Heidelbergian Children's Catechism (age 8- 10 years)
Lord's Day 34
This article and the ten following are about the Ten Commandments. They are read out every Sunday morning in the church service. We have already mentioned the law of God in Lord’s Day 2. Then we learned that the Ten Commandments help us to take a good look at ourselves. If we do that, we notice how sinful we still are. Our sins make God sad. The commandments help us to ask God for forgiveness.
In Lord’s Day 34 we come back to the same law of the Ten Commandments. You know that Moses received these Ten Commandments when he was on a mountain. They were written on two flat stones, called tablets. One tablet contained the commandments which teil us that we should love God. On the other tablet were the commandments telling us to love one another. Before the commandments begin, it says first: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”You may think that the slavery in Egypt ended a long time ago. Should that be said every time? Yes, I think so. It teaches you that you and the Israelites belong to the same great nation. The church from long ago and the church today is one people. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Their Iife was very hard. You must have heard stories about that. They were so glad when Moses and Aaron led them out. The Lord made that possible. The Israelites were free! We, too, are free. We are no longer slaves of sin. The Lord makes us hate sin, and then we begin to fight against it. We want to show to the Lord that we are grateful to Him because we belong to Him. Now we want to know God’s commandments and obey them. Tell God that you want to be obedient to his commandments, and ask Him to help you obey them. What is the first of these commandments? “You shall have no other gods before me.”You may say that you do not have a statue of a god in your room, and you only pray to God. But … do you always trust Him fully? Or do you think that when you grow up, th en you can be good without God’s help. The Lord does not want to see superstition, either. Some people say that you should not walk under a ladder. If you do, you will be unlucky. This is trusting in luck, not in God. Keeping your fingers crossed will not help you. You do not need to be scared to walk under a ladder, because you should not be superstitious. We trust in God alone.