June 6, 2022 Show with Jim Mento on “Discovering the Outward & Ordinary Means of Grace in Local Church Ministry”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Monday on the sixth day of June 2022.

I just want to start off the program with a praise report. If you listen regularly to this program you know that after the midway break every day

I ask people who are listening if they are not a member of a good

Christ -honoring biblically faithful church to send me an email with I need a church in the subject line because I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world that I can recommend, and I ask our listeners also to send me an email like that if they have a friend, family member, loved one, or acquaintance who needs a good church home.

Well, back in January I got an email from a Canadian listener,

Kevin, and I'm not sure what area of Canada he's from, but he was vacationing in Arizona and while at a campsite he met an elderly couple from Poughkeepsie, New York who were near that campsite, they were camping on their own right near that campsite, and they met, or Kevin I should say, met that couple and began having a relaxing time of pleasant conversation with them, discovered that they were in a cult and that they were beginning to reach the point that they wanted to leave that cult, and Kevin contacted me because he wanted a church recommendation in Poughkeepsie, New York where this couple lived.

I sent him a couple of recommendations, one of which is

Vassa Road Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie, New York pastored by Dr. Jake Dunlow, or Dunlow, and that couple visited that church, they got saved, and they were baptized yesterday.

So I just wanted to give that praise report. It always gives me indescribable joy when

I hear that God has used Iron Shorten's Iron Radio in some fashion to be a conduit, to be a means by which he has drawn someone to salvation, and I am still praising

God for that after hearing that wonderful news. And keep those emails coming, folks, because I always love helping people find biblically solid churches.

And speaking of biblically solid churches, we are going to be interviewing today someone from a church that definitely fits that description.

We have a first -time guest today, Pastor Jim Mento of Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania.

This is a church where one of my pastors, Simon O'Maney, conducted a conference not long ago, and today

Pastor Mento is going to be discussing a very important subject. We have discussed this before on the program, but it's the kind of a subject that I think bears repeating.

We are going to be discussing the theme, Discovering the Outward and Ordinary Means of Grace in Local Church Ministry, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Shorten's Iron Radio, Pastor Jim Mento.

Hi, good afternoon. And Pastor Jim, please tell our listeners about Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, we're a local body of believers up here, about 25 or so minutes north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, nestled in the country as it were, preaching the gospel loudly and compassionately, and just rejoicing in the

Lord and rejoicing as His bride. And how would you describe the church theologically?

You know, our men, our teaching men, are Reformed. We're Baptistic and distinctive.

We are a church that is very much online and in unity in these distinctives, so if you come and visit, or are part of us, certainly we'll have that hearing of the clarity of the gospel through the tenets of not only

Reformation era, but the tenets of the Church Fathers, which are the tenets of the Scriptures. So yeah,

I guess to put it simply and plainly, Reformed, Baptistic is what we are. And if anybody wants more details about the

Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, the website is BibleBaptistChurchofLiverpool .org.

BibleBaptistChurchofLiverpool .org, just like Liverpool, England, L -I -V as in victory,

E -R -P as in Peter, O -O -L. And we hope that you will visit that website, and more importantly, visit that congregation, especially if you live in or near Liverpool, Pennsylvania, or happen to be traveling through there on a

Lord's Day. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Pastor Jim, whenever we have a first -time guest, and that would include you, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, the kinds of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in that individual's life that drew himself or herself to God and saved them.

And we'd love to hear your story now. Sure, sure. Well, salvation is of the

Lord, and how wonderful that is. Salvation is of the Lord. I was raised in a devout

Roman Catholic family in southern New Jersey. It was an

Italian Catholic family, so it's kind of like the Marine Corps of the Roman Catholics. Yeah, we were very devout, but we were sinners.

The women were dressed in black and said their rosaries while the men, though devout, learned the

Roman Catholic loopholes, and that's how

I was reared. I actually, as a young child, had an interest in the priesthood, and that was taken and run with, and of course every

Italian Catholic grandmother, you know, will cry at the sound of their grandchild in some way having an interest in the

Catholic priesthood. So after high school I was actually in a seminary for a little while.

Just as an aside and a really interesting turn of providence, those credits that I accrued in a

Catholic seminary actually carried over into a Bible college and seminary once I was born again and studying for the ministry.

So I joke in some sense, but it's not really a joke, it's God's providence. The Roman Catholic Church actually paid for my first year and a half of a

Bible college. The way that works out was very interesting, but I was in the seminary for a while.

Like I said, I was called home. My family needed me to go to work.

My mother was sick and died soon after, as it were, that I came home.

In that time I just decided to stay out of the seminary and get a job.

I met a young lady who was raised in a Pentecostal background actually, but at the time was not attending any church presence at all, and she would attend with me.

We began dating very and courting seriously, and she would attend

Mass with me and ask me these questions. You know, what are you doing here? What is this?

What is that? What's up with the statues? What is the whole thing with Mary?

The church, the Catholic assembly that I was part of had a huge Marian devotion, even to the point of every

July 16th, even to this day, taking statues out of the church building and parading them around the streets.

Very old world kind of stuff. There were those things that she would ask me about.

I say the one misjudgment of her wisdom was that she accepted my marriage proposal.

We were married, and my wife then began asking me even deeper questions about Roman Catholicism.

As a seminary, you know, as some time in the seminary and kind of being raised up through being an altar boy and those kinds of things, an acolyte within the

Roman Catholic tradition, I had a grasp of canon law. I had a grasp of some of the tradition behind those things.

Certainly the family life that I had was just steeped in this kind of devout tradition.

I would give her answers, but none of them sufficed. Even though she came from a

Pentecostal background, by God's grace and through his blessed providence, he allowed her never to be satisfied unless I could bring her to the

Bible with anything that I said regarding the faith. That really challenged.

