Lessons for Our Day From the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ - 2024
Lesson No. Eleven

King Benjamin’s Core Values - Mosiah 2-5

Successful organizations, families, and individuals have core values: Some core values may vary depending on the purpose of the organization or the interests of the individual. The core values of exemplary organizations and individuals typically are universal truths that apply regardless of what generation we are born in, or what part of the world we live in. We should memorize our core values, and think about them often so that they are naturally part of our lives.

The US military is an example of a successful organization that teaches core values:

- The Air Force core values are: Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do.

- The Navy and Marine Corps core values are: Honor, Courage, and Commitment.

- The Army core values are: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage.

Successful families have core values: The Proclamation on the Family is a good start to establishing family core values: “Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities…”

Successful individuals have core values: Benjamin Franklin arranged his core values, he called the “virtues”, so that the first acquired could help in acquiring the second, and so on. His thirteen core values were: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.

King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon is a wonderful example of a person who had core values and lived by them: King Benjamin put much thought into the preparation of this sermon recorded in Mosiah 2 – 5, and from it we learn what his core values were. These include:

- Equality – “I am like yourselves, subject to all manner of infirmities in body and mind” (2:10-11, 26).

- Service – “I have not sought…any manner of riches of you…And even I, myself, have labored with mine own hands that I might serve you…Behold, I tell you these thing that ye may learn that when you are in the service of your fellow beings you are only in the service of God (2:12-18)

- Gratitude – “O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!...and if you render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess…ye are still indebted to him.” (2:19-25)

- Obedience – “Consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all thing, both temporal and spiritual…” (2:31-33, 41).

- Faith, believe – “Believe in God…believe that ye must repent of your sins…and now if you believe all these things see that ye do them” (4:9-10).

- Remember –“remember and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God and your own nothingness” 4:11).

- Live peaceably – Do “not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably….do not suffer your children to…fight and quarrel…teach them to love another” (4:13-14).

- Generosity – “Ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need…” (4:16-27).

- Diligence – “be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works” (5:15).

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has many core values, including: “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men….If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (Articles of Faith 13).

My personal core values – I have adopted the Lord’s counsel to Joseph Smith Sr. as my personal core values: “Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen” (D&C 4:6-7).

Released on April 28th. 2024.