Think of a time that you were really hungry. One of the qualities that will most make us happy is to desire righteousness. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness. We’re not going to do that. But I would like to give you just one brief insight. Now, every single statement in this section is a lesson in and of itself that you could dedicate an hour or more to. Then I invite them to choose a beatitude that they feel they most need to work on and ask: What is one thing you could do this week to develop that attitude? Then have them mark the attitudes in a different color. We get four additional beatitudes here and I encourage you to check those out. If we wish to receive these blessings, then what must we do? What attitudes must we develop in order to be happy and blessed and fortunate? By the way, the blessed’s we find in 12:1-3 are exclusive to the Book of Mormon and are not found in the New Testament. After listing those blessings, then I ask them which blessing they would most like to receive and why. If you do that, you’ll end up with a list that looks like this. That’s where I like to start and create a large list on the board. First, have them find all the blessings first. You could approach this as a marking activity. So, this isn’t about telling us what to do and controlling our lives He’s going to give us the instructions on how to live a happy life. We all know that righteousness always was happiness. If I control my anger, if I control lust, if I love my enemies, if I am not judgmental, if I treat others how I want to be treated, I will be happy. You could go through and find all the things that will make us happier. In fact, that is a way that you could approach the entire sermon. The point of this entire sermon is yes, to make us just and perfect us, but, his ultimate goal for every one of his children is their happiness, their blessedness. I think it’s nice that this is the way this sermon begins. That word derives from the Latin word “beatus” which means “to be fortunate, or “to be happy”, or “to be blessed”. What does Christ begin this discussion of perfecting ourselves with? This section we call the beatitudes. But I hope I can at least give you a starting point to work from. I admit that sometimes it’s harder to decide what not to teach than it is to decide what to teach so I wish you the best as a teacher in making those decisions. Then, as a teacher, you choose what you want to cover or what you think your students need most and flesh those out a bit more on your own. Less of a complete lesson walk through, and more a section by section focus. Since I like to keep these videos under an hour, I’m going to try more of a shotgun approach. Trying to cover 3 Nephi 12-16 feels like trying to eat an elephant with a pair of chopsticks. Jesus is going to teach us what it means to be a Christian and I’m not going to even try and do it justice. When it comes to the gospel, this is the constitution, this is the founding document, the magna carta. The Sermon at Bountiful which for the most part mirrors the Sermon on the Mount represents what I feel to be the greatest masterpiece of Christian literature.
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