So I thought, well, if your proof text is this Bible, which it's just so interesting.

Growing up, we had Bibles in the house, but they were just other kinds of relics.

They were always dusty. They were never open. There was never an encouragement to read them.

They served the same purpose as, say, a Saint Joseph statue or a picture of the

Pope. They were just kind of there. My wife read the

Bible, and she saw it as an authority, which was very odd to me.

Growing up as a Roman Catholic, going to a seminary, there was never the statement that the

Bible had authority. It was always the Magisterium. It was always the Bishopric. It was always the

Pope. So all that to say, I picked up a

Bible and began to read it. Really, her nagging question was purgatory. We had, as most

Roman Catholic churches do, a very intricate system of purgatorial masses being said daily for what we were told were souls stuck in purgatory.

They were still selling masses, indulgent masses, indulgence masses,

I should say. They still do. They still do. And I had told her one time, interesting,

I told her to stand in line with everyone else and buy a mass for the soul of my mother who was in purgatory.

Well, she just couldn't understand this, and it didn't sit well. And we were not an arguing couple.

But this really kind of led, I don't remember an argument, but it really led me to say,

I need to prove to her that purgatory existed. So again, her authority was the

Bible. I thought, well, I'll go to the Bible. We were living in an apartment then. We were newly married.

I had a Catholic edition of the Bible, but it was packed away, but she had her

Bible. And interesting enough, it was an NIV student Bible. And in that student

Bible, if you're familiar with it, there's little snippets around certain verses, some of them good, some of them, you know, they're there.

I began reading, looking for the life of David in the Bible. I didn't know where to look in the

Bible. So I thought, well, David was a general, a king. I liked history.

I was an avid history reader, you know, popular kind of history. I can't say I was a scholar in any shape or form, but I thought

I'd read that. And I'm not kidding you, it took me a week to figure out where David's life was in the

Bible. I had no idea it was there in 1 and 2 Samuel. I thought it was a

Protestant conspiracy to put David in Samuel. Why didn't he warrant his own book,

I thought, you know, and again at the time. So, well, anyway, I began reading 1 and 2

Samuel on the 1st and 2nd Kings. And I just, I began reading it through. I can't say that there was a salvific turning, but the

Spirit of God was certainly weighing on me to keep reading this Bible. I read it in the morning before work.

I read it in the afternoon when I got home from work. We read it together. My wife was very patient.

She never probed me or prodded me or she would just read along. There was never an overarching kind of teaching moment or anything like that.

I was reading, she read along. Then I obviously came to the

Gospels, and a Roman Catholic would tell you they're familiar with the Gospels. They're read every Sunday. I was actually one of the people at the

Roman Catholic Church that was allowed to read the readings, a lectern, and I was able to do that.

So I had some familiarity with reading the Gospel accounts. I just kept reading through.

Then I got to Romans 1. Next to Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, in the

NIV student Bible, there is a little brief synopsis of Martin Luther being just thunderstruck by these verses.

I was appalled. I didn't know much about Protestantism, but what

I knew growing up was that Luther was as good as the devil.

That's just the way we were taught. He was errant. He was a heretic. I was appalled that Luther's name was in the

Scripture. But I kept reading that text over and over and over again.

It probably went on for a decade. I was reading chapters a day.

I could not get past it. What was it that the arch -heretic

Luther saw in these verses? The just shall live by faith.

Incredible. Just incredible. Not ashamed of the

Gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation. If there is anything

I knew as a Roman Catholic, it was guilt. It was fear of hell. It was fear of purgatory.

I had never heard of an assurance of salvation. Giving great kudos, as it were, to the

NIV student Bible editors. They didn't say this was

Luther's verse. This was the Word of God. And the Word of God was saying, there is a power of God unto salvation.

Not of man. Not of sacraments. Not of confessional. Not of weekly

Mass. But to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ now shall be faith.

Incredible. It's like Luther said. The gates of heaven were thrown open.

And I dare say I cannot remember a date or a time.

I probably have a year narrowed down to maybe a month or at least a season of the year.

I think it was in the fall when I had just turned 21 years old. And I rushed to my wife and I said, have you heard this before?

And she said, yeah, I've heard it before. And how wonderful that was of the

Lord. He saved me. Salvation of the Lord. My eyes were opened. It was open to new birth.

The Spirit of God took that Word and wielded it into my soul.

And since then, and since that point, being sanctified, twists and turns, ups and downs.

But God is faithful. And the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And the just shall live by faith.

So in a sense, I'm learning that text. I think as many of us do as Christians, as what we do as Christians, we learn that text daily, if not moment by moment.

And that's where I'm at to this day. Now, how did you come to discover and embrace the doctrines known as the doctrines of sovereign grace, the doctrines of Calvinism, Reformed theology, comes by a number of nicknames.

How did you come to discover and embrace these truths that you and I both hold so very dear?

Interesting enough, you know, that wasn't an easy discovery.

I can't say that I had even, you know, I was 21 years old. I was reading the

Bible just as much as I could. My wife and I, at that point, began reading together, just as, you know, kind of a groundwork to explain it.

We read through the Bible. We still read through it. But we actually read through the Bible poignantly and purposely three,

I think maybe four times in the consecutive years, I should say, from that point.

As long as I knew that what I heard in the

Catholic Church was wrong. It just wasn't right. There was no reason to re -sacrifice

Jesus Christ. There was no reason to go to a priest for confession, of course.

But at the time, I was working with a born again Christian. I was a trained caterpillar.

I had a career with caterpillars. And there was a mechanic that had just come to the shop about the same time that I was saved, the

Lord saved me. And he would listen to WFIL radio out of Philadelphia.

That was a sister station, or is a sister station of the station where I worked for 15 years.

WMCA 570 AM in New York, and we would meet with the leadership there at WFIL annually for sales summits in Maryland and have other opportunities from time to time.

