Well, I tell you, it is a wonderful joy and privilege to be just a river across from Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. To think that God in his kind mercy to me would have so like-minded a fellowship This close is encouraging. I know pastors who are languishing in places far removed from fellow believers and fellow pastors who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ and cherish His Word like your elders in this congregation do. If I don't say anything else tonight, let me say this plainly. Do not take for granted what you have here. Do not take for granted your fellowship. Do not take for granted the sweetness of it. Do not take for granted the faithfulness of those who lead and serve you. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13, 8. That comes in the context of an exhortation that you should remember those who led you, who spoke the Word of God to you. Consider the result of their conduct and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Either that biblical statement is true or it is not true. We presuppose that it is. And for that, I praise the Lord. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. He has always been, is now, and ever will be. But this is no theoretical or esoteric consideration. As I said in the context of that Hebrews passage, the Jesus your elders preached to you 10 years ago, is the Jesus that your elders preach to you tonight and is the Jesus that your elders will preach to you should the Lord tarry his return 10 years or 25 years or however long into the future. Jesus, who is that Jesus, can be counted on. Another word of thanks. I'm thankful to the elders and congregation of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church for the opportunity to address this evening three not two, three, major Trinitarian heresies. And these are a mouthful. Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Sabellianism. We all would affirm, I am sure, that we are robust Trinitarians. If I say, do you believe in the Trinity? You would say, yes, I do, of course. We believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. Acknowledging the Trinitarian nature of God is foundational to the Christian faith. Without affirming that truth, we might be Muslims. We might be Jehovah's Witnesses. We might be Hindus. Friends, we cannot be Christians. We are quick to say that while we cannot adequately explain the triune nature of the true and living God, we believe the doctrine because the scripture teaches it and teaches it plainly. These disastrous deviations from divine truth challenged the scriptural understanding of the Trinity and the nature of Christ, prompting the early church to define its doctrine through councils and creeds. So we might say, in a sense, in the providence of God, something good came out of these heresies. They helped define what we believe the scripture teaches with absolute clarity. We can say and affirm the definition of Chalcedon that we'll read later. We can say we believe that because godly men poured over the scriptures and used the best minds that God gave them and used the best words that God gave them to put into succinct form what we believe about the person of Jesus Christ. Robert Latham wrote a systematic theology, it was published in 2019. And I'm not a good mathematician, but pages 66 to 154 of that pretty thick systematic theology are devoted to three chapters. entitled God is Trinity from Eternity. That's a big section of his theology devoted to the Trinitarian nature of Almighty God. While that is a long treatment by comparison of the subject, every good systematic theology, and there are lots of them, will give serious attention to the triunity of God. It matters that much. Our best confessions and creeds are unanimous in their affirmation of the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead. And I'll just consider a few. The Apostles' Creed. I believe in God, the Father Almighty. In Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, I believe in the Holy Spirit. Now, that's just a summary of the Apostles' Creed, but it touches on the Trinitarian nature that was affirmed from the earliest days of the Christian church. The Nicene Creed, which grew out of the Arian controversy. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. That's good. That is rich. That's not just something that churches who are liturgical recite on a Sunday morning. It is something that we can boldly declare as a summation of Trinitarian truth. And then the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is precious to our own congregation at Cottondale. It was devised in 1689. In this divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided. The Father is of none. neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, all infinite without beginning. Therefore, but one God who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God. Please remember that word communion when we get to the end. and comfortable dependence on Him. This we believe and this we teach. Of course, these confessional statements only have validity to the degree that they are in harmony with the Bible. They are helpful summations. What do you believe about the Trinity? I believe this. Well, that's true. But if you're having a two-minute conversation with somebody about the Trinitarian nature of our God, you need something that is a summation and that is true to the Scripture. It is not authoritative above the Scripture. It is authoritative only as it is reflective of the Scripture, and it is only helpful therein. But these summations are useful in the teaching, discipling, counseling, and church discipline functions. of the church. But creeds and confessions are always subordinate to the authority of God's Word. What does the Bible say about the Trinity? Well, if you're doing a personal word study and using a thick exhaustive concordance, guess what? You're going to come up short. The word Trinity is not in our translations of the Bible. It's not there in that explicit term. But in implicit and explicit ways, it is abundantly clear that the orthodox, biblical, historical doctrine of the Trinity is found throughout the Bible. And it starts in the first chapter, right? Then God said, let us make. That translates one verb, and that verb is plural. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens. So implicit in the first chapter is the triune nature of God, the baptismal experience of Jesus. And when Jesus was baptized, you have the son being baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him and he saw the spirit of God Descending like a dove and coming to rest on him and behold a voice from heaven said this is my beloved son the father speaks aloud With whom I am well pleased So here in the beginning of the Old Testament the beginning of the New Testament The baptismal formula of Matthew 28 go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and Pay attention later because one of the heresies in its modern expression, one of its modern expressions doesn't baptize that way. And then one of my favorite texts in all of the New Testament, 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. You have been chosen. You are elect. If you are one of God's people, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, but not just God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, the Father has chosen before you were, before you existed, before there was time, God the Father chose His own. And it is by the sanctification of the Spirit that you are becoming transformed into the image of Jesus, His Son. For obedience to Jesus Christ, and for sprinkling with His blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. What a greeting. Heresy. This is the heresy. Hour, right? I get an hour to preach? No, it's historic heresy. Okay, HH, historic heresy. Heresy is a notion about God that is disastrously wrong. That's my own definition. Heresy is a notion about God that is disastrously wrong. Now, there's another definition I prefer, Gervase Charmley. I had never heard of this gentleman. He was an editor of a paper. He said, but it is also important to emphasize that the heretic on the whole does not set out to deny the truth, rather he begins with one truth and so distorts it as to deny other truths of equal importance. It's distortion. It doesn't come parading in, look at me, I'm a heretic, avoid me at all costs. That's not how heresy approaches. I believe that's a charitable and accurate definition of heresy. If we were each to engage in an exercise, if we each decided I'm going to write my own systematic theology, I'm gonna take the next 10 years and I'm gonna consult the best sources, I'm gonna do the best biblical exegesis, I'm going to do all of the reading necessary to compose my own systematic theology, guess what? All of us would be wrong in the main. There would be areas that were not perfectly right. And there are some areas where we would be very, very wrong and would need to be corrected. And all of that to say this, when we do theology, there ought to be one characteristic that rises to the top, like cream, and that's humility, right? We are dealing with God. We are dealing with the infinite and we are finite. Now that doesn't mean that we can't know true things about God, about His nature, about His character. Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord. You're not gonna know everything about Him. You're not gonna have all of your questions answered. But the things revealed belong to us and to our children and we're responsible for the things that belong to us. We walk a razor's edge whenever we do theology, whenever we think, talk, or write about God. It is the razor's edge between orthodoxy and heresy and we should be careful what we say and how we say it. If we have opposite views, let me say what I'm not talking about when I say heresy. If we have opposite views about the exact timing and specific details of the parousia, the Lord's return, we would do well not to accuse each other of heresy, right? Sometimes people throw that word around when they don't really mean to say it and they really should steer clear of it. But if you deny the biblical doctrine of the Trinity or claim that Jesus was a creature, even the first and chief creature, then you are a heretic. If you affirm the deity of Christ, but you deny the reality of His humanity, then you are a heretic. If you believe that Jesus is the Father, then you are a heretic. Not as loud an amen, but modalism, Sabellianism is not that familiar. You may not have horns coming out of your head. You may even be sincere in what you say, but you are dangerous to the church and you need to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as he is revealed in scripture. Titus 3, 10 and 11, if you would turn there. Titus 3 and verse 10. As for a person who stirs up division, After warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned." Do you know what person who stirs up division translates? Hieraticon anthropon, a heretical man. Division. Does the errant spiritual understanding cause the divisive behavior? Or does the tendency to stir up strife reflect heretical thinking? However understood, heretical divisive individuals get two strikes and they're out. Warn him once, warn him twice, he's gone. They're that dangerous to the church. I like how Brother