“The Lord Labors with Us”
The Book of Mormon prophet Jacob gives us an ancient allegory, with a surprising number of modern applications.
I’m Mark Holt, and this is Gospel Talktrine.
Welcome again to Gospel Talktrine. So grateful to have you listening today. And today’s lesson is Jacob 5 through 7, “The Lord Labours with Us.”
And the first chapter we’ll study today is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon, the infamous Olive Tree allegory, which a lot of people get stuck at as they’re reading the Book of Mormon. They get to this chapter and they realise they don’t know what’s going on, it’s so long, and it’s been the cause of many people taking a break from reading the Book of Mormon!
So hopefully I’ll make it a little more exciting for you today.
As always, should you wish to ask a question, I’ll be happy read that on the air. Send me an email at gt@gospletalktrine.com.
I want to mention a couple of people today. One is Paul Castro, who has done an amazing job transcribing the first episodes of our Book of Mormon study this year. And I just wanted to send a special thank you to him.
Secondly to Alex, who has given me a number of insights into today’s lesson, so I wanted to thank him. I asked him a question last time I saw him, and he sent me a bunch of resources, so thank you Alex.
A quick word about what’s going on in the world today. Last week, my Bishop and Stake President have given us the guidance that in our Ward and Stake we can bless and partake of the Sacrament in our individual homes, because of the COVID19 virus scare that is going on right now. And so last week, as we performed that ordinance in our home, it occurred to me that the ability to bless your home in this way is a lot like the oil in the lamps that is described in the parable of the Ten Virgins. And I thought, a lot of time people consider that this oil has to be stored up, and the reason it can’t be shared is personal righteousness, so the oil is obedience, the oil is the blessings of obedience, which can’t immediately be shared.
Which is certainly a valid interpretation. But it just occurred to me that for various reasons it’s not advisable for us to invite everyone. As we had our wonderful sacrament service here in our home, I thought “Oh, I’d like to invite everyone in the neighbourhood to come share in this wonderful Spirit that we have in our home with us.” And then I thought, “Oh, it’s not appropriate for everyone to come over and share with this. In so doing, we would increase their exposure to us, and our exposure to them.”
And so, another application, to me, presented itself, of the parable of the Ten Virgins. Which is that, that’s another way of looking at the oil: is that we’re each responsible for our own household. Now, there are exceptions, obviously. We have to invite people who may not have a priesthood holder in the home, but those exceptions are limited in such a way that we’re still not inviting the entire ward over to our homes, we’re not going into everyone’s homes. These experiences are small by their nature. And so, where ever you are, I believe the entire Church is now participating in the Sacrament this way, in limited gatherings in homes, where the Sacrament is shared. And in each of those gatherings, all of the participants are responsible for creating the content: for choosing the hymns, for example, for singing, for praying, for helping with the Sacrament where possible, and for doing a lot more jobs than you would normally do in Church, rather than just attending.
And so each of you is providing your own oil for those services. And you’re understanding the whole point, the reason for which the prophet received the revelation for a home centred worship, is because we each have to have our own crews full of oil which will sustain us. We have to have our own spiritual means for providing a connection with God every Sabbath day.
And I imagine it won’t be too long before we’re back to normal. But I believe it’s a warning, I hope the lesson stays with us. This is how we gather oil: we study at home, and we create in our homes – this is the oil, is the connection with God that we create every week, every day, if we can. And the Spirit that we feel on Sunday, it will grow and expand to fill the other days. The service that we share in our living rooms will grow and expand to fill the other rooms in our home. This is the point of a home-centred gospel, a home-centred religious practice.
Well enough about the modern world, let’s get back to the ancient world.
We have a fascinating allegory to study today. One thing I want to say quickly about Jacob chapter 5, before I get into the content of it. It is a continuation from Jacob chapter 4.
So the chapter divisions in the Book of Mormon – you might be aware of this – they weren’t in the original translation of Joseph Smith. He didn’t relate to his scribes, “Ok, now we’re starting a new chapter.” These chapter divisions are a later addition, innovation, into the Book of Mormon manuscript. And the way it used to be, 4 continued right on into 5, and into 6. So these are part of the same discourse. And, as such, it’s worth going back in to the end of Jacob chapter 4 and understanding the reason for chapter 5 to exist.
Now Jacob, in chapter 4, he’s finished with the Temple discourse that he gave in chapters 2 and 3, and he’s giving his commentary on it. And at the end of that chapter, where he’s explained his discourse, he says, “Look, I’m led by the Spirit into prophesying, for I perceive that the Jews are going to reject, they’re going to turn what should have been their chief cornerstone into a stumbling block. And they’re going to reject the stone upon which they might build.” (Jacob 4:15)
“16 But behold, according to the scriptures, this stone shall become the great, and the last, and the only sure foundation, upon which the Jews can build.” (Jacob 4:16)
So the question that Jacob has is, how is it possible, that after having rejected Christ, how can they ever build upon it? Well, “Behold, my beloved brethren,” – he says, in the last verse of Jacob 4 – “I will unfold this mystery unto you.”
So the context of Jacob chapter 5 is important. And the context is this: Jacob is trying to teach how it is, that the Jews, having rejected Christ, can ever build upon him and make him a sure foundation.
So as we read Jacob 5, we should keep in mind that it is meant to answer this question.
Now another thing. This chapter is quoted, whole, from the scriptures that Jacob has. We can presume from a chapter that is written or engraven on the plates of brass. Jacob cites this as a chapter from the prophet Zenos.
So I want to mention a few things about Zenos that have been mentioned already in the Book of Mormon.
First of all, both after Lehi’s vision, and after Nephi’s vision, Zenos is mentioned. So, indirectly in those two cases. But later on, Nephi explicitly mentions Zenos. And later on, in in the Book of Mormon, Alma also mentions Zenos. It’s worth understanding who Zenos was, before we dive into the content of chapter 5.
So one of the things that Lehi says, after he has his dream, he says, “Israel will be likened unto a tame olive tree, that will be broken off and scattered all around the world.” Now at the time, Lehi did not mention the name of Zenos, but he says that “the house of Israel shall be likened unto a tame olive tree that will be scattered across an entire vineyard.”
So it’s obviously a reference, a direct reference, to the content that we have today preserved as Jacob chapter 5. But at that time Jacob chapter 5 didn’t exist. So Lehi was obviously referring to some older chapter, some scriptural analogy that everybody knew.
And when Nephi has his vision as well, one of the questions his brethren ask him – and this is in 1 Nephi 15 – they say, “What did our father mean about the tame olive tree?” And Nephi says, “Don’t you understand the scriptures?” And he explains to them what we’re going to talk about today. He gives them a little taste of the lesson Jacob chapter 5 teaches. This olive tree allegory of Zenos.
Now, who was Zenos? One of the important things we know about Zenos, from Nephi as well, is that Zenos is a man who prophesied extensively of Jesus Christ. Who talked about the Messiah who was known unto the Jews, who was promised unto the Jews, was going to also be their redeemer and their God. So, he is the one who directly drew the line between the Holy One of Israel, Jehovah, and the Messiah, and said these two are one and the same. That God himself will come down and condescend to live among us.
