Why all these rules???

Deuteronomy 26:16-19 “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.” Rules, rules, rules. Is that what this relationship with God is all about? If you stumbled onto the Bible and started reading in the middle of Deuteronomy one might think so. But in context of the flow of the Book, it is far deeper than that. God's people are His treasure. Like anything we treasure, we want to keep them pure, clean and beautiful. He wants us to be holy not to be a mean bully, but to show and tell: "Look at my prized possession."