#13 Allegory of the Olive Tree

Allegory of the Olive Tree
Jacob 5-7

Symbolism of Olive Tree
Olive Tree……………………………………Peace
Vineyard………………………………..The World
Master of Jesus /Heavenly
Vineyard……………………………………Father
Servant……………………………...Lord’s prophets/Jesus
Servants……………………………… we are called
Tops of tree………………………….Leadership
Tame tree……………………….. House of Israel (Covenant People)
Wild tree……………………Gentiles, non-Israelites
Wild Branches……………………apostate Israel
Branches……………………….......groups of people
Roots of tame tree………....Gospel Covenants and promises made by God; gives life to tree
Fruit of tree…………………lives or works of men
Digging, pruning, dunging…………..Lord’s work seeks to persuade them to be obedient; nurturing, Shaping our lives, fertilizing (testimony building)
Transplanting………………..scattering of groups throughout world or restoring them
Grafting……………………..spiritual rebirth; joined to covenant.
Decaying branches…………..Wickedness and apostasy
Casting the branches to fire………Judgment of God

Jacob 5-7
Allegory of the Olive Tree

The Purpose of this lesson is: to help class members better understand Zenos’ allegory of the olive trees and how it applies in our day.
Well I’ve handed out a scriptural symbolism sheet that will help clarify much of that, so, Yes! You have a little work to do on your own to understand this chapter; Because, I want to spend our time on ‘how it applies in our day and lives’. Don’t worry I’m not going to leave you completely alone where this chapter is concerned, but I will attempt to explain a little as we go along, but I am mainly going to go through this chapter pointing out what I feel this class needs.

To start out I want to show you something I have made (show my pen made of wood). Aren’t you impressed? With a little help and direction I made this, by myself. I’m impressed with myself. I Love this pen, I feel a kinship with this pen, I put a lot of work into this pen, to me, it is symbolic of a great work I accomplished and a great time I had making it. When I look at this pen it invokes feelings of pride on a job well done, a closeness I felt, during it’s conception, with my son and a friend, who were with me.

To look at this pen you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with it. It writes like a normal pen should, it is strong and useful, however this pen has a few imperfections. 1-this pens top (side closest to writing tip) is shorter than the bottom half, not enough you can tell by looking but, it is. 2nd- my pen is supposed to be able to retract the tip when you turn it, mine doesn’t. My teacher at first was a little sad that my pen didn’t turn out perfectly, in fact he suggested that I give him my pen and do another one. The more I thought about my pen and the feelings it invoked, I told him I didn’t want another pen and that this one is the perfect fit for me. (A little flawed but still works!)

What in the world does a pen have to do with our lesson about olive trees you ask?
It doesn’t, I just wanted to brag about my pen. J/K. The more I thought about the relationship with my pen, the more I thought it reminded me a lot of how it reminded me of my relationship with my Heavenly Father. As I read about this Olive Tree and how it represents the Lords care for His people I started to think about how not only is this allegory about gathering of all Israel (people) in the latter-days, it also is a story of how the Lords sees me and treats me as an individual. (A lot like me being His Pen)

To get us started we need to know a little something about Olive Trees. Say you were going to stick an olive tree seed in the ground and let it grow, it would grow into a wild olive bush, one where the fruit would be small, pitiful and tasteless. So what needs to happen in order for these trees to grow is that as soon as the roots are established and a shoot starts up you have to chop off all the branches and take a live tame branch from another tree and graft it in to the main trunk of the tree so that it can grow, the roots and the tree grow together, nourishing one another, roots grow strong and deep and the branch also grows strong and tall. The branches you cut off the young tree are not wasted, you take them and graft them into a well established root system, one that can tame them and temper them and show them how to grow well, strong, tall and fruitful.
Let’s go to the scriptures now and see how Jacob illustrates this for us. Jacob 5:3
This is a lot like us, we start as a seed (spirit or block of wood), but we soon need to be transplanted into a place that will teach us to grow, temper us, help us to reach our full potential as a beautiful tame, fruitful tree. That place is where? Earth, or for my pen (the lathe)
The Man or Heavenly Father/ Jesus sent us to His vineyard (the world) and as what happens we start to ‘decay’ or apostatize. We start to make mistakes, we start to have flaws (like my pen, I sanded one side longer than the other). Well the Lord doesn’t just say, “ well so much for that tree it’s no good” in other words He doesn’t throw out the pen and start over, He’s invested too much time already, He continues to do some things, work on us some more.
Jacob 5:4-5 He prunes us, digs around our roots, to let air and sunshine in, This is a lot like giving us new callings or jobs at work, that take away our comfort zones, the air and sunshine we get is Him nourishing us, or blessing us as we go through with our callings and do our best.
***Sometimes we don’t see this as Him loving us, ie: He puts me in primary-He must hate me. He allowed me to be fired from a good job He must hate me….But we don’t see what He sees. He sees that we needed something far better that was going to take us to higher places and help us experience more things than we ever thought possible.

