Daily Readings for Sunday 22nd December 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 - Amidst the judgments of the neighbouring nations God will defend his church. Zion is exhorted to rejoice for the coming of Christ and his peaceable kingdom. God's promises of victory and defence.
Zechariah 9
Preface - Mary anointeth the feet of Jesus: Judas murmureth at the cost. The people flock to see Lazarus: the chief priests consult to kill him. Jesus rideth into Jerusalem in triumph. Certain Greeks desire to see him. He sheweth the benefit of his death to believers: prayeth to his Father; is answered by a voice from heaven: signifieth the manner of his death; and exhorteth to make good use of the present light. The generality of the Jews believe not: yet many chief rulers believe, but dare not confess him: he urgeth faith in his divine mission.
John 12


Daily Light - Morning
Your work of faith.

This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. - Faith...worketh by love. - He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. - We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. - Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth... Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power. - It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
1 Th. 1.3; Jn. 6.29
Jas. 2.17; Ga. 5.6; Ga. 6.8; Eph. 2.10; Titus 2.14
2 Th. 1.3,11; Phil. 2.13


Daily Light - Evening
Where is the promise
of his coming?

Enoch...the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all. - Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.

The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.
2 Pe. 3.4; Jude 14,15; Rev. 1.7
1 Th. 4.16-17
Titus 2.11-13


A Puritans Catechism​
Q 42 - Which is the first commandment?
A - The first commandment is, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Law of God
Chapter 19
PARAGRAPH 1

God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart, and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil;1 by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience;2 promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it.3
1 Gen. 1:27; Eccles. 7:29
2 Rom. 10:5
3 Gal. 3:10,12

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The gospel bell
... a bell and a pomegranate, round about the hem of the robe to minister in; as the Lord commanded Moses.
Exodus 39 v 26

Christians you are priests. Be like Christ in this. Wherever you go, carry a savour of Christ. His name is like ointment poured forth; it is like the vine flourishing, and the pomegranate budding. Let men take knowledge of you, that you have been with Jesus; let it be plain that you come from within the veil; let the smell of your garments be as a field which the Lord hath blessed. Carry a sound of Christ wherever you go. Not a step, Christians, without the sound of the gospel bell. Even in smallest things, be spreading the glad sound. Edwards says, wherever a godly person enters, he is a greater blessing than if the greatest monarch were entering. So be it with you. It appears to me that even the tracts for which you contribute, are like little bells. They are small and despised by some, yet they carry the clear sound of the Gospel wherever they go. What Christian among you would not love to see them multiplied, till every family on the globe should hear the message of mercy? Come, then, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.