In the literature on this is the efficacy of a means of grace necessarily tied to its use. What I mean by that is if you hear the preached word, can God use it to encourage you only when the preaching is occurring? Or can the preached word become a means of grace to you on Tuesday? And if the answer is, well, it can come on Tuesday, then we have to. The next question is, can the same thing happen to the Lord's Supper? Can the same thing happen with baptism prayer? Does God answer our prayers at the moment we pray or can prayer become a means of grace later on? Lord, give me strength this week or this month or in my life. Give me strength. And then, you know, six years later we get the wisdom we need for a given thing. So so so it's a long haul approach thing. I don't think it's a fair question. I think matter of fact, you keep asking yourself that question, you're going to be discouraged and then you're going to put props up to gauge, gauge holiness by that God hasn't done and just do what God says. He gives us grace to do what he says. On the Lord's day, go worship him as often as your church does and as often as you've committed to. During the week, be faithful to whatever your calling is and keep doing that. And lo and behold, someday you'll die well. And that's a great and marvelous and wonderful testimony, by the way. I was thinking that there is just the aspect that how do we know they're working because God says they're working. You don't have to believe it first. Hope nobody was out in the parking lot scraping bumper stickers off their car. Or crossing out. How do you how do you say with confidence to a friend when they ask you how your church is? And you say, by the grace of God, we're growing. But you know that numerically speaking, maybe you're shrinking and you get discouraged in the ministry. You just know that God says, I will build my church and Gates of hell will not prevail against it. And the Word of God is effective and His Word does not return void. You have confidence in those things all the time. Not by what you see, you walk by faith and not by sight. Your confidence is in God and His Word to be effective. You watch over His Word to perform it, whether you feel it or see it. We looked at some of the confessional statements earlier today and we saw that. especially in the earlier confessional statements, the emphasis on the public means of grace, the role of the gathered church in the means of grace. And so we had several questions along the lines of how do we distinguish between public and private means of grace? Is there such a thing as private means of grace? Do we do we get rid of the idea of private means of grace? How can we understand those two things, public and private means of grace? I've been drafted. I still have my draft card from when I was 18. It was one each. I don't even know what a draft card is. Are you a draft dodger? I'm not old enough. He burned his, yeah. Well, you know, we have to be careful about this because it's a question that comes out of the 20th and 21st century. And I think that that's the problem with the question. is that it makes an assumption or two that if you take it back through the history of the church cannot be applied. All right. Now, private means of grace generally falls into the category of things like Bible reading. OK, now, before I say anything else, let me say this Bible reading is a really good thing that we all ought to do. OK, do you all hear me saying that? OK, it's a really good thing, but it's not a means of grace. Because most Christians in the history of the church have not been able to have a Bible to read. Bibles were not accessible to Christians until after Gutenberg discovered or invented movable type. And even then, the German Bibles that were printed were very expensive. Luther translated the Bible into German and it was really as a result of his translation that Bible reading began to be something that was accessible to most Christians. And then of course today most of us have multiple Bibles in our homes. Now remember what I said, it's a really good thing to do. But a means of grace has to be something that was accessible to all Christians at all times. It didn't become a means of grace in 1485 or whatever year it was that Gutenberg first published the Bible. And at that point it becomes a means of grace. That's why we have to be careful about this. I'm not saying that we shouldn't read the Bible. I'm not saying that it's not a good thing. It is a very good thing and our minds ought to be full of the Bible. But it doesn't take on the same level. There's no command in the Bible to read the Bible for ourselves, because most believers have never had the opportunity to own a Bible. It was the public reading of Scripture. In fact, Paul, in the commands that he gives to Timothy in First Timothy, chapter four, verse 13, he says this, and the modern translations get it right. Some of the older translations miss this, but here's the ESV rendering of first Timothy four thirteen. Well, let me let me just read verse twelve. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity. Paul knows that Timothy is a young man in that culture. Being a young man, it was something of a stumbling block to older men. He was probably in his 30s. You didn't become an adult until you were 40 years old. Sounds good to people. But also you were elderly at 50. So I passed the elderly mark quite a few years ago. I've come to grips with it. It's okay. I've embraced it. I'm elderly. But Paul has to say this to Timothy. Then the next thing that he says is this. