Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello my friends, welcome to Follow Him Favorites. My name is Hank Smith, I’m here with the incredible John Bytheway. And this year for Follow Him Favorites we’re answering a single question. The question for Exodus 18,19 and 20, John, I get from my teenagers, you’ve probably got it from your children as well, I’ve had it from students, is, “My goodness, why does the gospel have so many rules?” And this is where we get the 10 Commandments, right?

John Bytheway: 00:30 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:30 The thou shalts in Exodus 20.

John Bytheway: 00:32 The bigger rules.

Hank Smith: 00:33 How would you address this idea of, oh, rules is where happiness goes to die, right? And yet God wants to give us all these rules and how are they supposed to make me happy?

John Bytheway: 00:43 Oh, this is such a good question, and I’ve heard so many different, beautiful ways to answer. One of my favorites is President Boyd K. Packer. I’m going to paraphrase a little bit, but he said, “Don’t think of the gospel as the rules, the commandment’s, a fence around love that says keep out. Actually, they are the guard rails on the highway to love and happiness with guideposts along the way.” He said, that sort of a thing. I love to tell, how does Heavenly Father say, I love you? Sometimes he says it like this. “I love you.” Sometimes he says it like this, “Thou shalt not.”

Hank Smith: 01:16 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:17 “I’m going to save you from so much hurt, heartache and sorrow. I’ll save you from so many problems and so many consequences.” I just think the commandments are in a way, the easiest way to live. Somebody, “Oh, they’re not easy at all.” No, but it’s easier than going through the consequences of not living them, I like to say. So if you only see the gospel as a list of rules, it’s like looking at a library as a place where you can’t talk and forgetting all of the knowledge and wisdom that’s inside. Actually, the gospel is the pathway to maximum joy and happiness, right?

Hank Smith: 01:51 Right.

John Bytheway: 01:51 Adam fell that men might be, men are that they might have joy.

Hank Smith: 01:54 Joy. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:54 It’s all about joy and happiness and rejoicing. Here’s a way to keep you safe, some rules, right?

Hank Smith: 02:01 If you wanted a happy life, you want to have happy relationships. Well, the commandments seem to me to be all about first, the first ones, my relationship with God.

John Bytheway: 02:08 With God.

Hank Smith: 02:09 Thou shalt not have other God’s before me, nor make any graven image. And then the rest of the commandments have to do with my relationships with my family and my neighbors. And God wants me to have healthy, happy relationships, so I can have a healthy, happy life. And that’s really what the rest of the commandments are all about, right? Having good relationships.

John Bytheway: 02:27 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 02:28 And then the last one, thou shalt not covet, helps me have a good relationship with myself and my own life. I see the commandments as ways to have happy, healthy relationships, which in turn, equals a happy and healthy life.

John Bytheway: 02:41 Happy life. And it’s interesting too, that when Jesus was asked, “Well, what’s the great commandment in the law that he…” And there’s, what is it, Hank? 613 separate commandments in the Old Testament.

Hank Smith: 02:52 Laws, yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:52 But Jesus answered, “Love God and love your neighbor.” And compressed all of them into those two. And those two sounds like those relationships too, you just mentioned, our relationship with God and with our neighbors. And actually, it’s a pathway to happiness, not a bunch of restrictions.

Hank Smith: 03:09 Absolutely. David O. McKay used to tell a story, maybe you’ve heard me tell this before, about a horse named Dandy. He said, “The horse was amazing under the saddle. He could do things other horses couldn’t do.” But he said, “Dandy, resented restraint. He hated ropes, fences and gates.” He said, “Anytime someone put a rope on him or put a fence around him or closed the gate, he would do anything he could to get out of that rope, to get out of that gate or to push that fence over.” He said, “We just couldn’t keep that horse contained.” And finally, it ended up Dandy getting hit by a car. He said, “I hoped that would cure him, but it didn’t.” I think the car got hit by the horse, actually. But he said, “At one point, Dandy got out and he took another horse with him and they got into a feed house, but it was baited with rat poison and-

John Bytheway: 03:58 Oh, no. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 03:59 “They ended up both dying.” And David O. McKay just with tears in his eyes said, “That horse couldn’t understand that fence wasn’t there to restrain it, that fence was there to protect it.” And that’s the same thing with commandments. They’re not there to restrain you, they are there to protect you. And they’re there because God loves you. I like how you said that John, commandments are a way of God telling us he loves us and wants us to have a happy life.

John Bytheway: 04:24 Yeah. For those who are listening, ponder the meaning when Jesus said, “You’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.”

Hank Smith: 04:31 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 04:31 What does that mean? One of the meanings could be free from a lot of bad consequences, that you will never have to worry about, because you’ve kept the commandments and that’s a blessing.

Hank Smith: 04:41 God says in Exodus 19, I want to make you a peculiar people. And that’s another reason for the commandments, is, “I’m going to make you different. People will look and say, what is it about you?”

John Bytheway: 04:52 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 04:52 “How come you have all these good consequences in your life?” And you can say, “It’s because of the God I serve. And it’s because of the commandments he has given me.” Well, we have hope you’ll join us for our full podcast with Dr. Dan Belnap this week. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, it’s called Follow Him. Join us next week for another Follow Him Favorites.