167 | Freedom Doesn't Mean No Boundaries: Why Structure Is A Form of Love (Exodus Bible Study 3)

Find the full episode here >>> PaulaBehrens.com/blog the companion printable resource here: PaulaBehrens.com/store

Rules can feel like the opposite of freedom, especially when you’re tired, burned out, or quietly wondering why following Jesus sometimes feels heavy. In today’s Bible study companion episode, we head to Mount Sinai and slow down long enough to notice the detail many of us miss in Exodus: God doesn’t begin with a list. He begins with rescue, relationship, and biblical encouragement. He reminds Israel who they are before He tells them what to do.

We walk through Israel’s arrival at the mountain, the terrifying beauty of God’s holiness, and the purpose of the boundaries He sets. Then we trace the opening of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and hear it the way Scripture intends: every command is anchored to an act of deliverance that already happened. That shift can reshape how you think about emotions, obedience, devotions, and the daily struggle between what you are feeling and what is true. God’s commands were never a ladder to reach Him. They are guardrails for a people He has already brought near.

We also explore the often-skipped Book of the Covenant and how God’s heart shows up in practical justice for ordinary life, from property disputes to caring for the vulnerable. Finally, we sit with Exodus 24 and the blood covenant that binds God and His people, then follow that covenant thread into the New Testament as it points to Jesus as our mediator and the new covenant in His blood.

If you enjoy faith-rooted conversations that connect Scripture to real life, emotions, and spiritual formation, this episode will meet you there. And if practices like aroma freedom, essential oils, or simple sensory rhythms have helped you slow down and listen in God’s presence, you’ll hear resonant themes here too, even as the focus stays anchored in the Word.

If this episode changes the way you think about the Ten Commandments, share it with a friend, subscribe for the rest of the series, and leave a review so more listeners can find this space for biblical encouragement.

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Transcript

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Welcome Back To Exodus

Paula Behrens 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Living on Purpose in Christ. I'm Paula, and today we are picking back up in our walk through Exodus for part three of our four-part series. If you've been with me for parts one and two, you already know Israel has been rescued from Egypt and fed in the wilderness, and now something shifts. They arrive at a mountain, and everything about the story changes tone.

Printable Study And A Hard Question

Paula Behrens 0:25

Quick note before we dive in. There's a full printable Bible study to go along with this series over at PaulaBehrens.com in the store under "Printable Resources." And it goes so much deeper than we have time for today. Complete leader's guide and all. Okay, so I'll come back to that at the end. But I want to say, stay with me all the way through because today we're tackling something a lot of Christians quietly struggle with. And I think what we find is going to surprise you. Here's the question: Do you actually believe God's commands are good for you? Or do you secretly experience them as a list of things, standing between you and being free? Because if you're honest, a lot of us were taught to read the Ten Commandments as a set of rules God hands down to keep unruly people in line, like a stern parent, finally laying down the law. But that is not even close to what actually happens at Mount Sinai. And once you see the real sequence of events, I don't think you'll ever read Exodus 20 the same way again.

Spiritual Burnout And Aroma Freedom

Paula Behrens 1:30

Friend, have you ever carved out time for prayer in Scripture, longing for quiet renewal with the Lord, only to feel your thoughts spinning from endless demands, your energy depleted, or your soul parched? I recall a season when my days felt more like constant striving than sacred rest. I had a prayer journal, a quiet chair by the window, and a heart set on seeking Him. But truthfully, I was running on empty and close to burnout. I longed for deeper peace, steadier rhythms, and a heartfelt connection with God. I kept showing up, yet the soul deep rest I needed stayed out of reach. Then the Lord gently reminded me, He never required perfect plans or endless effort. He simply wanted my presence. From that place, I began looking for gentler ways to abide with him. I discovered that pairing a natural scent with releasing emotional triggers and limiting beliefs opens something sacred. That shift is what I now share in the Aroma Freedom Coaching Session. Whether you feel spiritually drained, weighed down by old patterns, or hungry for that closeness to the Holy Spirit, this session invites you to release what blocks your peace. Together, we use aroma scripture and a gentle guided technique to restore your sense of wholeness so you can feel grounded, nourished, and rooted in God's presence. You don't have to figure it out alone. There's a gentle path to releasing old patterns, finding emotional freedom, and drawing closer to God, and I would be honored to walk it with you. Now is the time to breathe in his peace and let go of what is keeping you stuck or holding you back. Book an aroma freedom coaching session at PaulaBehrens.com /coaching. That's Paula Behrens B-E-H R E N S .com /coaching (no spaces).

