Confirmation Study Notes: The Ten Commandments, The Lord's Prayer, and Westminster Shorter Catechism Q1-12
The Ten Commandments: Exodus
Context for Students: This section is designated for confirmation memorization. Students are instructed to memorize the words that appear in BOLD only (per the instructional note in the transcript).
Introduction: And God spoke all these words, saying, ‐I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.‑
Commandment Regarding Other Gods: ‐You shall have no other gods before me.‑
Commandment Regarding Images and Idolatry: * Prohibition: You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. * Service and Jealousy: You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the and the generation of those who hate me, * Steadfast Love: but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Commandment Regarding the Lord's Name: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
Commandment Regarding the Sabbath: * The Command: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. * The Labor Schedule: Six () days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. * Prohibited Labor: On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. * Creation Justification: For in days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Commandment Regarding Parents: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Commandment Regarding Murder: You shall not murder.
Commandment Regarding Adultery: You shall not commit adultery.
Commandment Regarding Theft: You shall not steal.
Commandment Regarding Witness: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Commandment Regarding Coveting: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.‑
The Lord’s Prayer
The Invocation: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
The Petitions: * Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. * Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. * And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The Doxology and Conclusion: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English: Questions through
Q. What is man's primary purpose? * Man's primary purpose is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
Q. What authority from God directs us how to glorify and enjoy Him? * The only authority for glorifying and enjoying Him is the Bible, which is the word of God and is made up of the Old and New Testaments.
Q. What does the Bible primarily teach? * The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God and what God requires of man.
Q. What is God? * God is a spirit, Whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.
Q. Is there more than one God? * There is only one, the living and true God.
Q. How many persons are in the one God? * Three () persons are in the one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one God, the same in substance and equal in power and glory.
Q. What are the decrees of God? * The decrees of God are his eternal plan, based on the purpose of His will, by which, for His own glory, He has foreordained everything that happens.
Q. How does God carry out His decrees? * God carries out His decrees in creation and providence.
Q. What is creation? * Creation is God's making everything out of nothing by His powerful word in days - and all very good.
Q. How did God create man? * God created man, male and female, in His own image and in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, to rule over the other creatures.
Q. What is God's providence? * God's providence is His completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action.
Q. What did God's providence specifically do for man whom He created? * After the creation God made a covenant with man to give him life, if he perfectly obeyed; God told him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.