Month: March 2020

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“Righteous Praying”

At a time like this the instinct of believers in Jesus is, rightly, to pray. But, what do we pray for? How do we avoid meaningless babble and repetitive cliches?The model prayer that Jesus taught his disciples was to focus prayer in a meaningful way according to God’s priorities and purposes; to help us pray in a genuine relational way as we learn to care about what he cares about.

To help facilitate and encourage ‘households’ to meet together on Sunday around God’s word and to pray together for their own needs and for the needs of the body of Christ and our community, we have provided a suggested order of service that includes the Bible readings and links to a couple of songs and a pre recorded Bible talk. 

This week Ray has recorded an audio and video message for us, so please follow the below suggested order of service for your convenience.

Suggested household worship for Sunday 29th March.

Read Psalm 4:1-8
Prayer: Praise and confession
Song as per YouTube link

Bible reading: Isaiah 58:1-14
Song as per YouTube link

Read together from the Bible: Matthew 6:1-18
Then watch the below embedded YouTube video as Ray teaches from Matthew 6:5-13

Or listen to below embedded Audio from WPC website.

Prayer for needs in response to the Bible passage.
(check bulletin for Church family news in this regard)

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Information Concerning Services At Warragul Presbyterian

Brothers & sisters in Christ,

May God sustain you through the various difficulties that this current COVID-19 crisis will cause you in your particular circumstances.

The elders met recently to discuss our response to the current circumstance.

In line with the latest announcement by the health authorities, we will be suspending physical Sunday services for a while.

In view of this we want to encourage ‘households’ to meet together on Sunday around God’s word and to pray together for their own needs and for the needs of the body of Christ and our community.

To help facilitate this, each week we will provide an outline of a service that includes the Bible readings and links to a couple of songs and a pre recorded Bible talk from Steve or Ray that continues to follow our preaching program.

This will be available later in each week, hopefully by Saturday morning.

Of course keeping in touch with others will be really important at this time, so it would be good to make use of phone and the various internet chat forums.

This crisis reminds us that church life does not depend on buildings or special effects but wholly on God and His word.

Psalms 46:1-3
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Regards in Christ

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“The Righteousness Heaven Requires”

Matthew 5:20-48

Life is a gift. No one can choose to be born and very few choose when they will die. However, we are all required to make a choice during our lifetime which has eternal consequences.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:20
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The Pharisees were an impressive people, but we are told to beware of them by Jesus, because they didn’t understand and correctly apply the God given Law.
They wanted to be noticed and praised by others for their practices and believed God was impressed with their self righteousness.

Jesus states in Matthew 6:1
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

The Pharisees self righteousness failed to achieve the standard required for entering Heaven.
What is needed, is a far greater righteousness than those who simply practice law keeping.,

The Pharisees misunderstood the intention of the law and Jesus had to explain that it wasn’t good enough to just ‘not murder’ or ‘not commit adultery’, for we must not even hate or lust. Hatred is the seed that leads to murder and lust is the seed that leads to committing adultery.

The only righteousness that is acceptable to a perfect, holy God can’t come from within us.
It is a righteousness that can only be given to us from God by his Spirit through trusting in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

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“The Genuine Righteousness Of God’s Kingdom”

Deuteronomy 30:1-10, Matthew 5:11-20

True or false?

  1. The Law was God’s way of salvation for the Old Testament people, but it didn’t work, so now we have Jesus.
  2. We don’t need the Old Testament anymore, because we now have the teaching of Jesus which is far superior.
  3. The Old Testament is a poor reflection of God, but Jesus is a better representation.
Genuine righteousness will attract hostility. It’s not just that genuine righteousness makes us look bad, it’s that it exposes how unrighteous our hearts really are, and that exposure is naturally hated by unregenerate hearts. That is why Jesus is so hateful to self-righteous people.
 
Christians can expect persecution when we publicly exhibit the righteousness of Jesus and we can expect to be hated and reviled and slandered by the world just as Jesus our master was. But we can rejoice, because our heavenly reward is so much greater than our temporal suffering. Our willingness to suffer for the gospel is evidence of our Lord’s righteousness; for it is confirmation of our faith in Christ’s righteousness by which we are justified.
 
We are to be as salt and light to the world. The world will only see the transforming power of Jesus and give glory to God our Father when we shine our light openly.
 
So how does Jesus relate to the Old Testament Law? Did Jesus come to abolish the law or did he come to fulfil it?
 
We can’t properly understand Jesus and his sacrificial death without reading and understanding the requirements and principles of the Old Testament.
 
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“Worship – A Pattern For Today”

1 Chronicles 16:1-36 : 13:1-14, 15:25-29

Chronicles was written for the returning exiles of Judah from Babylon to reassure them of Gods faithfulness towards his people.

The ark was symbolic of Gods presence amongst his people and we see King David involved in worship of God and the return of the ark to Jerusalem.

On the first attempt, the ark was carried upon a new cart and Uzza reached out to steady the ark when the oxen stumbled, but he was struck down by God and died.

The sin of Uzza should be a warning to us to take care that we are not brash or irreverent when dealing with the holiness of God.
Our worship should only be based on Gods word and through our Lord Jesus Christ.

On the second attempt, the ark was carried by the Levites and this time God helped them.

We have a natural tendency to change the true image of God for our own and to develop strange methods of worship which are unacceptable and disobedient to God.
It is only with Gods help that we can worship him in spirit and truth.

David danced for joy before the ark of God and he was generous to his subjects as the Lord had been gracious to him.
The people sang together with thanksgiving to the Lord.

Today we look at this beautiful song of David.

1 Chronicles 16:29
“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come before him!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;”