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have. Paul tells Timothy that one of the areas that he must concentrate on as a minister in the Church of Christ is his ability to read the scriptures. I think Paul means practice this, grow in it, be better at it. And the reason for that is That's the only place during the week that Christians would have been able to hear the Bible, to know the Bible. They didn't have copies by themselves. Maybe some of the wealthy might have been able to get a copy of a manuscript of a book of the Bible. But even that is questionable. See, most of them didn't have it. And so you have this language right in Scripture. Paul tells Timothy to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. And so while I don't want to deny that certain private things are of great benefit and can be helpful, they ought not to be put in the category of the means of grace. Now, that's probably surprising to you. I may have just raised all kinds of questions in your mind, but I hope that even here in 1 Timothy chapter 4, you get a sense of why that distinction needs to be made. One of my friends gave me a helpful category a few years ago, and he said that we need to have in our minds a distinction between the means of grace. I have been speaking English for a few years, the means of grace and the means of growth. And there is a difference between them. And I think we could put Bible reading, for example, into the category means of growth. Well, it's not necessarily a means of grace. Anybody else want to weigh in on that or you just want the darts thrown at me? They say that they like my answer. We'll see. Lots of private things could be mentioned. One of the questions we received asked about family worship and quiet time and how do those things fit in with the means of grace? You're getting at that. Would you call those two things means of growth or would you describe those two things differently? Yeah, I think that they're means of growth. Now, when I'm in a bad mood, I like to say don't ever use the phrase quiet time in my presence. Because it ought not to be quiet at all. You know, that has this sense of waiting there for God to speak to me. And that's not how it is. I like the older Puritan language of devotional exercises. My wife and I exercise every day together, six days a week. We don't exercise on the Lord's Day. We exercise to try to make our bodies, as we get older, stay fit. And that's what you're doing, is you are exercising spiritually when you pray, when you read your Bible, when you meditate. So I have this thing about the phrase quiet time. You want to know what the other thing that I tell my students never ever to say in my presence? You want to know? I tell them when they stand up to preach, don't you dare ever say, I have something to share with you. Because the preacher never shares anything. You know, I heard one guy stood up one time and he said, somebody introduced him and said, so brother, so and so is here to share today, share what's on his heart. And he said, the only thing that I have on my heart is, is cholesterol and sin. He's right. I didn't share in any of those sessions. I preached to you God's word. authoritatively preach to you God's word. Sharing has the connotation of you can take it or not. Would you like some rolls with your spaghetti? No, thanks. I've had enough. OK, that's sharing at the table. Preaching is proclaiming God's truth. So, brothers, watch out in the next couple of days. Don't share anything. Except at the table. We're going to let you keep the mic because we don't want to share. Larry wants to share. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole right now. I think one of the things, and I appreciate what you said and I agree with you, and I think one of the things that we have to be very careful about in our modern American culture is a shift in authority and it can be very subtle. And that is that shift where we've been taught by the scripture, such as in the message we heard last night, that there's a place of authority in our lives, that the word of God occupies. And there's a way that we get that word that Christ is ordained. And we're tempted constantly. Because of our sinfulness as human beings and creatures, but in the culture we live in, to, without thinking about it, shift the authority to my own self. And that undermines the place of preaching and the place of the church in the economy of our Lord and Savior and the new covenant. A lot of questions are provoked with this kind of topic when I hear the emphasis given on the corporate gathering and the public preaching of the scriptures and the public reading of the scriptures in our corporate praying. It usually provokes questions from people who, either of themselves or they think of someone who they remember, they were converted under a circumstance that's very, it wasn't in a corporate setting. They were, they were at home privately reading their Bible or they were, they found a tract on the street and they believe that the Lord used that to convert them. How would you address those particular kinds of situations in light of our discussion