Malachi Rebukes the Priest’s Polluted Offerings

6 ¶A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?

7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.

8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts.

9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the Lord of hosts.

10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.  (Malachi 1:6-10)

This block of verses describes a number of ways the priests of Malachi’s day were polluting their service at the temple.

Their contempt for the service they did was the main problem because it led to them giving low quality offerings instead of their best.  Malachi challenged them on whether they thought low quality gifts to a human ruler would receive commendation, and it should have been obvious that if the governor were insulted, God certainly would be.

These comparisons are still useful today.  Do we have contempt for our callings or priesthood service?  If we were to go to our temporal jobs where we make a living and have a bad attitude there, can we imagine our employers being pleased?  Is God any different?  We may think He will not mind, but His greatness and mercy is worthy of our finest and purest devotions.

Malachi reminds the priests that they are the ones who are supposed to intercede for the people and he asks whether God will listen to their prayers if they have polluted their service.  Good question..

Malachi also asks the priests who among them would be so devoted to the service of God that they would “shut the doors” of the temple or “kindle fire” on the altar for nothing (not receiving any part of the offering).  If they would do it even if they didn’t partake in the offerings, then their hearts would be where they should be and their service would be devoted. 

Today our service is without charge, but we still need to be sure that the gift of our service is done with a willing heart, otherwise it is as polluted as Malachi spoke of.

Also, there is the principle Mormon shared in Moroni 7:

6 For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing.

7 For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness.

8 For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God. (Moroni 7:6-8)

I noticed about a month or two ago that my service was starting to get a little robotic, just going through the motions.  I’m trying to better at that, to think of it as an offering and to go into it whole-heartedly, rather than with apathy.  It’s taking some effort, I can tell you.  But I try because I anticipate that great spiritual blessings will come from it, and I want those blessings, particularly greater closeness to God.

Wakeful & Ready Servants

35 Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning;

36 And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. (Luke 12:35-36)

This reminds me of times when I was a teenager and I would come home from a youth stake dance around 11pm.  I always wondered if the door would be unlocked for me or whether someone would be awake to let me in if it was locked.  I wondered if I would might have to stand outside and bang on the door and the windows to get let in.   Thankfully, those times the door was locked, someone was awake and nearby, ready to let me in.

This imagery is interesting to me, not just because of what it tells about what Jesus wants to see, but also what He implies He doesn’t want to see happen.

He doesn’t want to be like a lord who comes back from a late night party and has to yell and hammer on the door for quite some time before anyone comes to let Him in.  Likewise, He doesn’t want to come back to the earth and find His own servants unaware and asleep and unready to receive Him because that would imply that they don’t care.

He wants the lights burning, showing people are awake.  What kinds of things are we to do to show the Lord we are awake spiritually and waiting for Him for His second coming?

He says he wants our loins to be girded about, showing we are still at work.  This isn’t supposed to be a situation where the servants all go to bed early or rest because the master isn’t home.  He wants us to work until He returns.

The cool thing is, the verse that comes after shows that there is a nice reward for those servants who do this:

Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. (Luke 12:37)

This could mean two things—first, a big sacrament meeting (as in D&C 27) with all the servants of God together and/or it could mean a big conference in which Jesus Christ does a lot of teaching and ministering and healing (kind of like when He came to the Nephites).

That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?

Thoughts on Mary and Zacharias’s experience with Gabriel

I had a few thoughts about the stories of Mary and Zacharias in Luke 1 during the Sunday school lesson this last week.

When we talked about the story of the Annunciation, when Gabriel came to announce to Mary that she would conceive, I asked myself the question, “What does it tell us about the character of God that He sends a messenger to tell Mary ahead of time that she will conceive instead of just making it happen without any warning?”

It was an intriguing question and I came up with a few answers.

I think it tells us the Lord wanted her to understand the significance of what was going to happen and wanted to prepare her.  There is also in her submissive response the suggestion that she saw it as an implied request for permission, which permission she gave.

Just to pursue for a second that idea of asking permission, this suggests that the Lord was respecting Mary’s agency.   But then we have to wonder what the Lord would have done if Mary had refused.  The Lord’s plans are not frustrated, so He would have a backup plan ready.

Who was Mary’s backup?  It would have to be a woman named Mary, also of the house of David, for Old Testament and Book of Mormon prophesies to be fulfilled.