The Covenant Money Blueprint Bootcamp

Paula Behrens 3:26

Are you finding it difficult to figure out where God is leading you through the whirlwind of daily life? Perhaps, like me, you've had moments of doubt, surprise encounters, and maybe even a bit of overwhelm along the way. Well, if that resonates with you and you're yearning for clarity, peace, and faith-focused encouragement, this podcast is for you. Okay, before we get into it, I want to tell you about something that's been close to my heart lately because it actually shares a name with what we're talking about today. It's called the Covenant Money Blueprint Boot Camp, and it's a one-hour self-guided session that walks you through resetting your relationship with money, not from a place of striving or fear, but from the same kind of covenant relationship we're about to unpack in Exodus. So many of us carry old, tangled beliefs about money that have nothing to do with what God actually says about provision. And this boot camp gently walks you through identifying those beliefs and replacing them with the truth using the same aroma freedom approach I use in all my coaching sessions. You can find it at PaulaBehrens.com /finances if that's something you've been needing. Again, that's Paula Behrens B-E-H R E N S .com /finances (no spaces).

A Mountain That Wouldn't Be Ignored

Paula Behrens 4:48

Okay, let's head to the mountain. So Israel arrives at Sinai about three months after leaving Egypt. And before God ever gives a single command, he says something remarkable to Moses to relay to the people. He reminds them how he carried them out of Egypt on eagle's wings and brought them to himself. And then he tells them that if they'll listen to his voice and keep his covenant, they'll be his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Notice what's missing there. There's no Ten Commandments yet. There's only relationship and identity being offered first. This is the order most of us get backwards in our own spiritual lives. We assume obedience comes first and belonging comes second, when scripture consistently shows it happening the other way around. Then the mountain itself becomes something almost unbearable to witness thunder, lightning, a thick cloud, the blast of a trumpet growing louder and louder, the whole mountain wrapped in smoke because the Lord descends on it in fire, and the ground itself trembles. God tells Moses to set boundaries around the mountain so the people don't get too close and die. This is not a gentle, cozy scene. This is overwhelming, terrifying holiness on full display. And it's worth sitting with for a second because I think a lot of modern Christians have quietly lost any real sense of the weight of God's holiness. We've gotten so comfortable with casual, familiar language about God that we forget the same God who invites us close is genuinely, dangerously holy. And Sinai will not let you forget that.

Ten Words, Not a Cage

Paula Behrens 6:41

Out of that fire and smoke comes the Ten Commandments. And I want you to notice something about how they open. Before a single command is given, God says, I AM the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Every single command that follows is anchored to an act of rescue that already happened. These commands were never given to people trying to earn their way into God's favor. They were given to a people who had already been saved as a description of what freedom with God actually looks like in daily life. Think about it this way. If someone freed you from slavery and then handed you a set of instructions, those instructions wouldn't feel like a cage. They'd feel like someone protecting the freedom they just gave you. Don't have other gods because you're free, and other gods will enslave you again in a different way. Don't steal, don't murder, don't covet, because a community living in real freedom can't survive on exploitation and envy. The commandments were never meant to be a ladder Israel had to climb to reach God. They were guardrails for a people who had already arrived. And here's the part I love: the people's actual reaction to hearing God's voice directly is fear. And they ask Moses to be the one who hears from God on their behalf from now on, because the direct presence of that much holiness is more than they can bear. And God doesn't rebuke them for wanting a mediator. He actually affirms it, which, if you've spent any time in the New Testament, should make your ears perk up because that's precisely the role Jesus steps into later, the mediator who lets us approach a holy God without being consumed by Him.