But very familiar with the station. Yeah, and I had never heard anything like that before.

You know, we didn't listen to preachers. We were Catholic. You didn't listen to that kind of stuff.

And we grew up as an Italian Catholic, and so we wouldn't even listen to Quentin Sheen.

He didn't have a vowel at the end of his name. So it's not as if we listened to those kinds of things.

But this friend of mine, or this coworker, became a dear friend, and now a brother in the

Lord, of course. But we were young. Both of us were newly married, and we just worked all the time that we could.

And we would go out at night and do oil services on machines in the sand pits of South Jersey, kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

And he would put this radio station on, and I was just floored. And you know the lineup.

So there was Charles Stanley, those kinds of guys on there. But then there was this one guy who didn't sound like anybody else.

And I'm just so grateful to the Lord for putting him in my life. And that was

J .M. Boyce. I never met him. I'll meet him in glory. But I could hear his blessedly gravelly voice handle these texts of Scripture, and it floored me.

He went deep. He didn't go wide. He went deep. I'm not throwing a shadow on any other preachers, but Boyce was different.

I didn't know it then, but it was expositional preaching. He was going to the text, he was going to the

Word, and he was unpacking it. Well, just to fast forward, or to give you a background as to what was going on,

I found kind of an evangelical -ish church in the area after the

Lord saved me. But I was still attending Mass, you know, as a

Roman Catholic, which so many of really cultish people deal with.

Your whole life is wrapped into the system.

All of my friends, all of my family, everything was wrapped up into Roman Catholicism. So I went mostly as a social reality, but in a true sense,

I was not taking up my cross and following Christ. I was keeping it easy and simple.

And some friends knew, and I tried to share the Gospel with them that were Roman Catholic, and they let me go and do those kinds of things as long as I was in Mass.

Well, the Lord settled that. He moved me from South Jersey into central

Pennsylvania. And so he moved me to a Bible church.

It's actually the church that I minister to now. And he moved me to a

Bible church. And from there, I felt a desire to know more.

I can't say that I pointed to ministry or was sold out on ministry, but I wanted to know more of the

Scriptures. I wanted to know more theology. So I went to Bible college.

I worked nights at the shop and then went to Bible college during the day. I was about five years shy of everything being online like it is today.

And so I did it the hard way, the old -fashioned way, burned the candle at both ends.

And so I'm there at this Bible college, and they're not reformed. I didn't know that was the term.

Again, I'm still new to all these things. I didn't know these terms. So I'm taking seminary classes.

I was an old guy going back to school at the time. And so they allowed you to kind of take dual credits for college and seminary.

You're undergrad and grad. And so the seminary library in the college was in the bottom layer of the college.

And then there was this book stack way in the back, kind of even like the lights wouldn't work back there.

It was just way in the back. And so I waded through there and just kind of looked at some of these books while I'm going through these classes that are not reformed.

And I'm going through these books, and I see authors by the name of Martin Lloyd -Jones.

I see authors by the name of John Owen.

And interesting enough, the one book that I took out was

Theology of Worship by John Frank, The Doctrine of God. And there were some things in there

I totally didn't understand. Other books now have come out and helped me understand some of those.

But nonetheless, people that he quoted, I went back and began reading. I found that a lot of these books were from a publishing company called

Banner of Truth. And I looked them up and began just diving in.

Found Faith and Life by B .B. Warfield, began reading that, was floored.

I found a small book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray.

And I just, I ate that up. It was wonderful. I found a book called

Forgotten Spurgeon. Well, I didn't know much of Spurgeon. I didn't even know I had forgotten him. But I find this book,

Forgotten Spurgeon, and I begin reading that. Yeah, Ian Murray, a classic book.

Yeah. And so I just went into anything I could find from Spurgeon.

And it was just a wonderful time. I took my oral exam and had to write a thesis.

And I'll never forget the prof who was kind of the head overseer of all of that.

He said, you know, hey, we're passing you. I know you don't agree with anything that you said, but we're passing you because you answered our questions.

And, you know, I guess they didn't know. But it was really just as I was studying in a non -reform tradition and studying through and still searching, as it were, for that, what was it that voice, what was it that J .M.

voice was? How did he preach like that? What was he looking? Where did he get the goggles for that?

Well, of course, it's the Holy Spirit. But from that hermeneutic, but from that world, here's the reformed tradition.

And of course, going through, you know, you pick up Calvin's Institutes and you begin reading them through.

The reform doctrine of predestination, you begin reading that through. Burkhoff's systematic theology began reading that through.

So that's where I was at. So really, I can't say that there was a point or a time, but I can just,

I can tell you now that there was, once a theological outlook was,

I want to say, codified, I have to say it was a reformed perspective.

I can't see anything in the scriptures that doesn't hold to these tenets.

Because the Bible is so clear in these blessed truths that thrill the soul that knows new birth in Christ.

So, yeah, if that makes sense or if that answers the question. Yes, it does.

It was really just budding, coming through it. And, you know, and sometimes I didn't know, like, the arguments between, you know, the five points and whatever.

I, praise God, he kind of kept me from that. And I came to it afterwards when I would hear these arguments.

But for me, it was just being in the Word and having these men that God blessed his church with, these gifts of pastors and teachers from so many centuries ago, just kind of taking me by the hand and opening the

Word of God to me. I don't preach Ellen, I preach the Word of God. I don't preach Charnock, I preach the

Word of God. But God gifted his church with these men, and those are the men

I read. Amen. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, if anybody would like to send us a question for Pastor Jim Mento.

And again, our theme today is going to be Discovering the Outward and Ordinary Means of Grace in Local Church Ministry.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Don't remain anonymous unless this is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking, and since Jim Mento is a pastor, we will broaden the theme of questions over which you may ask.