Todd referenced that epithet, doctrine divides. And I guess in our theological age, when people don't want to think deeply about God, that's true. And if it divides along the lines of wheat and tares and sheep and goats and faithful and unfaithful, then let it divide. But rarely do people say heresy divides. No, instead they proclaim it from their pulpits proudly. in some cases. Heresy divides in the worst possible way. It destroys individuals and families and churches. This isn't theoretical, as I said at the beginning. Pastors who are dealing with broken homes, in some cases, are dealing with false doctrine, and sometimes very heretical doctrine. It is a very practical issue. Okay, that's introduction. I divided this into three points. Baptist preacher, after all. The persons, Arius, Apollinarius, and Sibelius, we're going to briefly touch on them. The problem, what they teach, and then the present, how it expresses itself in our own day. First of all, the persons, Arius, Apollinarius, and Sibelius. The three individuals I will address tonight are heretics, but they are also people. bearers of the imago dei, the image of God. It is easy to paint them as cartoon villains, like the Joker, or the Penguin, or the Riddler. But Arius, Apollinarius, and Sibelius were churchmen. Living in their era, you might have met them on the street cordially, listened with profit to some of their instruction, and you actually may have liked them. I guess my point is this, and please take it to heart, heretics don't usually present with horns. We must be discerning when it comes to those we allow to teach and to lead in the body of Christ. They may be mostly sound in doctrine, but if they deviate from truth in key points, or if they overemphasize or underemphasize certain biblical truths, beware. Every pastor who has been in ministry for any period of time has seen this. It needs to be a matter of prayer, observation, question, and scrutiny when we allow someone to teach in the church. Now, I'm not suggesting that we become spiritually paranoid, but hear this. The next Arius may be an enthusiastic Sunday school participant. in your church. A future Sibelius might be feverishly taking notes during the sermon. Not this one, but some sermon. While we must be cautious not to unwittingly plant heretics or tares in the church, we must also treat all persons fairly and with love. And on that note, nearly 40 years ago, Swiss Baptist theologian Roger Nicole published a most helpful article. It has been reprinted in numerous places entitled, How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us. How should we deal with people who differ from us? You and I are in complete agreement that heretics deserve no quarter in the realm of theology, but I do believe at least two of the three main points Nicole proposes are worth considering. First, what do I owe to the person who differs from me? And this is, again, talking in theology and doctrine. Well, we owe them love, right? We owe them, at a basic level, love, Matthew 7, 12. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. We are quick not to obey that verse and just go on the attack. But the golden rule applies to heretics. By extension, we owe even heretics to seek to really understand what they're saying and what they mean by what they are saying. Nicole told a story as a great illustration of this from his own experience. Nicole said that he went to the library of Cornelius Van Till Now, if you don't know Cornelius Vantilli, he was a Reformed theologian and he was an apologist. He believed in presuppositional apologetics. He believed that when you go to a lost person and you talk to them about the things of God, that they're not coming from a neutral position, they are coming from a position of knowing that there is a Creator, knowing that He has written in His Word, truth, and they have rejected that. And on that note, they would probably say, as presuppositions, that the Apostle Paul is the best example of that in Romans chapter 1. You know there's a Creator. But what you have done is you have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. You want to do what you want to do, and you know God is opposed to that, so you just put God out of your thinking. Well, Nicole went to Cornelius Van Til's office, and in his library was a huge set of church dogmatics by Karl Barth, the neo-Orthodox king. Liberalism has gotten much of its footing over the last half century or longer from Barth. And this set of Barth was not an English translation, it was in the original German. And Dr. Nicole picked up some of these volumes of Barth in the office library of Van Til and he started thumbing through them. He said there was not a single page that was not heavily constellated with notes and exclamation points and question marks. He had done the work to oppose this false teacher. He didn't just say, well, I know Barth's got it wrong and I don't need to read his stuff. He read it in the original German and made notes about it. Well, I'm not saying that any of us need to become scholars on Arius or Apollinarius or Sibelius, but we should at least give them that careful reading. If one of your elders says to you or even to me, mark such a man and avoid him, I'm gonna pay attention, I'm gonna listen. But I would owe it to that individual to at least dig a little deeper and understand what they mean. by what they say. And then the second thing that Nicole points out is, what can I learn from those who differ from me? Are there areas of emphasis or lack of emphasis in my own theology that the unpleasant exposure to heresy can point out? Possibly. If I read Arius, I might have to think, do I think