Broken Hearts of Your Tender Wives | Jacob 1-4 | Come Follow Me

Spencer W. Kimball taught, “There is no compatibility between light and darkness. Unchastity is darkness. It is ugly, bitter, destructive, and consuming. It neutralizes good. It darkens minds. It produces spiritual amnesia. It comes in many ugly forms and has many distasteful names. It is born in the mind and is given expression with directed body members. It is a tyrant, demanding and uncompromising and unreasonable, tending toward monopoly. It is like creeping paralysis, slipping up in the darkness, getting hold with its tentacles, and clings on so tenaciously that it takes a prince with a sharp sword to cut it loose.”

The women and children among the children of Israel were suffering because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands and fathers, both at Jerusalem and “in all the lands of [the Lord’s] people” (v. 31). Verses 31–32 read, “I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people . . . [and] I will not suffer . . . that the cries of the fair daughters of this people . . . shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Jacob reminds them, “These commandments were given to our father, Lehi; wherefore, ye have known them before; and ye have come unto great condemnation; for ye have done these things which ye ought not to have done,” and in this thing, they had committed much greater sins than the Lamanites (v. 34).

The irrevocable moral standard of the Lord and his Church is and has been forever the same: total and complete chastity before marriage and unconditional fidelity after marriage. Joseph F. Smith said, “No more loathsome cancer disfigures the body and soul of society today than the frightful affliction of sexual sin. It vitiates the very fountains of life and bequeaths its foul effects to the yet unborn as a legacy of death.”

Counsel and comfort are given to those hurt by the immorality of others.

Jacob spoke next to the wives and children who had been hurt by the abominations of their husbands and fathers. He advised them, “Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions” (v. 1). All those who were “pure in heart” were encouraged, “Lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever” (v. 2).

*These excerpts were taken from the book "Making Precious Things Plain." *