Daily Readings for Sunday 21st July 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.)


Church Services
Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (and also available online via Facebook)
(Sunday morning) Scripture reading - Psalm 92; Matthew 10 v 16-42 - Sermon by Jonathan Arnold
Doctrine Class - in church (after lunch) (and also available online via Facebook)
(Doctrine Class - Scripture reading - Matthew 22 v 29 - [Title: The Doctrine of God] Class - by Jonathan Arnold
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (and also available online via Facebook)
(Sunday evening) Scripture reading - Song of Solomon 1 v 1-17; 1 Corinthians 13 v 1-13 - [Title - Love the more excellent way]                                    Sermon by Neil McGovern
Bible Study and Prayer
Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (and also available online via Facebook)
Lunch Hour Service
Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (and also available online via Facebook)
Outreach/Witnessing
Saturday morning at Victoria Street (outside the big Boots store) for 10:30am (across the road from Town Hall - No. 64). Afterwards we go back to church for prayer.


Daily Reading
Preface - The captivity of Judah for her sin. Trust in man is cursed, in God is blessed. The heart, though deceitful, cannot impose upon God. In God alone is sure salvation. The prophet complaining of scoffers, prayeth God to support him: he is sent to exhort to a due observation of the sabbath.
Jeremiah 17
Preface - Christ appealing to reason healeth the withered hand on the sabbath day. The Pharisees conspire his death: he retireth to the sea side, and healeth many: he chooseth his twelve apostles: his friends look upon him as beside himself: he refuteth conclusively the blasphemous absurdity of the Pharisees in ascriibng his casting out of devils to the power of Beelzebub. Those who do the will of God he regardeth as his nearest relations.
Mark 3


Daily Light - Morning
What profit is there of circumcision?

Much every way. - Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart. - If...their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember.

Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. - In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. - You, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him,, having forgiven you all trespasses.

Put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and...put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness.
Ro. 3.1; Ro. 3.2; Jer. 4.4; Lev. 26.41-42
Ro. 15.8; Col. 2.11; Col. 2.13
Eph. 4.22-23,24


Daily Light - Evening
The veil of the temple was rent in twain
from the top to the bottom.

The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. - The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life... He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me... Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.

A new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh...let us draw near.
Mt. 27.51; 1 Co. 11.23-24; Jn. 6.51
Jn. 6.53-54,56-57,61-63
He. 10.20,22


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 52 - Which is the fifth commandment?
A - The fifth commandment is, Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Gospel and the Extent of the Grace Thereof
Chapter 20
PARAGRAPH 2
​
This promise of Christ, and salvation by him, is revealed only by the Word of God;3 neither do the works of creation or providence, with the light of nature, make discovery of Christ, or of grace by him, so much as in a general or obscure way;4 much less that men destitute of the revelation of Him by the promise or gospel, should be enabled thereby to attain saving faith or repentance.5

3 Rom. 1;17
4 Rom. 10:14–15,17
5 Prov. 29:18; Isa. 25:7; 60:2–3

Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
In time of death
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 
1 Corinthians 15 v 26

Few ever think of dying till dying comes. The last enemy that shall be overcome is Death; and an awful enemy he is. We go alone. No earthly friend goes with us. We never went the way before. It is all strange and new. The results are eternal. If we have not rightly believed, it is too late to mend. These are some of the solemn thoughts that overshadow the soul. What can give peace? None but Jesus; the sight of Jesus as a Redeemer, the same yesterday, today, and forever, the same sight we got when first we knew the Lord, when first He chose us and we chose Him, when first He said, 'Seek ye my face,' and we said to Him, 'Thy face, Lord, shall we seek.' To see Him as a God of truth, the Lord that changes not, the unchanging One, the same Jesus; thus to see Him and to cry, 'Into thy hands I commit my spirit' - this is peace.