“Moses went up the mountain to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain: ‘This is what you must say to the house of Jacob and explain to the Israelites: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation.” These are the words that you are to say to the Israelites.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you are married, I suspect that you are pretty willing to do the things your spouse asks you to do. Now, I’m assuming on a relatively healthy relationship here, and not one riddled with contempt or else where there is not the presumption of inferiority in one direction or another. Absent that, you are willing to do what each other asks. But this didn’t come out of nowhere. A strong marriage doesn’t come out of nowhere. It takes work, and it starts with both of your making overtures of your commitment to one another. This is how all healthy relationships get started. God wanted a healthy relationship with the people of Israel. He’s made some overtures toward them, and now He’s inviting them into more. Let’s talk about what’s going on here in this foundational passage for our understanding who God is.

I have been watching through the new Percy Jackson series from author Rick Riordan on Disney+ lately. I’ll plan on doing a full review once the first season has ended, but so far it has been really good. I’m glad for that too because I really enjoyed the books and the first two attempts at making movies out of them were terrible. In any event, while watching the latest episode last night, something caught my eye. Percy and Annabeth are trying to make a rainbow call in order to find out what is going on back at home. In order to do this, they need two things: a way to create a rainbow and a golden drachma, the coinage used by Olympus. Once they get the rainbow to appear using a prism they just happen to have, Annabeth, who is well-versed in operating in the world of the gods, tells Percy, who isn’t, to throw the coin into the rainbow. In order to explain this odd act she says this: “If you want the gods’ attention, you have to pay for it.”

I immediately sat up and took notice. That’s exactly how the world understands the gods to operate. And this isn’t a one-off event in the story world Disney is translating from page to screen. I remember now from the books (I think I’ve read 13 of his books) that anytime the heroes want to get in contact with the gods, they have to make an offering. They have to pay for it. Across human history, this same thinking has been in play in almost every religion. Actually, because this kind of thinking is so common to humanity, it has come into play in every religion without exception. There’s one, though, where this kind of thinking was not foundational to its operation, but was smuggled in later contrary to the character of its God. That religion, of course, is the religion of Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, and later the Christian God who revealed Himself fully and finally in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

In every other religion in the world, the relationship between the god and the people works like this: He demands obedience, but otherwise doesn’t really care about them except where such care is convenient or boosts his image. If the people want to get his attention or convince him to do something for them, they have to first get his attention and then butter him up with sacrifices and other acts of devotion. The relationship runs along the same basic lines as the husband who never tells his wife he loves her because he told her once on their wedding day, and that was enough, or the father who never tells his children he loves them because he works hard to provide for them and that should be enough.

When it comes to the Christian God, though, the same God who was preparing to give the original and genetic people of Israel the basic contours of what living in a relationship with Him looked like, things work exactly backwards to this normal pattern. In the story arc of the Exodus, chapter 20 gets a great deal of attention because it contains the original statement of the Ten Commandments. But if we are going to understand the Ten Commandments properly, we can’t read them before we read chapter 19. Here, God gets the people ready to receive the commands. As a part of this, He establishes with the people why He is inviting them into this kind of a covenantal relationship with Him in the first place.

That language there is important and intentional on my part. God does not simply come down, give the people a bunch of rules, and then go back to heaven. That’s how all the other gods operated. This God was and is different. Long before He gave a single command, He showed up and brought freedom to them after spending multiple generations enslaved to the Egyptians. He didn’t ask anything of them to do that. Yes, they had been crying out for justice, but not necessarily specifically to Him. They weren’t following Him in any kind of a close and personal relationship. They weren’t trying to get His attention with sacrifices and offerings. And He came anyway. He initiated the relationship.

From there, He provided for them miraculously several times in the desert as they made their way to this very spot. Over the course of three months He parted a sea to help them escape the pursuing Egyptian army (which He subsequently drowned in the sea by dropping it on them), He provided water for them miraculously out of a rock, He provided food miraculously for them that appeared on the ground outside their tents each morning, He led them with clarity by way of a giant pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and He helped them win a military victory against the Amalekites when they attacked. All of these things He had done for the people with only minimal instructions for them to follow.

After doing all of that, He came to the people at this mountain and invited them into more. Out of the context of all that He had done for them, out of the relationship He had now spent months developing with them, He invited them into a more personal and formal relationship with Him. He was inviting them to “be my own possession out of all the peoples.” And, I know that language sounds very possessive, but He was God. A wife is the possession of her husband just as a husband is the possession of his wife because of the covenant they make with each other. God was inviting the people on whom He had showered His love and attention and affection to enter into a covenantal relationship with Him in which He would be their exclusive God and they would be His exclusive people. He would do things for them and with them and through them that He wasn’t going to do through any other peoples. In return, they would be devoted to Him and Him alone, doing life the way He directed and not after the pattern of any other gods.

This was the context in which the famous Ten Commandments were given. They were never merely rules handed down from on high by a disinterested god who demanded obedience simply because he was god, and who never really cared about the people in the first place. They were always and only the basic, big picture contours of what living in a relationship with Him looked like. If Israel was going to enter into this relationship with Him, these were the boundaries of what that relationship looked like. It would have to be a relationship with Him and only Him (just like a marriage is a relationship between just the husband and the wife). They were going to have to learn to depend on Him for their provision, a trust demonstrated by their willingness to set aside a regular day of resting from their otherwise daily labors. They were going to have to value relationships with one another properly, starting at home. They would have to cherish life and truth and faithfulness and respect for others and their property and be satisfied with what He provided them rather than constantly looking to what others have.

I hope you can see the difference between this and how the rest of the gods of the other religions in the world operate. I hope you can see the difference because this same God still operates like this. He is more interested in a relationship than mere obedience. Except, He now operates under the auspices of a new covenant. This first covenant He made with Israel was a precursor to and model for the new one, but it has been replaced and we now have something different. Yet the pattern for His establishing it and inviting us into it is still the same. This new covenant rests on the foundation of Jesus’ sacrificial death and life-giving resurrection. The major difference between the old and the new covenant is that with the new covenant Jesus didn’t give us a whole bunch of relationship contours. He gave us just one: love one another as He loved us. And, this new covenant is not just between God and one people group. It is open to everyone who is willing to enter into it by faith. It is available to you if you want it. You simply receive it by faith in Jesus. I hope you will.