The Divine Law-Giver

God: the Divine Law-Giver
Exodus 20
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Therefore, you shall have no other gods before Me.”

The Ten Commandments have been cherished and honored throughout history for their scope, simplicity, and brevity as they provide the foundation for moral and spiritual life. In these ten commands, we discover the basis for maintaining a right relationships with others and a right relationship with God. God's moral requirements for his people are embedded in the over-arching covenant with Israel (commonly referred to as the Mosaic Covenant).
In the Ten Commandments (20:1-17) we find the overarching stipulations of the covenant (the apodictic laws). In the rest of the book of Exodus, we see the case laws (Casuistic laws), which provide real-life examples of how the apodictic laws would be applied in real life (25:2-31:18). For example, we are given the command not to murder in verse 13. In the rest of the book of Exodus, we find examples of daily situations where this would apply, including not only acts of murder (taking another’s life) and the devaluing of other humans, whether it be in kidnapping with the intent to enslave them (21:16), or the causing the death of the unborn child (21:22-23). In both cases, this is seen as an act of murder and, thus, a capital offense.
As we examine the law of God, we are to recognize that all moral, social, and spiritual laws are grounded in the person and character of Christ. Thus, the first command forms the bedrock of all God’s moral law. The first command is that we are to give exclusive and complete allegiance to God. God is the supreme being, and he alone is to be worshipped. He alone is to be the object of our devotion, our faith, and our obedience. God is the source of all moral law, and he is the one who establishes the moral law governing our life.
We live in an age when our society is seeking to throw off the constraints of God’s moral law given in scripture. We view God’s law as archaic and outdated. Truth, including ethical and religious truth, is not absolute but fluid and changing. As one person in the L.A. Times describes this  modern perspective, “The Scripture is outdated and fossilized and needs to grow and change with modern times, and some injunctions are ‘morally repugnant.’”  Ultimately, we seek to cast aside God’s law in favor of our own. This violates the first three commandments because God is no longer our God; we have become a god to ourselves. In our post-modern world, the moral reasoning of humanity, along with the scientist and philosophers, has become our god and the object of our worship. Ultimately, instead of having a moral and civil foundation for the society, we have moral and spiritual chaos where everything becomes right. I become a god to myself. Perhaps the greatest act of idolatry is not the worship of some other deity; it is the worship of self.  
But the scripture is clear; God is the foundation of all moral law. He is the divine law-giver. Furthermore, because he is perfect in his divine attributes, he does not change. Therefore, his moral law, which he embedded in his creation, does not change. God is the creator of the universe, the one who established moral order within the universe, and the one to whom we are accountable. In an age of moral confusion, we must look to God and His revealed Word as the foundation for our morality and spirituality. The question is not what society determines as right or wrong, but what God decides to be right or wrong. He will bless those who follow his law and curse those who reject it (See Exodus 20:5-6). The most critical question we must ask in determining truth and morality is, “What does God say in his Word?”