Wednesday, 21st August

READING

2 Timothy 2v14 -16

MEDITATION

Why Church ?

What do you think makes for a healthy church?
In his book “Men with a Message” written by John Stott, Stott summed up the teaching of Christ to the  churches in the book of Revelation  this way: “These then are the marks  of the ideal church-love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility.”
Mark Dever in his book “Nine marks of a healthy church” tells how he asked his congregants one Sunday: “What are you doing here?  Whether you’ve been coming to this church for fifty years or this is your first Sunday – why do you come?
What makes a really good church?
Dever argues that the first mark of a healthy church is Expositional preaching.  If we get this one right everything else, he says, will follow because God has decided to act by His Spirit through His word.  Expositional preaching, Dever says, is not simply producing a verbal commentary on a passage of scripture. Rather, expositional preaching is that preaching which takes for the point of the sermon the point of a particular passage of Scripture.  That’s it.  The preacher opens the Word and unfolds it for the people of God.  It is of great importance that the preacher is committed to preach a passage of Scripture in context, ie., expositionally- which means taking as the point of the message the point of the passage.  So, preaching should be mostly expositional.  It’s a good practise to go through books of the Bible.  I believe it’s good every year to preach from at least one, probably 2 Old Testament books, a series from the Gospels, and at least one epistle.

Let’s continue to hear God speak to us through the Scriptures.  Paul in 2 Timothy instructs the young pastor Timothy “to correctly handle the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15)
The other 8 marks that Dever discusses in his book are: 2: Biblical theology, 3: The gospel, 4: A biblical understanding of conversion, 5: A biblical understanding of evangelism, 6: A biblical understanding of church membership 7: Biblical church Discipline, 8: A concern for Discipleship and growth, : 9: Biblical church leadership.

It’s worth a read.

PRAYER

Lord renew my confidence in the Scriptures.  May I desire to sit under them and be committed to hearing the Scriptures taught regularly, so that I can hear you speak to me. Amen.

PRAYER for WEDNESDAY

Today we pray for the following 6 things:

• Pray that the pastors of CCB would remain faithful to expository preaching.
• Pray that we at CCB would not let the world set the agenda for the church.
• Pray that we would recognise the importance of the good news of Jesus Christ for all
• Pray we at CCB would invest our lives in others, wanting to encourage them in Jesus.
• Pray that we would want to see growth, both in numbers but also spiritually.
• Pray that we would be profoundly and deeply thankful to God, that he has had mercy on us, so that our hope would become more certain.