There are many lessons that we can learn from this foundational story. It’s very difficult to read the whole Book of Mormon and everything that happens afterwards without the story of Laban in the background. It tells us the importance of records, of language, of revelation, of obeying the word of the Lord, of following the Spirit, of doing whatever needs to be done to promote the building of the Kingdom, that God will provide, lessons about making oaths and promises. Nephi at one point even says, "As the Lord liveth and as we live, we shall not return to our Father Lehi until we have done this." He is swearing an oath, making a covenant, and what is he saying here? We put our lives on the line, we will die if necessary, we will do everything we can, to make this happen. Lessons of covenant making and oath keeping are told and presumed over and over again throughout the Book of Mormon.
Mormon knows this story. He probably grew up hearing this story. But he did not originally begin with 1 Nephi. He began with the Book of Lehi. Would we not love to know what Lehi wrote about this episode? He was not there, of course. But what did he think about this when Nephi came back and said, "well dad, here are the plates, but oh by the way, we are kind of in trouble in Jerusalem." There was now no going back there anymore, if there was ever a question in Lehi’s mind. Lehi may have had some mixed feelings about this, especially knowing the next thing he was going to do is say, was to ask his sons to go back and get Ishmael and his family. And the sons may have wondered, what if we run into any of Laban’s relatives in the process? Still, they went forward with courage. If readers keep this story in mind, they will see its influence throughout the whole Book of Mormon and will ultimately know that if we will go and do the things that the Lord has commanded, he will provide a way that we may accomplish those things, no matter how challenging those commandments may be.