Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off.
Exodus 20:18

So what happened after God issued the Ten Commandments? Note the following.

God gave the Ten Commandments. Who else could publish His Law, complete with, “thunder, lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking”? Because the Ten Commandments are God’s commandments, given by Him, with no small amount of drama, let us all all receive them as such. What does it mean to receive and respond to the Ten Commandments as God’s commandments?

We had better take them seriously.
We had better receive them all, not being so arrogant as to assume we can pick and choose which ones we like—much less disregard those we do not like.
We had better plan to obey them, understanding that to disobey even one of the commandments is to disobey God Himself and to summon His wrath upon us.
And as illustrated by Israel’s initial reaction, we had better fear and tremble—and we had better do what Israel did in the next verse.

More on that next time.