on the means of grace? Well, first of all, everything you have asked is something that I have already have in my notes for Saturday morning. Okay. So you all just need to quit asking questions or I'm not going to have anything to preach, including this illustration about the tracks. Quick point. Yeah, Larry will forget by then. I've never heard you say that before, Steve. There's a distinction in the concept of the means of grace between that which is ordinary and that which is extraordinary. One of the commentators on the Baptist Catechism, Benjamin, and I don't know how to pronounce his last name, is it Bedome or Bedimy? Bedome. Okay, Bedome. I think I got two different answers there. raises this question, you know, is it true that sometimes people are saved or acted upon by other means than the means of grace? Well, yeah. And one of his examples is Saul of Tarsus was not exactly saved through the ordinary means of grace. So we need to make a distinction between what's ordinary and extraordinary. And God is free to use extraordinary means. We are not free to then assume that anything extraordinary becomes something that we must institutionalize at that point. So illustration of I knew a gentleman who got, say, drunk, stumbling out of a bar and a God's plan of salvation track blew up against his pant leg. And faithful man, all his life afterwards, he tried to shake it loose, thought it was a piece of paper, bent down, picked it up, read it, confessed his sins, asked God to save him. Next day, he read it again, opened his Bible, started reading, and God just miraculously saved him. I don't think that means we should go around dropping tracks in the street because God will use them to blow up against people's pant legs to save them. That's an extraordinary situation. That doesn't mean we institutionalize it. But God does use those things. Dr. Barcella says that has been institutionalized. But the other thing that I would want to say is it would be interesting to sit down with that man and ask him if he ever sat under the preaching ministry of the gospel in his past. Because usually in those kind of circumstances, They have heard the word of God that has been preached to them in the past, and there's something at the end that the Lord uses. And so even in that case, it is the preaching of the word that has been the means of grace in that person's life, simply working later on in that person. And so you can't isolate that particular incident in his life necessarily from what may have been present before in his life. And I'm taking that away from what you're going to say tomorrow morning, right? In his particular case, he claimed that he had basically been raised pagan. Now, I don't think this would have been 1960s. I'm not sure that's possible in 1960s America as much as he thought. But I would just say that you can connect that question to the first question you asked Brother Rich about the effectiveness of the means of grace. And Rich's answer in part was, You may hear the word preached at one time and it become more effective at another time. And I don't want to overstretch that, but I have a very close relative who was converted reading a tract after an evening of drinking. And, but he had been in church. So I don't know. How do you, how do you nail down what actually was the effective means? I'm sure the tract was helpful. But he also heard the word of God preached. Can that come back to somebody two or three or four or five years later? I think so. Absolutely. They kept looking at me, so. First Corinthians three, five and following. This is where Paul is trying to help the Corinthians recognize how carnal they are by identifying with different leaders in the church. What then is Apollos, what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. Now, that's a really helpful thing for me. And I think for any of us, especially if we go into territory that has never been reached by the gospel before, maybe our ministry is a ministry of sowing. And maybe it's not until a generation after or two generations later that God gives the increase. But our task again, as we said before, is to be faithful, to sow, to do that sowing work and allow God in his time the watering to go on and allow God in his time to give the increase. Back to Larry. I want to I want to add one more thing. This this emphasizes to us how important your praying for your pastor is. You're praying for your pastor, maybe the most important thing you ever do in evangelism. And don't discount that. Give it the weight it should have. Praying for the power of the spirit and the preaching of the word of God is extremely important. Jim, you gave a definition of the means of grace, and you incorporated two main criteria by which we determine that something is a means of grace. Those two things were, first of all, dominical institution. They're instituted by the Lord, and they are attended with a promise of blessing. So we had some listeners who heard that those two criteria and wanted to ask you if there were. It would seem like there are some other things in the New Testament that meet those two criteria, that they're instituted of the Lord and that they're attended with blessing. One example would be from Matthew, chapter six, verses two through four. And the question is, would the giving of alms to the poor be considered a means of grace? It would seem in that passage that it's that that activity is instituted by the Lord and that it's attended with the promise of blessing, namely rewarding you openly. And another example in terms of giving as a means of grace would be second Corinthians nine. Does that does that meet the definition that you are giving to us? Or would you make a distinction somewhere in there? Yeah, well, I think that we need to be careful because there are several things that in one way or another are able to meet the definition as the confessions have formulated it. but are not in and of themselves means of grace. For example, Ephesians 6, 1, 2, and 3. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. That's command, all right? It's a divine institution. I think since the Apostle Paul wrote it under the inspiration of the Spirit as a representative of Christ, we could call it a dominical institution. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. There we have divine or dominical institution. We have the explicit statement of a promise. And then we can come to that and say, well, is that a means of grace? But no, that's not what the promise is. You see, the promise is that it will go well with you in the land, meaning if children obey their parents, they won't face the rod. It's really a physical promise that's there. Likewise, in cases in the New Testament, the word blessed or blessing doesn't always mean the same thing. In the Matthew passage, for example, I'm just looking at it quickly. I don't see the word blessing there. It just says your father who sees in secret will reward you. But if we turn back to chapter 5, we have the Beatitudes which speak about blessing, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn the meek. But that's not the promise of covenantal blessing of grace. That's a specific blessing for that thing. So I think that we have to be really careful and not be naive and say everything that seems to us on the surface to meet the criteria is necessarily a means of grace. Is it a good thing? Sure, it's a good thing. Is it a good thing for children to obey their parents and to live long in the land that the Lord has given to them? Of course, it's a good thing. And they must obey their parents. You know, what's the first memory verse that you teach to your kids? John 3, 16, maybe, and then Ephesians 6, 1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Nathan, what does the Bible say? What does Ephesians 6, 1 say? Oh, he looks up at me. Children, obey your parents. Now, remember that, Nathan. That's a good thing to do, but that doesn't make it a means of grace. So we have to be really careful about this and think a little bit more deeply than what we may see right on the surface of things. Along those same lines, someone wondered from, can I follow? Oh, yes, sir. Go ahead. When you correct me if I'm wrong here, but be nice. He said when he, when you're in a bad mood, he said something about being in a bad mood, and then he started yelling at us. I thought, what, you're in a good mood now? What would it be like to be in a bad mood? Anyway, means of grace. When we talk about the grace that comes through means we're talking about the benefits of redemption accomplished by Christ applied to our souls by the Holy Spirit. Correct. Yes. So that would limit. That's right. OK. view those institutions ordained by our Lord through which or those means through which he is pleased by the blessing of the spirit to bring the fruits of his redemption to our souls. So I think if you think of it that way it's going to limit the concept right. Because because you know that for instance I don't know all Roman Catholic theologians are but some are believe that creation itself is sacramental, that we get grace through meditating on a tree, for instance, that they're all symbols of divine favor toward man. And since they're all symbols of divine favor toward man, we can get grace through them. Don't quote me that all Roman Catholic theologians believe that. Okay. I think some, but he sometimes said that, but I think that Jonathan Edwards had something in his stuff about that. And then somebody who did the gospel and the stars stuff. And then didn't D. James Kennedy do something like that? Yeah. That the gospel was in the stars that in the gospels, not in the stars. It's in the written word of God for us, but So I think understanding what we mean by grace, it's purchased grace, it's accomplished grace, it's mediatorial grace, it's saving, it's justifying, it's sanctifying, it's glorifying grace that comes to us through the mediator by the Spirit. That's going to limit our concept of means. Well, you use the words sacrament or sacramental, and we had a question that asked how proper is it to think of the means of grace as sacramental? Can we think of them as sacramental? Should we not think of them as sacramental? Or maybe we can start with the definition of sacramental. What does that word mean? What is a sacrament? And is that proper to apply to what we're talking about? The capital of California, Sacramento. There's a lot of. Yeah. So that's yours. Well, I wasn't here for his lectures yesterday. Ordinance. Ordain refers to dominical institution. Sacrament is just a word that encapsulates the concept of a means of grace. Personally, I don't have a problem with using the word sacrament. It's used