Zenos is the prophet who made that the most clear, and – the point that Amulek would later go on to make – is he says, “Look, Alma mentioned Zenos, but also Zenock prophesied according to Jesus Christ, Moses prophesied according to Christ. In fact, no prophet has ever spoken who didn’t speak about Jesus Christ.” So Zenos wasn’t the only one, but he seems to be one who made it most explicit.
We’re going to talk a little bit about Zenos before we get into the content of chapter 5.
We learn about Zenos in Alma chapter 33. So Alma’s talking to – at this point he’s talking to the Zoramites. And if you remember, the Zoramites are apostates. And he talks to them in verse 3, he says, “Do you remember to have read what Zenos the prophet of old has said concerning prayer or worship?” And then we get a surprising number of insights from this teaching by Zenos about prayer.
He talks about praying – while he’s in the wilderness – he talks about praying so that God will hedge up the ways of his enemies. He talks about praying, so that when he is in his fields. So we learn that who Zenos was, was one of the wilderness prophets that are so common in the Old Testament.
For a number of insights along these lines, I recommend a talk to you, it’s by Hugh Nibley, it’s called “Rediscovery of the Apocrypha.” And if you listen to Part 2, the whole first half of that is about the prophet Zenos. And what we can learn about him, not only from this thirty-third chapter of Alma, but from Jacob 5 and from some of the Dead Sea scrolls. So I recommend that talk. That is to be found on the speeches.byu.edu website, so you can just look for that: Hugh Nibley, “Rediscovery of the Apocrypha.”
But he talks about that it’s obvious from these verses in Alma 33 that Zenos was a prophet that had been ejected from Israelite society. And the probable reason was, he has been prophesying – as we can see in Jacob chapter 5 – he has been prophesying to them about the fact that they’ve rejected their own Messiah. They have walked away from the Lord’s statutes. And what they want to do is simply obey the law of Moses as it’s been given to them. They want to obey past prophets, but they don’t want to listen to today’s prophet who’s teaching them about Christ, or perhaps telling them to repent.
Whatever it was that Zenos was teaching them, in his individual message, his customised message for the people of his time – we don’t know exactly when that time was, by the way – they were rejecting that message. So he was forced to be in the wilderness.
And then it seems apparent from these verses in Alma, that then he says to God, “Thou art merciful unto me, and when I’ve been cast out and despised by my enemies, and thou would turn my enemies into friends, and I’ve been cast out again.” And so we can get a little picture of the life of Zenos, that he was somebody who was repeatedly rejected by his own people.
And then we can surmise by the lessons that we know he taught, as to why that might have been.
Why is that important? It will become a little more apparent as we dive into the content of today’s lesson, but it’s just good to get a background on who Zenos was.
So what is Jacob chapter 5? This is an allegory about a man who is a husbandman – what you might call a person who looks over an olive grove – and he has one tree, specifically, that is so valuable that he wants to get the fruit from it. But the problem with the tree is that it’s old and in a state of decay. It’s about to fall apart.
It’s really interesting, if you’ve ever travelled to the Holy Land, there are trees in this exact state. In what they call the Garden of Gethsemane, which is right at the base of the Mount of Olives, between that and the Old City of Jerusalem, there’s a Catholic Church there called the Church of All Nations, and alongside it, adjoining that Church, are a couple of olive groves, one of which they term the Garden of Gethsemane. Now it’s not known, obviously, if that’s the exact spot, but there are very old olive trees there, and you can kind of see what it looks like to have a tree that is so old, but you know it’s roots are still active, because there are just a few new shoots coming out of it every year. But, by and large, it’s a huge thick trunk with just a few branches that are still alive.
But that tree is so valuable because you know that it is going to produce fruit that is well established; the line of the fruit, they type of fruit that it would bear, would have withstood the test of time. And these trees are heirlooms in their culture. A grove of olive trees would be passed from father to son for generations upon generations. And they would consider it a priceless – a well-established tree that produced fruit every year would be worth its weight in gold. It would be beyond the price of gold. You could not get anyone to sell that kind of a grove, because they cannot create it afresh by working at it. The only way you can do it is by having something that would age and age and age.
And that is the position that this husbandman is in. He goes on, he looks at his tree and he sees this valuable resource is going to die.
Now, with that understanding as you read this chapter, you can understand, you can see, you can begin to feel, how much this husbandman loves the tree! For example, I’ll give you a couple of examples. At one point he says, “You know what, this tree does nothing but bear this bitter fruit. I want to get rid of it. Let’s dig it out, and burn the whole thing.” And his servant says, “No, let’s try one more time.” And he says, “You’re right!”
Immediately – he’s frustrated in the moment – but immediately he realises that he really didn’t mean it. He’s frustrated, and then immediately he says “You’re right, we’re going to try again. Because I love this tree so much. I love the fruit this tree gives me. It is so important to me. I’m willing to do anything it takes. I’m willing to spend all my time out here digging around this tree. I’m going to fertilise it, I’m going to prune it, I’m going to care for it.”
And so, that to me is the number one message that stuck out to me of chapter 5, is how much this husbandman cares, he loves, this tree. He will do anything to preserve it.
Alright. I’m going to relate to you in very quick terms the narrative of Jacob chapter 5. And then we’ll go into what it means.
So, the first thing is, the tree’s getting old, and he looks at it and says, “I’m going to nourish it and see what happens.” So he makes his labour for this year – these trees grow in seasons, and there’s a winter and a summer – so, for this year’s labour he prunes it and he digs around it, he fertilises it, (as he calls it, he dungs it), and then he gets a little bit of new branches.
But the main top, which is everything but the branches, it begins to perish. It doesn’t mean the very top of the tree – there’s a bottom and a top of the tree – what it means is all of the branches that have leaves and fruit. “The main top thereof began to perish.”
So he sees this, and he says to his servant, “It grieveth me that I should lose this tree,” (so, “I’m really sad that I should lose this tree”) “so, one of the things that we’re going to do, is that we’re going to graft in branches from a wild olive tree. And if we can get the sap flowing” – and I’m paraphrasing, I’m adding my own words to this story, so that you can understand exactly what he’ trying to do – “if we can get the sap flowing from the roots to the branches, that will revivify every part of the tree.”
And these branches are not vital enough to pull that sap through the tree. In modern terms we might say that the leaves aren’t producing enough photosynthesis to give the tree the food that it needs. So what we need are some sort of more vital branches, that would bring this tree’s roots back to life. So let’s find the wild olive trees.
Now understand, the reason a tree is wild, the reason an olive tree is considered wild, is because it’s of a variety that’s not cultivated, it’s not popular for cultivation, because the olives are bitter. They’re don’t taste good. They look like olives, but you can’t good olive oil from them, and you can’t eat them. So they’re really good for nothing. They actually are considered like weeds. However, genetically, they are compatible. And by genetically, what I mean is, and if you’re not familiar with the process of grafting, you can actually cut a branch from one, and cut the branch of the other, and join them where those two raw areas meet.
The trees themselves will create a new bond. The bark will grow around it, and it’s as if the one branch was always in the other tree. That’s how grafting works, but the two branches that are joined together have to be close genetically, the trees have to be similar.
