President Spencer W. Kimball said in 1976 that few men have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his blessings.

Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of faith has always appeared to be more difficult

and relying on things more immediately at hand, carnal man has tended to transfer his trust in God to material things.

Therefore, in all ages, when men have fallen under the power of Satan and lost the faith,

they have put in its place a hope in the arm of flesh, and in gods of silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood and stone,

which see not, nor hear, nor know, that is, President Kibble says, in idols.

What can we learn from the Old Testament, especially the book of Exodus, about worshiping God

and rejecting idols?

We'll explore that and much more in today's episode of Abide, a Maxwell Institute podcast.

My name is Joseph Stewart.

I'm the public communication specialist of the Neely Maxwell

Institute for a religious scholarship at Brigham Young University. Christian Heel is a research fellow

at the Maxwell Institute, and each week we'll be discussing the week's block of reading from the

Church of Jesus Christ's Latter-day Saints Come Follow Me curriculum. We aren't here to present a lesson,

or rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block, so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints in their

testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the world of religious ideas.

Today we are once again joined by Aaron Garner, one of our research assistants who studies

ancient Near Eastern studies and comparative literature here at BYU.

Aaron is from Raymond Alberta, and upon graduation plans on attending graduate school to further study in these fields.

Welcome back, Aaron.

Thank you.

Now, Christian, what is going on in these chapters, specifically Exodus chapters 18 through 20?

...