Released prisoners, deathbed survivors and freed slaves all face the same question – How do I live now that the nightmare is over and my new beginning has come?

That was the challenge faced by the Hebrew people after God redeemed them from four centuries of slavery in Egypt. Their journey had started when God miraculously parted the Red Sea so they could escape from Egypt. After three months of living in the desert they still felt like slaves. God instructed their leader Moses to tell the Hebrew people that they were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation – God’s own people. Then God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai where he was given a written list of commandments instructing the Hebrew people how to live. We call it the Ten Commandments. It calls for the highest ethics and it is the greatest moral code ever proposed to the human race.

There are two ways of looking at the Ten Commandments. You can see them as an impossible standard – a reminder of how far short we all fall of God’s expectations. Or, you can see them as possible with God’s help – recognizing that the God who can free from slavery will provide the moral and spiritual power to live by a superior standard.

The Ten Commandments were for the Hebrew people set free from the slavery of Egypt and they are for Christians today who have been set free from the slavery of sin through Jesus Christ.