Thursday, May 6, 2010

King Noah’s priorities

Recently when I was reading through the story of King Noah and what he did, something jumped out at me that I had never noticed before about his choices of building materials and where he put them.

8 And it came to pass that king Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings; and he ornamented them with fine work of wood, and of all manner of precious things, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of brass, and of ziff, and of copper;
9 And he also built him a spacious palace, and a throne in the midst thereof, all of which was of fine wood and was ornamented with gold and silver and with precious things.
10 And he also caused that his workmen should work all manner of fine work within the walls of the temple, of fine wood, and of copper, and of brass.
(Mosiah 11:8-10)

King Noah used gold and silver on his own throne, but used wood, brass, and copper on the temple. Those choices scream loudly that his priorities were massively out of line. God was much further down on his priority list and the fact that he used the finest materials on his own stuff, meant he thought of himself first. It could also have been indicative of his ideas about his own power versus the power of God.

4 comments:

Don said...

Good insight! I never caught that before either.

The fact that he even built a temple is interesting too. Noah was merely paying "lip service" to God by building the temple. It seems like he wanted to appear to the people that he was righteous while he went about with his women and wine. This is perhaps why he and his priests came down on Abinadi so hard; b/c Abinadi saw through all the lies and was showing everyone the wizard behind the curtains.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of King Solomon, who spent 7 years building the temple and 13 years building his own palace...

LeAnn said...

Wow, I loved your thoughts on King Noah. Isn't it amazing when you read something and you get great insight. I am sure that is the gift of the spirit.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts.
LeAnn

Michaela Stephens said...

Yep, it is definitely a gift of the Spirit. I have to put in a lot of study to qualify for it though.