The Ten Commandments starts with Grace, with God giving people something that they did not earn or deserve:
"I am the Lord your God", who is choosing to bless you with freedom from slavery, not because of anything you've done, but because I love you, and want all the people of the world to know that I am a loving God. Welcome to being human again.
Its: Anokhi - an offer to increase us, inside the “hedge of praise and submission”
Exodus 20:1. We've already established that this is a Katubah, and this is how the Katubah starts: “and God spoke all these words, saying: I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, so you will have no other Gods before Me.”
1) God is talking. For almost the first time in their history, God is talking. For the first time since they've gotten out of Egypt, God is speaking! He says: “I am Jehovah, your God” - He relates to them as Jehovah (not as El Shaddai, which was odd).
When God first started ministering and relating to this family known as Israel, He ministered to a guy named Abraham - the grandfather, great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of this group of people. He showed up to Abraham, and said: My name is El Shaddai. My name is God Almighty. I want to make a covenant with you. That made sense to Abraham, because he was a sun-worshipper during the day and a moon-worshipper at night. That leaves one big nagging question: who's in charge?
So God shows up and says: I am God Almighty. I'm the one in charge of the moon, sun, stars. I'm one in charge of all that, and I want to make a covenant with you.
Abraham said: why?
God said: just because, just because I've chosen you, not because of anything you've done. You see this pattern with God all the time - not because of anything you've done, or anything you will do. I want to choose you. I choose you, Abraham, to be My person.
Abraham says: sure!
God is a mystery; so all of us are on this journey - to sort of journey to God. None of us will ever figure it out; and God tells us to do things all the time. Anybody who says that they figured God out, they don't realise that they're just Joe and Jane, trying to get through life. They're just 4-D beings, trying to make sense of an infinitely-dimensional God.
We say things all the time, that we think sound good, but in fact they're just stupid; like: God would never... What do you mean ‘God would never’? God would never do what? You've figured God out?
Leviticus says: do not touch your own poop; which is a really good plan, right? If you're going to be ‘the light of the world’, a ‘city set up on a hill’ - you can't be known as a group of people who ‘fiddle with your poop’, right? It doesn't bode well for what God wants us to do, ok? Imagine that - that weird group down at Bay City - they fiddle with their crap! You can't do that right?
But the Bible says this: “and the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, saying: cook food - using your poop as fuel”. People say: “God would never say that” - but He did. He did!
The Bible says: Do not marry Gentiles - and stone prostitutes; but the word of the Lord came to Josiah saying: marry that Gentile prostitute. You don't know what God might do.
There's this one place in the New Testament, where Peter shows up with a barrel of pork rinds. He's got a barrel of bacon, and they say: “you can't eat bacon!” - God said you can't do that! Peter says: Jesus told me I could - in a dream! In my dream, Jesus told me: I could eat bacon.
We make doctrine out of it! If Peter would have showed up now, all the white Pentecostals would be going: “God would never say do that”, because we think we've figured God out. No, just like Moses, just like Abraham, all these guys were just on this journey with God. They had this sense of awe.
‘El Shaddai’ wanted to speak to Abraham; so Abraham says: El Shaddai - what do you want me to do? He says: I want you to leave. I want you to leave everything you have. Where do You want me to go? I'm not going to tell you - I just want you to leave.