Come, Follow Me September 30-October 6: 3 Nephi 12-16
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Ask, Seek, Knock
By Rosalynde F. Welch
Christ’s Sermon at the Temple in Bountiful, like its close textual cousin, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, is a feast and a puzzle. Each passage is a spiritual delicacy, savory and nourishing. However, the overall structure of the sermon puzzles readers who study it closely. How do its parts fit together, what is its internal flow, and what kind of text is the complete whole--a set of ethical guidelines, a code of vows for Christian disciples, a teaching text?
It’s not easy to answer these questions, and dozens of answers have been proposed. The Sermon is enigmatic enough to inspire a lifetime of investigation, proposal, and revision. At the same time, it’s practical and compelling enough to lift me to my feet and lead me into the work of discipleship. The string-of-pearls structure of the Sermon invites readers to connect deeply with a particular part of its teachings, something among its seven (or is it five? or eleven?) passages that speak individually to you--the Beatitudes, or the Lord’s Prayer, or perhaps the teachings on salt and light.
For me, one passage captivates my spiritual imagination more than any other: “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened” (3 Nephi 14:7-8).
Ask. Seek. Knock. Receive, find, open.
The actions described in this passage are, like much of the sermon, simple, everyday moments: asking for something I want, looking for something urgently needed, knocking for entry into a new space. I ask my husband to build a fire and sit with me on the patio in the chilly evening. I look for my son’s passport as he packs for his trip next week. I knock on my neighbor’s door and wait for her to open. We instinctively understand the tiny dramas involved in these simple moments: will my husband respond to my bid for connection? What will happen if I can’t find the passport? Is my neighbor at home? And then how satisfying it is to sit in John’s warm arms, lay hands on the elusive passport, and be received by a cherished friend!
Despite the lived immediacy of these three scenarios, much remains unexplained in this passage. One question in particular is urgent: what is it that the petitioner seeks in each of these scenarios? What does the Savior want us to ask him for? Is he referring to the physical necessities we need to survive from day to day, as he did earlier in the sermon when he promised his disciples that God will provide their food and clothing (3 Nephi 13 25-32)? He follows the “ask, seek, knock” teaching with an example scenario of a child asking his father for bread, which might suggest that he has physical sustenance in mind.
But maybe the bread should be interpreted more broadly. Perhaps it represents anything we need--anything, that is, that is good for us, as bread is good for a child. Is Jesus here speaking more generally, inviting us to petition him for any good thing we need--say an urgently desired pregnancy, relief from chronic pain, or a healed marriage? Is the challenge for the disciple to ask the Father only for what is good, and never for what is bad? I don’t know. Experience shows that these manifestly good things, even when faithfully and patiently petitioned over many years, are often not given and not received.
Still, I recognize an openness in this passage which suggests not just a resigned acceptance of what the Father may or may not give, but an invitation to probe the extent of his generosity, secure in the knowledge that only what is “good” will be given. There’s a childlike confidence here that belongs to disciples who have a true relationship with their Father In heaven: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (3 Nephi 14:11).
Ask. Seek. Knock. Receive. Find. Open.
For me, in the end, there is one thing I might petition that is more compelling than any other. The bread I ask for is the bread of life (John 6:35): the Son who is the image of the Father. When I ask, when I seek, and when I knock, what I finally seek is God himself. I seek a personal revelation--though not the “yes or no” or “this or that” sort of answer we often associate with personal revelation. I seek a more foundational form of personal revelation: God’s revelation of himself to me, his daughter.
Ask to know me. Seek my face. Knock at the door of the kingdom. You will receive my presence. You will find my face. The door of my kingdom will be opened to you.
You will receive and be received.
One thing that sets the Sermon at the Temple apart from the Sermon on the Mount is the explicit teaching of ordinances. Jesus shows the Nephites how to baptize, how to bless the sacrament, how to pray communally. These sacred rituals provide a specific set of words and actions, called “sacraments” or “liturgies” more broadly, for channeling God’s power and presence into our lives.
Given this sacramental emphasis in the Sermon at the Temple, I read the admonition to “ask, seek, and knock” as an informal entrance liturgy: a personal prayer with which to approach an experience in the presence of God by way of his Spirit. I might seek that experience on my knees, in the scriptures, at the temple or the chapel, or in the everyday work of serving others. Jesus gives me words to ask the Father to open the door to his kingdom and receive me into its peaceful pasture--not just at the end of my life, but now, through the abiding of his Spirit.
“Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened” (3 Nephi 14:7-8).
The door will be opened. And it will be opened by the one who knows me deeply and loves me best: “The keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there” (2 Nephi 9:41).
Images
Ardelle Fisher, Come, Follow Me, 2023. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/come-follow-me/].
Rose Art, Treasure in Heaven, 2025.
Corey Snow, Road to Emmaus.
James E. Seward, Behold I Stand at the Door, 2016.