in Baptist literature interchangeably. You know, people say, well, the Baptists purposefully left it out of the 1689 Confession. Well, it's in their catechisms, though. It's in Hercules Collins' catechism. Is it in what they call the Keech Catechism, too? Okay, but it's in their literature. And the important thing is for us to know, what do they mean by that? Not, look at that word. They're papists. They're going backwards. They're sliding. What do they mean by the use of that? They're writing in a context, in a historical theological context. They want to use, and they told us this in the preface of the confession, they want to use terms that others use that they think reflect accurately the teaching of scripture. They don't want to put a clog in religion. Is that what they said? Jim knows what they said. He was there at that meeting. It was good ones, yeah. So I personally don't have a problem with it. So an ordinance is something divinely instituted by our Lord Jesus. for his church. A sacrament is a means through which grace comes to us. In that sense, we could say that the word is sacramental. The baptism is sacramental, and I'll deal with that in a half hour, and the Lord's Supper is sacramental. That is a means through which redemptive, great mediatorial grace, purchase grace gets to the souls of Christ's people on earth. Yeah. Yeah, I think a key text for this is First Corinthians four, one where Paul says, this is how one should regard us. as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. This is one of the key texts why our confession emphasizes the fact that only pastors are the ones who ought to be administering the sacraments, if I can call them that. And I'm a little bit reluctant to use the word just because it does raise in people's minds some questions, and I don't want to distract them from what needs to be said. But when you read the commentaries that are made on this out of the Reformed and Puritan writers, they equate the mysteries of God with the sacraments. Now, why do they do that? Well, a mystery is something that reveals what has been hidden. And each of the sacraments, the word is just a Latin word. The sacraments are revealing the gospel. They are in actions of the gospel, the proclamation of Christ. What? Well, not exactly, but the preaching of Christ is a revelation of who He is, of what He's done. We explain that, we exegete it, we open it up. Remember what I said yesterday, we take an event that's hidden in the past and we open it up for people today because the only way that they can find salvation is by our explanation to them about what God did in Christ. Baptism is like that as well. Baptism depicts to us the nature of our death and resurrection in Christ. The Lord's Supper, it proclaims to us His death until He comes, because we have a loaf of bread that depicts to us His broken body, and we have a cup that depicts to us His shed blood. Those are mysteries in that sense. They're sacraments in that sense, in that they show to us what the gospel is. And when Paul says this, that's what he intends. We are stewards. A steward is just one who has been given a charge by someone in authority to dispense that which belongs to him. And that's what a minister is. He's simply a steward. He takes what Christ has commanded him to give to God's people, and he gives those things to God's people in preaching, in baptism, in the Lord's Supper. Prayer, granted, is a little bit different because prayer doesn't reveal to us the gospel. But prayer is always in Jesus' name. Why is it in Jesus' name? Because he's the mediator who in his broken body and shed blood has opened the way for us to come to God. So I would say here in 1 Corinthians 4.1, we have sacramental language if it's understood properly. What about saints in the Old Testament? Were there means of grace in the Old Testament? What were they? How did they work? He's the Old Testament guy. No. I'm not ready to answer that. I mean, if we're talking about that which is ordained of God and which by the truth of what it portrays, conveys grace to those of faith, then I would think, for example, that circumcision would have been a means of grace. It does not remove. its dual nature in that it was also a nationalistic emblem for an ethnic people, Israel as a theocratic nation. But, you know, when Romans 4 says that circumcision was a sign of the faith that Abraham had and that Moses then goes on to tell the Israelites they need to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts. That is that they need to be regenerated. So here you have truth being proclaimed in symbolic form by divine institution and which, when acted upon by spirit and through faith, is the gospel, then I would suggest that at least in that one entity you have a means of grace for Old Testament saints. And then I think you could elaborate from there preaching of the prophets and the ministry of the word. Certainly, the sacrificial system, as it's intended to be understood as a type of Christ. These things are of divine institution and because of the truth portrayed in them become a means of grace through faith through faith. OK, yeah, I took Old Testament as in mosaic, but yes, yeah. Pre Christ. Jason, you want to say anything? Well, what I was just thinking about was, you know, one of the places that we often turn to see preaching as a means