Heavenly Treasures

This week’s Come Follow Me lesson states, “Jesus Christ came to teach the way to lasting happiness, to teach what it truly means to be blessed.  What do you learn about obtaining lasting happiness from Matthew 5:1-12 and Luke 6:20-26?”  These verses represent the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.  As I’ve thought about this question, I noticed that most of the blessings mentioned in these verses are the eternal, heavenly blessings that won’t come immediately to the faithful.  The “poor in spirit” and those who are “persecuted for [His] name’s sake” are promised the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:3,10).  The meek are promised that they “shall inherit the earth,” undoubtedly an allusion to the reward after this life given to the faithful once the earth is “renewed and receives its paradisiacal glory” when He comes again (Matt. 5:5, Article of Faith 10).  Those who are merciful are promised that “they shall obtain mercy,” likely at least in part reference to how they will be treated at the judgment day in the next life.  The “pure in heart” are promised that “they shall see God,” something that could happen in this life but more likely refers to a time after death when “in our bodies we shall see God” (2 Nephi 9:4).  And to those who are reviled against and persecuted, the Savior promised, “Great shall be your reward in heaven.”  These blessings were largely eternal blessings of happiness to look forward to in the future.    

These promises focus our attention on obtaining the happiness and blessings in the next life that God wants to give us.  This is of course not to say that there are no blessings in mortality of living the gospel, but I believe the Savior was trying to encourage us to look beyond this life and to see the whole plan and promises of God.  The world judges happiness and worth based only on that which is seen and experienced in this life, but the Savior wants us to understand that happiness is not in the temporary things of mortality but in that which will endure forever—in particular, life in the kingdom of God.  He later taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt” (Matt. 6:19-20).  While we obtain things here and have to work to address the needs of this life day to day, Christ taught that our focus and our most earnest desires should be concentrated on obtaining that happiness that He has prepared for us in His kingdom. 

There is one promised blessing from the Beatitudes, though, that clearly refers to mortality.  The Nephite version reads, “And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 12:6).  That is the greatest blessing we can obtain unto in this life, and receiving the Holy Ghost provides that “peace of God, which passeth understanding” and is far more valuable to us here than any temporarily earthly blessing or pleasure (Philippians 4:7).  We need not say as the people in Malachi’s day, “It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered” (Malachi 3:14-15).  Rather, if we truly work towards the heavenly treasures and hunger and thirst after righteousness here, then we can have the Holy Ghost as our companion and, even now, “that happiness which is prepared for the saints” (2 Nephi 9:43).