Daily Readings for Wednesday 31st January 2024

Prayer - Wednesday
- Give thanks to God for the Bible, its inspiration and preservation for us to read it today. (2 Timothy 3.16, Proverbs 30.5.)
- Give thanks to God that we have easy access to the Scripture in English, in our mother tongue.
- Pray the Lord would bless us as we study the Bible through the ministry this coming year. That as we work through a book of the Bible the Lord would       continue to help us to grasp God's truth.
- Pray for the Lunchtime outreach service and those who attend; pray that more from the offices nearby and Christians who commute are able to join us.


Church Services
Sermons
Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (also available online via Facebook)
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (also available online via Facebook)
Bible study and prayer
Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (also available online via Facebook)
Lunch hour service
Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (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 - Esther having made known Mordecai's nearness of kin unto her, he is advanced in Haman's room. Esther with tears beseecheth for the reversal of the letters gone forth against the Jews. The king granteth authority to the Jews to stand upon their defence, and letters are issued out accordingly. Mordecai's honours, and the joy of the Jews.
Esther 8
Preface - The Jew's prerogative; which is not vacated by the unbelief of some; nor is God's justice impeached in punishing their sinfulness. The law itself convinceth the Jews also universally of sin; so that no flesh is justified by the deeds of the law; but all indiscriminately by God's grace through faith in Christ: yet without annulling the obligations of the law.
Romans 3


Daily Light - Morning
If ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land
from before you...those which ye let remain of them
shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides,
and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

Fight the good fight of faith. - For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations...and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds
of the body, ye shall live.

The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. - I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. - We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Nu. 33.55; 1 Tim. 6.12; 2 Co. 10.3-5
Ro. 8.12-13
Ga. 5.17; Ro. 7.23; Ro. 8.37


Daily Light - Evening
If a man sin against the LORD,
who shall intreat for him?

If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. - Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?... It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
1 Sa. 2.25; 1 Jn. 2.1-2; Ro. 3.25-26
Job 33.24
Ro. 8.31,33-34


A Puritans Catechism
Q51 - How is the sabbath to be sanctified?
A - The sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.


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


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The work of Christ
The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness' sake; he will magnify the law, and make it honourable. - Isaiah 42 v 21
This is in some respects the most wonderful description of the work of Christ given in the whole Bible. He is often said to have fulfilled the law. Thus, Matthew 3 v 15: 'Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.' And again, Matthew 5 v 17: 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' But here it is said He will 'magnify the law, and make it honourable; He came to give new lustre and glory to the holy law of God, that all worlds might see and understand that the law is holy, and just, and good. When God wrote the law upon the heart of Adam in His creation, that was magnifying the law. He showed it to be a great and holy and happy law, when he wrote it in the bosom of so holy and happy a creature as man then was. When God spoke the law from Mount Sinai, that magnified the law, and made it glorious. When He spoke it with His own voice in so dreadful a manner, when He wrote it twice with His own finger, this was magnifying it - enough, one would think, to make our modern Sabbath breakers tremble to erase it. But most of all when Christ died, did He give lustre, and greatness, and glory, and majesty, to the law of God in the sight of all worlds.