of grace is in like first Peter one and two, where he talks about the word that was preached to you. And Peter speaking of the Word of God as living, the Word of God as abiding, the Word of God that remains. In order to establish his point, Peter makes reference to the Old Testament scripture, I think, Isaiah. All flesh is like grass, and its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. This, for Peter, is a great encouragement to use the preached word as a means of grace to the people of God." So it's something that, you know, unless Isaiah was just saying, well, this is true, but it won't really kick into effect until the new covenant. I don't think Isaiah is saying that. The Word of God remains forever. So therefore, the Word of God has always been and will always be a gracious thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we don't talk about this very much, but sometimes there are means of disgrace. When they're not mingled with faith, Isaiah's commission was a commission to go and preach to the people, but they would not hear. They would not understand. Imagine an ordination sermon. And here's the young man. He's just had hands laid on him. One of the elders preaches to him and says, here's your commission now, Bill. Your commission is to go out to the people of this town and to preach to them. But they'll never hear. They'll never understand. And they'll never believe. I can't imagine that being preached to me, but that's what Isaiah heard. And he said, how long, O Lord? And the Lord says, until the land is desolate, till the land is empty. Isaiah's mission was to preach. But it was really a means of disgrace to the Israelites because it was not mingled with faith. And I think that's why Paul brings Isaiah 53 1 right into the middle of that section in Romans 10 that we looked at last night. It's in verse 15 or verse 16. Lord, who has believed our report? Because to many people, the word has gone. But it's not mingled with faith, and so it's rejected for unbelievers who participate in the supper. There are warnings in First Corinthians 11 that are to be taken very seriously. You know, when in our church in Vista, California, when we lead the Lord's Supper, whether it's my co-elder or I, we always fence the table. We put restrictions on who may come. And sometimes we tell people we do this for your benefit, for your safety. Because if you come to the table in a manner that's not appropriate, you're actually doing harm to yourself and not receiving a benefit from coming. So the means of grace can be, in a sense, a means of disgrace when they're not mingled with faith. That needs to be remembered. We like to say means of grace. That means growth and forward movement and grace that comes from the mediator. But when they're not mingled with faith, they are means of condemnation, really. Connected to that, I wanted to ask Dr. Renahan, so was there mediatorial grace being dispensed prior to the incarnation? In other words, were they saved based on what Christ would do? Yes. Yes. So the son of God assumed the work of mediation before the incarnation. So how did that happen? Has that happened? I don't quite get your question. Was he mediating grace? No, no, I'm trying to think through this. It is hard to distinguish sometimes. Was was was media. Was he mediating anything prior to the incarnation? Was he functioning as mediator prior to the incarnation? Because if he was, then we could connect. My next question is, was the spirit of God ministering in the souls of the elect prior to the incarnation in light of what the sun would do in its incarnation. Yes. Okay. All right. We have to say that. Okay. So they're getting the benefits of redemption. Yes. That hasn't been accomplished. Right. Proactively in a sense or retroactively based upon when they'll be accomplished. Okay. So they're saved based on always, only everyone is saved based on Christ alone, alone, always. I think the concept of means of grace in this, you can answer this in the confessions is a new covenant, churchly doctrine, right? And the confessions are churchly doctrine, right? It's not a whole biblical theology of public worship or private worship or means of grace. It's a, it's a churchly document. So, so we might be asking a question that's Because we're using that phrase, we're taking it out of its churchly document, and we're putting it in the Old Testament. One of the problems with that is that... I'm getting off into many other things, but I'm going to stop. One of the problems with that is that I was talking... I don't have anything to say. It was just getting good. Why did you stop? The second one at fourteen one talks about the ministry of the word and the question is basically what does that mean precisely. We're all aware of the general environment that we're in today has taken that word ministry and certainly it has Ballooned out quite large so that there's a lot of things now that that we call ministry and maybe some who would have the you mentioned the labyrinth. I think yesterday or a wide variety of things that and some might even look at the labyrinth and say, well, this is. This is ministering the word to my soul because I walk the path and I think about a Bible verse or I look at the picture at a station and I think of a verse or things like that. The writers of the Second London, for them, was this just a general catch-all phrase or was it a technical phrase that they were using that they have something particular in mind when they talk about, and it's not just in this place, but this ministry of the word. Yes, the ministry of the word is a technical phrase that refers to the preaching of the word by authorized men. And that's fleshed out really in the Baptist catechism. And we saw some of that earlier today when the question was asked, how is the the word made effectual to the salvation of the elect? And the answer is basically that it's through the word that is preached. That's where the promise of blessing comes, that Christ will speak through that word to his people. So, yeah, through the sent messenger. And that, you know, in Romans 10, 14 through 17, that's the point of the fourth question. Remember, I tried to say They, the pronoun they in the beginning focuses on unbelievers. But when it comes to that participle at the end of the third question, it shifts from the audience to the pulpit and they become the preachers. And how shall they preach unless they are sent? That's a neglected question in our day because we have a lot of self-appointed preachers where the Bible, Paul there is asking the question, how can they preach? What right do they have to preach unless they're sent? And I would say if they're not sent, and the only legitimate sending body in the world today is the Church of Jesus Christ. If they're not sent, they don't have the right to go out and preach. Now, that goes contrary to all of the self appointment that we have in evangelical culture today. But that's what Paul says. And you can, you know, you could come back at me and say, but I know so and so who went somewhere by himself. And it seems that God blesses ministry. And my response is my obedience is to what Scripture says, not to an anecdote. We must always bring our anecdotes to the test of Scripture, and if Scripture says, how shall they preach unless they are sent? We have to say we need to send them to authorize them in order for them to preach. And that's why our confession, if you know, chapter 26 actually has a paragraph. It's paragraph 11 that speaks about those who are not pastors, but who are authorized by the church to go out and preach. We've done that five or six times in our church where we have formally recognized men, not to the eldership. But we've given them what's effectively a license to preach. The church has voted unanimously in favor of them. And I tell you, it's a blessing to them when we do that, when they are recognized as gifted brothers in our church, officially recognized by us. It gives them a freedom and an ability that they say they've never had before. It's been a wonderful thing. How will they preach unless they're saying that's what Paul says. If anybody has a problem with that, they have a problem with the apostle. And not just with this narrow-minded Reformed Baptist sitting before you. They have a problem with the Apostle Paul. Sorry if I sound a little strong about that, but that's what the Bible says. On a practical and personal level, when I moved from Kentucky to California, I wanted to start a church. But before I said that basically to anyone, I started getting advice and counsel from other guys. And the advice I got was, was to call Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada. I've known those men for 20 years and see if they'll kind of take you into their membership and at some point send you to do that. And I was wrestling in my own heart. Do I just show up in Palmdale and start preaching or how do I do this? So they basically commissioned me to preach up there. in Palmdale, and it gave me just exactly what you said. And even though I was 50 years old and older, it still gave me a sense that I wasn't going unsent. I was a sent one to do what I was doing. So anyway, it's kind of connected to what he was saying. First question, when you said narrow-minded reformed Baptist, were you talking about yourself? Yes. Okay, just checking. To be a little narrow-minded myself, in my opinion, there are some analogies to the idea of being a self-appointed minister to being like practicing medicine on your own without a license. There is a give and take within the corporate body of Christ that is necessary. For determining such things, and then there's also the submission to authority that's necessary, and when we become self appointed ministers, we rob ourselves of both of those benefits. The phrase ministry of the word is used elsewhere in the confession in Chapter 26, paragraph 10. When it very specifically refers to the work of pastors as being the ministry of the word and the scriptural reference there is to Acts chapter six, where deacons are appointed and they are given the ministry of the benevolence of the church and the apostles say, but we will give ourselves to the ministry of the word and a prayer. And so they saw them both saw themselves as servants, the deacons of service and themselves as servants. But the service of the word was retained for the leadership or the spiritual leadership, if you would, the apostles and elders of the church. And so that's a it's a technical phrase ministry of the word that pertains to pastors and the work of pastors. OK, we have well, first of all, thank you for your very thoughtful questions, I think they were very helpful.