdom as moral failures. This life is a learning experience, and we grow, and we fail, and stumble, and we pick ourselves back up and try again. And I hope I’m not giving a false impression here either. I don’t think we have to all be bodybuilders with six packs or super skinny supermodels to consider ourselves true keepers of the Word of Wisdom. In fact, from what I know, many of those people are living anything but healthy lifestyles in order to look that way. Let’s not judge our health or the health of others by some standard of worldly outward appearance. We’re talking about being wise in the way we treat and regard our bodies. We can’t let the adversary push us to extremes. To love or hate our bodies too much. They’re a gift--the greatest temporal gift we’ve been given. Hopefully we see the wisdom in doing everything we can to maintain and use them wisely. With wisdom, judgment, skill, prudence, thanksgiving, and moderation. We are so fortunate as members of the Church to have the direction of the Word of Wisdom. It’s blessed my life immeasurably, and I know it will bless yours as well.
90-92 MINI LESSONS
For the rest of today’s video, we’re going to look at some shorter principles from the remaining three sections. They’re all pretty short sections, and there are other great principles you could pull from these, but I’ve boiled it down to four. What you can do with these is give your students a chance to be student teachers. I’ve found this can be an edifying and educational experience for them. I’ve selected these four great verses from sections 90-92. And what you’ll do is give them this lesson prep sheet to work on to help them feel more confident with their lesson.
First, you divide them up into groups of four. That’s the group they’ll be teaching their lesson to. Teaching in front of the entire class can be quite intimidating for some of your students, but they seem to be a bit more comfortable with the idea of just teaching three others. Then you number each person in the groups from 1-4. Whatever number they’ve been assigned, the corresponding reference will be the verse that they will teach.
First, they will write in their assigned reference in the top line here.
Then. They are instructed to read their verse at least 3x and ponder its meaning and lesson.
Then. They should write down the truth they feel was the most important thing they learned from their verse.
Then. Prepare a statement explaining why that is an important truth to understand.
Then. They’re encouraged to share an experience or illustration of that principle in real life. Now that experience doesn’t have to be anything grand or miraculous. It can just be a brief explanation of how that truth has manifested itself in their own life. Now if they can’t think of a personal experience with that truth, they could also just give a hypothetical example of how a person could apply that truth in their life.
Finally. A brief statement of testimony for that truth. What is their statement of belief?
And that doesn’t have to begin with “I’d like to bear my testimony”. It’s just a powerful concluding statement of conviction. I believe this principle is true because . . .
Once they’re finished preparing, you can allow each student to take a turn in sharing their mini lesson with the other three in their group. As the teacher, you could walk around and listen to some of the lessons being taught, and then afterwards, if you wish, you could allow some students to volunteer to share all or part of their lesson with the whole class or choose some of the students you heard teaching that you feel had something very insightful or profound to share. You, as the teacher, could also share some insights that you have found in these verses.
For the purposes of the video. I’d like to share just a few brief thoughts on each.
90:5
This verse reminds me of a story from Buddhism. A king has a dream, and in the dream, he finds himself on the banks of a great river. As he stands there, he looks upriver and sees giant heavy boulders floating down the river, bobbing up and down as if they weighed nothing as they sail by.
Then a short time later, he sees empty hollow pumpkins cast into the river, which then proceed to sink to the bottom as if they each weighed 1000 lbs.
When the king wakes up, he relates the dream to the Buddha and asks for an interpretation. The Buddha tells him that this is a vision of how things will be in the future when unrighteous men will rule. Things that are important, weighty, and essential, will be treated lightly. People will let them float by in their lives as if they didn’t matter. On the other hand, things that were inconsequential, trivial, and frivolous would sink deep into people’s hearts and consume their attention and time.
Now I think that’s a perfect description of the latter-days. We live in the day and age of floating boulders and sinking pumpkins.
There is a floating boulder in verse 5. Can you find it?
5 And all they who receive the oracles of God, let them beware how they hold them lest they are accounted as a light thing, and are brought under condemnation thereby, and stumble and fall when the storms descend, and the winds blow, and the rains descend, and beat upon their house.
The floating boulders are the revelations that flow from the oracles of God. The prophets. We must be careful not to treat the words of the prophets as light things. Hopefully, their counsels and commandments are sinking boulders that dive deep into our hearts.
I’m afraid though, that too often, that it’s the pumpkins that get a lot of our attention. The hollow things of this world. The entertainments, distractions, and vain things of life. Do we allow those things to sink far deeper than they should?
There is a consequence for allowing those boulders to float by found later in the verse. We are brought under condemnation, we stumble and fall, when the winds blow and the rains descend, and beat upon our house. That’s a clear reference to the parable of the wise and the foolish man. Do you know that primary song? The wise man built his house upon the rock and the rains came a tumbling down. Well now we know what it means to build your house upon the sand. We build our house upon the sand when we treat the revelations of God lightly. When we allow the boulders of revelation to float idly by.
90:24
Oh, one of my favorite scriptural principles of all time. I usually quote it from Romans 8, but the same idea is found here.
It says:
24 Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another.
