As a high school student, Brent Top, associate dean of Religious Education at BYU, received an exceedingly precious gift from his mother. It was a ceramic basketball player, painted with his number and fashioned to look like him.
There was no other of its kind anywhere, said Brother Top. "It represents my parents' love for me."Speaking on the theme, "A peculiar treasure: Becoming God's Covenant People," Brother Top called the gift a "peculiar treasure - something that was painstakingly prepared and something that has been painstakingly preserved."
He then read from Ex. 19:5-6: "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people."
Brother Top explained that the word peculiar means something exceedingly precious - something like the basketball figure from his mother.
Reading from Ezek. 37:21-28, Brother Top said Church members can become a peculiar treasure unto God through the Abrahamic Covenant.
"Not only the Old Testament, but the New Testament and everything that we have in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, go back to that Abrahamic Covenant," he said.
Brother Top said there are three blessings associated with the Abrahamic Covenant:
A promised land. (Gen. 13:14-15.)
A great posterity. (Gen. 22:17.)
The everlasting priesthood and the gospel. (Gen. 17:7.)
"To be able to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests and priestesses," Brother Top said, "we have to keep the Abrahamic Covenant. And the blessings will be eternal."
