Exodus 20:2-3
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods before Me.
Perhaps the most significant word in this verse is “your.” Without it, there is no covenant, for it is in God’s giving Himself to us (and we to Him) that a covenant happens. For a covenant is a sacred family bond of kinship. “The Lord God” is a remote deity, somewhere up in heaven. Powerful to be sure, and the Artificer of All, but still remote. But “the Lord your God,” though still awesome and powerful and the Maker of All, is something more: a Father who gives Himself to us and who calls us to give ourselves to Him unreservedly and with complete devotion, as He has done.
