Today we begin reading through the Ten Commandments.

Now I've been familiar with the Bible my whole life, and I've been familiar with the Ten Commandments my whole life.

But I learned something completely new to me.

I thought that Moses was up with God alone on the mountain when God gave Israel the Ten Commandments.

And I thought this because there is a later scene when Moses is up on the Mountain with God

and God inscribes the Ten Commandments into stone.

But when God first speaks the Ten Commandments, Moses is down at the base of the mountain

with the Israelites.

And they hear the words blasting down like thunder, and it frightens them.

The people's response to the Ten Commandments is they think they're going to die.

Getting in touch with what is really true is actually going to feel so counter to what I think is normal life. What they hear booming down is this.

I am Yahweh, your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

The first line in the Ten Commandments is not a command, but a reminder of who God is and who they are.

This is a family whose fundamental identity is we used to be slaves, being slowly killed off.

And we were liberated.

How do we live as freed people?

One way to think about the Ten Commandments is it's like a freedom ethic.

It's the ethic of the free.

This freedom ethic begins in the context of an intimate relationship with the divine.

I will be your God and you will be my people.

I am my beloveds and my beloveds is mine.

After this, we get to the first two commands.

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