Oddly enough, it seems Mary had a sister also named Mary (which is rather weird), but it could have been a half sister.  “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene (Luke 19:25).  Of course, this is a bit speculative and depends upon how you interpret the meaning of that comma, whether it attaches “Mary the wife of Cleophas” to “his mother’s sister” or whether it continues the list with more people.  Still, I think it highly likely that the Lord had a backup in place in case Mary chose to refuse.

A point was made in the lesson that I hadn’t thought of before.  It is likely that Mary wasn’t so very popular among her peers because of her righteousness and it would have been startling to her to be told she was highly favored among women, thus her troubled feelings at the greeting, and thus the need for Gabriel to clarify that she was favored of God.  I think the experience she had standing strong against the temptation to seek for the world’s favor would have been important to her development for when she would find herself in a position that would look wrong, but be okay—pregnant, yet not having known a man.   It takes a spiritually strong person to stay faithful while everyone around them thinks they have done a very wrong thing when they haven’t.

Moving on to the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth..

The case of Zacharias and Elizabeth is interesting as well.  They were barren, and both well stricken in years, implying Elizabeth is into menopause.

The angel Gabriel, when he comes to tell Zacharias he will have a son, says something interesting: “…for thy prayer is heard.”  (Luke 1:13)  This makes it seem like this son is what Zacharias has been praying for that day as he offered incense.

Yet Zacharias is very old and his skepticism is opposite what his response would be if he’d been praying for it that day.

I think it is likely that Zacharias and Elizabeth had prayed for children for a long time, but that they (or Zacharias) had given up that particular petition once Elizabeth had moved into menopause, thinking it wasn’t going to happen.  That fits more with his skepticism.

So this brings us to some interesting questions now about how the Lord works when Gabriel says, “thy prayer is heard.”  Why tell Zacharias this now?  Why not visit him at the beginning of his prayers back when he was young and tell him, “Thy prayer is heard, but you’ll have to wait for years.”  It tells us that there may be long times when God is silent and doesn’t give us our petition.   And why?   It becomes a test of our faith whether we will continue to follow Him when we don’t know why He is not giving us immediately a righteous thing we ask for.   We’re probably pretty good at waiting a long time for things if we know why.  But can we wait a long time when we don’t know why?  It’s hard.  We have to trust that God is still good.

Another question that occurs to me is, “Why did John the Baptist have to be born so late?  Why not earlier?”  I think we don’t know much at all about why John had to be born so close to Jesus.  Perhaps if he were born earlier, he might have been martyred before Jesus came on the scene.  Perhaps his prophetic testimony of the coming Savior was meant to be witnessed very soon after it was given in order to show that God was moving fast and so there was necessity for quick repentance.

At any rate, the miracle of Elizabeth’s pregnancy was used by Gabriel as a sign to Mary that God could do impossible things.  If God could help a menopausal woman conceive by her husband, then God could certainly cause a virgin to conceive without coitus.

But back to this declaration, “thy prayer is heard.”  Sometimes we don’t know our prayer is heard until it is answered and the thing we pray for comes to pass.  It takes a lot of spiritual sensitivity to know the Lord has heard, even when our requests aren’t granted.  Granted requests are the biggest way we know prayers are heard, yet the angel’s pronouncement also teaches us that God hears our prayers all along, even if He can’t grant them yet according to His plan.

It also teaches us that God remembers and may answer our prayers far past the time that we’ve prayed them.  It teaches us something about the emotional strength of God, that He can hear our prayers and enter into the deeps of our yearnings and pains, and love us so, and yet refrain from granting our petitions for a greater purpose known to Him.  How badly He must want to bless us, and yet He can’t yet.  How many parents can stand that long a wait along with their children?

If I were to summarize the principles from the story, it would be this way:

--God respects the agency of His children, even those who are linchpins in His plan.

--Formative experiences often become a big part of our life purpose.

--God delays answers to prayer to try our faith

--God delays answers to prayer to fulfill His greater purposes.

--God’s miraculous answers to prayer are often used to help strengthen others’ faith in His power.

--God remembers our prayers even if we’ve forgotten or think it is past time for them to be answered.

--God hears our prayers all along, but has the emotional strength to delay answering and to lovingly wait along with us.

What else do you see in these stories?

