What motivates you to listen to instruction and then walk in line?
That is the question behind the first two verses of Exodus 20: “And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery’” (Exodus 20:1-2).
Motivation to obedience is the main point of these two verses. In the fifteen verses following this, God will give the famous Ten Commandments, the ten words to the people of God for what it is to live rightly inside His covenant.
“Eat your vegetables” may carry some weight if your parents tell you to do it, but certainly not if a stranger came up to you in the middle of a store and said, “Eat your vegetables.” There’s no context, there’s no authority, there’s no value in a command like that. On the other hand, if your doctor tells you to take a certain prescribed set of medications, that carries quite a bit of weight.
When God is about to give His ten words, He first identifies Himself so as to add weight and meaning to the list. This is commonly referred to as the preface to the Ten Commandments. You can go look in our Larger and Shorter Catechisms and find questions on it (Larger 101, Shorter 44), and they essentially boil down to this: because God is the Lord, and because He is our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all of His commandments.
Why should Israel pay attention to what He’s about to say? Why should you and I make such a big deal about these Ten Commandments that we’ve memorized as children, maybe forgotten as adults? What weight do they carry?
Because they have come from the mouth of God Almighty, our Creator and our Redeemer.
God Is the Lord
“I am the Lord.” The one who gives these commands is God the Lord. This is the name that Moses was given in chapter three. It’s the name Yahweh, or Jehovah.
This name “I am who I am” is derived from the Hebrew verb “to be.” God exists in Himself and of Himself. He is self-existent. He has no origin. He has always been. He always will be. He is dependent on nothing outside of Himself, and nothing outside of Himself can bind Him in any way whatsoever. Johannes Vos writes that “The name ‘The Lord’ signifies that God is sovereign and self-determined, not limited or influenced by anything outside of Himself.”
What effect does this aspect of His identity have on the commandments He gives? Surely it binds all creatures to obedience. As the Lord He has the right to make universal law. He has the right to require obedience to all that He commands.
The Confession of Faith, chapter 2, section 2, says that God “is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made,” and that “to Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.”
God doesn’t need us. He doesn’t need anything from us. No one is ever permitted to question the commands of God. To do so simply displays a foolish heart and an irreverent attitude.
Thomas Watson says, “If God be Yahweh, the fountain of being, who can do what He will, let us fear Him.” It’s a horribly impractical point of application, is it not? Fear God. And yet the prime responsibility of our life, perhaps the foundational responsibility of our life, is to live in fear of God.
God Is Our God and Redeemer
But more than just this, God identifies Himself in another way. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
What came first? Deliverance or commandments? Redemption or obedience? The Exodus or Sinai? John Mackay writes, “It is one of the recurring errors in theology to reverse the Scriptural order of events, and put Sinai before the Exodus.”
Will parents kick children out of the family if they do not obey? Of course not! That is because their membership in the family is not dependent upon their obedience. Instead, it is certainly the case that their obedience is expected as a result of their membership in the family.
The same is true of God and His people. Salvation comes before the commandments. We are not saved because of obedience, but unto obedience. God comes down and ransoms a people for Himself. And here He says to them, “I am your God who saved you out of slavery. Now serve Me. Live with Me. Walk with Me.”
Let’s be clear. God’s not putting the people under some new enslavement. God’s law is true liberty. God’s law is true life. It’s the way we were meant to be and the way we were meant to live. As those who were living in lifelong slavery, the Israelites had no idea how to live rightly before the presence of God. And so He comes to them and He says, “I brought you out and I will teach you how to live because you are Mine.”
We cannot be reminded of this truth enough. Christian, you are not saved because of your law-keeping, nor are you condemned because of your law-breaking.
For those in Christ, your sin and your iniquity cannot kick you out. He has paid the penalty, not only for our past sin and our present sin, but for all of our future sin. He is our substitute. There’s no more penalty for God to mete out on us, because He meted it out on His Son at Calvary.
Therefore We Are Bound to Keep His Commandments
So what? God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer. Therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments.
God is the Lord. He is sovereign, supreme. He is Creator and Sustainer. And because of this, we are bound to keep His commands.
But this same Lord is also our God and our Redeemer. He has saved you and ransomed you. In Luke 1, Zechariah’s voice was returned to him, and he prophesied of the coming kingdom of God through the Messiah. At one place he says, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for He has visited and redeemed His people… that we, being delivered from our enemies, might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness.”
Alec Motyer writes, “We have not been left to fumble around in mist or darkness, we have been given directions. As the Lord’s redeemed, it should be our delight to give pleasure to God our Savior and he has told us how.”
What does that mean right now? Here are three practical points.
Give God your trust. He is good, and His steadfast love endures forever. For those who belong to Him through Christ, we will face trial and trouble, and you will struggle with sin and shame, but it is for us not to fret, for our God sits on His throne.
Give God your allegiance. Forsake all other idols and interests. Take Him alone for your God and live like it. Weed out the thorns and thistles in your life, that the Word of God would be the soil to which you are wholly devoted.
Give God your obedience. You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. Therefore give obedience to the one who has redeemed you to Himself.
May the Lord grant us to declare with the Psalmist: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97).