CFM-NT-Lesson 12: I Will Give You Rest

Lesson 12:  March 13-19

Matthew 11-12; Luke 11
"I Will Give You Rest"

FollowHim.co - Guest John Hilton III (Link to transcript)
Teaching With Power - Ben Wilcox
Don't Miss This - Emily Belle Freeman & David Butler

He That Cometh

Speaking of John the Baptist & Jesus (Matthew 11).  Was John the Baptist struggling in prison?  It's possible he did...Joseph did in Liberty Jail, Peter struggled at times, and we will to.  Faith isn't always easy when things are really hard to bear!

John Hilton:  As far as we know in scripture, the first time that they see each other in person is at the baptism. And it's clear at Christ's baptism, like you were talking about a couple of weeks back with Professor Huntsman, that John the Baptist or John the Prophet recognizes Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. So it's sort of strange in Matthew 11, this is at the beginning of verse two, when John heard in prison, he's now been imprisoned by Herod Antipas shortly after Christ's baptism. When John had heard in prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and they said into him, "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" In that phrase, "He that should come." That actually is significant because back in Matthew 3:11, John had said, "He that cometh after me is mightier than I whose shoes I am not worthy to bear."  So that phrase, "He that cometh", suggests it's a connection between these two passages. It's sort of like John the Baptist is saying, "Hey wait, are you really the guy that we were prophesying about?" So let's just pause it and think, why would John the Baptist send disciples to Jesus to ask if Jesus is the Messiah? Because he already knew that. So one of the things that I often heard growing up was something like, "Well, John already knows that Jesus is the Messiah. So he is sending these two disciples to Jesus because he's hoping they'll start hanging around with Jesus and follow the Savior." And that's one possibility. But the text itself suggests something different. Because in Matthew 11:4, Jesus tells John's disciples, "Go and tell John what you hear and see." In other words, he doesn't say like, "Oh great, I'm so glad you came to me." He's like, "No, go back, deliver this message." And in verse seven, John's disciples actually do go back to talk to him. So that takes us to another possible reason why John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus and say, "Are you the person that should come or do we look for another?" And I wonder if maybe John the Baptist is languishing in prison and it's hard and he's starting to lose hope. And maybe he's even doubting a bit like, "Jesus, I thought you were the Messiah. I thought you were coming to bring in a new kingdom. And here I am in prison, what's going on?" So Jesus says to John's disciples, "Show John again those things which you do hear and see. The blind received their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them."

Fence Laws

I loved the discussion on fence laws!  It really made me think about the rules I follow, to help me keep the commandments.  I think it would be a great idea to have discussions with youth about fence laws.  Maybe talk to them about the real commandment and help them decide what fence laws they would like to set for themselves to help them keep the commandment.  Breaking a fence law is not breaking a commandment.  Some fence laws help us keep us from sin. (dating rules, movie rules) Other fence laws help us do good things (exercising, studying daily).  Yet, at othertimes they can be burdonsome -- when we try and adopt the fence laws others impose on us.  (See example below).  Or when we judge others based on fence laws we believe in as the pharisees were doing.  Their fence laws were over shadowing the actual commandment -- i.e., how many steps you took was more important than the actual Sabbath day.

Dr. John Hilton III: 16:44 Let's shift gears. We're going to see a theme throughout Matthew 11, Matthew 12, and Luke 11. And we're going to come at this from lots of different angles. So I want to introduce it with a little analogy. Imagine one day you wake up and there's this big hole in your backyard and it's dangerous, the kids could fall into it, they could get hurt. So you don't want anyone, the neighbors to hurt themselves. So you build a little fence around the hole to protect people. We can liken sin to the hole in your backyard. When people fall into the hole of sin, it hurts them spiritually. So to protect ourselves and others, we build little fences to keep us from falling into the hole of sin. So as a concrete example, we got the Word of Wisdom, part of which is don't drink alcohol. So I might build a little fence around the Word of Wisdom saying, "I'm not even going to go to a bar." Now it's not a sin to go to a bar. Hank Smith: 17:36 It's not even breaking the Word of Wisdom to walk into a bar. Dr. John Hilton III: 17:40 Exactly. Hank Smith: 17:41 But I'm going to keep myself from falling into the hole. Okay. Dr. John Hilton III: 17:43 Right. So maybe we could call the Word of Wisdom a core law. It's a part of our temple recommend, it's definitely something that we're going to do. Whereas don't go into a bar, that would be a fence law. And a fence law is something that prevents us Matthew 11-12; Luke 11 Part 1 followHIM Podcast Page 8 from breaking the core law. And this idea of fence laws, it's ancient and Jesus Christ is interacting with it throughout the gospel accounts. Early Jewish leaders had talked about the phrase, "Make a fence around the law", as part of their directive to make several extra rules to keep people from breaking the commandments.