And if you make that bond correctly, and if that new branch is seated correctly, then a new bond will be created, and the sap will flow freely into that new branch, and then it will be as if it was always part of that tree. It’s a very strange thing, you obviously can’t do it with animals, but you do it with plants. You can join one plant to another plant, and have the roots of one feed the branch of another.
So what he says is “Let’s bring these roots back to life by putting some vital branches into this tree.” And so they do just that.
Incidentally, we’re now around verse 8 of chapter 5.
And at the same time, he says, “I’m going to take some of the branches of this good tree, and I’m going to take them and spread them out, so that I can preserve the line of this tree, the kind of fruit that it gives me,” – what we today would consider the genetic material of this tree – “I’m going to keep it alive, so that even if these branches were to die, I would have some of this fruit.”
Now there are two kinds of grafting – this is a side note, we’re not talking in Jacob 5 anymore – there are two kinds of grafting that are described here. One is typical grafting. Now today we still use the word grafting to describe this process. However, part of what this husbandman is doing – the Lord of the vineyard – is he is doing what is called “rooting a cutting.”
So a cutting of a tree is cutting off the last say, 12 to 18 inches of a branch, or 35 to 40 centimetres. And you have a branch that is about that length, and you take off some of the leaves along the bottom of it, and you just put the cut part into the ground, and you put it in a certain kind of soil, you do it at a certain time of year, you fertilise in a certain way, and you take explicit care of this cutting. And if you do that, and you water it just the right amount, it gets just the right amount of sunlight, and if you’ve chosen the ground carefully, then that cutting can actually grow roots, and become a tree of its own.
So that’s not grafting as we would consider it today. However, in ancient times, this was one and the same thing: you were taking part of a tree and making it a new tree.
So, the first thing he’s going to do, he’s going to graft wild branches into this valuable tree to preserve the roots. The second thing he’s going to do, is he’s going to take the branches of the good tree that he loves, and he’s going to take cuttings, and make new trees from it, so he can preserve the genetic material. So he’s preserving this tree in two different ways.
So we’re back in Jacob 5 again, so he instructs his servant to go and do some of these things, and to help him with some of this work. But he alone takes the branches, and takes them into what is described as “the nethermost parts of the vineyard.” So hidden parts of the vineyard.
So what “nether” means is “low”. And the idea that you get from that is that this valuable tree is in a high spot in the vineyard. If there’s even a rolling hill in the middle of the vineyard, then the valuable tree, what’s called the “natural tree,” the good tree, is at the high point. And he’s going to take it, and he’s going to choose other spots in his vineyard. And a “vineyard” and an “olive grove” in the Old Testament, in old Hebrew, those are two words that are actually used interchangeably. Incidentally, that’s just a side note.
So when you say “vineyard,” it doesn’t just mean where grapes would grow, it also means where olive trees would grow. And so he’s going to take these cuttings into the nethermost parts, the lowest parts of his vineyard, which might not be as valuable or as prized a spot of ground. He’s going to see where they will grow.
So that’s what they do. That’s the first season that we have a report of. They graft in wild branches, and they take cuttings of the tame tree, and they plant those. And when they come back, in verse 17, after the start of the next season, they can see that all of their efforts have had great success. And they go, and they find these trees that have grown up from the cuttings, and what has happened is, every one of them has grown up and produced some really good fruit. And in the case of the last one, he planted it in the best spot of ground in the vineyard, and it’s half good, and half wild.
So the original tree, the roots were so strong they’ve overpowered these wild branches, and the wild branches are actually growing sweet fruit, it’s growing good olives. And all of the natural branches that they’ve taken and planted throughout the vineyard, they’ve also grown fruit.
Now if you look this up, you might learn that it takes between two and five years, and sometimes as many as eight years, before an olive cutting can become a tree that would actually bear fruit. So it’s not just one season. It’s been a long time. And in fact, we get the idea that this Lord of the vineyard, he’s somebody who live longer than a normal lifespan. Because the kinds of activities that he’s doing with these trees, and the fact that this tree is so important to him, he’s lived with this tree as long as the tree has been around. The tree means everything to him. Because he’s been with it it’s whole lifespan.
This may or may not be a valid interpretation, but it’s kind of what I’m getting, that there’s something special about the Lord of the vineyard. He knows more about olives than anyone else. His servant is good at tending olives, but he says to him, “Why did you plant this olive tree here? This is a terrible piece of ground.” The Lord of the vineyard says, “Well, you can tell that I know what I’m doing, because look at it, it just bore a lot of fruit. So I don’t understand why you’re questioning me, I chose this spot of ground very carefully, I’ve done a lot of work on it, and obviously it worked.”
Anyway, we’ll talk about the meanings later. We just want to get the story.
So now we’re around verse 28 – 29, and a long time passes away. The first time they go back and they see that all of their labours bore fruit. And the second time they go back, and now what’s happened to the main tree is that the wild branches have grown so fast that they’re bearing wild fruit again. Which is to be expected, right? They are wild olive branches, and usually the fruit follows the genetic type of the branch, rather than the genetic type of the roots, as we would say in modern language.
So if you take – for example, in a modern orange grove – this is how seedless oranges are reproduced. Once they have developed a strain of oranges that don’t have big seeds in them, then they can’t take the seeds out of their fruit and plant new trees. They have to graft and create seedlings, create cuttings, and create trees from there, or graft it into new trees. So they can take a seeded orange tree, and graft into the branch of a seedless orange tree, and this is how you would grow an entire orchard full of seedless oranges.
Now we all want to eat seedless oranges. We don’t want to work as hard on our oranges as we do on our lemons, you might say. Because if you have ever squeezed a lemon, there is always tons of seeds in it. That’s how oranges historically have always been. And yet you and I, hopefully most of us, I think, are used to eating oranges that have very few seeds in them. That’s because orange husbandry has grown to the point where we take the oranges with the smallest seeds, and we keep creating cuttings from that. Then we take the oranges with the smallest seeds from that, and eventually you get a branch were the oranges have no seeds at all.
And this can be replicated across your whole grove, and eventually you can just sell oranges where you don’t have to deal with the seeds. And you can reproduce those trees by grafting, as is described here. So it’s the branch that carries the material. And what he notices is that these branches have reasserted their own strength over the roots, and the roots of this amazing heirloom tree, they’re no longer dictating what kind of fruit is coming out. The branches have reasserted themselves. So now you’re getting wild fruit.
So then he goes around to look at all these seedlings that he’s planted, all these cuttings that have become trees. And they have all now converted to bearing wild fruit, for a reason that he can’t even understand, because they don’t have – those trees never had any wild genetic material, and yet they’ve also, perhaps because of the trees that have surrounded them, but for whatever reason, they’re also bearing wild fruit.
And in fact, one of the trees had half wild and half good fruit, and he thought to himself, “You know what, I should, I told myself that I should cut off those wild branches, but my servant talked me out of it, and now look, the whole tree is wild.”
So this is the third time he’s gone out, and at this point everything’s bad. So he says to his servant, he says, “Let’s get rid of all these trees, I hate them all.” My words, not his. “I hate these trees now, it makes me so disappointed and frustrated that I’ve loved these trees so much and I’ve worked so hard, and now what do I get? Nothing but wild fruit.”