David’s humiliation and disappointment turns to his advantage

In 1 Samuel 29  we see David working for king Achish in Gath, living as a mercenary with his men.  He fully expects to take part in a battle fighting on the side of the Philistines, but when the Philistine leaders of other cities see David and his company, they are determined he will not be part of their army on the grounds that he might turn into a fifth column and attack them from behind while they fight the Israelites in front.

Achish has to break this news to David, and he says all kinds of nice things to David about how good he’s been, but I notice he doesn’t tell him why the Philistines don’t want David with them.  This makes me think that Achish was worried sharing that info would give David ideas and he would really become a fifth column then.

This rejection must have been humiliating to David, to be rejected and for no good reason he could see.  However, we see in the next chapter (1 Samuel 30) that this turned out to be a really good thing because when David and his army come home early, they discovered their city Ziklag had been attacked, spoiled, and all their families had been carried away captive!

Why is this a good thing?  It looks very very bad, but they were able to get revelation to go after them, and they eventually recovered everyone.  (I totally recommend reading about the circumstances yourself; it is neat to see the circumstances that line up so nicely and neatly that enable them to recover all their families and belongings.) 

See, if they had been part of the Philistine battle, they would have fought their own people, possibly been part of those who killed Saul and his sons, and when they returned to Ziklag much later, their city would still have been attacked and kidnapped, but the trail would have been so cold that they probably would have lost their families, a much greater tragedy.

The story in these two chapters teaches again that all things work together for good to them that love God.  Likely all of us have had or will have disappointments or humiliations that seem crushing at the time and seem to close off opportunities.  However, if we can reserve judgment and carry on as best as we can and seek revelation, we may find that those very events are the means of preventing greater loss and open even better opportunities.  It takes time and patience and perspective to see this.  (One example that comes to mind is that of Elder Hugh B.Brown’s experience with cutting down a current bush in his yard and then being passed over for promotion because the Lord meant to make something else out of him different from what he wanted.)   

Jesus on children of prophet-killers

29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,

30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.

32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. (Matt 23:29-32)

In Matthew 23 Jesus delivers a list of woes to the scribes and pharisees for the hypocrisy and towards the end, he pronounces this line “ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.” But it isn’t quite clear why it applied so well, especially when He also points out how they seem to distance themselves from the people who killed the prophets before.

How do they distance themselves?  First they say, “If we had been in the days of our fathers..”  This shows they knew their genealogy.  They knew their ancestors had been part of mob action or individual persecution or tyrannical oppression or injustice against prophets and righteous mean.

Then they say, “…we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.”  The fact that the descendants now distanced themselves from the acts of their ancestors shows that at some point along the way the message of the prophets and the cause of the righteous who had suffered had finally been publicly vindicated.  In order to try to show they had learned from it, the people made a public show of honoring those dead worthies. 

However, by claiming they would not have partaken of the blood of the prophets, they demonstrated they did not know the nature of the circumstances and the pressures surrounding those prophets and righteous people when they were alive.  When pressures are that great that prophets and righteous are killed for their beliefs and message, those less steadfast change to the side of the persecutors out of self-preservation. 

Further, their distancing statements were done solely for the praise of the world, which is a position that is opposite that which prophets and righteous people have to take.  So the reality is that all statements to the contrary, these people would have partaken in the blood of the prophets to continue receiving the praise of the world.  Once the world turned against the current prophets and Christ, these people would too, in order to preserve that general good opinion they craved.

The consequences of this are terrible:

33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

34 ¶Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:

35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.  (Matt 23:33-36)

While this isn’t the most cheerful of messages, I think it helps us today to understand how important it is to be independent of the praise of the world.  I appreciate how Jesus is clear about the consequences and does not mince words.

Inquiring of the Lord with idols in our hearts

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1 Then came certain of the elders of Israel unto me, and sat before me.

2 And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

3 Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?

4 Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols;

5 That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols.

6 ¶Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations.

7 For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that sojourneth in Israel, which separateth himself from me, and setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to inquire of him concerning me; I the Lord will answer him by myself:

8 And I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 14:1-8)

This block of verses have some puzzling things in them.  The elders of Israel come to Ezekiel to inquire of the Lord through him, but the Spirit tells Ezekiel that the elders did not inquire sincerely and that they still have idols in their hearts.

