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And [God] said: \u201cI am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.\xa0 You shall have no other gods before me.\u201d (Deuteronomy 6-7)

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Today we start in on the Ten Commandments.\xa0 What are the Ten Commandments?\xa0 Well, for starters, they are not exactly commandments.\xa0 In the Hebrew language, they are quite literally called the \u201cTen Words.\u201d\xa0 And these Ten Words are also not exactly \u201cthe law,\u201d even though that tends to be the way that we refer to them.\xa0 No: they are firstly and primarily the Ten Words of God\u2019s Covenant with his people.\xa0 That is to say: these words God speaks are the terms of a relationship.\xa0 These Words are not firstly ethics, laws, commandments, or a list of \u201cdon\u2019ts.\u201d\xa0 They are firstly the definition of a new relationship\u2014a covenant.\xa0

It is easy to reduce these Words into a criminal code to be policed with the coercive force of discipline in its worst forms.\xa0 But that is not how the Bible, nor our own church tradition in the CRC through the Catechism understands them.\xa0 These are life-giving words of relationship: a guide for gratefully living with God in the new relationship that he has graciously established.

The two members of this covenantal relationship are named in this first Word.\xa0 God is the Lord who saves, and we are the people who are saved.\xa0 This is the basis and foundation of the relationship.\xa0 Why and how does Israel have anything to do with this God?\xa0 Because he is the God who has chosen of his own volition to have something to do with them, namely by saving them.\xa0 It had nothing to do with Israel or anything good or special about them, just as it had nothing to do with Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob before them.\xa0 The patriarchs were cowardly, devious, and strong-willed.\xa0 They were not particularly righteous.\xa0 The people of Israel weren\u2019t any better.\xa0 There was nothing that made them better or different than anyone else.\xa0 The only basis of their relationship with God therefore, was God himself through God\u2019s own, voluntary choosing.\xa0

Given this new relationship of God\u2019s choosing though, from now on, God and Israel are to be a monogamous couple.\xa0 No other gods can enter the picture.\xa0 But to hear only this negative prohibition about no other gods is to miss fully half of what this command is about.\xa0 It is not merely a negative prohibition.\xa0 The equally important Shema of chapter 6 enters on the heals of these Ten Words to balance them out in a positive form.\xa0 The Shema ties directly into this first Word of the Covenant and declares that Israel is also to \u201clove the Lord their God.\u201d\xa0 To love God firstly, only, and completely.\xa0 Just as God has loved them.

If this one, first, most important Word Command is kept, all the others tend to find their place.\xa0 That is to say, if our relationship with God remains strong, primary, and exclusive: all of our other relationships and activities have a foundation for flourishing too.

I talked to someone just the other day who experienced this.\xa0 Any number of questions had hung over this person for years about relationships and the future.\xa0 Any number of paths to a solution had been sought, but to no avail.\xa0 Finally, after spending years skirting real time and attention for God, they took a retreat to do nothing but spend time with him.\xa0 Oddly enough, simply taking that time to reorient firstly on God, this person discovered\u2014not a resolution\u2014but a peace about some of the other questions too.\xa0 Enough to step forward into commitment on the other side.\xa0

God has established a relationship with us.\xa0 It is the first, most important relationship of our lives.\xa0 So: take time to check in with God today.\xa0 How is your relationship doing?\xa0

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