Greetings, and welcome to Redeemer Radio, a radio ministry of Redeemer Reformed Baptist Church of Redlands, California, dedicated to declaring the glory of God and the redemption that is found in Jesus Christ. I am Jeff Massey, your host, and with me in the studio is Pastor Steve Markodont of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Ontario, California, and your co-host. And with us today is our special guest, Pastor Sam Rinehan of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada, California. And we will continue our interview with him on the subject of God's covenant shortly. But before we do, I want to read a few paragraphs from the work, A Discourse of the Covenants, from Nehemiah Cox, a Baptist theologian, on the fact that God has always dealt with men by way of covenant. He writes, It is wise to observe that the holy and wise God has always dealt with the children of men in a way of covenant. The great God has not kept His distance from man, but He has condescended to come to terms with him. And as He has required obedience in some things, He has also been pleased to oblige Himself beyond the debt of a Creator by the promise of a bountiful reward, so that it follows that all the worship and obedience that God has required and accepted from the children of men has been on covenant terms. their ability and moral capacity to walk well-pleasing before Him has been given to them or worked in them in accordance with the ends of their covenant relationship with Him. From this are several consequences. One, once people have fallen under the guilt of breaching the covenant, they are by their own failure utterly disabled from yielding any acceptable obedience to God on the terms of that covenant which they have violated. Their interest in that covenant relationship is forfeited and lost by them. They remain under the penal sanctions of the covenant, but are utterly incapable of strength to answer the ends of that covenant, and have wholly lost their right to its reward. Secondly, if they are without strength with respect to the condition and end of that covenant, which they once had an interest in, then they are so much more without strength while they remain in their lapsed state with respect to the terms of another covenant, a covenant being more excellent and mysterious and wholly supernatural in its doctrine and its terms. And then thirdly, this means that the spiritual strength and ability to please God cannot in any way be restored to them except by a new covenant interest and that new creation which accompanies it. And of course these words from Nehemiah Cox help us to understand what happened when our first parents violated their first covenant with God, the covenant of works, thus disabling themselves, and why a new covenant, a more excellent and mysterious covenant, a covenant that is wholly supernatural in its doctrine, was actually needed. and this new covenant is the subject of our continuing interview with Pastor Sam Rinahan, who was our guest last week and who has kindly agreed to be back with us today to discover the new covenant with us. Pastor, we appreciate your being here and welcome back to Redeemer Radio. Thank you, Pastor Jeff and Pastor Steve. It's good to be with you again. Thank you. Pastor Sam, we left off last week talking about the covenant of grace and the promises that were given under it. Please remind us of what this covenant is about and what the promises under it are. The covenant of grace, as we discussed last week, is God's promise that all those who believe in Jesus Christ will receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Him, that is, in Jesus. And as we discussed last week, we talked about definitions of a covenant. And I want to return to those definitions for just a moment to help refresh us on why the covenant of grace is what it is, according to these definitions. So, last week we defined a covenant firstly as a promise suspended upon a condition. A promise suspended upon a condition. And using that definition, the covenant of grace is the promise of eternal life and forgiveness of sins. suspended upon the condition of trusting in Jesus, or having faith in Him, believing in Jesus. Second, we defined a covenant as a commitment with divine sanctions, a commitment with divine sanctions. And so if we use that definition in return to the covenant of grace, the covenant of grace is God's commitment to forgive the sins of all those who trust in Jesus. And the sanctions, those threats that guarantee the participation of the covenant parties, are directed at God himself. He must make good on his promises. And Jesus established the covenant of grace in His own blood, which means that His life is forfeit if the promises are not fulfilled. And that is a wonderful encouragement to the people who receive that promise because Jesus is God, He cannot die, thus the promises cannot fail. That makes the covenant of grace and its promises a sure, established, certain, and infallible covenant. It cannot fail. And that's the beauty of the gospel. The gospel is the good news about what Jesus has done. And all of mankind is commanded to trust in what Jesus has done in order to be saved from their sins. which means that the gospel is not about our works, our doing things to please God. In fact, to the contrary, it's about our