Lesson 12: Seek Ye for the Kingdom of God
Jacob 1-4
Purpose: To help class members feel a greater desire to magnify their callings, be chaste, and invite others to come unto Christ.
Lesson Development:
1. Jacob magnifies his calling from the Lord
2. Jacob warns against the love of riches, pride, and unchastity.
SCRIPTURE DISCUSSION AND APPLICATION
We begin the Book of Jacob today. As if we didn’t remember from having just read the two books of Nephi, what does the title of this book tell us is the relationship between Jacob and Nephi? [“The brother of Nephi” is the designation on the plates – the relationship appears to be important enough to make that explicit.]
The first words that Jacob records in his book are that it has been 55 years since Lehi and his family left Jerusalem. That interests me because it’s almost my lifespan – I’m 57 – so I’m generally aware of the kinds of changes that can take place over that span. There has been great technological development, of course – and maybe we can say something of the same occurred to Lehi’s people: the Spirit instructed Nephi how to build a boat which brought them to the New World, and probably there have been developments that helped the people adapt to life here.
How about the Church? How is the Church different today than it was 55 years ago? [Keep responses brief; note the 1978 revelation as probably the greatest doctrinal development]
What about the people of Lehi? What doctrinal develops occurred in the 55 years after Lehi left Jerusalem? [Accept whatever is offered, but include and emphasize the Lehites’ greater understanding than the Jews of the doctrine of Christ – his name, his mission, the date of his coming, his baptism, the reception of the Holy Ghost, his crucifixion, etc. Note how significant those developments were, so that although the Lehites continued to practice the Law of Moses, their religion would have been practically unrecognizable to the Jews of the Old World.]
Nephi gave Jacob a specific assignment: He was to continue keeping the small plates of Nephi, those that recorded the sacred history of the people, and add to them appropriately.
Jacob 1:4
4 And if there were preaching which was sacred, or revelation which was great, or prophesying, that I should engraven the heads of them upon these plates, and touch upon them as much as it were possible, for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of our people.
Apparently the other plates of Nephi, the large plates recording the general history of the people, were also to be kept – but by somebody else, not by Jacob – Jacob had another responsibility.
3 For he said that the history of his people should be engraven upon his other plates, and that I should preserve these plates and hand them down unto my seed, from generation to generation.
Do you think those other plates were preserved, and the secular history continued? [Yes; they are the records that Mormon used to abridge the history of his people:]
Words of Mormon 3-6
3 And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi.
4 And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of the prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have been fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely come to pass—
5 Wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people.
6 But behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren.
So the large plates were apparently better known by the time Mormon compiled the Book of Mormon, but the record that Jacob continued on the small plates was so precious that when Mormon discovered it, he added it unabridged to the plates he had engraved.
By this point in the Book of Mormon narrative, we know already that there has been a division in the people of Lehi – at an earlier date, Nephi took all the people who were willing to follow him and left the land where Lehi had first landed, to make a new settlement at a safe distance from the people who followed his brothers Laman and Lemuel. Nephi told us at that time that “all those who were with me did take upon them to call themselves the people of Nephi” (2 Nephi 5:9) – not “Nephites” yet, but “the people of Nephi,” and apparently they were not yet calling their relatives “Lamanites.”
But by the time Nephi dies (as he does in Jacob 1:12), Jacob makes that distinction between Lamanites and Nephites – with a Nephite being anybody who wasn’t a Lamanite. The Nephites aren’t a single group, though – Jacob recognizes that the Nephites, the people of Nephi, belong to distinct groups – just as the Israelites were not just Israelites, but were the tribes of Ephraim and Judah and Reuben and Levi and so on.
Jacob 1:13
13 Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites.
[Write those names on the board so you can tick them off while the verses below are read.]
Why do you suppose the people preserved these distinctions?
Those distinctions of lineage were preserved by the children of Lehi generation after generation – they were still recognized at the time of the coming of Christ.
4 Nephi 1:36-38
36 And it came to pass that in this year there arose a people who were called the Nephites, and they were true believers in Christ; and among them there were those who were called by the Lamanites—Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites;
37 Therefore the true believers in Christ, and the true worshipers of Christ, (among whom were the three disciples of Jesus who should tarry) were called Nephites, and Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites.
38 And it came to pass that they who rejected the gospel were called Lamanites, and Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites; and they did not dwindle in unbelief, but they did wilfully rebel against the gospel of Christ; and they did teach their children that they should not believe, even as their fathers, from the beginning, did dwindle.
[Check off the groups as they are named, perhaps noting that they are named in the same order as in Jacob.]
Those tribal distinctions persisted to the very end of the history, when Mormon witnessed almost the entire destruction of his people.
Mormon 1:8-9
8 And it came to pass in this year there began to be a war between the Nephites, who consisted of the Nephites and the Jacobites and the Josephites and the Zoramites; and this war was between the Nephites, and the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites.
