Man, the title of my sermon tonight is Oneness, Motilist, Heretics, Oneness, Motilist, Heretics.
Now this is the third part in a series because I preached on this on Wednesday night.
I preached on it this morning and I'm preaching on it tonight.
It just seems fitting to have a trilogy of sermons dealing with the subject of the Trinity.
And I'm going to say the same thing tonight that I said this morning.
If you were not here on Wednesday night, you need to listen to that sermon.
In fact, let me just ask for a raise of hands.
Who was not here on Wednesday night?
Put up your hand if you weren't here on Wednesday night.
Okay.
Who was not here on Wednesday night and you haven't listened to the sermon yet.
You haven't heard Wednesday night's sermon.
Listen, I really want you to listen to that sermon, download it, get it on YouTube.
And if you have any trouble, yes?
You listen to half of it.
All right.
Good.
You're on the right track.
I'm just making a point about this because if anybody needs a CD or something, I could
burn you a CD of it.
I just want to make sure that everybody in our church knows what the truth is and gets
that doctrine.
And I don't want to have to do a big, long review right now and re-preach all that or
re-preach what I did this morning.
So I encourage you, if you weren't there, listen to the sermon, listen to the preaching.
I will do just a super quick review tonight, but I want to get into new material.
The title of the sermon is Oneness Modalist Heretics.
Who are they?
Where do they come from?
Where does this doctrine come from?
What are they basing it off of?
Well, we talked about on Wednesday night just what the book of John alone says.
This is just a super quick review.
We talked about the fact that Jesus over and over again in the book of John makes a big
distinction between him and the Father.
He talks about how he obeys the will of the Father.
He doesn't do his own will.
He does the will of the Father.
He doesn't just testify of himself, but the Father testifies of him as well.
He does the works of the Father.
The Father loves the Son.
The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
The Son is going to return to the Father.
And there's just a mountain of evidence.
Then this morning, we kind of focused on the Old Testament.
And we showed just a lot of Old Testament evidence.
Let us make man in our image.
We went to Psalms and even showed just really powerful scriptures from Psalms that the apostles
are constantly using to affirm the deity of Christ, but how they clearly teach that there
is the Father and the Son, that they are not the same person, but that there's the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and those three collectively make up one God.
There's one God, and that one God is made up of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
These three are one.
Obviously, there's a closeness there between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
We don't want to go too crazy ripping them apart and end up with three deities or three
gods.
There's only one God, but the Father is not the Son.
The Son is not the Father, but the Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Holy Ghost is God.
But they are different.
And look, we could use all kinds of illustrations to illustrate the Trinity.
Every illustration will fall short, but at least they can help people begin to wrap their
mind around the Bible's clear teaching.
So no illustration is perfect, but for example, the illustration that I grew up with was that
of an egg that says that there's the shell, the yolk, and the white, but it's just one
egg.
It all makes up an egg, but the shell is not the yolk.
The yolk is not the white, but it's all egg, right?
It's all the egg.
Another illustration that I think is helpful is to understand that we, in the image of
God, are also a trichotomy because we are made up of body, soul, and spirit.
So if I were to die right now, the spirit and the soul would depart my body, and there'd
be nothing but a body laying here, right?
And if the police came to you and said, would you identify this body?
And you said, that is Steven Anderson, you would be accurate.
But yet if I walked up to someone in heaven and I was introduced in the soul, in the spirit,
as this is Steven Anderson, that would also be accurate.
But yet, is the soul the body?
Is the body the soul?
No.
Is the soul the spirit?
No, the Bible talks about dividing the soul and spirit asunder.
So these three collectively make up Steven Anderson, but they are distinct from one another,
they are separate from one another, they're not equivalent to one another.
Same thing with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
They collectively make up only one God, but they are distinct and different one from the
other.
So that's what we really talked about on Wednesday night, this morning.
Tonight I want to talk about where this doctrine came from, where the heretics in our church
that were cast out got this doctrine from, and just what does it mean?
What are the conclusions that we draw here about who they are, what they were doing,
what's this all about?
First of all, let me just get into a little more scripture on the Trinity that I didn't
get to this morning.
Right there in 2 John, we can see some evidence right here of the fact that the Son is not
the Father.
Look at 2 John, verse 3, the Bible says, Grace be with you, mercy and peace from God
the Father.
So we have the term God the Father in the Bible, it says from God the Father and from
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in truth and love.
So there's a distinction made between God the Father and the Son of the Father who is
Jesus Christ.
Jump down if you would to verse 9, it says, Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in
the doctrine of Christ hath not God.
He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
So notice the first half of that verse says they don't have God in general.
Then the second half gets specific and says that the one who abides in the doctrine of
Christ has both, both, that's two things there, right?