Here is where we learn a little more about Olive trees; when the root system is established enough and perhaps gets too old it will shoot forth new young tender shoots that can be cut off and either transplanted to start a new tree or grafted into another tree, to help it grow. To me these young branches can be 2 things; 1- Other people that have grown in the gospel because of our influence or, 2- New talents, strengths that we have gained. But to stay on the lesson I’ve prepared I am sticking with #2. He helps us grow and learn and feel good about ourselves, shapes us into something useful, something He can use to build His Kingdom.
**For example: Say we are forced to take a job as a garbage collector (keith’s dream job) we feel we are above this sort of job and we have a snotty attitude. We gain nothing we are shaped into a negative ball of sludge that sits around and complains. Now on the flip side, we take this same job and learn to love the people we work with, we find treasures all along the way, perhaps we take some of that discarded stuff and use it to make inventions that eventually teach us about science, physics, electronics etc. What we just received was a boat load of knowledge, and you never know maybe you’ll make a fortune off one of those weird inventions.

Jacob 5:10 Here we see that the Lord brings in wild branches. Normally the wild branches would do one of 2 things; overrun the whole tree and destroy it or it will become tame. In the previous scriptures it is talking about how He will take apostate Israel out (v.8) and cause them to be scattered, (transplant them somewhere else) and give the gospel and promises to the gentiles (10a)
To me this means He will take me, and my talents (young branches) and transplant me into another situation. Meaning He allows me to experience a new calling, trial, temptation, in hopes that our root system (testimony of the gospel) will continue to grow. He doesn’t leave us there to flounder through, (v. 10) He gives us a servant, (prophet) to lead and guide us and help us to see the eternal perspective. They also have a job to do (v.11) They dig about our roots, they prune (shape) us, and they spiritually nourish us with their words in General Conference. **As we apply them, they shape us to become the person that is a reflection of the Savior.

The next section of scriptures gives us what happened to all the branches of Israel He transplanted them, but we will liken them unto us. There are 4 groups of people (Scriptural symbolism tells us this is all people 4 corners of earth) We are the ones who decide which group we are. We decide which group we will be in by how we live through our trials and experiences.
Jacob 5:17 1-The first group was the tree which wild branches had been grafted in. Converts who have taken upon them Covenants. Have you been converted yet? They sprung forth good natural fruit. (Good works are abounding because they have taken upon themselves the gospel (roots) and grew in it.

Jacob 5: 20 2- second group-good people=good land=good fruit.
Also in this 2nd group
Jacob 5:21-22 good people=poor lands= good fruit. People who thrived and put forth good fruit (works) despite their poor circumstances. Didn’t give up!
Also in this 2nd group Jacob 5:23 good people=poorer land=good fruit People in even worse circumstances that still put forth good works and didn’t give up despite their difficult circumstances. These People could be people like paraplegics, or the starving people in Africa, or us as we have been dealt a bad hand in life, but we stay strong, we stay good, we continue to build up the kingdom by building up ourselves and those around us. Like the paraplegic who is now a motivational speaker right?