You may ask pastoral questions as well, but we are hoping that the majority of our questions will be on the actual theme,

Discovering the Outward and Ordinary Means of Grace in Local Church Ministry. Don't go away, we're going to be right back with Pastor Jim Mento right after these messages.

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Our guest today is Jim Mento, pastor of Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, and we are discussing discovering the outward and ordinary means of grace in local church ministry.

Well, first of all, for those of our listeners who may be new Christians or they may be members of churches that are outside the orbit of Reformed churches who might not ordinarily—no pun intended—use terminology like we are accustomed to hearing, but if you could define the outward and ordinary means of grace.

Sure. Well, I'll go to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, what are the outward and ordinary means whereby

Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption? The outward and ordinary means, the answer goes, whereby

Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are His ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer, all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.

So the preaching of the word, the sacraments or the ordinances, baptism and the

Lord's table, and prayer, prayer in fellowship, prayer in community, prayer in unity, and prayer in our own prayer times individually.

So these are the outward and ordinary means. They are called that because they are visible and or physical.

The preaching of the word, we hear that, the ordinances, we see they are visible, we see the

Lord's table, the elements of the table, we see the baptism, and we hear and converse and praise and worship prayer of the faithful, prayers of God's people.

So those are the outward and ordinary, and the reason why they're called ordinary, not that they're mundane, but these are that which are ordinary and common elements of the word, the preaching, the speaking of the word, a simple supper of bread and cup, a simple element of water, and then a time of prayer.

And not that they're diminished, but it's through these ordinary means where God does something so blessedly extraordinary, in that He communicates, and it's

His will to communicate His blessings of redemption through such means.

So when we say outward and ordinary, certainly the outward part we kind of get, but in our culture today, ordinary, we kind of flinch before, but when we realize how good

God is in providing such elements that are not adorned with the world's definition of extraordinary, what the world would consider ordinary, but it's because of that, through them,

God conveys, God conveys, man doesn't have to innovate, God conveys His extraordinary blessings to His people.

Well, while we're at it, we might as well have you give a definition of grace, because grace is a highly misunderstood concept.

I actually did, conducted a two -hour interview not long ago. In fact, I would highly recommend our listeners to look that up on the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com. If you look to podcast past shows, you will find, if you type into the search engine

Sasser, S -A -S -S -E -R, you'll find a very recent interview I conducted with Pastor William, a .k

.a. Bill Sasser. We spent two hours discussing that very one concept, grace, because it is highly misunderstood.

We have, even amongst evangelical Protestants, misunderstandings and disagreements.

The Reformed within Christianity have a somewhat different view of grace than the

Armenian evangelical Christians. The Roman Catholics have an extremely different understanding of grace than biblical

Christians. Cults use this word, false world religions use this word grace, and people use it in common vernacular that aren't even religious individuals at all.

So, as far as what you see as a biblical understanding of grace, could you define that for us, please?

Sure. Well, it's what we would know and understand as the unmerited favor of God.

That's grace. Unmerited favor of God, the unmerited love of God that He shows and pours out on His elect according to His eternal counsels.

Grace is one of those words where when you begin to unpack it, it just keeps coming.

We keep digging deep into it. But as we just kind of deal with that one sentence, and certainly it's not as definitive as what you just referenced, which is highly recommended to listen to that podcast, to hear such thoughtful view and such thoughtful regard to understanding grace.

Just for this time allotted, God's unmerited favor on His people, on His elect.

As someone who grew up as a Roman Catholic, that was completely antithetical to what

I was taught grace was. And in the end, a

Roman Catholic's view of grace is nothing more than work. You have to merit grace.

You have to earn it. There are hoops that some

Catholic theologians will jump through to try to make it not sound as such. The poor elderly lady who's wearing away the enamel on her rosary beads only understands it's because her tradition will only allow it to be understood and local

Catholic ministry will only allow it to be understood is that which you earn. And sadly, like you said,

Chris, there's many in the evangelical landscape that still consider grace as something earned, as something that we're perhaps born with in an ability to conjure or open.

No, all of that is just another word for work, grace.

And this is why I love the language of the Bible. We don't get to define the words.

The words had their own definition when they were being used. And grace is the unmerited favor of God.

And even doesn't that term, even unmerited favor, doesn't that also need a little unpacking?

Because I have heard, and I think these men of God have aptly put it this way, that the grace of God that saves us is even more specifically ill -merited favor.

If I'm walking down the street and a homeless person holds up a cup and I throw some change in there, that was unmerited favor.

He didn't earn that money. He didn't do anything that would necessarily make me think that I owed him that.

But if that person who is homeless, I had already discovered that he murdered everyone in my family and burned my home down, and I still gave him that money, that would be more comparative to what

Christ has done for us, is it not? Sure. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it wasn't that he didn't know us.

He knew us. He knew that we, and knows that we are rebels in and of ourselves. Not just rebels, but murderers, liars, killers, adulterers.

We are all of that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, as you begin to probe that meaning, what you probe and what you come up with is truly, as you truly probe that meaning, it is, there is no merit whatsoever.

And the fact, as you say, it is counter to any point in any way. Yeah, absolutely.

And believe it or not, we are already at our midway point where we have to take another break. Folks, please be patient with us.

I know that some of my listeners get impatient with the commercials, but it's the only way this program can remain in existence.

The funds that we receive from our advertisers keep us on the air. We cannot remain on the air without these funds.

So please be patient with us as we take this midway break, which is typically longer than the other breaks, because of the fact that Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show so they can air their own public service announcements and other things that localize

Iron Trump and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida. They are required to do that by the

FCC. While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

And I'm asking you to please use this time wisely, write down as much of the information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

And we're hoping that means that you will frequently purchase their products, you will frequently support their paratroop organizations, you will on occasion visit their churches.

