This is the twentieth post for Scriptures Alive, but already, thanks to readers like you, this blog has seen over 150 views. We’re not viral, yet, but I’m not after that, so I just want to express my gratitude to each of you for showing me just how important you think studying the scriptures is. Especially since that is the main purpose of this blog. With that in mind, let’s begin today’s entry by exploring in 1 Nephi 17.
Nephi and his family have been wandering in the wilderness, according to him, for about eight years following the death of Ishmael. As Mrs. Ishmael isn’t mentioned anywhere in Nephi’s record, I suspect that she died before the Ismael family left Jerusalem. Nephi states that they travelled nearly eastward following Ishmael’s death and saw a good deal of affliction, their women even bearing their men children in the wilderness. However, the great faith of the company brought them the blessings of the Lord, in that they were able to gain nourishment from eating raw meat and their women were nearly as strong, if not exactly so, as the men, bearing the journey without murmuring against their husbands or the leaders of the group.
Nephi also points out here that the Lord’s commandments have to be fulfilled. If the Lord’s children keep their Father’s commandments, he has promised to nourish and strengthen them and make keeping His commandments possible for them, a belief repeated from chapter 3, in which he gave this sentiment to his father as proof of his determination to keep the commandments. He notes, further, that their afflictions in the wilderness had been quite severe, so much so that it would be time consuming to mention them all.
In any case, following eight years of wandering in the wilderness, they arrive in a fruitful oasis on the shores of a vast sea. The oasis is given the name Bountiful, which it must have seemed to them after so many years of constant privation. The sea they name Irreantum, which Nephi explains means “many waters.” Here, the growing family finds a good deal of fruit and lots of wild honey. It is Nephi’s belief that Bountiful was prepared specifically so that they wouldn’t die.
Several days later, the voice of the Lord commands Nephi to go to the mountain, which he immediately does. There, after calling on the Lord, Nephi is commanded to construct a ship to carry the company across Irreantum. Nephi is assured that he will be shown the manner in which the ship is to be constructed. Nephi doesn’t stop to ask where he’s supposed to get the skill or to express doubt in his ability to do as instructed. His only question has to do with where to get the materials to make the necessary tools. As Nephi is building the fire for smelting the ore he’s gathered to make his tools, he notes that, up ‘til now, the Lord hasn’t allowed them much in the way of fire, promising them that their food will be sweet so that it doesn’t require cooking. He has also provided them with a light during their sojourn in the wilderness for as long as they kept the commandments.
Again, we see the contrast between Nephi and his eldest two brothers. The minute Nephi starts his ship building project, they come slinking out of the woodwork to laugh at and belittle him. Nephi says they were “desirous that I might not labor,” which makes me think that they had decided between themselves that Bountiful was promise enough for them, never thinking that the place wouldn’t be large enough for a growing nation. Nephi’s sudden interest in ship building seems to be putting a kink into this desire. So, do they go and ask him why he’s building a ship, and possibly learn that the Lord has other plans? Nope. They decide to go and try to manipulate Nephi into believing that this idea is stupid and, maybe, make him give it up. Nephi also states that they didn’t believe that the Lord was teaching him to build the ship. To them, it was just something Nephi decided to do.
Apparently, this bothered Nephi, since it showed that the two brothers were backsliding again. If you have habits your parents have tried to get you to break, even ones as minor as nail biting, when you backslide, you often see a look like what I imagine was on Nephi’s face when he realized Laman and Lemuel had hardened their hearts again. When Nephi’s face showed this disappointment, Laman and Lemuel immediately rejoiced, thinking that Nephi was looking that way because he believed their assertion of his lack of ability. So they pressd what they believed to be their advantage by telling him that they knew he didn’t have what it took to build a ship. He is “lacking in judgment,” they laughed, and can’t complete such a big job. They laughingly compared him with Lehi, who they claimed had let his imagination get the best of him, the result being eight years of deprivation in the wilderness.
Nephi responded with what I believe was probably considerable irritation. He reminded them of the miraculous happenings surrounding the exodus of Israel from Egypt. He pointed out that, if not for Moses, Israel would probably still be in bondage to Egypt. Moses had been commanded by the Lord to free them. By his hand, at the command of the Lord, the waters of the Red Sea had parted before the children of Israel, so that they could cross that waterway on dry land, followed by the summary drowning of the armies of Pharaoh. By his voice, the children of Israel were made aware of the coming of the bread from the Lord which they called “manna.” By his voice, and the command of the Lord, Moses was able to split a rock to provide the suffering Israelites with water. Not just that, Nephi added. The Lord also went before them by day and lit their camps at night. However, did the Israelites rejoice because they were favored by the Lord? Nope. They allowed their hearts to become hard and their minds blind and “reviled against Moses and against the true and living God.(v30). The result, of course, was that the Lord destroyed all those that refused to believe. Following that, the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and destroyed the former inhabitants of the land. Nephi pointed out that, had the former inhabitants of the land been righteous, the Lord wouldn’t have had them destroyed. He then asked if the brothers thought the Israelites would have been somehow better than the previous inhabitants of the land, had those inhabitants been righteous. The Lord, says Nephi, “esteemeth all flesh in one.(v35)” The righteous are favored, the wicked are rejected and destroyed. Nephi went on in this vein for quite a while, ending by pointing out how swift the brothers were to backslide into old habits, which almost forced Nephi to speak to them again. He ended his speech by saying that he was worried that his brothers were about to be cast off.
Now, predictably enough, this little speech angere the brothers and they decided to grab Nephi and pitch him into the “depths of the sea.” Before they could, though, Nephi commanded them to stop, telling them that he was so full of the Holy Ghost that, if they touched him, they would wither like sea grass in the sun, which, I might add, withers pretty fast. He then commanded them to stop murmuring and start helping. He told them that the power of God was so strong in him by now that, if the Lord told him to command Irreantum to be earth, it would, adding that, if the Lord can do that, then surely teaching Nephi to build a ship should be a relatively small thing. Nephi, apparently, said a great many other things to his brothers, to the point where they were “confounded” or thrown into confusion, baffled or frustrated (M-W). This condition persisted for the next several days, in which the brothers didn’t dare touch Nephi. It doesn’t say that they helped him, but it does say that they couldn’t argue with him. After a while, the Lord told Nephi to stretch his hand out to his brothers, delivering to them a terrific shock that more or less forced them to acknowledge that their brother had been given the power of the Lord. They then began to worship Nephi, however, and their younger brother humbly asked them to stop, recommending that, instead, that they worship the Lord and remember His commandment to honor their parents.
Applying the Scriptures to My Life
I am one of those that has been afflicted with the erroneous belief that I wasn’t “good enough.” This is the fallacy that Laman and Lemuel were trying to foist off onto Nephi when he was trying to keep the Lord’s commandment to him to build a ship. “You’re not good enough,” they were telling him. “Give it up.” So, as I read this chapter, I can almost hear the Lord say to me, “See? If Nephi can build a ship, because I told him to, then you can do whatever I ask you to do as well. There’s no such thing as not good enough.” The Lord knows that none of us is good enough, by ourselves. However, with our hand in His, we can do anything. If the Lord told me to fly, I could do it because He would make it possible for me. He would give me the power. I’m not saying that I’m going to go try it out, because that’s not something I feel that the Lord has commanded me to do. What he has commanded is that I take things one day at a time. That I do my very best as wife and mother and that I study the scriptures and share what I learn with anyone willing to listen. What about you? Do you think you’re “not good enough?” Can you set that aside and try anyway? Remember, the Lord makes his commandments possible to those who are willing to obey him. That’s not just a fact, it’s a promise.
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