Jacob 5: 24 3- third group of people. Good people=good land=some fruit, (Not necessarily good )
Jacob 5:25 good people=best land=some tame, some wild fruit. (America). We have the freedoms to have anything we want we can do and go as we please and yet we are content to just settle with what life deals to us instead of going out and being good fruit, in other words, improving our lives, by experiencing and learning positives from every situation.

Despite us sometimes being the not so tame fruit He still doesn’t give up on us.
Jacob 5:27 He tells His servants: Let us continue to prune, dig, and nourish the trees.

5:29-32 they come again 2nd time to check on us or vineyard.
Group A all sorts of fruit- apostasy. Instead of being mad that we have turned away He is grieved. What does that tell us of how the Lord loves us?
5:39-40 All the other trees had also become corrupt and died. We continue to choose worldliness, selfishness and pride over growth, God’s knowledge, and spiritual experiences.
5:41 He still grieves for us. He wonders what more He could’ve done for us? He is like the parent of a wayward child that says what could I have done differently that they wouldn’t have gone astray? He grieves as any parent does when His children choose a path of unhappiness.
5:47 Here is a grieving parent, what is He to do? How is He feeling about us? He asks His servant why has this happened?
5:48 The servant answers the question as to why this destruction happened to His people. It is Pride, (Loftiness) taking strength unto themselves. In essence, we are telling the Savior we don’t need Him, we can do it on our own, this is what leads us away from Him, not towards Him. Not relying on the Lords atonement and strength of the gospel (roots). ***It’s true the Lord loves a strong independent person but if we become the person that won’t allow others to grow and won’t even allow ourselves different experiences that help us grow then we move further from Him not closer.
5:4-50 the servant in this verse is His prophet Joseph Smith. With Him and His work they hope that we will be spared.
5:52 He says lets take all the trees and try one more time to put them all back together in the mother tree. Symbolic of Gathering of Israel. For me this means Lezette has made a shambles of her life she had made some bad choices, but she has also made some good ones, Let’s help her pick up the pieces, through repentance, and help to build her back up again. (The Pen is flawed, but let’s continue to build it and see if it still works right? Or will be a functioning piece of the kingdom)
5:59 Hopefully there is more good in the people than bad, and we can figure out that it is living the gospel that truly makes us happy not all the other stuff that we put our hearts upon.

5:60 Our Lord is optimistic towards us. He continues to have hope and continues to have joy in the potential He sees in us. He keeps the hope that we will figure out that we are His Children, capable of doing anything. So much so that He wants us to have all He has, therefore, 5:61 He allows us to be a part of the gospel by being teachers, speakers, prayer givers, service doers, That as we do and become an integral part of His Kingdom, we bring about the most natural, best tasting fruit in ourselves.
*So what does He ask of us?
5:71-72 He asks us to work with all our might. And we do because we love Him and the way He makes us feel.
*Jacob tells us the qualities that He (the Lord) has, the parts of Himself that He has tried to show us, through our relationship with Him.
5:75He gives us all He has. He loves us so much that He desires that we live and be as happy as He is.
6:3He blesses those who are diligently laboring
6:4 He is merciful, and stretches forth His hand all day long. Just waiting for us to take it!
6:7 He nourishes us all day long. Through nature, feelings, miracles, love of others, etc.
Jacob, after reviewing God’s good qualities, asks us what we will do? Who we will be? What will we become?
6:8, 11-12 Stay on the strait and narrow way, continue to do the things that bring you joy. Be wise in your choices! In other words, stop making dumb decisions, make the ones that help us feel closer in our relationships with Him.

Who cares if we have flaws and we aren’t perfect, like my pen, we can still function. The Lord created us, He still loves us! He still wants us to create for ourselves a life full of good works and happy days. He desires to be close to us and through this allegory has shown us that He doesn’t ever give up on us. He is continually there nourishing us. We just need to slow the pace of life down and feel of His love in a quiet moment, or we all we have to do is ask, ask in prayer if He is there and if He loves you; you will get an answer!! I have done this I testify I have felt of His love for me. I have felt Him reaching out to me during my day, I know these things are possible for you. In the name of Jesus Christ amen.