I love the principle of all things working together for our good if we walk the path of righteousness. If you want to assure a happy ending to your story, just love God, and the rest will take care of itself. It’s that simple. He can make goods out of all our bads. He can take any negative in your life, and you may have a lot. You could probably very easily list them. In my life there is this negative and this one and this one, and this. And Christ comes along, and he says, just search diligently, pray always, walk uprightly before me, and remember your covenants, and I promise you that at some future point, by the power of my cross, I will cross all your negatives, and make them positive. The story of Joseph of Egypt in the Old Testament is probably the best case study of this principle. He had so many negatives in his life for years and years. And then finally, because he persevered in walking uprightly throughout it all, God turned all of it around and made it positive. God has the power to take anything and make good out of it. Our mistakes, our weaknesses, our sorrows, our tragedies. Even if we can’t see it now, somewhere down the road, we will look back at these negatives in our lives, and we will see, with an eternal perspective, the good that came out of them. Perhaps you’ve had an experience like that already, where in the midst of your trial you couldn’t see any earthly good that could come from it, but later in your life, in hindsight, you see it. Even though it’s hard to imagine it now, at some point you may very well find yourself saying: I’m grateful for that “suffering”. God made it good. C.S. Lewis spoke of this phenomenon in this very eloquently expressed passage from The Great Divorce.
"ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: . . . But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. . .. all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. . .. all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, `No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say `Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, `We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, `We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly." "Ah, the Saved . . . what happens to them is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water."
(C.S. Lewis "The Great Divorce: 67-68)
So, remember, all things work together for good to those who walk uprightly and remember their covenants. That little statement right there in verse 24, is the kind of statement that can guide an individual for a lifetime and get them through almost anything. I know it’s done that for me.
91:5 Enlightened by the Spirit
Section 91 is a fascinating one. At first glance it may not seem like much, but it contains a truth that has the potential to really enrich your life. The section revolves around the translation of the Apocrypha. No if you don’t know what the apocrypha is, it’s a collection of Biblical writings that are of questionable authenticity. In other words, they’re not really sure if they’re truly prophetic writings. Here’s a list of the books found in the Apocrypha. Now, the Apocrypha is typically included in Catholic Bibles, but not so much Protestant ones. The Church has followed in the footsteps of the Protestant tradition, and you won’t find the Apocrypha in our Bibles. But I do have a copy of it, and I’ve read it before, and I usually like to show that to my students. The Bible Joseph was translating from, during his inspired translation of the Bible, did have the Apocrypha in it and so he wondered if it should be translated. Section 91 was the Lord’s response. Now I want you to listen to this section with more than just the Apocrypha in mind. The Lord is going to teach us a principle here about reading, or watching, or experiencing things that don’t necessarily fall under the realm of scripture or prophetic revelation. Here’s what the Lord says:
1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha—There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly;
2 There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.
3 Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.
4 Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth;
5 And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom;
6 And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited. Therefore it is not needful that it should be translated. Amen.
Now that’s an enlightening principle. Just like the Apocrypha, there are many things out there that have things in them that are true, and things in them that are not true, and are interpolations by the hands of men. So, what do we do when we encounter such things? How about literature, poetry, other religions, theater, or even movies? Is it possible to gain benefit from those sources too? Or can we only find truth and inspiration in revealed scripture? The answer is that, yes, we can find benefit in those other places. But the key is to have the Spirit. If you are enlightened by the Sprit, you will obtain benefit therefrom. That’s a comforting thought for me because I love literature, and I love movies, and I love learning about other religions. If you have the Spirit, you’ll be able to pick out the things that are true in them and disregard those things that are not. For example, I just shared a story from Buddhism a little earlier. That was a true principle taught from the scripture of another religion. But we benefitted therefrom. Just like I feel we can benefit from reading the Koran, or the Upanishads, or the Talmud. Now there are going to be things in each of those sources that we can’t accept and that are not true. But the Spirit will help us to draw those things out. I’ve found inspiration and truth in the writings of Shakespeare, and the Bronte sisters, and Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. I’ve also learned great truths from movies like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Man of La Mancha, or even Star Wars.
The key is the Spirit. If we approach these things with a firm grasp and testimony of the restored gospel, and cultivate the Spirit in our lives, then we can reach out and search through all the amazing things that have been created by the hands and minds of our fellowmen. God is the inspiration behind all truth, and members of the Church do not have a monopoly on it. He has spread that truth and inspiration throughout all cultures, religions, and peoples. If we search with the Spirit, these things can enrich our lives and deepen our understandings.
One other quick idea for this section. If you want to give them just a little taste of Apocryphal writings. Perhaps one of my favorite stories from it is this little story from the book called Bel and the Dragon and it’s purportedly from the life of Daniel. It’s found in verses 1-22 and before you read it to the class, you challenge them to see if they can figure out the mystery. There’s a giant idol called Bel that the Babylonians worship. And the priests teach the people that Bel will only be pleased if they bring a large offering of food and wine to it every night. And every night, the door is locked to the idol’s chamber, but then lo and behold, every morning when the doors are opened, all the food is gone and the wine drunk. Now the King really believes in Bel because of this. But Daniel says that Bel is not a real God, just a statue, which makes the king angry, and he demands proof of Daniel’s assertion. What Daniel does next is really fun. I’ll leave the rest of the story up to you. I think you’ll like it. I’ll put a link in the video description below to where you can read it online. (https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bel-and-the-Dragon-Chapter-1/) But this is just one example of a positive, uplifting story from the Apocrypha that we can obtain benefit from. The moral that it teaches, I believe, is true.
92:2 Last one.
Section 92 is only 2 verses long and is directed to Frederick G. Williams, a counselor to Joseph in the first, First Presidency. There is just one phrase that I’d like to point out to you here. Verse 2 encourages Frederick G. Williams to be a “lively member”. Oh, that’s a good phrase. Would that we could all be considered lively members of the Church. That word suggests activity, vigor, anxious engagement in good causes, and doing many things of our own free will. Maybe we could use that word instead of active. We could talk about being lively, less lively, or non-lively members of the Church. I pray that we can all be lively members of Christ’s church.
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