Fulfill What You Have Got

In the Doctrine and Covenants there are several sections that were either about or directed towards Martin Harris.  Sections 3 and 10 speaks about the loss of the 116 pages and includes references to Martin; section 5 was given at the request of Martin; section 17 was given to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris; and section 19 was given at the request of Martin Harris.  Martin Harris mortgaged his farm in order to pay for the publication of the Book of Mormon, and he hoped to get the money back through the sale of the books.  Martin was apparently distraught when he they weren’t selling as fast as he was hoping, and he said to Joseph: “The Books will not sell for no Body wants them.  I Want a Commandment.”  Joseph reportedly replied, “Fulfill what you have got.”  Martin insisted that he needed a commandment, but he received no more revelations directed at him from Joseph.  The Lord has certainly intimated that this would be the case in D&C 19, the last revelation Martin received: “Thou shalt declare repentance and faith on the Savior, and remission of sins by baptism, and by fire, yea, even the Holy Ghost.  Behold, this is a great and the last commandment which I shall give unto you concerning this matter; for this shall suffice for thy daily walk, even unto the end of thy life” (D&C 19:31-32). 

Perhaps this story contains a lesson for us as we seek to be guided by the Lord in our lives.  Sometimes the answer to our questions is not new inspiration from the Lord but rather instruction to fulfill the commandments the Lord has already given us.  We can sometimes have the attitude of the people of Athens that Paul found when he preached there: “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing” (Acts 17:21).  But if we always expect something “new” from the Lord we may be disappointed.  We will continue to hear teachings about faith and repentance and baptism—as the Lord suggested to Martin—all of our lives as we go to Church and listen to the teachings of the prophets and apostles.  We look forward to the day when new scripture will be revealed—such as the sealed portion of the Nephite record—but in the meantime the Lord expects us to “fulfill what we have got” and to “remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments” which he has given us (D&C 84:57).  I sometimes wonder why Joseph Smith brought us so many pages of new scripture in the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants and yet his successors have given us relatively few pages of “new” canonized scripture.  Perhaps the answer simply is that the Lord is waiting for us to study and cherish and live what He has already given us.

On one occasion a scribe asked the Savior, “Which is the first commandment of all?”  The Savior responded, “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28-31).  We hope that Savior will give us direction from time to time through the prophets and through the Spirit directly and we are eager to hear those words and live our lives in accordance with them.  But we will get no commandment “greater” than to love God and our fellow man with all our hearts.  And as doing so is really the pursuit of a lifetime that we will never fully master, we can indeed let this and the rest of the revelations we already have “suffice for [our] daily walk” as followers of the Savior.