But when you can't do any of those things, please at the very least simply respond to our advertisers and say thank you for sponsoring

Iron Trump and Zion Radio. That is, if indeed you really love the show and are grateful that there are generous people out there and generous ministries, churches, and businesses, and private practices that share the money that God has given them with us so that we can remain in existence.

If you really are grateful for that, please thank our advertisers. And also send in your questions to Pastor Jim Mento as we continue to discover the outward and ordinary means of grace in local church ministry.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back.

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Before I return to my discussion with Pastor Jim Mento of Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, on discovering the outward and ordinary means of grace in local church ministry,

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I have found churches for many people all over the planet Earth in our listening audience, sometimes even within minutes of where they live.

They didn't even know these churches existed, or they passed by them every day and didn't know that they were biblically faithful churches.

So if you are in that circumstance, or you know someone who is, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line, just like our listener

Kevin in Canada did that I informed you about at the very beginning of the program.

He asked for a recommendation for a couple. He met a lost couple in a cult on a camping trip in Arizona.

He asked for a church in Poughkeepsie, New York, where they live, and they visited that church.

They got saved by the grace and mercy of God, and they were just baptized yesterday. I'm still praising

God for that. So send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. And that's also the email address where you can send in a question for our guest today,

Pastor Jim Mento of Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania. I'm discovering the outward and ordinary means of grace in local church ministry.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't you think one of the reasons that we who are

Reformed need to make a point of the outward and ordinary means of grace is that throughout history there have been, sadly, hyper -Calvinists who don't even believe that God uses means of grace.

They think that that's Arminian. One denomination, and I don't want to broad brush because they're not monolithic, but there are many among the primitive

Baptists who will, in a derogatory fashion, identify people like us as being guilty of the means doctrine heresy, because they don't believe that God uses means.

They don't even believe that evangelism is used by God to bring about the new birth.

So tell us in your own words, why do you think it is so important to discover the outward and ordinary means of grace in local church ministry?

Sure. Well, just referencing, first and foremost, the confession again or the catechism again, there's a line there that just catches me, and it shows the importance and the answer to what are the outward and ordinary means.

The answer says it's whereby Christ communicates to us, and I just want to think about that for a moment.

It's such a pastoral answer, right? The church needs this.

Biblically, what has Christ done to communicate to us the benefits of redemption?

Well, as we consider these outward and ordinary means, the word sacraments and prayer, we need to realize that that's what's occurring.

Christ is communicating the benefit, the benefit of redemption.

We live in a culture that is just sapped, and I'll say this in an evangelical, and I usually add these days the ending "-ish," an evangelical -ish culture, which is just so sadly vacant as to the blessing of assurance.

And even those solidly doctrinal assemblies that hold so dearly to these means, any

Christian is going to struggle with assurance, and isn't it good that our good shepherd

Christ knows that? He knows that, and he has ordained means by which he would bring an assurance to the believer, a help to the believer, a blessing to the believer, a strengthening to the believer, an encouragement to the believer, and indeed, as we do confess, even a glimpse of heaven to the believer.

This is because Christ is good. He's the good shepherd. Our Father loves us.

The Spirit of God is with us. This is a triune glory when we consider the outward ordinary.

It is so important, not just so that we could fly a banner, and so sadly, even those that are on the right side of doctrine these days, we have a tendency or do have the temptation to simply wave a banner and say, we're right.

But when those banners get planted deep into the soul by God's grace, the ministry of the

Spirit, that's where we see what maybe we might call revival or whatever,

I don't know, but just Christians, true Christians being Christians, rejoicing in the benefits of redemption.

This world is not kind to Christians. Christ told us that. Our own flesh will work against us.

The devil works against us, but our good shepherd provided means by which he would teach us, communicate to us, commune with us, and we don't have to innovate.

That's the other reason why it's so important to know these ordinary means, to recognize, rejoice in them, to, in a real sense, practice them.

And I'll say this, in kind of the church culture that I was educated in and then found myself in once I was first saved and have, in some sense, ministered in, that kind of circle, there's always that tendency to innovate.

We need to figure something out in order to keep people, in order to address the, really what boils down to the itching ears of people.

And the reality is every church is practicing what they would consider a means, but sadly it's not

God's grace. It might be the means of the celebrity preacher, the means of the, just a relationship that really amounts to nothing more than, you know, good civic groups, but God has appointed means of grace to bring a

Christ -glorifying, Christ -honoring unity to His church, where His church would be

Christ to the world, to manifest Him as the church is living and loving unity.

And it's through these means that He communicates this blessing to us.

And so it takes away the intensity or the temptation for the preacher, the pastor, the ministry team, the eldership to think they need to innovate.

I think the means of grace, and as we look through the scriptures, we're really led to that, that they go hand -in -hand with what we know as the regulative principle of worship.

So the Bible tells us how to worship. God tells us how to worship. And He tells us by what means, that He will accept worship.

And it removes that temptation to kind of a lowercase p pietism, you know, all of that I feel,

I feel, I feel, because our hearts will lie to us.

But God does not lie to us. Our hearts will lead us astray. There are days when

I don't feel faithful. There are days when I don't feel good. And any believer will say that truly if we have the

Word of God as a mirror to our souls. But the means of God's grace are those solid truths.

And it's that solid blessing. It is the active blessing of God to where He communicates to us how blessed we are, how loved we are.

And again, going back to our discussion of grace, all by grace. And so for the struggling believer, that doubting believer, the answer is not try harder.

The answer is not try to be more positive. The answer is to rest in our

Good Shepherd who has provided His Word, provided the visible sacraments to visibly proclaim the

Gospel, and has provided us a entrance of prayer before the

Father. And so it reminds the soul, reminds the church, and it draws the church to these ordinary means.

It draws them to less and less trust self and more and more rely on Christ.

Amen. We have a Christian in western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who has a question.

