Daily Readings for Sunday 23rd February 2025

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


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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.)


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Daily Reading Plan - First Year
Preface - God reneweth his promise by his name JEHOVAH: he sendeth Moses to Pharaoh. The genealogy of Reuben, of Simeon, and of Levi, of whom came Moses and Aaron. Moses in answer to God's charge pleadeth his defect of speech.
Exodus 6
Preface - Christ sendeth his apostles to work miracles and preach the gospel. Herod desireth to see him. The apostles return: Christ feedeth five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. The different opinions concerning Christ; Peter's confession of him: Christ foretelleth his own death and resurrection; he sheweth his followers the necessity of self-denial, and that they must not be ashamed of owning his gospel: he is transfigured: healeth a demoniac: again foresheweth his sufferings: checketh the ambitious disputes of his disciples: will not have them forbid any one to work miracles in his name: reproveth the fiery \eal of James and John against the Samaritans who would not receive him: and proposeth terms to three persons who offer to follow him.m
Luke 9

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Daily Reading - Morning
The blood of sprinkling, that speaketh
better things than that of Abel.

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. - The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. - It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.... By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Abel....brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof....the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering. - Christ....hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. - Having....boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
Song 1.3; Eph. 5.2; 1 Pe. 2.7; Phil. 2.9; Col. 2.9
Jn. 14.15; Ro. 5.5; Jn. 12.3; Ac. 4.13
Ps. 8.1; Mt. 1.23; Isa. 9.6; Pro. 18.10
He. 12.24; Jn. 1.29; Rev. 13.8; He. 10.4-5,10
Ge. 4.4; Eph. 5.2
He. 10.22; He. 10.19



Daily Reading - Evening
Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? - The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. - Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. - Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. - That he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Ps. 90.11; Mt. 27.45-46; Isa. 53.6
Ro. 8.1; Ro. 5.1; Ga. 3.13
1 Jn. 4.9-10; Ro. 3.26


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A Puritans Catechism
Q 23 - How does Christ execute the office of a prophet?
A - Christ executes the office f a prophet, in revealing to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Lords Supper
Chapter 30
PARAGRAPH 3
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The Lord Jesus hath, in this ordinance, appointed his ministers to pray, and bless the elements of bread and wine, and thereby to set them apart from a common to a holy use, and to take and break the bread; to take the cup, and, they communicating also themselves, to give both to the communicants.  5
(5)  1 Cor. 11.23-26, etc

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The utmost farthing
Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Romans 4 v 25

If you saw a criminal put into prison, and the prison doors closed behind him, and if you never saw him come out again, then you might well believe that he was still lying in prison, and still enduring the just sentence of the law. But if you saw the prison doors fly open, and the prisoner going free; if you saw him walking at large in the streets, then you would know at once that he had satisfied the justice of his country, that he had suffered all that it was needful to suffer, that he had paid the utmost farthing. So with the Lord Jesus; he was counted a criminal - the crimes of guilty sinners against God wee all laid at His door, and he was condemned on account of them. He was hurried away to the death of the cross, and the gloomy prison-house of His rocky sepulchre where the stone was rolled to the mouth of the grave. If you never saw Him come out, then you might well believe that He was still enduring the just sentence of the law. But lo! 'he is risen - he is not here' - 'Christ is risen indeed.' God, who was His duge, hath raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places; so that you may be quite sure He has satisfied the justice of God. He has suffered everything that it was needful for Him to suffer - He has paid the utmost farthing.