The Lord tells Ezekiel something strange He will do to people who do this – “I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols; That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols.” (v4-5)  He says further that “I the Lord will answer him by myself: And I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.” (v7-8)

What is it these people are doing?  They are likening the words of the prophets to themselves, but because of the idols in their hearts (things they love more than God, sins they prefer more than God) they are likening the words of the prophets in a way that will justify them in committing their favorite sins.   This is what it means when the Lord says He will answer them according to their idols.  It is not that the Lord wants them to interpret His words as they do, but they take an edifying message and twist it to their purposes.

However, that doesn’t free them from the negative consequences, and the Lord declares these people will eventually be cut off from among the people, which means they will leave the church or be excommunicated.  You see, any time someone prefers a sin or idol to God and interprets God’s words to encourage them in that, they set a course that will lead them by degrees out of the church.

How does this help us today?  It shows us God knows perfectly well that people bent on keeping their favorite sins use His words to justify themselves and He also knows the consequences and warns all of us against trying that trick (and all of us may find ourselves in that situation at once time or another.)  We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by doing that.

How much better it is to use the word of God to show us what sins we have to give up and then use the Atonement!  This reminds me how important it is to pray with real intent and sincerity when praying for guidance. 

Jeremiah on the difference between trusting men and trusting God

5 ¶Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. (Jeremiah 17:5-8)

I ran across this block of verses recently and I was struck by them and how the imagery so well captures the sense of the principle of what life is like when you trust God versus trusting in man.

The first image is of the heath (or juniper tree) in the wilderness, in a salty land.  Of course, plants can’t survive in a salty land, so the juniper will die pretty quickly.

The second image is of a tree that is planted by a lake or a river, where the water table is high and constantly nourishing the roots without the need for rain (which can be chancy in arid places).  It stands to reason that if the tree always has water, a dry wind coming may wither other plants less advantageously placed, but will not affect this tree, therefore it won’t “see when heat cometh.”  To the tree with plenty of water, heat is not a problem.

What does it mean when it says the heath (or juniper) in the wilderness won’t see when good cometh?  The good in the image probably means rain.  Because of where the juniper is positioned, the rain doesn’t reach it and the runoff doesn’t reach it either, therefore it doesn’t know rain has even been there.  Similarly, those who trust in the arm of the flesh can only consider something good that everybody else around them considers good.  But in general, the things of God are higher than the world’s ways, so the good things of God actually look harsh (hard truths) or impossible to achieve.. or just unimportant to the world, so they don’t gain general acceptance.

How does this help me?  It reminds me how the daily practices of scripture study and prayer connect me to spiritual nourishment from the Lord.  I feel refreshed after studying and praying in a way that is different from anything the world can offer.

Be not afraid of their faces

Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord….

Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. (Jeremiah 1:8, 17)

As part of the Sunday school lesson a few months ago in the reading of Jeremiah I noticed there were two repetitions of this idea that Jeremiah was not to be dismayed or afraid of the faces of his people.

What does this mean?  What is so scary about their faces?

I realized Jeremiah was worried about how the people would respond to his words, and he was very sensitive to the expressions on people’s faces as an indicator of how they were receiving (or rejecting) his message.  Since his people were very wicked, their response would be opposite of what it should be, and if he was to go by their response, he would be quickly silenced.

We likewise should not be afraid of people’s facial expressions as we share truths.

Jesus on Divorce Causing Adultery

This is a verse I’ve always puzzled over:

Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery. (Luke 16:18)

The thing that bothered me before was I couldn’t understand how divorced people could ever be able to marry again and find happiness if any man who marries a divorced woman has committed adultery.

Finally it hit me that Jesus is describing a situation with certain preconditions that may or may not be true in our modern age of increased mobility.

In Jesus’s day, people stayed in the same place and hardly ever moved far from their ancestral home.  People knew everyone in their locale.  We are also to remember His previous pronouncement in the Beattitudes that he who looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already in his heart. 

So, the man who puts away his wife and then marries another woman immediately after has been looking and lusting after that second woman who lives in the same locale.  The second marriage is essentially legalized adultery.

Likewise, the man who pretty quickly marries the woman who was divorced is one who knows her and has been looking and lusting after her all the time she was married to the other guy.  His marriage to her is legalized adultery as well.