How exactly are these elements within the local church assembly means of grace, and how do we avoid when viewing them as such falling into the heresy of sacramental salvation, sacerdotalism, and sharing

God's glory with men in salvation? Sure. Well, again, the

Bible tells us how. So good, isn't it? We don't even have to innovate with them.

We preach the Word. We preach God's Word. And it should be the prayer of every preacher to, in a sense, stand out of the way, to put

God's glorious Gospel there at the center. And so we preach the Word.

We preach the whole counsel of God. So it's not man's counsel. And so we remove that temptation to celebrify the man.

We don't have to be clever. We don't have to be neat and cool in the pulpit.

And in some sense—and, you know, I'm no pulpiteer.

I'm a sinner saved by grace and by God's grace. Further, I preach the

Word. And I preach the Word. And men preach the Word. And our churches are called together at that high point of that preaching of the

Word. And then when we look at the elements, you know, what does

Paul say to us? As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the

Lord's death until he comes. And so it removes immediately when we go to the

Word of God. And as Christ's own words in instituting, say, the supper and certainly the ordinance of baptism, it removes the self.

It removes the person. It removes the spotlight on the person. The table isn't a place where you go if you've earned all your merit badges.

The table isn't a place where you go if you've been perfect that week. That's the place where ruined sinners saved by grace come and partake and see before their eyes and, in a sense, taste upon their tongues a beauty and glory and blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So even as those who administrate, say, the sacraments or the ordinances, it's incumbent upon them to invite, indeed, the way we're called to invite and only put up the prohibitions that the scriptures themselves put in place.

And so that as well removes that temptation to celebrify or the man rather than bring all the

Word to God. So then we look at our prayer, and really, you know, all of this is in tandem with the work of the church.

So if you're preaching the whole counsel of God, you're preaching God. You're not preaching five easy steps for you to feel more positive today.

You're preaching God. You're preaching His glory. That should shape our prayer.

That should shape our prayer as a church and a body. That should shape our prayer as we pray at home, with our families, and in, as Spurgeon called it, our prayer closets.

Who is this God? How are we approaching Him? The very act of prayer should bring, if you're under the

Word of God, bring the gospel forefront. Who is my help in this prayer? There is the

Spirit of God who prays as we ought. And so it all revolves around how has

God revealed Himself? How has God revealed all that we do as we confess in faith and practice?

It's His Word. So the Word provides the parameter, the safe explanation, and the safe exposition of these outward ordinary means.

And then, as I discussed before, we were talking about those gifts of God to His church, pastors and teachers and preachers, you know, from all time, because all, whenever they lived, they were gifts.

Praise God to His church. And so we could see the confession as a 1689, the

Westminster, the Heidelberg. You know, you go to these confessions and you see and hear these explanations of the

Word. And that helps us. That helps us to see them in the light of God's glory and not man's.

And so, yeah, these outward and ordinary means as they communicate Christ's blessings, blessings of redemption, as we see them as that and understand them as we do all things through His Word.

Well, then that takes away the man and takes away the sacramental system.

And I'll say that with all lowercase s's there. And it brings forth the glory of God because that's what it is.

It's God's blessing to us to commune with Him, the God of glory, the eternal

God of glory. And we have an anonymous listener who has a connected question.

I'm remaining anonymous because some of my dearest friends in the pastoral ministry are fundamentalists and also even some from the

Reformed faith who much prefer the usage of the term ordinances than sacraments.

In fact, some of them get downright angry when the use of the term sacraments becomes a part of our speech.

Because they cannot separate it from the Romish understanding of that.

Is there a need to use the word sacraments, or do you think that it's fine just to refer to them as ordinances?

Or is there something special in using the term sacraments that you think really conveys the true meaning of what is occurring?

I don't want to speak ex -cathedrally here as an expert.

I use both terms. When I use the word sacrament because of the circle that I minister in,

I'm also very careful to maybe explain the word. I don't think one has to be used as opposed to the other.

When it comes right down to it, we can use the words that Christ used. You know, we consider this supper.

When we consider baptism, we can just use those words. I don't know if there has to be.

But words are powerful. And words can convey, sadly, things within an understanding of one's mind that aren't in the actual definition of the word.

Why is it sacred? Well, sacred doesn't elevate. It doesn't elevate the element, those kinds of things.

But it sets them aside. It sets them for a purpose to bring

God glory, those kinds of things. But I use both terms. I can't say that I have to plant a flag on either one.

So that's me. I speak not as a scholar or expert or to create more arguments.

That's me where I'm at, where God has me at this point in my study. I use both terms. So that helps.

Yeah, and even the greatly beloved hero of the Christian faith that is embraced by a hero—embraced as a hero,

I should say—by many fundamentalists, even outside of the Reformed faith,

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He used the term sacraments. Not that he is some kind of an inerrant guide into truth.

Sure. He did not write any of the canon, but he is certainly somebody that many of us look up to as someone that we can feel safe imitating, although being

Berean while doing it. Yes. Yeah. I think just to add something, you know, when you're in pastoral ministry and it's—believe me,

I fall so, so short in this, but every word you say is a teaching time, right?

I mean, you're always teaching. So if you use the word sacrament, man, we got to teach it, right?

We need to—and it can provide us an opportunity, perhaps, to just, you know, teach why we might use the word.

But I understand. I understand the reality of it being loaded, as it were.

Sure. And let's see, we have another anonymous listener who says,

Because I believe so strongly in everything you are saying today, I think there is a need for the

Church to return to a weekly observance of the Lord's Supper. I think that the neglecting of the

Lord's table is a neglecting of the means of grace, and I don't think it should be put off to once a month or even fewer times a year, as some congregations and denominations have the practice of doing.

Just to comment on that, I think any time we neglect, we are doing just that, neglect.

And when we realize what the means of grace are, and in this sense, when we're talking about the table, if it's communicating the blessings of redemption, why would we want to limit it?

