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“Do you remember the stories of where our people lived long ago?” one Israelite would say to another. “It was a wonderful land. The soil was rich and people got along together.” “Our ancestors are buried there: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel.” “They say it is a land flowing with milk and honey.”

While the Israelites were leaving the Goshen region of Egypt, the only home they had ever known, they had to begin to build their new home, at least in their heads and their hearts. They had to imagine what it would look like and how it would smell and the sculpture of the land and the texture of the sunset.

And as they prepared to go and claim a land that was also claimed by the Hittites, and the Perrizites, and the Jebusites, and the Hivites, and the Canaanites (and probably a few other “ites” that we don’t know), they also had to remember what made them a people. What set them apart from all the other peoples? What particular perspective, what special identity would they bring to their new home that would make it home? How would the patterns of land ownership and worship and justice and defense and family interaction lay across the terrain of desert and farm land and fishing village? How would the Israelites be different from all the other “ites”?

In 1972 I was a case worker in Newark, N.J. My territory was a number of high rise low rent apartment buildings constructed for people who had recently moved up from the south seeking jobs. Most of the tenants had lived in rural Kentucky in one room shanties. They were not used to urban apartment dwelling.

You can supervise your children from your front porch, but you can’t supervise them from the window of the 14th floor. The neighborhood was in chaos. That’s what happens when there is no connection between your image of home and the realities of where you live.

So God guided the Israelite by Mount Sinai where Moses had first seen the burning bush, in order to give them the law, that is, to give them the religious and social and economic context of what home would be. So that they didn’t bring their Egypt dominated ways to a new place and contaminate it rather than blessing it.

There was a much shorter way to get to the physical Promised Land—up the coast three months at the most. But God was not just leading the Israelites to a new piece of turf. God was leading the Israelites to a new way of being a family.

The people of Israel had 12 tribes for the 12 brothers who were sons of Jacob. They were not a voluntary association bound by mutual convenience or common goals. They were cousins. And God was not leading them like a camp counselor on a hike. God was reminding them of the ties that bind.

You’re going to live side by side in a new land among others of differing cultures. So here is who you are: you’re mine. And here is who I am: I am the God of your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am yours. That’s called a covenant.

You will be a holy people because I am a holy God. Not piece of clay or a piece of wood or a piece of metal. See that fire on the mountain? Clay didn’t make that. See that cloud leading you out? Wood didn’t make that. Feel that rumbling of the earth under your feet? Metal didn’t cause that. So pay attention.

And then God sent Moses up the mountain and gave him the law, beginning with what we call the 10 commandments.

A lot of people (especially clergy) have made a lot of inane comments about how similar the 10 commandments are to the basic laws of other cultures. And they are right if you just pay attention to the Reader’s Digest Condensed version. But consider commandment number one. The condensed version goes: “you shall have no other gods before me.”

The first commandment in full reads: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” You shall have no other gods before me because I am the God who set you free.” You are a family. You’ve got history. I gave it to you.

A lot of people (especially clergy) have made a lot of inane comments about how the law is good for you. It makes your life better. And it does, but that is not the point. The point is that the pattern makes you a part of the family with God as its head.

Tex Sample, a sociologist of religion some of you know from Living the Questions, tells the story of how, in his teen years during the Great Depression, he had a bad back and couldn’t play football, a terrible case of acne, and a number of other social limitations. But his family went in hock and got him a used convertible to ride to school in. It changed his whole young life.

Years later he asked his mother why she and his father made such an economically stupid decision. She replied: you didn’t have much going for you at the time, and we had just enough to tip the scale in the right direction.

Tex reflected: it was a transgression of the laws of good economics but good family.

Similarly, there are Muslim women who take the vale, not because they are forced to or because it is comfortable, but because it is commanded. And there are Jews who keep Kosher even if their diet would be better non-Kosher, not because it is healthier for them, but because it is what defines their family.

What we heard today was not 10 self help principles. Not 10 wise suggestions. What we heard today were the 10 commandments that make the people of God the people of God. We are under obligation to them simply because we are family. We live in them. They are our ethical context. They are our moral house. They are our home.

Did you notice earlier how the psalmist moved seamlessly from the structure of the starry heavens that declare the glory of God to the moral structure (the statutes and ordinances) that define the people of God. Our home in society is like our home in the universe.

We don’t worship idols in this family. We don’t disrespect parents in this family. We don’t steal and lie and kill and covet in this family. And here is the toughest one: we take time off once a week to remember that God is our creator. Because we are family.

And like the two boys in Jesus’ parable, sometimes we say yes to the commandments and then to do not fulfill them and sometimes we run away from them and end up carrying them out after all.

And no matter what we do, the commandment still stands, and the father is still the father, and the mother is still the mother and the kids are still the kids.

And after God stops giving 10 basic commandments, God starts giving hundreds of others—about treating your neighbor with compassion and the powerless with justice, and the foreigner with protection. And as we struggle to live that, we become aware that our family is larger than we thought.

And so we obey. Not necessarily because we feel like it or think that it is good for us. But because thus says the Lord, and because we are children in the family of God, and the word of God is the structure that keeps the cold winds of meaninglessness and the heat of dissipation at bay. It is our house.