When God gave Moses the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai, He wasn’t doing it to make us slaves, as society tries to make the 10 Commandments appear. More often than not, these laws seem to be oppressive and limiting to our freedom. Again, I mentioned earlier about how freedom can make us slaves, but I digress. When God gave Moses and the rest of the Jews these laws, He had just rescued them from Egypt, where, that’s right, they were slaves!

Why would God spend all that time trying to get the Jews out of slavery to put them right back into it? Egypt is a hot place and the physical labor that the Jews endured was severe. Granted, I don’t think many words I can say are going to do much justice in regards to the harshness that they suffered, but, I’m getting off topic. The Jews were slaves to the Egyptians. God told Moses to fight back and to lead His people the Jews out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. Moses obeyed his God and did just that. Then, shortly after they had escaped the clutches of Egypt, soon after, what did the Jews do? That’s right, they started to worship false gods and idols. They were dishonest with one another, they basically treated each other like garbage.

So, God sees His people in total disarray, and decides He’s gotta do something. So, He calls Moses up to the top of the mountain and gives him the 10 Commandments. Laws not to constrict us, but to more or less set us free from our sin. Now, we as humans need boundaries, otherwise we will go and do anything that we want to thanks to our fallen nature. Its rather sad that we do, but, its how we are. Its good for us to have clear and concise rules and boundaries in order to determine what we can and can’t do.

Let’s look at it this way. When a wide receiver catches a football, runs out of bounds and the referees blow their whistles and stop the clock and set up for the next play, nobody yells out that that wide receiver’s freedoms are being trampled upon. Why not? After all, if we follow the same logic that rules are there to restrict our freedom, then that wide receiver should be able to run wherever he wants to. No! Rules are there to determine what can and can’t be done.

We are all looking to be happy. God knows this, and He loves us. He wants us to be happy. He knows that if we break these commandments, then we will be unhappy. He doesn’t give them to us so that our lives are burdened down by rules and regulations, but He does this because He knows that if we do any of these immoral behaviors, we will severely be disconnected from Him. At the end of the day, the Ten Commandments are rules to live by, to receive love. Not love from another human person, but love from on high. Love that is greater than all other love combined. We need that love in order to be happy and when we fall away from the ten commandments, our lives begin to crumble, and our happiness vanishes.