enough of the deity of Christ? I mean, he's the Jesus who is my best friend. He is the Jesus who is the captain of my salvation. He is the lover of my soul, but do I acknowledge and worship him as God? Maybe some exposure to Arius would drive me in that direction, and that's not pleasant. Whenever my dear wife Dawn has to go for a PET scan and she's had her share, One thing that always strikes me is when they come in with that canister that they had to go to Birmingham that day to get and bring back under whatever circumstances of safety, I always notice there's a symbol on the side of it. And it's that symbol that Cold War folks remember, the nuclear symbol. The thing radioactive stay away from this or they're going to put that in her body. That can't be a good thing, but it's a good thing because if there's cancer in her body, it exposes it. And so it is with our exposure to even heretical teaching. We can learn from those who differ from us. Okay, Arius, 256 to 336 A.D. You'll see different numbers on some of these. It's a long way back in time, so sometimes the dates differ, but these are good round dates for each, 256 to 336. Definitions are important. Some of the earliest pages of a doctoral dissertation invariably cover the definitions of terms. We've got to know what we're talking about before we can get very far into any discussion. I believe our brother Hank Acheson is dealing with Armenians, not to be confused with Armenians, the citizens of a West Asian country who may in fact be good biblical Calvinistic Armenians and who would likely not wish to be known as Armenian Armenians. So for me, it is necessary tonight to distinguish between Aryans and Aryans. Aryans with a Y are not our concern this evening. If you are interested in Indo-Iranian studies or the history of Nazi Germany, you will undoubtedly encounter Aryans with a Y. So tonight, I am not talking about Armenians or Armenians. And I am definitely not talking about Aryans. Tonight, I'm talking about Aryans, the followers of Arius. OK. I wondered if I'd get through that. Okay, I'm glad I did. All right, who is Arius? I had a professor in seminary, Dr. J. Terry Young. We called him J. Terry Overhead because invariably his class lectures were always with an overhead. You remember those? J. Terry Overhead, J. Terry Young, used to say to his classes, I better be able to come to your church out in the middle of nowhere and ask you to list the dates of the four great ecumenical councils that dealt with the nature of Christ. Okay, Dr. Young, if you're listening, Council of Nicaea, 325 A.D., Council of Constantinople, 381 A.D., Council of Ephesus, 431 A.D., Council of Chalcedon, 451. Of those, it was the Council of Nicaea was the one that dealt with Arius and his errant teaching. Here's Arius in a nutshell. He was an elder in the North African city of Alexandria, Egypt. He lived a simple, ascetic life and was apparently a well-educated and polished speaker. He had a rocky ministry filled with controversy and conflict. And though Athanasius was not a major player in the Council of Nicaea that condemned Arius for his heretical views, Athanasius, who we know, contramundum, who stood against the world, did rise in subsequent years to be the chief opponent of Arianism and one of Nicaea's staunchest defenders. Here's something important about Arius. He was apparently exiled to Illyricum, and some have suggested that he may have had some repentance from his infamous views before his death. We've had some famous people die recently, right? And there's all kinds of speculation, everything from the worldly view of salvation by death. They're dead, so obviously they're in heaven. to, well, there's no way that guy could have gone to heaven because we know what he said and what he did throughout his life. Well, we don't know what a person's soul is at the moment that they die. We don't know some of these infamous sinners. Maybe they had a deathbed repentance. We have one example of that in the New Testament. I don't know. But I can say this. We can be hopeful that Arius repented before he died of his errant views about Jesus. Secondly, Apollinarius, 8310-391. V.L. Walter in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology gives this good summary of the life of Apollinarius. He apparently lived out his entire lifetime in Laodicea, which is southwest of Antioch. He was a man of such unusual ability and gracious saintliness that even his staunchest opponents paid tribute to his sterling character. As a young man, he became a reader in the Church of Laodicea under Bishop Theodotus and circa 332 was briefly excommunicated for attending a pagan function. He had church background. He got into some trouble. He got excommunicated, brought back into the church. However, the Nicene congregation of Laodicea selected him bishop sometime around 361 AD. Evidence would suggest that Apollinarius put more time into teaching and writing in nearby Antioch than in ecclesiastical administration. As a revered teacher, he was the friend of Athanasius, consultant by correspondence to Basil the Great and numbered among his pupils Jerome in 373 or 374. So he had influential friends, some of whom believed good things. But he still went astray. And then finally Sibelius, circa 2nd or 3rd century AD. We don't really know a lot about him. He's much more shadowy than the other two heretics in terms of his person. He had some theological and church activity in the early decades of the 3rd century. A certain man by the name of Callistus is supposed to have introduced Sibelius to patrapossianism. What a term, right? There's a $50 theological word for it. Patrapossianism, it simply means the