I was just at a conference, Banner Truth, and there was an excellent exposition of this very idea.

So, I agree as well. On the other side of that, I think if you're in an assembly, if you're in a

Church body that does not observe every week, just to simply run it out there without the teaching, without the explanation, without the blessing explained in biblical detail,

I think that could harm. So, you always want to, you know, as a shepherd, as a pastor, and again, there's better men to reference than me in every way.

But as a pastor, as a shepherd, we're called to, well, to feed well.

Sometimes we need to know where our churches are. Are they ready? Do they understand? And so that, it doesn't make us throw it off, but it does, you know, there comes a time really in pastoral ministry, and I think it's just about every time, when it's a trench warfare.

We need to dig in, and we need to teach, and we need to teach the whole

Council. And if this is a blessing, and I believe it is, because the scriptures say, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, as often.

So, why would we want to limit it? Why would we want to neglect it? So, you know, I thank the person for that comment.

Joseph, in South Central Pennsylvania, says, on the one end of the spectrum, we have those that you've already mentioned that believe in a heresy of sacerdotalism and sacramental salvation.

On the other extreme end, there are those, even amongst the Reformed and other evangelical

Protestants, who believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper are purely and solely emblems and memorials.

Where do we fit in the middle of these two extremes, and what is exactly happening during these ordinances, if it is not saving us, or if it's not just a picture?

Proclaiming the gospel, proclaims the gospel, and the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

There's a lot of reading and study I still need to do on them. I was not reared in a confessional church.

And so, some of these things, I'm engaging with fresh eyes as I explore the confessions and rejoice in them and am taught by them.

But to say that the gospel being preached is not doing something, I understand, and I'm at the point,

I would say, in my understanding of the outward and ordinary means, where I kind of cringe when I hear purely and solely.

Perhaps that's where that gentleman is who wrote that question.

So, it's not purely and solely, it's just this little emblem. No, it proclaims the gospel.

And so, anything that's proclaiming the gospel according to God's need, God has provided what? Pastors and teachers proclaim the gospel.

All men, every man, woman, and child that's born again needs to be proclaiming the gospel, right?

But there's those ordained, those men ordained of God to proclaim the gospel to a local assembly week in, week out.

And we know what happens, right? It is the power of God unto salvation. This is how we're sanctified.

So, we're saved, we're sanctified because it's God's power. It's a monergistic work. And so, if these means of grace are indeed communicating those redemption blessings, what are they doing?

They're proclaiming the gospel. What do we do at the table? We proclaim his death until he comes.

Well, right there, Paul is explaining what? He died. He rose again. He ascended and he's coming again.

And so, there's a gospel proclamation in the baptism. We are baptized in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we are so identifying with what

God has done in our souls as the, I believe it's the

Heidelberg that says to the point, as surely as I'm washed by this water,

I'm washed in the blood of Christ. And so, the means are going to proclaim the gospel. They are a visible proclamation of the gospel.

The gospel is the power, right? So, I don't hold that they're just purely and solely.

I'm not saying they're conveying some kind of adverse grace or extra grace or un -gospel -identified grace.

No. Again, what is grace? God's unmerited favor. Did we deserve this week, if we observe the

Lord's table, his coming Lord's day? Did we deserve to have the gospel again preached to us physically?

No. Did we deserve, if left to ourselves, a justice that would send us to the pit of hell?

Of course. God's grace has provided this supper to proclaim visibly his gospel as the

Word of God, we hope, has been preached and proclaimed. And it's the gospel, gospel, gospel.

So, it's not purely and solely. It's not adding something or extra or whatever.

It's gospel power, gospel grace. So, I don't know where that puts me.

And I don't mean to offend anyone or I don't want Chris's lines to be running off the hook with scholars that I may not have correctly addressed some things with.

But if we see them as gospel proclamations, there is power.

There is blessing there. There is grace there to the soul. And as believers, we are ever more sanctified, ever more reminded, ever more rejoicing in, ever more bathed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen. And is it not, or should I say, are they not, meaning the ordinances, the opportunity for we who are in the body of Christ, who are sitting, observing, and listening to the gospel and the truths of Scripture proclaimed, the ordinances are where we have our turn, for lack of a better term, to physically and visibly and publicly participate in a ceremony that is demonstrating that we agree with this gospel being proclaimed, that we love this gospel and this

Christ being proclaimed, and that we want to identify with not only what is being declared, but with those people surrounding us who are part of that congregation.

The baptism, obviously, we are personally involved in once in our lives, but the

Lord's Supper is something that frequently, throughout our lives, we participate in, and we are over and over again, demonstrably giving evidence that, yes, we love what we are hearing, we believe what we are hearing, we trust what we are hearing, and we love and believe and trust in the one who is being declared our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And isn't it just, our

Savior is so wonderful, isn't he? He's so good to his church. What unity to eat together, to drink together.

And, you know, in a sense, even in baptism, what unity to hear that gospel that we believe and to see that water that we ourselves, as surely as we are watched with that water, we are watched with the blood of Christ.

Ah, isn't it good? Isn't our Savior good? The moment a pastor or a moment someone in the someone in the congregation, the moment we just are almost to the point of giving all the problems, their personalities.

A church is what? A church is full of sinners, right? Sinners saved by grace, the teachers, right?

So the moment, you know, we might be going through issues or tough times or hard times or there's division, right?

But there we are. There we are together, together, driven to Christ, reminded of the unity at which itself spills over forgiveness and compassion, because it's all there, right?

It's all there. And the reality of the gospel, those who are forgiven much, we should forgive.

So, yeah, of course, you're right on the mark. It just brings such a unity because our

Savior is good. Christ is good to his church and he's provided these for us. It also connects us not only with those that are visibly and physically around us at that moment, actually in the same congregation or outside near a lake or wherever these means of grace are being administered.

