“it is
a hard thing…”
-this is
a telling peek into Laman and Lemuel’s characters. They were not so much concerned with right
and wrong, their philosophy (morals/values) was organized around
expediency -a question of what is more
difficult or what is easier. Generally
the right thing to do is also the more difficult thing to do.
-so what
if it is a hard? It has got to be done,
so you might as well get with it.
Nothing worthwhile ever got done because it was easy anyway. Worthwhile things are difficult. God wants us to be about worthwhile things
(D&C 58:26-29), ergo, God will require difficult things of us.
-They
don't understand God and His dealings.
see Nephi 2:12
-Did they
see this commandment for what it was: a
test and growth experience? Didn't they realize that it was just that. If the Lord had wanted He could have told
them to get the plates while heading out of town the first time. Did God just "space it"? No, He did this for a purpose.
“I have not
required it of them, but… the Lord.”
-this is
a good principle of leadership to remember.
Always remember whose work it really is.
When we ask people to do things, we are asking as if we were the Lord. There is great responsibility for the leader
and for the follower.
-Laman and Lemuel’s failure to see whose command this
actually was is a sad insight into the failure to recognize their father as a
prophet of God. If they had seen him as a prophet they would
have known who had given the command.
This question is no less essential for us: who is it that is asking us to accept a
calling, to visit the homes of ward members, to do any number of things we are
asked by those who have stewardship over us?
Do we understand that these requests come from God? A full-time mission call is signed by the
prophet of the church… what if every subsequent call we receive was also signed by the prophet of the church? How
would we view our call as nursery worker, den mother, Sunday school
teacher? In point of reality, every call
we receive comes from a source much “higher” than the prophet but we fail to
have the faith to see this.
-just as
was stated in Nephi 2:12, they fail to understand God and his dealings. They did not understand God in the least;
they were on a completely different plane than he was. A dangerous situation!
“it is a
commandment of the Lord”
-from
this statement and the various reactions to the commandment, we learn of some
very important characteristics that commandments have:
1. we are not to murmur/complain about being
given a commandment.
2. commandments are hard things to obey/fulfill.
3. commandments, although they are physically
conveyed by one person to another,
originate from the Lord.
4. commandments are given with sufficient
instruction so as to result in success of the
obedient.
5. commandments are to be gone after (engaged in anxiously, diligently) and completed.
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