Daily Readings for Sunday 7th 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 119 v 41-56; Matthew 10 v 1-22 - Sermon by Jonathan Arnold
Doctrine Class - in church (after lunch) (and also available online via Facebook)
(Doctrine Class) - The all sufficient God - Psalm 23 v 1 - Class by Dennis Arnold
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (and also available online via Facebook)
​(Sunday evening) Scripture reading - Psalm 119 v 9-24; Isiah 53 v 1-12 - Sermon by Jonathan Arnold
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 - God inviteth Judah to return to him notwithstanding her vile whoredom. Israel, though rejected for her lewdness, is still less criminal than Judah. Both are called to repentance upon the promises of the gospel. The people reproached with their unfaithfulness make a solemn confession of their sins.
Jeremiah 3
Preface - The transfiguration of Christ: he instructeth his disciples concerning the coming of Elias: healeth the lunatic, foretelleth his own passion, and payeth tribute.
Matthew 17


Daily Light - Morning
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit
into the wilderness
to be tempted of the devil.

In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. - We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. - My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Mt. 4.1; He. 5.7-9; He. 4.15
1 Co. 10.13; 2 Co. 12.9


Daily Light - Evening
The Son of man came...
to give his life a ransom for many.

If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. - I lay down my life for the sheep... No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. - Without shedding of blood is no remission.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Mt. 20.28; He. 9.13-14
Isa. 53.7; Jn. 10.15,18
Lev. 17.11; He. 9.22
Ro. 5.8-9


A Puritans Catechism
Q 38 - What shall be done to the wicked at their death?
A - The souls of the wicked shall at their death be cast into the torments of hell, and their bodies lie in their graves till the resurrection and the judgment of the great day.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Perseverance of the Saint
Chapter 17
PARAGRAPH 2
​
This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with him, the oath of God, the abiding of his Spirit, and the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace; from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

1. Romans 8:30 
2. Romans 9:11,16 
3. Romans 5:9,10 
4. John 14:19 
5. Hebrews 6:17,18 
6. 1 John 3:9 
7. Jeremiah 32:40

​


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Different ways
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with an infidel?
2 Corinthians 6 v 14

Can two walk together except they be agreed? It is impossible that two souls can be happy together if they love opposite things. It is like two bullocks in the yoke drawing different ways. Hence the deep wisdom of the command which forbids God's children to intermarry with the world. What fellowship hath light with darkness? In the same way with Christ's bride, she must be of one mind with him, if she would enter in with him to the marriage.
Suppose one of you who has an old heart were to be admitted with Christ to the marriage. Your heart is enmity to God, you hate God's people, the Sabbath is a weariness, you serve divers lusts, and pleasures. The Lamb that is in the midst of the throne would lead you, and God would wipe away tears from your eyes. But you hat God and the Lamb. How could you be happy there? None but God's children or companions (psalm-singing hypocrites, as you used to call them) - could you enjoy it? Ah, my friends, there shall in no wise enter in any that defileth, and that maketh or loveth a lie. If you are still unborn again, you are not ready.