Dr. John Hilton III: 26:05 In my mind. I can picture a woman and she feels the Holy Ghost

prompt her to read the Book of Mormon for 30 minutes a day and she's loving it and she's feeling so good about it. And then in Relief Society, the teacher says, "I invite everyone to read all the General Conference talks over the next month." So she starts working on that, and then her ministering sister comes and visits and says, "You know, you really should write down a tender mercy every day." And then the high counselor's like, "Everyone, make sure you're doing the Come Follow Me studies and listening to the followHIM podcast every week."

Dr. John Hilton III: 26:36 And pretty soon what it should be, like you said, the joy in the

commandments, studying the scripture should be bringing me closer to Jesus Christ, becomes a burdensome checklist and I feel like, "Oh, I can't do it all and it's stressful." In this example, what I'm kind of broadly referring to as fence laws can also include good ways of inviting the spirit into our lives, but collectively speaking could become demoralizing when we

realize, "I can't do it all."  And there's an interesting quote from Elder Uchtdorf on this. I'd

love your thoughts. Elder Uchtdorf said, "Keeping the commandments may present a problem for some because there are so many shoulds and should nots that merely keeping track of them can be a challenge. Sometimes well-meaning amplifications of divine principles, many coming from uninspired sources, complicate matters further, diluting the purity of divine truth with manmade addenda. One person's good idea, something that may work for him or her takes root and becomes an expectation."

An example:

Dr. John Hilton III: 19:35 Yeah. So in Luke chapter 11, people criticize Jesus for skipping

the extra washing, but they miss all the miracles that he's performing. Maybe we can talk about a practical application here. Hank, you mentioned earlier that your wife does a great job of teaching the why to her kids about the fence laws. And I know I've done this myself, been a teacher where I'm like, "Fence, fence, fence, fence." And the students might walk out of the class and say, "I'm not sure about what the law is, but I'm really clear on the fence. I got the fence."

20:07 So here's a little example from my life. I don't know what your guys' opinions about PG 13 movies are, but maybe you'll agree with me that there's some PG 13 movies that are so good. It's fine for the kids to watch. There's others that are so naughty, I shouldn't watch them. There's a wide range. So when my son, Levi was 10 years old, he wanted to watch this certain PG 13 movie and I didn't want to have to always be having conversations. You can already tell I'm a bad parent who'll always be talking about kids, about which movies are okay,

which movies aren't. So I just on the spot, I created a fence law. I said, "Oh Levi, you know that in our family we don't watch PG 13 movies till we're 13." And he's an obedient kid. He's like, "Oh, oh, okay." And I was like, "Sweet, just saved myself three years of arguing about movies."  But of course you can guess on the day he turned 13, what did he want to do? Watch three PG 13 movies. 

Hank Smith: 20:57 He had a big list. Yeah.

Dr. John Hilton III: 20:59 A big list. So a few years later I've learned a little bit more about these principles that we've been talking about. And so now my daughter Maria, she's 11 years old. She wants to watch a PG 13 movie with her friends and she's like, "Dad, can I watch this movie?" And I said, "Well honey, what do you think? Why don't you look it up and see what's in the movie?" And she stopped. She's like, "Dad, what? I thought in this family, we don't watch PG 13 movies till we're 13." And I said, "Honey, why do you think we have that rule?" And she thought for a minute, "I know. You don't want us to watch bad stuff until we're older." 

John Bytheway: 21:32 Wow.

Dr. John Hilton III: 21:33 I was like, "Oh. Cool deal." She completely understood the

fence, right? But the core law, you want to have the Holy Ghost with you. And sometimes bad movies are going to drive away the spirit. Like I had completely not taught the doctrine.

"Your criticism may be worse than the conduct you are trying to correct."

--James E. Faust