sins and how we have displeased God and violated His laws. And so the gospel is then about how Jesus works, His obedience, covers our sins through His sacrifice, and makes us righteous in God's eyes because we receive the obedience of Jesus. The gospel is thus the good news of what Jesus has already done, not what we need to do, which means the covenant of grace is the good news of what Jesus has already done, and not what we need to do in order to please God or be reconciled with Him. And by trusting in Jesus, we get the complete package like we mentioned last week. If we wanted to talk about all of the promises that come in the covenant of grace, we could be here for weeks because there are so many minds that we could delve into. As Paul says in the beginning of Ephesians, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So we can simply sum those up by saying that in Jesus we receive promises such as we are justified, and we are adopted, and we are sanctified, and we are preserved unto glorification. We become co-heirs with Jesus, and thus the inheritors of a new heavens and new earth. We become citizens of heaven above. We become members of paradise. We get everything. Everything that man needs, everything that God has designed for man is given to us in and through Jesus Christ and the promises of the covenant of grace. Well, Pastor, what exactly is the relationship between the covenant of grace and the gospel? That's a good question, and one which in a way we've answered in previous questions, but let's add some clarity onto that question of how the covenant of grace relates to the gospel. Think about the gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus. Well, that is the promise of the covenant of grace. So the gospel is the promise of the covenant of grace. Let's go back to one of the definitions we have used. If a covenant is a promise suspended upon a condition, and if we ask ourselves, okay, well what is the promise of the covenant of grace? The answer is the gospel. The good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ. And if we start with the Gospel, if we start with the pieces and build up to the whole, think about the free nature of the Gospel promise. Well, what are we confronted with as soon as we begin to think about the free nature of the Gospel promise? We're confronted with the Covenant of Grace. And that's, as a side note, that's another reason why the name or the title or the category Covenant of Grace is such a helpful way of speaking. It's the covenant that promises free blessings, blessings of grace and not merit. And its promise is the gospel, the declaration of what Jesus has done and the command that comes with that to trust in who Jesus is and what he has done. In fact, some people call the Covenant of Grace the Gospel Covenant or the Covenant of Saving Grace because they're making a connection explicitly and directly between the Gospel and the Covenant of Grace. That is what it is. And so the Gospel and the Covenant of Grace are one and the same thing. The gospel is the promise of the covenant of grace. And wherever you see the promise of the gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus, there you see the covenant of grace. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Sam. And it is grace. It's pure grace. That's the wonderful thing about it, that God has done what we could not do. A few weeks ago, we talked about total depravity. People often don't understand what total depravity means. They think that we're saying that men are as wicked as they possibly ever could be. But what we're saying is that man is unable to please God in himself. There's nothing that he can do, but that God has made a remedy, the covenant of grace that you're talking about today. And thank you for articulating that, and I know that you will further. Let me just give out a scripture. Christ Jesus said in John 6, all the Father has given me shall come to me and he that cometh to me I will no wise cast out. And so we have a promise there that he has a people and every single one of them are going to come. And of course it's done by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works on our behalf. because later he says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day. So there's another promise. Now we have the promise of the resurrection and of course we have the promise that all will come to Christ that have been given to him by the Father. Now we have the promise that the Holy Spirit is going to come and they're going to draw us and then we're going to be raised up at the last day. This is good news indeed. And no wonder it's called the covenant of grace because our gracious God makes it for us that way. This was very offensive to the Jewish mindset that he was talking to in John chapter 6. In fact, they opposed him. They went against him. They had in their mindset that they could please God themselves. Not everyone. I mean, we're going to talk about the covenant of grace extending back into the Old Testament, too, before we're done today. But unfortunately, in that day and in this day today, there are those that believe that they can somehow please God by their works and merit salvation themselves. and as you said, that day is long gone. Yes, and that's what makes the gospel such good news. The good news is not