Now it’s not like it’s a surprise to him. The idea that we get, the impression that we get, reading this chapter is that he doesn’t go out there but once every two or three years to look at his vineyard. No, what happens is, he doesn’t know what kind of fruit is going to come out, until they’re fully ripe. So he’s seen the fruit growing, and he knows that each tree is bearing fruit, but it’s not until the harvest that he learns whether it’s bearing wild fruit or tame fruit.
So he has been – as we learn in this chapter – he has been working every day, there’s nothing that he could have done for his vineyard that he did not do. So the idea is not of a lazy Lord of the vineyard or husbandman, it’s a very industrious husbandman, who also knows everything about cultivating olives, and yet he still gets the kind of fruit that he doesn’t want. He has this extremely, extremely valuable asset, the kind of asset that families are built upon, that entire dynasties, legacies could be built upon, this valuable, valuable olive grove, that can provide olive oil, food, and wood to people for miles around. It’s a source of wealth, it’s a source of pride, and it’s a source of food. And he has spared no expense, nor effort, in trying to make it be everything that it could.
So in verse 41, this Lord of the vineyard asks himself, what more could I have done for my vineyard that I didn’t do? Nothing. I could not have done a single thing.
In verse 43 he notices this tree that was half good and half wild, he says “This one has become corrupted, but this one was the most dear to me, this was the plot of ground that I had thought would be very fruitful.”
So at this point the servant pipes up, and says, “Look, isn’t it the loftiness of the vineyard, the branches are so powerful that they’re overcoming the roots, and the branches are taking strength unto themselves? And so don’t you think the roots are still good?” (Jacob 5:48)
And the Lord of the says, “Let’s cut everything down, I don’t want to take up this ground anymore. If we’ve got to start over, we might as well start over now.”
And the servant says, “Spare it a little longer.” And the Lord immediately reconsiders, and says, “Yea, I will spare it a little longer,” (that’s in verse 51), “for it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard.”
So then the Lord of the vineyard comes up with another plan. “Let’s take the branches of all of these trees that I’ve planted around, and I’ve created little copies of the original tree, and let’s take some of these healthy branches, I know the genetic material is good, let’s graft them back into the original tree, this heirloom tree that I love so much. And let’s see if root and branches together can’t create some sweet fruit that will be valuable olives.”
“However, we can’t do it all at once. Number one, we don’t have enough branches to take from all of these little trees, and number two, if the entire tree is one big bunch of grafted branches, then we will probably lose too much sap,” – this is my own interpretation, this isn’t in the scripture – “but if we were to graft every branch at once, it would kill the tree. It would be too traumatic.”
“So what we have to do is graft these branches in slowly. So that as one graft takes hold, and the wound of that grafting heals up, then that branch is now healthy, then we can do another one, then we can do another one. But we can’t do them all at once.”
“So here’s our new plan: we’re going to take these branches we know are tame olives, and we’re going to start grafting them in, one by one, back into the original tree.”
“And we’re going to take some of the left-over tame branches from the original tree, and we’re going to replace the ones we take from these off-shoot trees, and we’re going to put some tame olives into those trees as well. We want to take every one of these trees, and lay up fruit for ourselves, against the season” (as he calls it).
On the surface it looks like they’re just switching branches, but they’re doing it in a calculated way. And at the same time, they’re taking the wildest, most bitter branches, and they’re cutting those away, and they’re getting rid of them, and destroying them. And one-by-one, as they take out the most bitter branches, and they keep the sweetest, and they put it where the roots are strongest, they’re actually managing the resources of their vineyard to the point where root and branch are matched together.
So that’s the third season, and they do this labour. And they call other servants. So the first servant goes out and recruits plenty of help, and they do this work. And then they say to each other, “This is the last time. We already had one season where we had a ton of valuable fruit, and then we had a season where we had worthless fruit, and so we’re going to work on it once more.” And the Lord of the vineyard lets all of these servants know that this is the last time they’ll do this. They have to save the vineyard this time.
And sure enough, after this season of intense labour, they come back and all of the fruit is good. They saved the entire vineyard. And he says, “The time will come when wild fruit again creeps into my vineyard. And on the day when that happens, I’ll know that I’ve done everything, and I couldn’t get rid of the wild fruit. And so we’ll take all the fruit at that point, have a mighty harvest, and then the whole vineyard will be burned by fire.”
So that is the allegory of Jacob chapter 5. It is a narrative story, it is internally consistent, and yet – the meaning of allegory is it has a one-to-one mapping of meaning onto some other interpretation. So now we’re going to talk what that is.
First of all, from 1 Nephi, we already know that the house of Israel is compared to a tame olive tree. So tame olive tree means the sweet olives, the good olives, the fruit that is useful not only to create oil, but to eat. It’s the kind of fruit you would want to eat. And a wild olive fruit is the kind of fruit that is not worthwhile for getting oil from it. The oil would be worthless to eat or to burn, and it would also be bitter to eat. You just don’t want these wild olives anywhere near your olive grove.
First of all, the land in the vineyard obviously represents actual land. So the tame olive tree in one sense represents the place where Israel has been planted. They’ve been planted in a place that is choice; it’s the high spot of ground. And the land, the physical place of this tree seems to be significant. That idea is supported by an interpretation that the children of Israel would have had access to Zenos’ prophesies before the Exodus.
There’s an interesting article, I recommend it to everybody listening to this, if you want to understand the background of Jacob 5, in the Old Testament, this is an invaluable resource to you. It is by David Rolph Seely, who I’ve mentioned many times, he was my Professor in the BYU Jerusalem Centre many years ago, and John Welch. So David Rolph Seely and John Welch they wrote an article called “Zenos and the Texts of the Old Testament.” So I recommend you look that up. That is on bookofmormoncentral.org.
And this is about a 20-page essay describing the many ways in which this planting imagery comes into the books of the Old Testament, as if from a single source. And they give support to the idea that somehow, somewhere, there was likely a place where they all were drawing from. Because it seems like they all have understood ideas that underlie everything. The idea that there could be both a blessing and a curse in an olive grove. So the blessing would be that you get wonderful fruit, but the curse could be that you’re going to take a branch and throw it away, you’re going to burn it in fire.
And that’s just the beginning, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I wish I could into detail of everything they cover. But that’s why I recommend this article to you. So it was very helpful in preparing this lesson today.
So the tree is obviously the house of Israel, and the place where the tree is planted is the land of Israel. And in Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea, if you’ve been listening for a couple of years, you’ll remember we talked a bit about this. But if not, the Israelites as they are travelling out of the Red Sea, it’s been split for them, and then they’ve walked through it, and then as they’ve come out of it – you’ll have seen this also depicted in that cartoon, “The Prince of Egypt” – they sing this very song from Exodus 15. They sing the Song of the Sea, which is a hymn of praise unto Jehovah, and one of the images from that hymn is that God will plant us in a high place, in his holy mountain.
And that is very in-line with what is going on here in Jacob 15. The Lord of the vineyard has planted this tree in a high place, in his most cherished plot of ground.
But it also, it’s not just a plot of ground. Now in my opinion, I’ll give you my interpretation of what the roots mean, and what the place means. But on one level, the place where the trees are planted actually does have to do with places in the earth. So as the Lord of the vineyard scatters this genetic material from this tree, he scatters the branches of the tree, it’s symbolic of the scattering of Israel.
So we might think of one of the branches planted in a poor plot of ground, we might think of think of that as the Assyrian exile. And then we might think of another branch that’s planted elsewhere as the Babylonian exile. And we can certainly think of the last tree that is planted in the good spot of ground, we can think of that as the Nephites. Because the prophets of the people of the Nephites have been telling them now, for over a generation, that we have been led to a land of promise, where God will only have people here who follow his word. And if they don’t, they will be cut off from his presence. And that this is a choice plot of ground, above all the other parts of the vineyard.
And also, in support of that idea, is that half of the fruit of that tree was wild, and half of it was good fruit, was tame fruit or tame olives. So symbolising the Nephites and the Lamanites. So that one tree symbolises these people. So different trees that are scattered round the vineyard, they symbolise different examples of exile among the Israelites, from the Israelites. So far there’s nothing here that that’s any different about the interpretation that I’m giving you to what you might just guess from reading this.
And so that is the meaning: God is trying to preserve the worship of the Israelites.
So what is the fruit mean? So I’m going to give you my interpretation of what all these things mean. First of all, not only is the original tree, not only is it the land of Canaan, but also - in my opinion the trees that these branches are growing on, the roots: it’s doctrine.
So God – if you think about the branches as being people, when he says these branches are wild, they have to be cut off and thrown into the fire, they have to be hewn down and thrown into the fire – this is obviously judgement of some sort. So plants of the vineyard they can be blessed or they can be cursed, by the Lord of the vineyard. He can work on their behalf, he can prune them, he can dig about them, he can dung them (or fertilise them). Or he can cut off the branches and throw them into the fire.
So his labours and his judgements are very important as to what happens to these branches. The branches are the people, and so then what are the fruit, what are the olives? Well if it brings forth good fruit, something that is pleasing unto God, it’s obviously they’re works. It’s their choices. They’re the choices that they make.
Now, the nourishment that the trees get, as you might recall, in verse 18, it says:
“Behold, the branches of the wild tree have taken hold of the moisture of the root thereof, that the root thereof hath brought forth much strength; and because of the much strength of the root thereof the wild branches have brought forth tame fruit.”
So this moisture, this nourishment, that the branches receive from the roots: this is grace. This is the grace or the love of God, the very fruit that – this moisture and the fruit of the tree of life from the vision of Lehi are one and the same thing. This is the grace, the undeserved gift of God.
And the connection, right? The roots to the branches, these roots are connected to each other: this is fellowship. This is fellowship, or some sort of worship. Now in my opinion, the combination of the branches, the roots, and the nourishment, this is what we might call today, religion.
So this is Zenos trying to teach what a practice of religion really is. This is what it takes for God to have a righteous people on the earth. And all of those aspects together, they work together to create religion. And religion – if you think about it, what God wants from people is to make good choices, is to make choices according to the law of happiness. And in order to do that, he has to teach it.
Now the number one limitation on God’s power, the number one thing that keeps him from having righteous people on the earth, it the same thing that is the number one goal of God, which is our agency. So the choices that God makes to influence us, they all are bound by our agency. God will never, never – this is his utmost commitment – he will never violate our agency in any way.
And Satan will try to, and God will – and that is also God’s commitment – that he will not allow Satan to violate our agency.
And so the thing that God has to do, in order to have a righteous people on the earth, is, he has to first find someone who is willing to make choices that are good enough that he can inspire that person. So he has to have a prophet who will bring forth – almost out of nothing you might say – who will bring forth the teachings, the kind of doctrine, that will lead people to do what is right.
And once he establishes that doctrine, then he’s done a lot of work, this has taken a long time. It’s like creating an olive tree. You can’t do it out of nothing. You have to have somebody, somewhere, who is righteous enough that he is willing to ask God, “God, what would you have me do?” And then God is willing, is able, finally, to pour down knowledge into this person, and then people who are taught by that person, and eventually the knowledge expands until it can produce an entire people that are willing to obey God, for no other reason than that they want to, and that they have been taught to do it. This takes a lot of work and a lot of cultivation, a lot of fertilisation, and it takes a lot of pruning, and it takes a lot of winnowing down, it takes a lot of trial and tribulation, it takes winters and summers, and this is why this a perfect analogy.
And it’s how we can see, this is Zenos not only teaching how God will deal with this people, but he’s showing us – in this analogy he’s showing us – why God chose the people of Israel. It’s not because he cared about them more than the other people of the earth. It’s because he has to have the free agency of man cooperating with his own agency in order to teach people how to do the right thing.
Now it was never intended – this is one of the main lessons of the Old Testament – it was never intended that God would limit his grace to the people of Israel. It was always intended that they would be what he called “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6)
Now what do priests do? They are intermediaries between God and Man. So they were always intended to be people who would spread the truth. They were to be an example of what it was like to worship God and receive his blessings. And from there everyone would witness this and come unto them. Be grafted in, according to the imagery that we’re dealing with. God always wanted to graft everyone into this tree.
But he had to start with a tree, he had to start with a people that he could call his own. He had to start with a people who were willing to receive revelation and act upon it.
So the first thing that has to happen is, there has to be correct doctrine. And those are the roots. But there also has to be nourishment flowing through these roots. And that nourishment, that moisture, that is the grace of God. So the doctrine has to be based in the truth. And if the truth is there in the doctrine, then the grace of God flows from the roots up through the branches, which is the people. And if the people, if they receive this nourishment, then they produce works that are according to the teachings of the doctrine.
Ad these works, because they are in line with the law of happiness that God himself decreed, then the fruit is sweet to God. And he lays it up to himself against the season. He finds that these people are worthy of all of the work that he has put in to them. And that is a form of judgement that is passed on them, that they have brought him joy instead of sorrow.
Rather than pluck them out of the tree, and throw them into the fire, then he will continue to prune and to nourish the tree, and to care for it, using all of the skill and strength and knowledge that he has.
So those are the outcomes that can come out for the tree.
So those are some of the meanings of what is going on. The roots are the doctrine, and the sap, the moisture in the tree is the grace of God, is his love. And the people, the branches are the people. And together, the branches being grafted into this tree, the branches being close to each other, and providing strength to the tree, and the tree providing strength to them, that association, that connection, is fellowship. And it’s worship. And it’s the practice of true religion.
And so, these three things together, they create what is known as religion. What God wants from us, and what he creates with us, is the practice of religion. Now, “religion” in the modern world has become sort of a dirty word. People say, “Oh, I believe in spirituality, but I don’t believe in religion.” And what this allegory is teaching us, is that religion includes not only the true doctrine of God, the grace of God… Most people would get rid of everything but grace, and they would say, “God talks to me, I can go out and be with God whenever I want, I can connect with him, and that’s all I need.”
Well that is great. To have the grace of God is wonderful. But God also wants you to have his true doctrine. You aren’t providing fruit to God if you just rely on his grace. You don’t have any roots to preserve the moisture; when the moisture stops, when the rains stops, you’ll die, if you’re a branch that’s depending upon moisture that’s just lying around.
If you want to have deep roots, and if you want to have enough of a foundation so when there’s a drought you can still bear fruit and be pleasing unto God, you need not just roots, but you need this moisture that can continually come up from the root system. And you need the kind of fellowship, you need the kind of tree, that is going to keep the roots healthy. This doctrine has to be preserved by a population of people. And they have to pass it on to their descendants. And in so doing, you have created a religion that is vital and alive, and has the ability to return to God the return on his investment of labour in this tree, of fruit.
And those actions that are right actions in accordance with his doctrine. That is the fruit that God wants.
This is such a powerful allegory for this reason, because it teaches the importance of religion, and it also shows us the reason that God would limit, or he would focus, his intentions on one nation. Especially early in the history of the world, in the civilisation of the world, so that their doctrine, their religion, could spread throughout the entire world.
And this is the process that God is performing in this very chapter. He is taking the doctrine, and he is spreading it around the world. He’s taking these roots, and he’s trying to plant them in as many places as he can. And if he can, he’ll get fruit from those places as well. This tree is not the only thing that’s important to him. It’s the doctrine, it’s the fruit of this tree. And so he’s willing to take the genetic material from this tree, and have it supply a different root system, if he has to. But this is the doctrine that is the most important to him. It’s indispensable fruit. And this tree, this heirloom tree, cannot be lost. He loves it too much.
Now there’s an important chapter I want to draw your attention to. And that is Romans 11. In Romans 11, Paul is talking to the Gentiles, and he is also pulling from a similar allegory, a similar metaphor, that all of these other Old Testament chapters have pulled from.
So Romans chapter 11, verse 15. When the Jews were rejected – I’ll read it in the King James version first:
“15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
Now I’m going to distil this verse for you. When the Jews were rejected, all other people were changed from God’s enemies into his friends.
So when God took those branches which were wild, he noticed that his tame tree was bearing wild fruit. When he cut out those branches, then every other branch in the vineyard was given sudden hope: “I now have the possibility of being grafted in to that wonderful tree, and bearing the kind of fruit that I’ve always wanted to bear.”
Or otherwise spoken: “When they were rejected, all other people were changed from God’s enemies, into his friends.” Paul, in this chapter, he makes extensive use of the olive tree analogy. And then he says, “what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”
So he’s saying to the Gentiles, “Look, you shouldn’t, number one, you shouldn’t think you’re better than the Jews, because they were cast away from the same root, that you’re now being grafted into. So if you think you’re better than them, what will end up happening is, you’ll have the same kind of fruit that they had. They were plucked out; you can be too. You should be humble. And if they’re ever brought back and grafted back in, then that will be life from the dead. So that will be a cause for rejoicing. So in none of these instances do you, the Gentiles, have any cause to think you’re better than the Jews.”
“But I, Paul, have been called to preach unto you, the Gentiles, partly so that the Jews will be a little bit jealous, or envious,” as he says, “of all your good fruit, of all of your success, of all of your pleasant worship. That they might be spurred on to revivify their own roots, and bring back their own righteousness, and start bringing forth better fruit of themselves. And this is one of the ways in which fellowship creates a stronger bond, creates better fruit among branches.”
So Paul said, in verse 17:
17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;
18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.
So that is verse 18. We’re still in Romans 11, that was verse 18.
So another translation says this: “Consider this, if you boast, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”
And the point of that is, that the doctrine of Christ gives you your nourishment in order to be righteous. You’re not the one giving righteousness to the doctrine of Christ.
If you want to understand Jacob chapter 5, you’ve got to understand Romans chapter 11. So I would definitely recommend reading this chapter. So, verse 17 and 18 are the centre of that.
Now in this chapter, he quotes Isaiah 59. Now you might remember that when we were talking about 2 Nephi 1, that this is one of the probable places, that I said Lehi was quoting from Isaiah 59 to give his sons the message about the armour of God. This is where the verse came from, “That he put on righteousness as a breastplate.” Isaiah 59 verse 17.
Just a couple of verse later, it says – this is where Paul is quoting from – and he says the covenant of God, the redeemer of God, he’s covenanted that he’s not going to leave Israel alone, but he will eventually change them. The redeemer, in verse 20. So this is Isaiah 59 verse 20:
“20 And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.”
So Paul quotes that, and he says, “Eventually God is going to redeem Jacob. He’s going to bring these trees that have been spread throughout the world, and he’s going to graft them back into their mother tree. He’s going to bring them back to the worship of the Messiah.”
Now this is a very important support for the idea that, not only is that centre tree the land of Canaan, but it is Christ himself. So Zenos, as a prophet, was very, very centred, he was always very focussed on the doctrine of Christ, and teaching that the redeemer, that the son of God, was the way in which the Jews would be saved.
And in fact, we have good reason to believe, taking Alma – this is a little work that you can do on your own – but you can take Alma chapter 33, what you learn about Zenos from there, and you can take Jacob chapter 5, what we learn about Zenos teaching the doctrine of Christ, basically prophesying that the Jews were going to be cast out because they rejected Christ, and you can take those two things and put them together, and you can take the chapters from 1 Nephi, which talk about the prophet Zenos and his teachings, how powerfully he testified about Christ, and you can guess that Zenos was cast out, and maybe even slain, and certainly rejected of the Jews, because he was so consistent, and so persistent, in his teaching of Jesus Christ, and of the fact that they would all reject him.
And he prophesied that not only would they reject him, but they would be rejected of him.
So I’ve already kind of explained that the roots of the tree represent doctrine. And the most important aspect of any of the doctrines of God is the need for the atonement of Jesus Christ.
So now we’ll go back to our original question: Why would Jacob take all of the trouble to transcribe one of the ancient chapters that’s already found in the plates of brass, why would he transcribe that onto his small plates?
And this is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon; a ton of work. Why did he do it?
And he gives us the answer, as we’ve talked about, in Jacob chapter 4. He wants to explain how the Jews can build on the foundation of Christ one day, if they’ve already rejected him.
So the whole point of this allegory is to show that the Jews will one day again be given an opportunity to build on that foundation. And what happens is, first, they’re separated from the central tree, then they’re brought back in and reconnected to the central tree.
So to finish off with our interpretation of this allegory, the Nephites, the Assyrian exile, the Babylonian exile, all of these are separations from the original house of Israel. And then one day they’ll all be gathered back in. And there will be a time when all of the fruit is good. When the house of Israel is flourishing. And this is the time of the Restoration. This is the time when there is a prophet on the earth who is able to communicate with all of the different branches and root systems of this tree, wherever they might be found, and therefore they’re all able to get correct doctrine, and they’re all being nourished by the grace of Christ, and they’re all participating in the fellowship of the leaves, and therefore all of the trees are producing good fruit.
They all have the doctrine, they have the grace, and they have the fellowship, that requires true religion. And this is the last time these trees will be nourished in this way.
And so, the Lord of the vineyard now is going to take as much opportunity as he can, he’s going to take advantage of this wonderful happenstance, and he going to gather as much fruit as he can. And so he’s going to bring in as many servants as he can, and they’re going to labour as much as needs to be done, to ensure that every fruit that comes out of this vineyard is going to be as good as possible.
And this is a process. Eventually this good fruit will fill up the entire vineyard. It has to be done slowly. The bad branches, the wild branches are not taken out all once. They have to be slowly replaced with good branches. But eventually this good fruit will fill up the entire vineyard. So that’s the prophesy that we’re in the middle of. God is now nourishing his vineyard for the last time, and eventually the belief in Jesus will fill up the entire world.
That is the prophesy of Jacob chapter 5. That eventually everyone will have access to correct doctrine, and they will be bearing fruit to God. Their works will be good. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be part of the same religion, in the specific sense that they’ll be part of the Restored Church of Jesus Christ, but it does mean in the broad sense of the word religion, that they will be bearing fruit unto God. That God will not permit people to be in the vineyard, if they are not producing the kind of works that he needs, to be considered tame fruit. He has to have valuable fruit for himself, otherwise it’s taking up a spot in his vineyard – it’s cumbering the ground, as he says – that could be used for a tame plant that would be profitable to the Lord of the vineyard.
So that’s the end of our interpretation. Another chapter that I want to point you to – I pointed you to 1 Nephi 15, and I also pointed you to Exodus 15 – and now I want to point you to John chapter 15. So the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament, and now the New Testament. Very interesting.
But this is where Jesus says to his disciples, “I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you are disconnected from me, then you can’t do anything. It’s only to the extent that you’re being nourished by the moisture that comes from the vine, that you can produce the kind of fruit that God wants to have.”
This is one more example of the idea that Israelites were very comfortable thinking about God as being a nourishing root system, and having planted them, and being connected with them and receiving this.
One more mention of Romans chapter 11. I want to read verse 17 from the New International Version:
“17If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” (John11:17-18 NIV)
So that nourishing sap, it only comes in – you only realise this if you read it in another translation. When in the King James version, when it says “the root and fatness of the olive tree,” what it’s actually talking about is the “nourishing sap.” So this moisture, that the Book of Mormon, that Jacob chapter 5 talks about, this grace of God was known not only known to Zenos, not only known to Jacob, but to Paul.
One more thing I want to mention is, that this isn’t just my own idea, this is supported from the Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi 10. Nephi tells his brothers that the Jews would be – so this is 1 Nephi 10:14 – the Jews would be scattered upon the face of the earth:
“…after the Gentiles had received the fulness of the Gospel, the natural branches [of the olive tree], or the remnants of the house of Israel, should be grafted in, or come to the knowledge of the true Messiah, their Lord and their Redeemer.”
So of the original tree, obviously the trees are places, but the tree is also, as Nephi says, “the knowledge of the true Messiah, their Lord and Redeemer.”
So there are a couple of different meanings for that tree: The land of Canaan, it’s membership of the house of Israel, but it’s also knowledge of Christ. It’s the doctrine of Christ. So this is Nephi telling us that the tree is, in fact, the doctrine. Ok.
So now Jacob has accomplished his purpose. In chapter 6, is Jacob emphasising that – explaining, and giving his interpretation, and emphasising – that he has taught us now, exactly how it is that the Jews, once having rejected Christ, can eventually come to partake of his blessings and build upon them, build upon him, as their sure foundation. So he’s the stone that they have rejected, and one day it will become their chief cornerstone.
So this is a conscious reference, by the way, to Psalm 118, where Jesus Christ is talked about in that same way.
So as an interpretation and as a summary of his allegory, Jacob chapter 6 gives us a very important lesson of the importance of choosing Jehovah, choosing Christ, choosing religion, and choosing true doctrine.
And, in fact, the importance of our choices in general. Choices are the good fruit.
The way he does this in chapter 6 – now I’m going to make another plea for you to read this essay by David Rolph Seely and John Welch, called “Zenos and the Texts of the Old Testament.” They emphasise over and over again how in this vineyard imagery that’s throughout the Old Testament, God is constantly saying on the one hand the blessing that come from having a Lord of the vineyard who’s nourishing you, and on the other hand the curses that can come by having God pluck you out of your original plant and casting you into the fire. So the blessings versus the curses. And you can see that contrast throughout chapter 6.
Alright, now to chapter 7. On the surface, at first blush, it appears to be that Jacob has shifted gears. Right? So Jacob has been giving… throughout the book of Jacob, it has basically been one thing. He has talked about his Temple discourse, where he talked about – you remember from last week – he talked about plural marriage, he talked about pride, and then while he’s giving us the interpretation, later on he’s saying “Here are some of the things that are important to remember from the speech I gave. And here is an important question: how can the Jews do this?”
It’s all part of the same thing. He’s giving his report of his Temple discourse, and then he’s giving his interpretation of that, and then he asks a simple question, in the middle of that interpretation, which is “How can the Jews build on Christ once they’ve rejected him?” Then he gives the – chapter 5 – the allegory of the olive tree, and then he gives his interpretation of that.
It’s all been sort of one lesson! From chapter 1 all the way through to chapter 6. And then now in chapter 7 it appears like, “Oh, Jacob is now just telling us a new story about some guy named Sherem, who happens to be an anti-Christ.”
But I’m going to show you… First of all, the reason that it seems that way is because it’s many years later, and this is narrative now, instead of instructive, and it’s not explicitly tied. But I want you to consider this. So briefly I’m going to tell you the story of Sherem, and then I’m going to tell you how it is tied in.
Sherem is a man who denies Christ. So anyone who does this – who says that Jesus is not the Christ, or that the Messiah is not God himself – in the scriptures that is a person who is an anti-Christ. Because of the book of Revelation, and because of one of the other epistles of Paul, we have taken, in modern terms, the word anti-Christ has come to mean a single person who will come in the last days, and be the embodiment of all evil. The anti-Christ will basically be Satan’s messenger on the earth.
But there is a more innocuous meaning: an anti-Christ is simply a person who preaches against the importance of believing in Christ. And while it’s still not a good guy, it doesn’t mean the end of days, right? So Sherem is an anti-Christ in that sense.
And he comes around, and he teaches, “Look,” – here are Sherem’s teachings – “the Law of Moses is important, but the Messiah is not God, and in fact there will be no Christ, and there’s no atonement. We just have to obey God, and pay attention to the Law of Moses, right?” And this is his whole spiel, this is the entirety of his message! And it doesn’t seem to be that evil.
But I’m going to talk to you about why it is, and then what’s the problem.
So he finds, eventually comes into contact with Jacob, and he says “I’ve been looking for you Jacob, because you teach about Christ, and I teach that there will be no Christ.” And he and Jacob have a discussion. And in that discussion, it ends up that Sherem says to Jacob, “Alright, if there is a Christ, then show me a sign.”
And Jacob says, “I’m not going to show you a sign, but if God wants to show you a sign, then maybe you’d like to be smitten, and if that’s your sign, I’m not going to find some way for God to visit your destruction on someone else, if that’s your sign then so be it.”
And from that moment, Sherem never gets to teach any evil doctrine again at all.
Now as a narrative, this is not a very powerful lesson. And I’ll tell you why. Because you and I face obstacles to our belief all the time, and God doesn’t smite those obstacles as soon as we say “Oh well, if you want to be smitten, then be smitten,” ok?
