Covenant Reformed Baptist Church of Angier

This is a way to close the service with an encouragement or charge from the Scriptures to send us on our way.

Jesus tells us that what we do with our money speaks volumes about where our hearts are at and we are told that "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:7). When we give faithfully, God is glorified because we are simply returning to Him what is already His. "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it," says Psalm 24:1, and it also glorifies God by enabling good deeds to be done by the church.

"Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). "He gave pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12). God exercises His divine power through the Word, making it the basis of any relationship we have with Him. Thus, preaching directly from Scriptures should be at the center of church life and is the central piece of our Sunday morning worship.

This is a time for the pastor to bring the congregation before the LORD in prayer as well as to pray for our community, nation, and other believers around the world.

We read in Nehemiah 9 how, in preparation to hear the Scriptures read, the people of God confessed their sins. The time in our service is an opportunity to bring those things before God that can hinder our communion with Him and, thus, our ability to hear what it is he has to say to us through the preaching of His Word. We do so knowing that forgiveness is ours through Christ and the reading of a passage of Assurance reminds us of this fact.

As Christians, we love God's Word and the more we are exposed to it, the better it is for our spiritual growth. To expose us to the whole of God's counsel, the reading will typically come from the opposite Testament of the sermon (i.e., if the sermon comes from the New Testament, the reading will come from the Old Testament). The reading will often be used to prepare us for our confession of sin.

Colossians 3:16 calls on Christians to "teach and admonish" one another. The congregation reading out loud a portion of Scripture, or a Confession of the church, is a way in which we call upon one another to believe the truths of the Word. In essence we are saying to one another: "This I believe, believe with me!"

Colossians 3:16 calls on Christians to sing "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God." We, therefore, sing a mix of psalms, older hymns, and newer spiritual songs. The psalms are typically sung acapella as a nod to the practice of our Baptist forefathers.

The beginning of corporate worship is indicated by the reading of a portion of Scripture acknowledging the greatness and majesty of the Lord and the worship due Him.