Both the Father and the Son.
You say, well, why didn't he mention the Holy Ghost?
Because the discussion in the books of 1 and 2 John is about the Father and the Son
because you have Jews and people that are acknowledging the Father but they won't acknowledge
the Son.
And then John's telling them, if you don't have the Son, you don't have the Father.
But if you acknowledge the Son, you have the Father also.
So the Bible's clear that the Father and the Son are distinct from one another but that
they're both God.
The Bible says in 2 Peter, flip back just a few pages while you're in that vicinity.
2 Peter 1 verse 17, this is a reference to the Mount of Transfiguration.
And in 2 Peter 1 verse 17 it says, for he received from God the Father honor and glory.
When there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, this is my beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased.
Go to Matthew chapter 3.
Matthew chapter 3 is another place where the voice came from heaven and said, this is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, Matthew 3.
This voice came from heaven in multiple places in the Gospels but two of the most famous
are Jesus' baptism and Jesus' transfiguration.
And it says in Matthew chapter 3 verse 16, and Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straight
way out of the water and lo, the heavens were opened on him and he saw the Spirit of
God descending like a dove and lighting upon him and lo, a voice from heaven saying, this
is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
So here we have a great example of the Trinity because you have the Son of God being baptized.
Then you also have the Spirit of God descending upon him and then you have the voice from
heaven from the Father saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
And there are lots and lots of verses.
We already covered a lot on Wednesday and Sunday morning.
Just of all the different instances where all three are mentioned in one verse.
Lots of places where all three are mentioned.
Here's another one that I didn't go over.
Go to 2 Corinthians chapter 13, 2 Corinthians chapter 13, and again, there's just a multitude
of examples where you'll find all three mentioned in one verse.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all, Amen.
There you go.
The Trinity right there.
Because often the Father is just referred to as God.
Now the word God does not always mean the Father.
Sometimes God is referring to the Son.
Sometimes God is referring to the Holy Ghost because they're all God.
And we do not for one second deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was God in the flesh.
God was manifest in the flesh.
Under the sun he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.
But there is a difference between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
And so when we see the word God, the context will tell us whether we're talking about the
Father, whether we're talking about the Son, whether we're talking about the Holy Ghost,
or whether we're talking about all three, whether we're just talking about God in general.
And we can tell that from the context.
In this context, because you got the Spirit and Jesus right there, we're clearly talking
about the Father.
In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God.
That's talking about the Father.
The Word was God.
That's talking about God in general.
Okay.
Now I heard someone else put it this way grammatically, and I think this is a good way to illustrate
the grammar of John 1-1.
What if I were to say to you, and again, no illustration is ever going to be perfect,
but I'm just throwing this out there as an example of what's happening grammatically
in John 1-1.
What if I said to you, in the Garden of Eden, there was a woman, and the woman was with
the man, and the woman was man.
That would be a correct statement, because if I said she was man in the sense of that
she was mankind, she was human, then that would actually make sense, okay?
But if I were to just tweak that just a little bit, it would stop making sense.
Because what if I said, well, in the Garden of Eden, there was a woman, and the woman
was with the man, and the woman was a man.
That wouldn't make sense anymore, would it?
Just like what the Jehovah's Witness, false Bible version where they say, in the beginning
was the word, the word was with God, and the word was a God, destroys the meaning of the
verse.
Or what if I put the in front of it, and said, in the Garden of Eden, there was a woman,
and that woman was with the man, and that woman was the man.
No, because if I say, well, the woman is the man, no, no, no, that's not true.
But she was with the man, and she was man, in the sense that she was human, okay?
So and again, that's just something to throw out there as an example of how that grammar
can work, that the word man can be used in two different ways, because often the word
man is just referring to all of mankind, whether male or female.
Other times, man is specifically referring to a man, a male gender man.
And it's the same exact thing with the word God.
Sometimes God is referring to all three in one, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Other times the word God is just referring, like when Jesus said, I'm ascending to my
Father and your Father, and my God and your God, that's how it's being used.
It's being used to just refer to the Father.
Other times it's clearly referring just to the Son.
And other times it's clearly referring to all three, or just to the Holy Ghost, et cetera.
Go to Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter number 20.
Let's get into the oneness modalist heretics.
Who are they?
Where does this doctrine come from?
Now one of the guys in our church that was promoting this false doctrine, Tyler Baker,
he claimed, oh, I got this from reading the Bible all on my own.
I just got it from just reading the Bible alone.
But then he qualified that by saying that he found one verse, and then he started asking
his friends Rick and Elliot about it, and then they indoctrinated him into this oneness
heresy, this modalist heresy.
I believe that probably, and it's hard to speculate between the three.
They all kind of want to take credit for being the archeritic.
So I don't really