The Ten Commandments, as we will see today, don't come to us in a vacuum. They come to us in an environment of love and saving grace. Because God has already given Himself to you, these commands are yours and your children's forever so that you can respond in love to the God who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. As we will see in particular today, the first five commandments all contain a statement about who our God is, a statement that explains and justifies and motivates obedience to the command to which they are attached. In other words, for these first five commands, for which there is less light of nature, there is more light of grace as God explains exactly what He means and why He's telling us these things. As the greatest and most prominent instance of this, the reason annexed to the first commandment comes before rather than after the imperative. Thus, it stands over the whole sequence of Ten Words as the motivation and explanation for them all. Ultimately, you and I should obey the Ten Commandments because God is Yahweh, He is our God, He brought us out of Egypt, and He delivered us from the house of bondage.