So this is not a chapter instructing us how to deal with apostates, or how to deal with obstacles to our belief. In fact, if you’ve ever studied narrative structure or story writing at all, this would be considered what is called a “Deus Ex Machina,” or the god from the machine.
Now in ancient Greek drama, one of the early techniques that they realised they were doing, it’s sort of that is recognised after the fact, but they were a lot of ancient Greek dramas, and the Greeks were the innovators, the inventors, of the play, of theatre in that sense. And quite often at the end of the play, what would happen is, the playwright would get the characters into enough trouble that they couldn’t get themselves out of it.
And so, then, on a little crane, they would bring an actor out from backstage, and they would hoist him up, and he would come out and he would be a god, and represent one of the gods of Olympus, and he would say to all of the assembled cast, “Here I am, I’ve watched you struggle with all of these things, and now I’m going to fix all of your problems.”
And this would be the way that the play would end. It wasn’t very satisfying because a god would come out of nowhere, and say, “Here’s the answer to your problems, you don’t have to change, and everything is going to be great.” Well, it was great for an early manifestation, and early example of plays. But people have moved on since that. And nowadays, if you want to criticise somebody, a writer, you can say, “Oh, you’re ending was a deus ex machina.”
And it doesn’t mean literally that a god came out and solved the problems, it means that somehow, the character didn’t really have to change, he didn’t really have to face the difficulty that the story presented him with. His problems got resolved for him. And therefore, big deal! It’s not very satisfying that he didn’t have to make a difficult choice.
And so this is a perfect example. If you look at this as a narrative, it’s not powerful, because God literally comes out of nowhere and solves the problem. So if this isn’t a narrative teaching us a lesson, then what is it?
Ok, that is an important question, and that is a clue to what is this chapter is even doing here. It seems like it’s different from the rest of the whole book of Jacob. And when we realise that the narrative isn’t the point, then we can kind of fit it in.
Ok, so then I’m going to tie this chapter back in to Jacob chapter 5. First of all, what do we know about Sherem. In verse 4 we learn “that he had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people.” It says that “he could use much flattery, and much power of speech,” but, it’s “according to the power of the devil.”
So he’s good at flattering people, but he’s good at flattering them away from God.
He’s prideful, we know that. And we also know he was loyal to the law of Moses. In other words, what do we know about him? He is one of the natural branches! What better example could we have, for the attitude of the branches described in Jacob chapter 5. Verse 37 says, I’m looking it up here:
“…behold, the wild branches have grown and have overrun the roots thereof; and because that the wild branches have overcome the roots thereof it hath brought forth much evil fruit.”
And the servant describes one of these evil branches in this way, in verse 48. He says:
“Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard—have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good? And because the branches have overcome the roots thereof, behold they grew faster than the strength of the roots, taking strength unto themselves.”
Now this is where Zenos makes it clear, that it’s the choice of the branches that actually perverts their fruit.
So this is a perfect example, Sherem is a perfect example, of the branch taking strength unto itself. In other words, it’s rejecting the doctrine. When a branch doesn’t yield the fruit that the genetic material of the roots would tend to send out, what that means is, that a person has rejected the doctrine of Christ. He’s bearing his own fruit, and that fruit is bitter to God.
What better example could you have for that attitude, than Sherem?
And so, here’s my point. Jacob chapter 7 is not meant as a narrative to teach us how deal with somebody like Sherem. Jacob chapter 7 is an example to us of the fact that God really will deal with the people of Israel the way that Jacob chapter 5 says he will.
And what happens to Sherem? He’s plucked out of his tree, and he’s cast into the fire, immediately.
So Jacob, later on he had a choice as to what he was going to write on his plates. And if we’re reading the book of Jacob, and we think, “Oh, he just wanted to relate all of his important experiences.” No. It’s many years later. He undoubtedly had many, many important experiences. But he chose to put Jacob chapter 7 here, precisely because he wanted to illustrate to anyone who wanted to read his plates – presumably his own descendants first and foremost – he wanted to them that, “Look, if you just read chapter 5, you need to know that God will pluck you out, and cast you into the fire. And he will bless you.”
So what happens to the people who formerly listened to Sherem? When Sherem is struck by God, to the point where he cannot raise himself, he has to be nourished by others for the space of many days, and eventually he gathers all of his former believers, his former adherents, and he renounces all of the teachings that he’s given them, and he says, “I’m afraid that I have committed the unpardonable sin.” And then he dies.
All of those people immediately repent, and what happens is they are all brought back into the fellowship, the religion, the practice, and the doctrine of Christ. And they immediately are forgiven.
So one man is cursed. Everyone else is blessed. One man is taken out, and plucked away from the natural tree, and everyone else is grafted back in. This is an illustration; this is an example. This chapter is not a narrative, it is part of the allegory of Jacob chapter 5. This is one example of how this applies to us – that when we listen to people that would take strength unto themselves, and deny the doctrine of Christ, then we are cast out of this tree, we are plucked out of our natural tree, and we are denied the nourishing sap.
But if we will repent, then we can be grafted back in.
Now I want to teach you something about Sherem. If you want to understand his deception, I’m going to read to you two of the verses from chapter 7. First thing that Sherem says. He’s talking to Jacob, and he says:
“7 And ye have led away much of this people that they pervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the law of Moses into the worship of a being which ye say shall come many hundred years hence. And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no man knoweth of such things; for he cannot tell of things to come.” (emphasis added)
That’s verse 7.
Verse 9. This is only two verses later, Sherem says this.
Jacob says, “Deniest thou the Christ who shall come?”
Sherem says, “If there should be a Christ, I would not deny him; but I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be.” (emphasis added)
So in one verse he is saying, “No man knoweth of such things, for he cannot tell of things to come.” Two verses later, “I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be.”
Something that you need to know about people who deny Christ, is exactly this: those beliefs require just as much faith as a belief in Jesus Christ. To believe that Jesus Christ will never come is a profession of faith, exactly as much as to believe that Christ will come.
So that’s the message of Jacob chapter 7. It is that God means what he says. He means exactly what he says, when he says, “I’m going to nourish this tree. I’m going to preserve the fruit of it unto myself, against the season. I’m going to take every branch that I can, and every leaf that I can, and every shoot that I can, and every cutting that I can, and every seedling that I can, and I am going to redeem it.”
That is the promise of Isaiah chapter 59, that God will send a redeemer to Zion, and he will take all of the people in Jacob who are willing to repent, and he will redeem them.
So this is an ancient promise, it’s an ancient allegory, and it has an infinite number of modern applications. It is the very promise that God will change all of us, that he can take us from one nature, and he can implant within us another nature. That we can have one form of worship flowing through us, and he can change that to another form of worship.
If we will connect ourselves to his root – which is the doctrine of Christ – and if we will allow his moisture to flow through us, his nourishment – which is the grace of God, and the love of Christ – if we will do these things, then he can help us to produce unto him good fruit. He can change our very insides, our very souls, into the kinds of people that will produce good works, and make good choices, forever.
The powerful lesson of Jacob chapters 5 through 7, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.