The principle Jesus was teaching was you don’t look around and people in your community and pick out who you would marry if you or they were unattached.  And singles aren’t supposed to pick out potential spouses from people who are married.  And if the way seems to open to do something about it, to act on any ideas you’ve had of that nature is adultery, even if it is legalized, because God knows what has been happening in our hearts.  That kind of thing does not stop if the itch is scratched.  It will itch again.

Now, having established this, we can see then that if two singles meet, want to marry each other, and find out that one or both of them have been divorced before, then that is not adultery because there is no history of them knowing and wanting each other while married to other people. 

Now, let us examine another version of this.

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.  (Matt. 5:32)

This is also puzzling,  the part about how woman who are put away for any cause besides fornication are being forced to commit adultery.   How does that happen? 

I suspect this goes back to the idea of looking and lusting.  Women are not visually stimulated like men, but after being rejected and divorced for a lesser cause than fornication, they might find themselves looking at other relationships around them, looking at the men and wondering if that man or that man would have treated them better than their ex had, wondering what it would have been like to marry one of them instead.     The way women are so relationship-oriented, Jesus implies that those kinds of thoughts are practically inevitable in a frivolous divorce, to the extent that He declares that the ex-husband is to blame for it.  That’s a pretty heavy condemnation, I’d say, especially since this verse comes in the middle of a lot of commandments about guarding thoughts.

Understanding these verses really teach how important mental loyalty is in marriage. They no longer seem unreasonable or nonsensical, but instead are plain in requiring purity of thought.

KJV vs JST: What’s wrong with the Pharisees and their baptism

In Matthew 9, there is a substantial JST insertion of three verses before v16, but the numbering of the inserted verses is 18-21, which is very strange.  I will present the context with the insertion and then discuss it.

KJV

14 ¶Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?

15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.  (KJV Matt 9:14-15)

JST

18  Then said the Pharisees unto him, Why will ye not receive us with our baptism, seeing we keep the whole law?
19  But Jesus said unto them, Ye keep not the law. If ye had kept the law, ye would have received me, for I am he who gave the law.
20  I receive not you with your baptism, because it profiteth you nothing.
21  For when that which is new is come, the old is ready to be put away.  (JST Matt. 9:18-21)

KJV

16 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.

17 Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. (Matt 9:16-17)

One of the things I found myself asking as I studied this was, “Why do the Pharisees say they keep the law and Jesus can immediately call them on it and say that they don’t keep it?”  It almost seems like the kind of argument in which Jesus would have to go point for point through all the commandments of the Law of Moses and show where the Pharisees are falling short.  But He doesn’t.  Instead, He makes two arguments to show why they aren’t keeping the Law.

First, they haven’t received Jesus, even though He was the one who gave the Law in the first place.  Their lack of receptiveness shows they are actually disobedient.  If they were obedient, they would have noticed how His messages fit perfectly with the spirit of the Law of Moses and they would have accepted Him.

Second, their baptism didn’t profit them.  They weren’t changed by it; they lived the same way before it as they did after it.  (Now, I suspect that the baptism of the Pharisees referred to was the mikva, which was a self-immersion performed every so often without priesthood administration that we commonly think of now.)   

We, having experienced baptism that brings a change, know how important it is to have that.  It is a sign to us that God has accepted the ordinance as well as a change of our nature.  In order for the Pharisees to be benefitted by baptism, they would have to 1) receive Christ, 3) repent of their sins, 3) submit to be baptized with the baptism of repentance with priesthood authority.

The rest of the discussion which is found in the KJV is about how newness doesn’t fit with oldness.  Without this bit of JST, one is liable to think that Jesus only refers to the doctrine of the higher law versus the doctrine of the lower law and the difficulty of changing from the lower to the higher.  (For the longest time, I thought this was what was meant.) But with the preliminary material focusing on receiving Christ and a profitable baptism, we see that Jesus is trying to teach them about how they must be born again and become new creatures through faith on Him, otherwise they can’t receive any benefit from baptism.   

If they aren’t changed completely, the newness would pull them one way and the old fallen ways would pull them another way, and they’d be torn like a piece of cloth yanked in two different directions.  Or the power of the new ways would be too much for their bodies to take and they would burst like a wineskin bottle eaten away at the inside and end up rejecting the saving doctrine, like a wineskin spilling on the ground.

I think this has some important messages for us as members.  It tells us that in order for gospel ordinances to do any good for us, we must be changed by them through our faith in Christ.  We can’t allow ourselves to continue doing the same sinful things after as we did before.