Daily Readings for Sunday 15th September 2024

Dear Congregation,

I want to thank all of you who have prayed and supported the work of the Gospel through the church in 2023 and this first month of 2024. It is a great joy to minister at Westminster Baptist and I love the church here greatly. Through this past year, there have been heart-wrenching tragedies alongside blessings too. This is often the case in Christian life and yet we are called to keep trusting and believing. We often bear the battle scars of past experience and circumstance, as we live in this sinful world and anticipate heaven. We see Mordecai, mocked and scorned for years in Esther and on the brink of execution, yet he latterly knew blessing from God. The most important thing was he was faithful in serving the Lord.

Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful - 1 Corinthians 4.2. This verse especially applies to ministers, church workers, but to all Christians. We are stewards of the oracles of God and to us has the light of the gospel been revealed. We should therefore be striving to be faithful, not popular, faithful. May that be our aim by the grace of God.

In the beginning month in recent years we have spent a week praying together on each day for certain things. As a reminder that with continuing faith that prayer is essential. Key to our hope and joy and endurance and love, and with new resolve to make time to pray regularly alone and with your family and with some group of fellow believers.

Alongside reading the Scriptures these should be our daily routine. There are various encouragements in the Scriptures to pray:
- Pray without ceasing (1 Th. 5:17).
- Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; (Ep. 6:18).
- Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; (Col. 4:2).

These are a few verses of the many that encourage us to pray and undoubtedly set before us a biblical mandate that we should be concerned to pray. Maybe you have fallen out of the 'habit' or relegated prayer to a part time practice; or you only pray when trouble or danger comes. To that end I would ask the church to pray, if led, the suggested topics below so we might pray for the same things (roughly speaking) on the same day to encourage us.

Let us be prayerful people and realise we too need prayer. To say we are praying for someone should be an expression of concern but an indication of our own action to bring the matter before God, before the throne of Grace through the believers mediator and High Priest. Jesus Christ, Paul even requests prayer for himself and those labouring for the Gospel with him twice in 1 and 2 Thessalonians saying 'brethren pray for us'. May we be a prayerful church and prayerful individuals, knowing that we have a prayer hearing and answering God.

Pastor Jonathan Arnold


Daily Prayer - Sunday
- God thanks to God for His character, perfect, unchangeable, the same yesterday today and forever.
- Give thanks to God that we can meet in the church and have fellowship with one another.
- Pray the Lord would grant the preaching of his word power and clarity, and there are ready ears to hear and believe it. (2 Thes. 3.1.)
- Pray we would be granted faithful ministry and good spiritual food from God's Word. (1 Peter 2.2.)


Daily Reading
Preface - God disalloweth the parable of sour grapes: he sheweth his dealing with a just man, with the wicked son of a just father, and with the just son of a wicked father: he declareth that the treatment of both son and father shall be according to their respective deserts: and that the wicked, if he repent, shall live; but he that revolteth from his righteousness shall die: he defendeth the equity of his dealings: and exhorteth to repentance.
Ezekiel 18
Psalms 62) Preface - David professing his confidence in God discourageth his enemies. In the same confidence he encourageth the godly. No trust is to be put in worldly things. Power and mercy belong to God.
Psalms 63) Preface - David's thirst after God's service in his sanctuary: his manner of blessing God: his confidence of the destruction of his enemies, and of his own rejoicing.
Psalms 62 - 63


Daily Light - Morning
Sin shall not have dominion over you:
for ye are not under the law,
but under grace.

What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. - My brethren, ye...are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. - Being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ. - The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. - Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. - If the Son...shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Ro. 6.14; Ro. 6.15; Ro. 7.4; 1 Co. 9.21; 1 Co. 15.56-57
Ro. 8.2; Jn. 8.34; Jn. 8.36
Ga. 5.1


Daily Light - Evening
A doble minded man
is unstable in all his ways.

No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. - Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. - What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love...grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.

Abide in me. - Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
Jas. 1.8; Lu. 9.62
He. 11.6; Jas. 1.6,7; Mk. 11.24
Eph. 4.14-15
Jn. 15.4; 1 Co. 15.58


A Puritans Catechism
Q 26 - Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist?
A - Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Lord's Supper
Chapter 30
PARAGRAPH 7
Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive, and feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death; the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.11
11 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:23–26

​
Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The third heaven of the believer's privileges
For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.
Romans 14 v 7

Surely this privilege is more than all that went before. Peace with God is a blessed thing, but it does not imply that the heart is burning with intense joy and love in view of a reconciled God. Access to His favour is a blessed thing; but it only implies liberty of coming before Him with acceptance. Joy in hope of glory is a blessed thing; but is in the very nature of it a happiness whose object is unenjoyed and afar off. Joy in tribulation, again, is a blessed thing; but it is a happiness which can only be enjoyed upon the earth. It is a joy, too, in spite of misery - a perfecting, but surely not a perfect joy. But joy in God is the most blessed thing of all. This is the third heaven of the believer's privileges - a joy which all the redeemed are sharing with angels - a joy begun in this world, made perfect in glory.