9 Now the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites were called Lamanites, and the two parties were Nephites and Lamanites.
[Again, check off the groups as they are named.]
And even into our own dispensation, the Lord speaks of the tribal distinctions among the descendants of Lehi, suggesting that there are descendants of each of those peoples living at that time:
Doctrine and Covenants 3:16-18
16 Nevertheless, my work shall go forth, for inasmuch as the knowledge of a Savior has come unto the world, through the testimony of the Jews even so shall the knowledge of a Savior come unto my people –
17 And to the Nephites, and the Jacobites, and the Josephites, and the Zoramites, through the testimony of their fathers –
18 And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindled in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers, whom the Lord has suffered to destroy their brethren the Nephites, because of their iniquities and their abominations.
[Again, check off the groups as they are named.]
Most of us probably don’t remember these tribal designations as we read the Book of Mormon, but evidently they were important enough to the descendants of Lehi preserve throughout their history, for the Lord to recall when he spoke to Joseph Smith about the purpose of the Book of Mormon even before it was published. That is probably because, while the tribal distinctions were important to them, Jacob simplified the terminology to speak only of those who followed Nephi, and those who wanted to destroy the people of Nephi.
Jacob 1:13-14
13 Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites.
14 But I, Jacob, shall not hereafter distinguish them by these names, but I shall call them Lamanites that seek to destroy the people of Nephi, and those who are friendly to Nephi I shall call Nephites, or the people of Nephi, according to the reigns of the kings.
Jacob is assisted in his roles as priest and teacher of the people by his brother Joseph, the other son of Lehi who was born in the wilderness after the family left Jerusalem.
Jacob 1:18-19
18 For I, Jacob, and my brother Joseph had been consecrated priests and teachers of this people, by the hand of Nephi.
19 And we did magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we did not teach them the word of God with all diligence; wherefore, by laboring with our might their blood might not come upon our garments; otherwise their blood would come upon our garments, and we would not be found spotless at the last day.
That peculiar phrase about magnifying his office is used by Jacob here, and by Paul in the New Testament epistle to the Romans, and in the modern Church, rephrased as “magnify your calling.” It isn’t a phrase I hear outside of religious contexts. What does it mean to you? [Discuss]
Jacob is anxious to “magnify his office,” to fulfill his responsibility as a priest and teacher to save his people from their sins. He takes seriously the charges that have been given him by his brother Nephi, including the charge to record the sacred things of the people on the plates. And yet, except for a few lines of preliminary history that we have talked about today, almost the only things that Jacob records on the plates are a few sermons that he preached after Nephi’s death. How important must these teachings be, when they are almost the only words that Jacob preserves in his desire to magnify his calling and save his people from their sins – and not only that, to save himself from the responsibility of their sins?
Jacob begins by telling the people that he is preaching the word of God given to him the night before. This isn’t his desire, but it is a commandment of God, and he, Jacob, regrets that his words will cause pain to innocent people.
Jacob 2:11
11 Wherefore, I must tell you the truth according to the plainness of the word of God. For behold, as I inquired of the Lord, thus came the word unto me, saying: Jacob, get thou up into the temple on the morrow, and declare the word which I shall give thee unto this people.
So what does the Lord want Jacob to teach?
Jacob 2:12-14
12 And now behold, my brethren, this is the word which I declare unto you, that many of you have begun to search for gold, and for silver, and for all manner of precious ores, in the which this land, which is a land of promise unto you and to your seed, doth abound most plentifully.
13 And the hand of providence hath smiled upon you most pleasingly, that you have obtained many riches; and because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they.
14 And now, my brethren, do ye suppose that God justifieth you in this thing? Behold, I say unto you, Nay. But he condemneth you, and if ye persist in these things his judgments must speedily come unto you.
This is always a difficult concept for a teacher to teach – and I understand why it was difficult for Jacob. It’s difficult for me. There are people in this room who have far more than other people in this room, as there were in the crowd listening to Jacob. It would be easy for the well-off to feel attacked, and to defend their use of wealth. It would be just as easy for those without wealth to be smug and accusatory. Neither response would achieve Jacob’s purpose in teaching it.
How can you – you, individually – know whether your attitude about wealth is a righteous one, or one of which you ought to repent?
Jacob also rebukes the people, or a part of them, for unchastity, which in the case of his people takes the form of a desire for many wives, and for concubines. Such men cannot justify themselves, Jacob teaches, and he tries to reach the sinners not only by condemning the sin but by stirring to realize the consequences of their acts.
Jacob 2:35
35 Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.
Have you had the experience – not necessarily relating to unchastity, but to any sin – of suffering more because of a loved one’s sin than the sinner himself? Why does that so often seem to be the case?