A Whole Way of Life, Not Just Ten Rules

Paula Behrens 8:38

After the Ten Commandments, Exodus moves into several chapters we often skip over, sometimes called the Book of the Covenant, covering everything from how to treat servants fairly to restitution for property damage, to caring for the poor, the widow, and the foreigner living among them. This section doesn't get nearly the attention the Ten Commandments do, but it's honestly one of the most practical, compassionate legal codes in the ancient world. God isn't just handing down abstract principles, he's describing an entire society down to property disputes and how animals should be treated, all of it flowing out of the character of a God who cares about how people actually treat each other in ordinary, everyday situations. I think this is worth pausing on. Because it's easy to treat our faith as something that only shows up on Sunday morning or in our private devotional time. But this section of Exodus makes it clear that God's law was never meant to stop at worship. It was meant to shape contracts, workplaces, courtrooms, and neighborhoods. If your relationship with God isn't changing how you treat the people around you all week long, something has gotten disconnected from the original design.

Blood Covenant And The New Covenant

Paula Behrens 9:55

Everything builds on Exodus 24, where the covenant is formally ratified. Moses takes the blood of sacrificed animals, throws half of it against the altar, reads the terms of the covenant aloud to the people, and then takes the remaining blood and throws it on the people themselves, saying, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you. This wasn't a symbolic handshake. Blood in the ancient world meant life itself, and this act physically bound God and Israel together in a covenant sealed by life poured out. Now I want to slow down here because this word covenant deserves real attention. The Hebrew word is berith (בְּרִית), and it describes a solemn binding agreement between two parties, far deeper than a contract, since a contract can be dissolved when its terms aren't met. But a covenant in the ancient world was meant to hold even through failure. This is the same word used all the way back in Genesis when God makes his covenant promises to Abraham, and it's the word that runs like a thread through the entire Old Testament, describing God's relentless commitments to his people even when they fail to keep their end of the deal. When Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in the Septuagint, they rendered berith (בְּרִית), as diathēke (διαθήκη), a word that could describe either a covenant or a will, the kind of binding document that only takes effect once someone dies. That detail matters more than it might seem. And this exact Greek word is the one Jesus reaches for at the Last Supper, recorded in Luke 22:20, when he lifts the cup and says, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. The blood thrown on the altar and on the people at Mount Sinai in Exodus 24.8 was pointing forward the entire time to a far greater blood poured out once, sealing a covenant that would never need to be renewed again.

Coming Back Down the Mountain

Paula Behrens 12:08

So here's what I want you to walk away with today. If you've ever felt like God's commands are a burden, or like your faith is mostly a list of things you're not allowed to do, I want you to reconsider the actual order of events at Sinai. Rescue came first, relationship came first. The commands were never the price of admission, they were the shape freedom takes once you're already home. And when we inevitably fail to keep our end of any covenant, we're not left outside in the cold because the blood that sealed the first covenant was always pointing toward the blood that sealed the last one, once and for all.

Takeaways Resources And Closing

Paula Behrens 12:52

Okay, if today's episode stirred something in you, come and go deeper with me. Head on over to PaulaBehrens.com/store, and under "Printable Resources," you'll find the full companion Bible study for this episode, part three of our four-part Exodus series. Inside you'll find the key passages laid out, the theological truths tucked into this section, what this passage reveals about God's own character, practical application for your everyday life, word studies explored in even more depth, reflection questions, journaling prompts to help you process what God might be saying to you, and a complete step-by-step leader's guide if you want to walk your small group, your Bible study, or even just a friend through this series.

Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

Paula Behrens 13:38

Thank you for tuning in today. And remember, just like setting biblical boundaries, it's okay to say no to things that don't serve you well, like that third piece of cake at the church potluck. If you are blessed by this episode, be share to share it with a friend and leave a review so that we can reach even more listeners like you. Check the show notes for all the links. Join us next week as we continue to discover how to live on purpose in Christ. Until then, keep leaning into him and walking in his wisdom. See you next time.