father suffered. So Sibelius was introduced to this notion that it wasn't the second person of the Trinity that suffered on the cross, it was the one person of the Father who suffered on the cross. Wow, how do you get sucked into that? Patrapasianism taught that he was not the son, but the father who was incarnated, born of a virgin, and who experienced the passion, hence the name of suffering and dying at Calvary. Sibelius was not the only modalist, but his name has become most closely identified with the error over time. All right, so those are the men. Those are the persons. Let's move quickly to the problem. You can't fully explain the Trinity, nor can you fully explain gravity, but you better not deny either or disaster will ensue. Arianism. Why might, let's start with some grace, why might Arius have posited his ideas, namely that Jesus is somehow subordinate to the Father? That's Arianism. Jesus is not God. He is subordinate to God. Why might he have posited that notion? Turn to Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, or just quote it. Every faithful Jew would be able to do so. In Hebrew, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Echad, one God. Possibly Arius had a strong desire to uphold monotheism, which is in itself a good desire. I think we would all agree. We don't believe in many gods, neither did Arius. That's about as far as we can say about him that's good. Okay. He may have wished to emphasize that Jesus really did share real humanity with those humans that He came to save. After all, we need a human to die in the stead of humans. Be that as it may, the Arian heresy maintained that only God the Father is eternal, and His Son was the first creature He created out of nothing. Arius taught that the Son was created by the Father, not eternal, and thus not fully divine in the same sense as the Father. Some Arians even believed that the first thing, the first person that Jesus created was the Holy Spirit. Now, when you start going down a heretical path, You can start to believe some wacky stuff. Wacky is a theological term. One of his most obviously heretical statements was, there was a time when the Son was not. Now, if we were Jewish men, we would tear our clothes at that point. There was never a time that the Son was not. There was no beginning to the Son's existence. He has always been. Some Aryans went on to teach that the Holy Spirit was the first and greatest creature produced. Okay. What did they teach from the Scriptures? Psalm 45, 7. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. Psalm 45, verse 7. Jesus had a God, and therefore that makes Jesus subordinate to God in their thinking. Another errant line of thinking. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared and brought up. Isaiah 1, verse 2. God has children. They must be inferior to Him. Therefore, Jesus is inferior to the Father. And then a whole line along the lines of wisdom. Proverbs 8, 22. In the Septuagint says, The Lord created me, speaking of wisdom, personified, at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old. Now along with 1 Corinthians 1.24, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. We preach those texts and we rejoice in what they say about the gospel and yet Arians use them to try to deny the full deity of Jesus. They twist the scriptures. And because of Him, 1 Corinthians 1, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God. So they take all of that and say, well, God created wisdom, Jesus is wisdom, so God created Jesus. Well, John 14, 28, the father is greater than I. Arius used this to argue that the son is inferior because the father is greater. And then Colossians 1, 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. We understand that to mean that Jesus is the chief, the first, he has the preeminence in all things. But Arius would teach that Jesus was actually the firstborn because he did not exist prior. Alan Cairns said the Council of Nicaea met in AD 325 to deal with the subject and it firmly rejected Arianism. It held that the son was of the same substance with the father, not merely of similar substance. Now you may have heard these terms before, homoousion and homoiousion. It is just the difference of one little Greek letter in Iota. Homoousion means Jesus is of the same essence. Homoiousion, just one letter, he's of similar essence. He's of the same, he's of the similar. Where are you gonna bank your eternity? He's the same. Well, it pronounced its scriptural faith that the Son was the Son of God, light of very light. Athanasius, Arius' chief opponent, ultimately would argue that the Son's divinity is essential for salvation as only God can save. We need God to save us, as John Piper says, from God and his wrath. Well, what saith the scriptures? Each time we would have to ask that question, it is the only question that matters. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him. This affirms the Son's eternal existence and full deity. Only God can exist with God from all eternity, and only God can create out of nothing. And so Jesus is God. Hebrews 1.3, He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. Let's say it this way. If you can say it about God the Father, and you can say it about God the Spirit, you can say it about God the Son. Whatever it means to be God, you can say that about Jesus. And then finally, John 10, 30, I and the Father are one. There is a unity in essence. They're not just on the same page about how history's gonna unfold. They are of the same essence. Whatever deity is, they share that. That's Arianism. Apollinarianism, simply stated, as opposed to Arianism, which taught Jesus is man, not God. Apollinarianism teaches that Jesus is God, but not fully man. More technically, it asserts that the fully divine Jesus had a real human body, not like the Dosetics who believed that he just appeared to have a human body. They believed that he had a real human body, but that his mind was the eternal logos, the divine mind and soul of God. So you've got a Jesus who has flesh, but he's got God's mind and God's soul, but not a human mind and a human soul. Well, that raises two $50 words again. These might be $75. Monophysitism, the blending of the divine and human natures in Christ. There's one person, but the natures, divine and human, are somehow blended in him. And then, as Brother Todd mentioned, the hypostatic union, Jesus is fully God, We affirm this, he is fully man without the blending of those two. Jesus is not deified man and he is not humanized God. He is 100% God and 100% man without mixture of the two natures in his one person. Apollinarians argued that Christ's divine nature, the logos, this was an idea in Greek philosophy as well, that there is some divine mind out there, The Bible rightly understands that to be the eternal word, Jesus, the logic, the mind, the reason, the rationale, the word of God. And turn over on that note to Galatians 3. I have often struggled, commentators have not given me the greatest of help, in this text, Galatians 3, beginning in verse 7. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham, and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed. The Scripture preached? If I set my Bible down here, does it speak out loud? That's what it sounds like. The Scripture preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. Well, who is Jesus? Jesus is the word. The scripture and Christ, he is so identified with his word that I believe in some sense Christ preached the gospel to Abraham. I can't get into all that, I don't understand all that, but it helps me make some sense of Galatians 3. All right, the Council of Constantinople later affirmed the hypostatic union Christ as one person with two natures. Gregory of Nazianzus. One of the early fathers insisted that Christ must be fully human, including a rational soul, to redeem humanity fully. He claimed what is not assumed in the incarnation cannot be redeemed. If Jesus just came to redeem our bodies, but not our souls or not our minds, we're in a heap of trouble. We need to be comprehensively redeemed. And a Jesus who is God and man alone can do that. John 1, 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Apollinarius interpreted flesh there as just the physical body. John 3, 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Jesus is just flesh. and that his mind had to be divine. Philippians 2.7, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. He looked like a servant. There's some docetic views there that come into play, apparently. 1 Corinthians 2.8, they crucified the Lord of glory. Apollinarius there emphasized Christ's divine glory over his human nature. Okay, what do the scriptures say from the biblical perspective? Hebrews 2.17. He had to be made like his brothers, what does it say? In every respect. It's not just his body, but it is his mind. He has a human, though perfect, mind. Luke 2.52 reminds us of that. Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature. This implies a human mind capable of growth. It's a sinless mind, but it's a perfect mind, but it's a mind that is human and capable of growth. Matthew 26, 38, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Jesus references his human soul. Apollinarius says, ah, see there? He's talking about his soul, which is somehow divine, but he's got a human body. Okay, Sabellianism. Also called modalism, or as you might see it in a systematic theology text, modalistic monarchianism. Why do theologians do that? Well, they're trying to be helpful, believe it or not. They don't always succeed. Well, monarchianism comes from monarchia, from which we get monarch, and it means the source, the beginning. One actor playing three roles is what Sabellians believe about God. There's only one person of God. God sometimes appears as father, sometimes God appears as son, sometimes God appears as spirit. Modalists believe in not just one God, but one person. God the Father is God. The Son is God the Spirit. The Spirit is the Father. The one divine person expresses himself at various times and in various connections as Father, alternately as Son, and sometimes as Spirit. And they do this with scripture twisting as well. Isaiah 45.5, I am the Lord and there is no other. Sibelius used this to emphasize God's oneness. John 10.30, I and the Father are one. used by other heretics, twisted. I and the Father are one. He interpreted as one in identity, not one in essence. There's only one Father, and Jesus and the Father are the same. Well, quickly. The Church affirmed that the Trinity consists of three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sharing one divine essence, not one person in different roles. Tertullian and others clarified this against Sibelius, emphasizing relational distinctions. The doctrine of the Trinity, formalized at Nicaea and Constantinople, rejected Sibelianism by affirming eternal distinctions within the Godhead and the best modern statement against Sabellianism I think I've ever heard is this, Brandon Smith, to speak of the one God of the Bible is to speak of the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are each God, but they are not each other. All right, what saith the scriptures, Matthew 11, 27, all things, I know this is going long, I'm sorry, all things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. There is a distinction, Jesus says, I and the Father are distinct, the Father allows me to give knowledge of myself to those to whom I choose. Have this mind among yourselves. This is the great canonic hymn of Philippians chapter two. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. God the Father in heaven, the Son comes down to earth. He gives the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit sanctifies and makes us Christ-like. Philippians 2, five to 11. And then the introduction to John's gospel, John 1, 1-18, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. There's a distinction between the word, who is with God, he is with the Father, and he comes in flesh to redeem his own. The baptismal formula, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, those are distinct names and distinct persons. John 14, 16, John 17, 5. Let me say this in closing about modalism. Be careful not to pray as a modalist. I have heard people pray, Father, we thank you that you died on the cross. Father didn't die on the cross. That's Patropassianism. That's an innocent Patropassianism, but it's Patropassianism nonetheless. We should be careful how we talk about God. We should be careful how we think about God. We should have our thoughts and our words informed by scripture. All right, the present. The problem of these Trinitarian heresies led to Chalcedon ultimately for which we are grateful. So how many of you woke up this morning and thanked God that you're a Chalcedonian Christian? Well, maybe tomorrow you will. You should. Chalcedon was a great definition. Hear it carefully. Employ it as a good, full, historic statement in answer to the modern followers of the ancient heresies we have considered. Because it brings them all together and it fixes the errors of those heresies. Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son. Our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, Apollinarius. of one's substance with the Father as regards His Godhead, Arius, and at the same time of one's substance with us as regards His manhood, like us in all respects, apart from sin, as regards His Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards His manhood begotten for us men and for our salvation, of Mary, the Virgin, the God-bearer, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person in subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one in the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, Lord Jesus Christ, even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of Him, and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us, and the Creed of the Fathers has handed down to us. It fixes them all. He's God. He's man. There is not two persons in there. There's one person, one person with two natures, and those natures aren't confused. They're not blended. They're not mixed. We have a firm foundation from biblical exegesis and from historical theology to stand against the present heirs of Arius, Apollinarius, and Sibelius, Arians. We know them most prominently as Jehovah's Witnesses. They teach that Jesus is a created being, the first of God's creatures, and not equal to Jehovah. They cite verses like John 1.1, which they mistranslate in the New World Translation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God, a God. It cannot be substantiated in Greek. It is a mistranslation. They have to add words in to make it fit their theology. In Colossians 115, which they misinterpret, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And we've already addressed that. Some liberal theologians or Unitarian groups also echo Arian ideas by viewing Jesus as a great teacher or prophet, but not fully divine. Liberals emphasize his humanity to the exclusion of his deity. He gets us, right? He gets us. Yeah, he also judges us. He also made us. They don't go that far. And I didn't explore this any further, but Coptic Church in Egypt and Orthodox Church in Ethiopia both have Aryan tendencies. I did a paper on the I Am Sayings of Jesus in John's Gospel when I was in seminary. And when you're privileged, as I was, to go to a seminary that has a huge library, I was wandering through the library, and I came across Commentary on the Gospel of John by the infamous, infidel Rudolf Bultmann, German higher critical theologian. And he was writing something about one of the I Am Sayings of Jesus. I was like, man, that'll preach. He's got that right. And it struck me. Here is a guy who is looking carefully at the text of the New Testament as it was written originally by John. And he notices something that is there that he doesn't believe, but he can't argue that that's what the text says. I may not believe it, but it does say that. And I thought, oh, if you could have just believed it, what a transformation it would have made in your heart and life and eternity. That's Arians. Apollinarians, definitely a minority modern representation. It's enduring bad fruit, can only be guessed at in some way. Apollinarians appear as Christian science teachings sometimes, which emphasize Christ's divine nature while minimizing his true humanity. I mean, Christian scientists don't believe that sin is real or that sickness is real, so why would they believe that the that the mind of Jesus was actually human. They don't like anything that's substantial like that. Similar, I guess, to the Gnostics who would say that they opposed that which is substantive or physical. Here's another thought that I had. Conservatives sometimes overemphasize the deity of Jesus, leading to liberals overemphasizing his humanity. And so when we react to error, sometimes we react so far that we cause others to react in an opposite direction that is