As always, the time runs out before the scriptures do. Next week Jo Ann will lead us through the best-remembered part of Jacob’s record, the Allegory of the Olive Tree. As you prepare for that, back up just a bit and read Chapter 4: The Allegory of the Olive Tree is the answer to a question asked in Chapter 4:
Jacob 4:18 Behold, my beloved brethren, I will unfold this mystery unto you …
What was the mystery? and how is the Olive Tree its solution? Enjoy your reading this week!
A lot of history to unpack, and a nice transition into next week’s lesson.
I was teaching probably this exact lesson about a decade ago when I realized that besides the tribal developments, the Lehites had to make a major adjustment to their worship since there are no olives native to the Americas.
Jacob was the last to mention olives or olive trees in the Book of Mormon; he would have belonged to the last generation to have seen any, or if not him, then his family.
How do you live the Law of Moses without olive oil or the other ingredients specified as part of the holy anointing oil? (Revealed recipe in Exodus 30:23-24.) Other sources of plant oils in the Americas would not have generated anywhere near the amount of oil needed in worship — olives are unique — so they would have had to do without oils at least as long as it took to develop or adapt new technologies, and by that time they probably had made other adjustments to their worship. Could this, in fact, have been an impetus for the development of their doctrines of Christ, when they faced a major disruption to their form of worship and had to identify the important center and purpose of their beliefs?
I wonder what Jacob’s audience made of all that?
As for going with the history angle, I struggled to do otherwise. I mean, you know that every single person sitting in every single classroom thinks it’s the other guy, not him, who suffers from pride; unchastity is something they do “out there in the world” , and bringing it up at the moment risks somebody wanting to give an anti-LGBT speech; and every last person thinks either that he is justified in holding the wealth he has accumulated, or that he isn’t wealthy enough to be condemned, and that Jacob was speaking about everybody with $10 more in his pocket. I struggled, and just couldn’t come up with any way to teach Jacob’s sermon that wasn’t trite and would be resisted at every step. So I’m throwing it back to the class — “How do you know how you stand?” — and going over the history.
I would appreciate hearing how other wards handled this lesson.
For our lesson, I skipped most of the polygamy/chastity stuff, because I didn’t have time to get into the historical background on Jacob there (I’d have followed Brant Gardner on that one if I had covered it, connecting it with Mesoamerican polygamy and how that tied into their economics, but mostly with extra-tribal marriage). Instead, we took a long, hard look at Jacob’s teachings on money.
We focused on 2:18-19, where Jacob seems to indicate (and I think this is backed up by other scripture) that the only acceptable reason to deliberately seek after wealth is so that we can use it to help others. We talked a lot about the condition of our hearts – where is our heart set? We’ve gone over earlier teachings of the Book of Mormon on money, though – this was a repeat of some of Nephi’s teachings in 2nd Nephi – and we’ll get there again in King Benjamin’s speech.
It helps that I teach in a married student ward at a university, where most of the students aren’t rich. The lesson was well-received, I think. At least, I didn’t get any pushback, and that has happened before when I taught things they didn’t like. If I had had a more economically diverse class like yours, I might have approached things a little differently. Made it more about introspection – had people ask themselves the hard questions instead of me explicitly answering them. I don’t know. I’d have had to prepare in a different way.
I also covered briefly Jacob’s teachings in chapter 3 against Nephite prejudice. We separated the skin color with the filthiness successfully, I think, and then we noted that Jacob forbade them from hating the Lamanites either because of their skin color or their filthiness (unrighteousness). We also discussed briefly the difference between inherited filthiness – the traditions of the Lamanite’s fathers – compared to the Nephite’s willfully chosen filthiness. (To use Jacob’s terminology.)
That’s a tremendous amount for a 40-minute class, Samuel! (Of course, nearly all of the lessons outline far more than can be covered.) It sounds like a very good topic for your demographics, while class members are making plans and goals for the future.
My ward’s discussion went better than I could have hoped — lots of discussion on the ticklish topics, and it all came from class members rather than from the teacher. I was surprised and impressed by how much of the discussion was about our relationships to each other, and how wealth does and should and shouldn’t affect that, about fairness in employment, recognizing how the generous use of wealth for the good of others has an impact far beyond material wellbeing (the example there was the Perpetual Education Fund, where helping someone get the training to make a decent living makes most of the difference between whether that person can help in the Kingdom or have to focus solely on survival).
Thanks for reporting your lesson. In past eras, the Sunday School had “union meetings” at a stake or even higher level, where teachers discussed upcoming lessons and their thoughts about presenting them. When we don’t have anything like that anymore, it’s very helpful to read what others decided to do.
The time limits in Gospel Doctrine classes have become a familiar lament to the class members when I am teaching.
And those union meetings sound amazing. I wish we still did that!
We talked about magnifying callings. The teacher is one who asks fairly obvious questions and repeats them until someone uses the exact word he was thinking of. But we did discuss the 92 year old activity day leader, and some other ward members who haven’t attempted to retire.