here's step one, step two, step three to success in terms of reconciling yourself to God, but rather here is what Christ has already done to open reconciliation to God and here's how you enter into that by trusting in what He has done, not by looking at yourself and trusting in yourself, but by looking at Jesus, which brings us back once again to the word grace. And you were mentioning that it's not our own merits that bring about the blessings that have been promised. We're simply appropriating and getting for ourselves the things which Jesus has won for us, and those become the promises of the gospel, the promises of the covenant of grace. Can anyone who's not yet believed the gospel be a member of the covenant of grace, and why? That's a very good question, and I want to spend a little bit longer answering this question than some of the others that we've been answering in the previous questions and in the previous broadcast. And I'd like to give two answers to this question of whether or not someone who is not believed can be a member in the covenant of grace. And the short answer is no. no one can be a member of the covenant of grace until they have believed the gospel. Now let me give you two answers to explain why that is the case, why you have to believe in order to be a member of the covenant of grace. And the first answer has to do with how covenants are made. A covenant has a variety of pieces that have to be in place in order for a complete covenant to be made. And the pieces that you use to make a covenant will determine the kind of covenant that you make. So there's different kinds of covenants and how you put it together will determine the kind of covenant that you get. Think of it like making two rings. Making one ring out of gold and one ring out of silver. A silver ring and a gold ring are both rings, but they've been made from different materials. One is silver and one is gold. So the final product, the ring that you have made, will be either a silver ring or a gold ring. And the material that you use to make the ring dictates or determines the kind of ring that you are making or that you have made. So in a similar fashion, thinking with that analogy, the way in which you establish a covenant determines the kind of covenant that you are making. We could talk about it in terms of the material. Gold and silver are materials that you use to make a ring. But we could talk about the materials that you use to make a covenant. And we could say that the material that you use to make a covenant determines the kind of covenant that you make. And there's two basic materials that you can use to make a covenant. And those two basic materials are laws or promises. And those two materials, just as gold and silver will determine the making of a ring, laws and promises will control and determine the process of making the covenant that follows. Let me explain that further. After God introduces a covenant to mankind on the basis of law or promise, that's step one, part one, that necessitates man's response to God. Part two will be how man responds to what God has introduced. But how man responds to God in the covenant depends upon what God has introduced, law or promise. For example, if God comes to man and he uses a law or laws to establish a covenant with him, then man's response must be complete obedience to those laws. And conversely, if God comes to man and uses a promise or promises to establish a covenant with him, then man's response must be to receive the promise, to believe and receive what God has promised to him. So those are the first two pieces of a covenant. You have the material basis or the foundation of laws or promises, and then you have the matching response of the covenant partner. obedience is pledged to a law, or believing and receiving to a promise. And the next step after those first two things is to put sanctions into place to guarantee the participation of the parties. And once again, the material that you use to establish the covenant determines how this works. Just as gold and silver control what kind of rings are made from them. Think of it this way, when God introduces a covenant based on laws, and then man pledges obedience to that law in order to obtain some kind of reward, the sanctions that are put into effect will threaten the one who must work for the reward. And what do you get when God introduces a law, man pledges obedience, and sanctions threaten the one who must obey? you get a formal and complete covenant of works. And because you began with law, you end up with a covenant of works. Just as when you begin making a silver ring with silver, you get a silver ring. Now let's think about beginning with a promise. God introduces a promise, man responds by believing that promise, and then sanctions are put in place to guarantee the promises will be delivered, in which case the sanctions actually threaten God. What do you get? You get a covenant of grace. a complete formal covenant of grace, in which the blessings are received not on the basis of any merit, but simply receiving a promise that has been given to the covenant partner. Now, we're saying all of these things because if any of those pieces are not in place, you don't have a covenant. You don't have a complete covenant. Think about it. A law, on its own, without a reward attached to it, and without sanctions to protect it, is not a covenant, it's just a law. And a promise without a means of receiving that promise or sanctions to guarantee the deliverance of the promise, it's just a promise, it's not a covenant. So you have to have all these pieces together in order to have a formal or complete covenant, which leads us back to the original question. Can anyone who has not yet believed the gospel be a member of the covenant of grace? And the answer is simply no. Because if receiving the promise, in other words believing in Jesus, is the condition of the covenant, the response that man makes to the promise, then the God-ordained means of entering into and participating in the blessings of the covenant has not yet occurred which means that only those who believe in Jesus are the members of the covenant of grace. If God has ordained the covenant of grace in such a way that the way to respond to the promise is believing it, and you have not responded by believing it, well then, there's a problem. You are not receiving the benefits and you are not a member of the covenant. Now that's the first explanation for why the one who is not believed is not a part of the covenant of grace. The second explanation has to do with something called federal headship. As we heard from Nehemiah Cox earlier, God always deals with mankind through covenants. And he always deals with mankind through covenants through a federal head. And the federal head is an individual who represents a group. Sometimes people talk about the head of the home, or the head of the army, or the head of the country, and that person is an individual who acts on behalf of others. Well, a federal head is a covenantal head, someone who acts on behalf of a group in a covenant. Think about federal heads in the Scriptures. We have Adam, we have Noah, Abraham, David, they represented specific groups of people in a covenant. And so, who were the members of their covenants? Who were the members of the Covenant of Works, or the Covenant of Noah, or the Covenant of Abraham, or the Covenant of David? Well, if you want to know who the members were, all you need to know is who were the people represented by the federal head. Think about it. Why were the Gentile nations not a part of Abraham's covenant? Well, it's because the Abrahamic covenant was given to Abraham and to his descendants, and not to the Gentiles. There was a matter of federal headship here, and the Gentiles were outside of its boundaries, and that's outside of the Abrahamic covenant. Well, in the covenant of grace, who is the federal head? It's Jesus. Who, then, are Christ's people? Who are Jesus' people? That leads us to another question. Whom does he represent? And Jesus represents the people whom God the Father gave to Him. And those people are all those who believe in Jesus. As we heard from John 6 already, that the Father gave a people to the Son and those people will come to Jesus. The Father will cause them by the Holy Spirit to come to Jesus by faith. And it's by faith that we are united to Jesus and enjoy the benefits of His covenant. And scripture is quite plain in Romans 8 verse 9, that anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. In other words, if Jesus has not made you one of his people, you're not one of his people. Now to summarize these two arguments together, or these two explanations together, the one who has not believed the gospel, on the one hand, has not failed to meet the condition of the covenant. And on the other hand, very much related to this, the one who has not believed the gospel is not united to the federal head, is not united to Jesus, and thus has no place in the membership and blessings of his covenant. So can someone who has not believed in the gospel be a member of the covenant of grace? No. They have not met the condition and they have no relation to the federal head, Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Sam. Faith in Christ. That's the wonderful thing. Of course, men left to themselves are are left in Adam. Well, Pastor, when was the covenant of grace first revealed? And at what point in history was its full discovery made? The covenant of grace was first revealed or made known when the gospel was declared in the Garden of Eden. And that's recorded for us in scripture in Genesis 3 verse 15 when God said to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And it was here that God made a promise that He Himself, that is God Himself, would intervene and make Adam and Eve the enemies of Satan. Whereas they had just submitted themselves to Satan and in a sense made themselves His servants. And God likewise promised that one of Eve's descendants would deal a fatal and decisive blow to the serpent. In other words, the devil will not prevail because God has made known a plan of deliverance. God's going to do something about the fall and the curse. Now, at that point, In Genesis 3.15, in the history of the world, in the Garden of Eden, this is just a promise. It's something that God is going to do in the future. He will provide deliverance. But because God makes that promise, and not just a creature, not a man or a woman, it is a sure promise. And it can be believed by God's people from the moment that it is declared or made known or revealed. Nevertheless, it was not until God the Son took on flesh and died in our place and established the covenant in His own blood that the blessings of the covenant itself were at last obtained and secured in history for mankind. And between that first announcement of the promise and that final accomplishment of the promise, God revealed more and more progressively about his plans for history, teaching his people through types and shadows what his deliverance would be like and what it would be. which means that the hope of every last believer from our first parents to ourselves is one and the same promise that God will undo the curse of sin through the victory of one whom he has sent. And of course scripture tells us that Jesus came to undo the works of the devil and that he has conquered death. He has resolved the curse. He has provided the solution for the curse of sin and Adam's fall in the garden. which means that all true believers believe in the person and the work of Jesus, who he is and what he has done. Some believed in it before it ever happened, but they believed it according to how it had been revealed to them, which was no less true than how it was revealed later when Jesus himself came. And we live in that wonderful time of the full discovery, the full revealing and making known of who Jesus is and what is offered in him, because we live after Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and seating at God's right hand. So we live in an extremely privileged time of clarity in terms of who Jesus is and what He offers or what salvation is in Him. Amen. Yes, and what you said was wonderful, Genesis 3.15 and you think about the fact that we need to be students of Scripture and when we're dealing in the Old Testament We should be looking for Christ and finding Christ because he is there, because it's promised all the way through and you can see it. Well, Pastor Sam, we sometimes hear theologians speak of the covenant of redemption. Is this covenant the same as the covenant of grace? And if not, what's the relationship between the two? That's a very important question and one which I'm eager to answer. The Covenant of Redemption and the Covenant of Grace are very closely related and they're very important covenants, but they are distinct. They are not one and the same covenant. So let's talk a little bit about the Covenant of Redemption first. And the covenant of redemption was a covenant of works for Jesus Christ. It was a covenant of works for Jesus Christ. And this is found all throughout the scriptures. When we read passages like Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 53, Psalm 110, Hebrews 7, Philippians 2, John 10, John 17, or even John 6 as we heard earlier, and other passages, what do we find? What do we see in those scriptures? We see that God the Father gave a mission or a work or a task to God the Son. The Son had work to do, a task to accomplish. Which means that God the Father gave him laws of obedience. There were things which he must do. Laws he must obey. He must take our flesh upon him. He must do the Father's will perfectly. He must die for a people. It was a covenant of works for Jesus Christ. But there were promises attached to that obedience. God the Father promised to Jesus the assistance of the Holy Spirit in his work. He promised him success in all that he does. He promised him resurrection from the dead and exaltation upon completion of that work. So if we think about it, God the Father commissioned the Son to create a new humanity and to take them to a new perfect creation. which makes Jesus the last Adam in a new covenant of works. He was tempted and he prevailed. He was given laws and he obeyed them. He died for his people. He lived for his people. And on that basis, God rewarded Jesus. He resurrected him from the dead and exalted him. And God has given him a name that is above every name. And the covenant of redemption was thus a covenant of works for Jesus Christ. Now, the covenant of grace is Jesus Christ mediating that kept covenant of works to his people. It is the way by which the sinners for whom the Father sent Jesus to die enter into the benefits and blessings which Jesus purchased for them. The covenant of grace is not the covenant in which Jesus must work for a reward. That has been accomplished and was transacted between the three persons of the Trinity. The covenant of grace is our entrance, the entrance of sinners, into that intra-trinitarian work of redemption and salvation. And that's what makes the covenant of grace so sure and firm. It is a kept covenant, it is a completed work, and it is established on the immutable oaths of the Godhead. It is Jesus mediating to his people a kept covenant of works. Our guest today is Pastor Sam Rinahan. Our topic is God's Covenant and in particular the Covenant of Grace and we continue with this question. Pastor, has anyone ever been saved apart from the Covenant of Grace and why? No one has ever been saved apart from the Covenant of Grace. Man cannot earn salvation on his own. Eternal life must be covenanted to you. God must make it available. And God has only covenanted eternal life to two individuals, to two federal heads, and that's Adam and Jesus Christ. Now in Adam we are cursed and we are in a broken covenant of works, a covenant whose sanctions threaten us with death. And indeed we die without hope, left in Adam. And like we said last week, the more you try to get into Eden on your own, the more you try to get back to the Tree of Life on your own, the more the cherubim will hack you to pieces, so to speak. Because God Himself has barred man from life through Adam's covenant. And we actually heard in the reading from Nehemiah Cox earlier that once man violates a covenant, he no longer has the strength and ability to fix that problem on his own. But in Jesus Christ, we are blessed in a kept covenant of works, that mediated kept covenant of works, the covenant of grace. And so in Jesus, it is possible to have eternal life. No one can merit or earn salvation on their own, it's impossible. We are already guilty sinners justly deserving God's wrath and judgment. But in Jesus, and only in Jesus, is life available. And Jesus and salvation in Him is only promised in the covenant of grace. So if we repeat the question, has anyone ever been saved apart from the covenant of grace? We could ask it another way and say, has anyone ever been saved apart from the promise of salvation in Jesus? And 1 John chapter 5 verses 11 through 12 answers this question. That's 1 John 5 verses 11 through 12. It says this, and this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Think of a circle, and that circle is life. Life is not outside of that circle. Well, that circle is Jesus. And within Him, there is life. Outside of that, there is no life. That is the testimony of God in the scriptures. And it is also a promise. If you have Jesus, you have life. If you do not have Jesus, you do not have life. The covenant of grace is the way by which we get Jesus, so to speak, the way by which we have Him, so to speak, and become united to Him and partake of the life that He has won for His people. So while no one has ever been saved apart from the covenant of grace, because no one has ever been saved apart from Jesus and the gospel, putting it another way, putting it positively, everyone who trusts in Jesus is saved. Whoever has the Son has life, and that is God's testimony to mankind. That is the covenant of grace. That is the gospel. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Sam, for your excellent answers. And now, friends, we want to transition to our Take Up and Read segment, in which we make our book recommendation for the program. And we have asked our guest, Pastor Sam Renahan, if he would recommend a book today that would help us in our further reading and studies on God's covenant. So Pastor Sam, what book would you recommend to our listeners? Well, in addition to the book that you have already recommended, I just want to say that I really would recommend Nehemiah Cox's book, A Discourse of the Covenants. That is a very helpful work on covenant theology, but let me add to that one a more contemporary work called The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology. The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology. This was written by Pascal Denon. And it's a very helpful book in a variety of ways. Let me explain why I would recommend it. Theology takes place in a historical context. We live in a historical context, we live in history, and theologians throughout the past obviously have lived through history, that's an obvious statement, but it has ramifications. We have not come to our theological conclusions in a vacuum. We have not arrived at them purely on our own as though we invented them, and no one thought of these things before we did, which means that it's very helpful to hear the voices of the past, and how they read the scriptures, and how they understood them, and how the Church has confessed the faith throughout the ages. And what this book does is it revives for us the voices of our Baptist forefathers on covenant theology, which is very useful because these resources and these authors and their writings and their views were largely unknown by the vast majority of Baptists until the publication of this book. It's very hard to get your hands on the sources, on the source documents, and this book makes them available to you. So it helps you become familiar with your own heritage as a Baptist in respect to covenant theology. But if you look at the subtitle of this book, it's called, it says, A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedo-Baptist Federalism, which means that this book is also helpful in navigating the debate historically and theologically between those who baptize only those who profess faith and those who also baptize their children. And we have a lot of love and respect for our Reformed Paedo-Baptist brothers, but this book helps us to navigate that debate historically and to add a more covenantal voice to the Baptist side of that perspective or debate, which means it's very helpful. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the content of the book. It begins with an introduction to the sources and the documents and the context that Pascal is bringing to light, which is very helpful because, as I said, we know so little of that, and so few are familiar with who the particular Baptists were, what they wrote. Very few know Nehemiah Cox whom we have recommended. And so these things are coming to light, and that first introduction is important to give yourself a historical context. Then Pascal moves on to talk about the Covenant of Works. We've discussed that several times in our interviews so far, and Pascal shows how the particular Baptists did not differ from their Reformed Paedo-Baptist brothers in any way, shape, or form on the Covenant of Works. It was a doctrine held in common, which means that their view of man and the fall of man and the need for salvation was one and the same with their Reformed Paedo-Baptist brothers. But he moves on after that chapter to a second chapter covering the covenant of grace. And this is where many of the major differences between Reformed Baptists and Paedo-Baptist brothers would be found. And one of the helpful things that Pascal shows is that the majority of the particular Baptists made an argument that said that the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant that God made with Abraham, was not the covenant of grace. It was a covenant which they called a carnal covenant because it was to Abraham and to his fleshly descendants and it promised physical blessings such as life in Canaan and many descendants and kings that would come from Abraham and Sarah, etc. They would look at that and they would see that as being earthly, terrestrial promises, not the covenant of grace. But at the same time, they would see the promises of the covenant of grace being made known through those earthly promises and those earthly features, which means that the covenant of grace was present in the Old Testament, but in promised form. As we mentioned earlier, there's several things that have to be in place to get a complete covenant, and Jesus has not yet spilled his blood to procure the blessings or to activate the sanctions against himself, which means that the Covenant of Grace was not actually established until Jesus died. It existed only in promise form. So Pascal shows how a particular Baptist forefathers had a different model of the Covenant of Grace from their Paedo-Baptist brothers, and that largely came down to whether or not the Covenant of Abraham was the same as the Covenant of Grace, which they said it was not. The next chapter, chapter 3, talks about the Old Covenant. And one of the helpful things that Pascal brings to light is the fact that the particular Baptists viewed the Old Covenant cumulatively or collectively. In other words, they would put the Abrahamic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant together. as the Old Covenant because they considered them both to be covenants of works. If you were not circumcised, if you did not obey God's commands regarding the Abrahamic Covenant, you were cut off from the blessings individually. And the Mosaic Covenant adds threats to the people on a larger level if they do not obey God's commands. And so for these reasons and others, they viewed those two things together, the covenant of Abraham and Moses, and they viewed them both as the Old Covenant, which means that their model of the Old Covenant was different and separate from their Paedo-Baptist brothers, which is an important point as well. The fourth chapter after covering the Covenant of Works, Covenant of Grace, and the Old Covenant is the New Covenant. Now this is the shortest chapter in the book because since the New Covenant and the Covenant of Grace are the same thing, in many ways this has already been covered in the second chapter on the Covenant of Grace. However, it provides a good opportunity to show that the particular Baptists understood the New Covenant to be the Covenant of Grace. And so for that reason, that last chapter serves sort of as a summary and a synthesis of many of the things that preceded it, and it makes a helpful conclusion. So to sum up, some of the reasons why this is a helpful book is the fact that it gives us a historical perspective of our own views. It helps us to understand our views by way of contrast, so that we understand them not simply positively, but also negatively. And it restores and puts in our hands something that has long lain uncovered and unknown by many Baptists. Well, Pastor Sam, we'd also like you to take some time here to tell us about the ministry of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada and your role there. Yes, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church is in La Mirada, California, and we have a variety of services every Lord's Day. We have a Spanish service with worship and preaching every Lord's Day at 9 a.m. I'm in charge of that. I preach in Spanish. I just finished a series in 1 John, and I'm still thinking about what series I'd like to do next. I have not decided. I've just been preaching individual sermons thus far for a few weeks. But besides the Spanish ministry at 9 in the morning, normally we would have a Sunday school for all ages. That's coming to an end for a summer break with the same schedule that schools have, but normally we would have an hour of teaching in the mornings at 9.30, so that's currently on hiatus. However, at 10.45 we have our morning worship. And after our morning worship, most of our people stay for lunch, and then we have an afternoon service at 1.30 for prayer meeting, followed by more another worship service and preaching. We've found to be a really helpful schedule for commuters. A lot of people in this area come from strange distances, I'll say, or it's at least hard to get places even though you're not very far away. We've tried to accommodate our commuting families and so our schedule transitions from morning worship into lunch in the afternoon. We found that that is a very practical way of doing things. One of our pastors, Arden Hodgins, has been preaching through Acts, and he's been doing a great job of really bringing out the meaning of a lot of the historical details in the narratives there, and showing how so many events in Acts are paradigmatic for the Church in certain ways, and how they affect how our Church ought to be, and how we should be looking to pattern ourselves after that Church. in appropriate ways. It's been really wonderful to see how he handles those texts. And then in the afternoons I've been preaching through Genesis 1 through 3. Currently in the series I've been talking about the covenant of works and many of the things that we've been talking about in these broadcasts. So with all of those services, we keep ourselves pretty busy. I preach in Spanish and English every week, and Arden's in charge of the adult Sunday school class and preaching in the mornings. We make preaching a priority at our church. We want to declare the whole counsel of God. We want His Word to be governing what we do in our worship and in our preaching. And we want to make sure that we're preaching the law and the gospel to our people and to the lost, knowing that that they need that. And that is God's ordained way of bringing sinners to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. And we would love to have anyone and everyone come to our church and worship with us and hear God's word. Amen. And I understand that your sermons are on Sermon Audio. Correct. Yes, they are on sermon audio. If you look up Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, or if you search My name or Arden Hodgins name you will find them We also stream our services live every Lord's Day for those who are providentially hindered and can't make it When many people have profited from it by looking at our church from a distance before they moved here and things like that so if you find yourself in an appropriate circumstance where you have to stay at home and then we would encourage you to tune into our services live every Lord's Day, which is also streamed through Sermon Audio or on our website, reformedbaptist.net. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Sam. Pastor Steve, Pastor Sam, is there anything you'd like to add before we conclude today's broadcast? Well, you know, it's interesting to me, it was just enlightening to talk about the covenant. I've been a Reformed Baptist pastor for over 30 years, and in fact, Sam's father is the same age I am, and we would call ourselves, I believe, second-generation Reformed Baptists, because there's a generation that came before us. Of course, Sam and others, theologians that have come since, have had the privilege to unearth and dig into things that have been long hidden. I mean, we're talking about particular Baptists of the 17th century. Well, they wrote quite a bit, and they said quite a bit. But I know as I came into Reformed Baptist circles and became a Reformed Baptist, I was pretty much unaware of their writings and they weren't available to us. So there's a lot of work being done. And so these things are not new or novel, but we are discovering them. And it's very encouraging. It's very encouraging to see that a solid foundation has already been laid. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can actually stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before. And I just commend those that are digging into those things and learning. And the book that you just mentioned, The Distinctiveness of Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology. It's just a wonderful, a wonderful thing. And, you know, may the Lord continue to help us to grow as a movement. There are so many more Reformed Baptist churches than there ever used to be. But we're still small. I'll be honest, we're a blip on the evangelical scale when you come right down to it. I believe very solid with a solid confessional basis. That's right. Pastor Sam, thank you for declaring the gospel on the program and for helping us to understand the nature of the covenant of grace. Unfortunately, so much of what is preached from pulpits today sounds like the covenant of works. Amen, that's true. I remember reading Jeremiah Burroughs who said, who said something to the effect that the only preacher who will bring comfort to the conscience of his hearers is the one who can properly distinguish between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Because we don't want to make our people think that they need to perform acts of obedience in order to be reconciled to God or earn his favor. That's impossible. but rather by looking to Jesus and trusting in Him will they find forgiveness of sins and acceptance. Amen. Well, this concludes today's broadcast of Redeemer Radio. We do want to thank Pastor Sam Renahan for being our guest today and last week as well to talk about covenant theology with us. Pastor Sam, may God continue to bless your ministry at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church. And remember, friends, there is a Redeemer. Jesus Christ is His name, and we have a duty as Christians to make Him known.