equally dangerous. And then finally, Sabellians. Sabellianism is seen in Oneness Pentecostalism, which teaches that God is one person manifesting as Father, Son, and Spirit, and they baptize in the name of Jesus only. A Oneness Pentecostal baptizes in the name of Jesus because they believe that Jesus is the Father, is the Spirit. Now, T.D. Jakes used to believe that, and as far as I have been able to discern, he rejected that at a later time. He was ordained in one as Pentecostalism, but supposedly rejected it in favor of a Trinitarian understanding. Also, some popular Christian songs might tend to oversimplify the Trinity, inadvertently presenting God as one person switching roles, reflecting the ideas of Sibelius. This is even done in our attempts to explain the Trinity versus analogies, via analogies. Don't do that, please. Don't try to make an analogy of the Trinity. You will fall short. People talk about water, H2O, it's a gas, it's a liquid, it's a solid. But that molecule is not gas and liquid and solid at the same time, in the same relationship. So that doesn't work. Jesus is God and He is Son at the same time. The Father is God and the Spirit is God. Okay, conclusion. In summary, Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Sibelianism each challenged core Christian beliefs about the Trinity and Christ's nature. Arius denied the Son's full divinity, Apollinarius compromised Christ's humanity, and Sibelius erased the distinctions between the persons of the Trinity. Maybe I have raised more questions than I have answered. I would ask you this, dig deeper in these areas, be guided by books, creeds, confessions, sermons, and podcasts, but as always, submit only to the Bible as the ultimate authority and the sufficient word it is. Any investigation you make into God's revelation of His own nature and character in God's Word will pay huge dividends in your Christian walk. If you don't understand anything about the triune nature of God, whatever steps you take to understand Him better will pay off now and forever. Because you will know God better. And what is better than knowing God better? Nothing. All right, there's a book, it's very small, it's written by Sinclair Ferguson, it's in that Long Line of Godly Men series, and it's entitled The Trinitarian Devotion of John Owen. I encourage you to get it. It's very pastorally written. John Owen was the master theologian of the Puritans. And I learned, before I started trying to read John Owen, a new vocabulary word from J.I. Packer, and it was the word elephantine. And it is just what it sounds. If you read a sentence of John Owen, it's like an elephant lumbering through the bush. He just writes and writes and writes and writes and writes, but everything he writes is good. Well, Trinitarian devotion of John Owen. John Owen can be off-putting, as I said, but Ferguson's book might just tempt you to wade into the pool a bit. Here are the salient points of the book summarized, and with this we'll close. God is Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a great mystery because we are not God and we cannot fully understand the sheer, wonderful, glorious mystery of His being, but we can begin to grasp it and learn to love and adore Him. Whatever you don't know about the Trinity, what you do learn about Him, you will be benefited by. Second, if you're a Christian, it is because of the loving thought and action of each person of the Trinity. The Father, along with the Son and the Spirit, planned it before the foundation of the world. The Son came to pay the price for your redemption and, supported by the Holy Spirit, became obedient to His Father in your place, both in His life and death. To bring you justification before God and now, by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit sent by both the Father and the Son, you have been brought to faith. Third, the greatest privilege any of us can have is this. to know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We can enjoy fellowship, what Owen calls communion, I said that at the beginning, with God. This knowledge is as rich, wide, deep, long, and high as are the three persons of God. Do you love the Father? Do you love the Son? Do you love the Spirit? distinctively as they have distinctively loved you. Let's commit to knowing and loving the persons of the Trinity, worshiping, obeying, and giving thanks for each of the persons of the Godhead. Let's be kind to each other over minor differences, loving and gracious even to the heretical folks we encounter. Don't give quarter to them on their ideas, but do be kind to them as humans. And last, and I promise last, heresy matters. Trinitarian heresy really matters. It is not just for professional theologians or elders in churches to wrestle with these truths. We all need to be like the Bereans and examine these things daily to see whether they are so. Know what you believe and why you believe it. Never settle. The more you know about who God is, who He truly is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the more you will likely love and worship Him. Strive to think and speak accurately about God. Don't be lazy and sloppy with your language. Let us recommit to give glory to the true, living, and triune God. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, You are our Lord and Savior, our Master and King, You obeyed perfectly your father. You have given to us your spirit. We worship and adore the triune God this evening. Thank you for these, my brothers and sisters, what kindness they have shown, what attentiveness. I pray that you would draw each of us close to you and to one another as we all seek to glorify Christ in Jesus name. Amen.