It connects us with the body of Christ universal throughout the ages, going back to the very first disciples who practiced these same ordinances.

I'm glad you said that, because it does. Isn't that good? You know, we're not alone, right?

We're not islands. And so not only can we say we're connected to the body 6 ,000 miles away, but connected to the body through, like you said, the ages.

So good. So good to see Christ. Good to his church. Again, what a blessing.

What an incredible blessing. And of course, one of those ordinances, baptism, is required, according to the scriptures, to add us to the church.

Not that it saves us. I don't believe in baptismal regeneration, and I don't believe, as some in the history of Christendom have said, that water baptism is a requirement for the remission of sins.

I don't believe that. But it is a command, and it is what

God uses as a means to add us to the church, is it not? I mean, it says it right in the scriptures. Sure, sure.

And don't we hear that? Don't we hear those words, sign and symbol? And again, that visible blessing,

Christ being good to his church, to provide our eyes with a proclamation of the gospel.

Yeah, and how good that is to join with the body and to be part of that body.

Yes, we are saved personally and individually, but he joins us unto himself in his body.

And yes, we are connected to that end and brought in.

So isn't that good as well? We're brought in. It was Christ who was taken outside the camp that we might be brought in.

Well, how do you explain that? Well, we preach that, we proclaim that, we go to the Word and exposit that.

But isn't it also so good of our Christ to provide a symbol, to provide a visible blessing to the eye to proclaim the same thing?

There's Christ. He himself went outside the camp. He was taken to be the sacrifice, to be the one who bore our sin, who took that upon himself.

He is our propitiation. He was taken out that we might be brought in. Yeah, it is a wonderful blessing.

And I love to hear faithful pastors remind the congregation when the

Lord's Supper is about to be observed that only those who have been baptized and are members of Christ's Church are invited to partake.

It seems obvious that among the means of grace, while the preaching of the gospel and evangelism are means of grace extended to everyone, even the lost, the means of grace in the ordinances are only for those who are saved.

And obviously, as much as we can humanly see and believe that our fellow men and women are giving evidence of being saved, being evidence of being regenerate, we don't know that infallibly when these individuals come to the leaders of the church and request baptism.

And then those who have been members for years receive the Lord's table as often as that congregation observes it.

We are fallible and errant in our understanding and our knowledge of who are truly regenerate, but we act upon what we can know with reason and with any credible profession that those two ordinances are only for those who are born again.

So isn't that a difference among the means of grace? Yeah. And the prohibition is serious, isn't it?

That prohibition that Paul brings us in 1 Corinthians 11. You know, if you come to this table, you're not a born -again believer.

You're eating judgment, as it were. What is this sign?

It's a sign of judgment. If you eat an unworthy matter, you'd be guilty concerning the body and blood of the

Lord. If someone asked me, well, what does that all mean? What kind of penalty does that entail?

Oh my, that's a hellish, literally a hellish penalty.

So we need to be so careful in this prohibition, don't we? We do talk about the fencing of the table, and here it is.

Here's Paul doing that very same thing. Don't come in an unworthy matter. Now, some people say, does that mean all my sin is forgiven?

Well, our sin is forgiven in Christ, right? So how are we worthy? Only as born -again believers in Christ, not because we lived a good month or lived a good week or lived a good morning leading up to the

Lord's table after the preaching of the word or before the preaching of the word, however the church administers, but are we in Christ?

Is Christ our Savior? Amen. And we have to go to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks.

So please, if you have a question, send it in immediately to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

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Pastor Jim Mento, if you could summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about our subject.

To be faithful to preach the Word, to be faithful to define the elements at the table according to the

Word, define the reality and blessing of baptism according to the Word, and to capture what we know of prayer by the

Word that we would all benefit from Christ's blessing to His church in giving and instituting these outward and ordinary means.

Amen. Well, we do have time for a couple more questions. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, New York, who says if one of the things that the reformers championed was the priesthood of all believers, why is it that typically in most reformed churches only an elder will administer the ordinances?

Typically you will not even see deacons doing this, let alone an average member of the church in good standing.

Why is that? Again, I am very deficient in my understanding and perhaps my grasp of the broader spectrum of the answer to this, but in understanding the ministry of the elder in proclaiming the gospel, in guarding, as it were, the gospel, we look at Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus, even to the

Ephesians, how the elders need to guard that proclamation and guard the teaching.

The elements are a proclamation. The elements visibly proclaim. The elements are teaching.

The elements are rich with gospel truth.

And so it's incumbent upon the elder to administer in that sense as he's charged, when he's charged to preach the word in season and out of season, when he's charged to preach the word always, he's still preaching.

Or I should say there's still a preaching occurring in the elements, in the ordinances, and thus

I can see why, as I understand it and I practice it and as we practice it here at church and as Reformed Brethren practice it under the administration of the eldership in that sense, because it is really a part of the teaching ministry.

So you would have those who are charged to guard the teaching to do as such. Well, we are out of time and I want to make sure

I repeat the website of Bible Baptist Church of Liverpool, Pennsylvania.

For anybody living in or near Liverpool or visiting that area, it is

BibleBaptistChurchofLiverpool .org. BibleBaptistChurchofLiverpool .org.

Don't forget, folks, if you are a man in ministry leadership and would like to attend the free

Iron Church on Zion Radio pastor's luncheon for men in ministry leadership, whether you're a pastor, an elder, and I think that those are the same office, by the way, folks, a deacon, a parachurch leader, as long as you're a man in ministry leadership, please send us an email chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. And that is Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Louisville, Pennsylvania. I hope as many of you as possible will join me

Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. I want to thank you so much, Pastor Mento, for doing such an extraordinary job today and I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write.

Don't forget, folks, tomorrow we have Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, joining us as a guest.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater