We're gonna do something ridiculously fun today. And before I tell you what the ridiculously fun thing is, let me just admit first that the kid version of me, the young man version of me, would not have thought that this is ridiculously fun. But the version of me that just finished basically a 300 episode series on the book of Galatians with you, that version of me thinks that what we're going to do today is really fun. Today, we are going to read a decent chunk of an ancient sermon preached to the same congregation that the letter of Galatians was written to. Let that sink in for just a minute. This is fun, right? Now, this sermon that I'm about to share some of some chunks with you from is from a couple hundred years later. I mean it's a ways down the road after the time of Galatians, but I mean Galatians was super early in the history of Christianity. So to be within a couple hundred years with another sermon that struck the ears of the Galatian churches or one of the Galatian churches is, I mean, as history goes, that is really close. That is right next door on the history timeline. Now to reset things just a bit, we've finished up our survey of the book of Galatians. Now we're in this little epilogue portion where we're asking the question, what is the legacy of the letter to the Galatian churches in the Galatian churches? How did it work out? Did it work? Did it stick? Did it take? We looked at Lystra and Derby and found there wasn't a ton of historical records left there, but the hints we found all point to Christianity lingering there for a time, even as those little towns kind of naturally fell off the map for whatever historical reasons. But now we've been spending the last couple days looking at the great metropolis of Iconium, modern day Konya in Turkey. And the church really stuck here. It lasted for a long time. This is a very influential church with very influential leaders. It had a big orbit of influence. Yesterday, we talked about the role that the church in Iconium played in dealing with the Montanist controversy of the late second century, the late 100s AD. Oh, yeah. And in the midst of that, by the way, I totally screwed up a name. I said that the guy who presided over the first council of Iconium was Agrippinus, but that's not true. I think he was the bishop who presided over a council in Carthage that dealt with the same stuff. I think I got him confused. The guy who probably oversaw the council in Iconium was a dude named Fermilian. That's a tough one. And I know that now, since we talked about it yesterday, you're going to be confused on this forever. Every time you're at a party and people start talking about the first council of Iconium in the early third century AD, your brain is going to go right to Agrippinus, and then you're going to look stupid and everybody's going to laugh at you. So, to make it up to you, because of my mistake, I composed a little Diddy, a little song, a mnemonic device to help you keep it straight. I have only composed it in my head. I haven't really tried it out loud yet. But I think if you just sing this song to yourself, whenever you get confused on that, it'll all come into focus. It goes like this. Well, if you ever start to think that the guy who oversaw the first council of Iconium's name was an Agra Pinus, just think to yourself that his name was an Agra Pinus, and the name of the guy who oversaw that council was actually Fermillion. And if you ever can't remember the name for Million, just think to yourself that the name was Vermillion. And then you should be able to remember it like that. Sorry, I got that one wrong. There's a lot of names with church history stuff. But today, I'm sure I've got the name right. There's a dude named Saint Amphilochius. There are probably a lot of different ways that you could pronounce that. I am doing my best. Amphilochius is not a guy I know real well, but his name, you know, it came up a little bit here and there in seminary. I've seen it a few times, skimming stuff from the church fathers and so forth. He was definitely the bishop of Iconium, and probably the most famous bishop of Iconium in the fourth century A.D., that is the late 300s. So from like 375 until almost 400, he died while he was in that role. Uh peacefully, there's a record of how he died, and it was of natural causes, which is nice to know. He was a faithful pastor, he was pastorally minded. He wasn't necessarily an innovative theologian, but he palled around with a lot of very important theologians, including a group of very important church leaders. There were a couple of generations worth of important church leaders in the fourth century from Cappadocia. You've heard me talk about Cappadocia or Cappadocia quite a bit. It's just to the east of Galatia. From Iconium, I mean, you're talking like a day or two walk. This is their neighbors, they're close by. So Amphilochius was friends with these guys who were very important in the Council of Nicaea and other successive councils and writings where the church really made it very clear that Jesus is fully God, fully man, the Trinitarian language, the super basic framework of Christian faith, the Nicene Creed, that all comes out of an era of Christian theology here in the fourth century that was led by this crowd, the Cappadocian Fathers. And our guy, Amphilochius from Iconium, a town we've been talking about a lot, he was a part of that crowd. So that's pretty cool. Maybe Amphilochius wasn't the leading bright light of that group. Maybe he was more pastorally minded. But wherever he ranked in that theological pecking order, he was really good apparently at articulating the fundamentals, the basics, the important stuff about Christian faith to his congregation. And we have eight of his homilies, that is, sermons that he preached to his congregation in Iconium. We still have eight of those homilies hanging around, as well as some other stuff that he wrote as well. One of the most interesting other bonus things that we have from Amphilochius, hang on, I think I have it here. Maybe I don't. Yeah, I do. He wrote this little poem, a mnemonic device. Are you ever heard of one of these things? I don't know, has it ever come up recently or whatever? Sometimes people sing little songs or have little poems to remember something that otherwise they might forget. And it looks like somewhere around 380 AD, Amphilochius wrote a little Diddy. Well, uh I mean the name of it indicates that it must have been originally in some sort of iambic pentameter because it's Iambi ad seleukum. That's iambic, right? Like that sounds like a it's a description of how the poetry would Well, however the structure of the actual poem works in the original Greek, it goes something like this. But this especially for you to learn is fitting. Not every book is safe, which has acquired the venerable name of scripture. For there appear from time to time pseudonymous books, some of which are intermediate or neighbors, as one might say, to the words of truth, while others are spurious and utterly unsafe, like counterfeit and spurious coins which bear the king's inscription, but as regards their material are base forgeries. For this reason I will state for you the divinely inspired books one by one so that you may learn them clearly, and I imagine a little do song here. I will first recite those of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch has creation, then Exodus, and Leviticus the middle book, after which is numbers, then Deuteronomy, add to these Joshua and Judges, then Ruth and the kingdoms of the four books and the double team of chronicles after these Ezra's one and the second. I have to cut away from a minute. Obviously, that is disappointing to you because this is clearly a musical masterpiece, and having that get interrupted in mid-flow is probably a huge disappointment for you. I'm not actually sure if that was the original tune or not. Probably it was. It seemed about right. I usually get stuff like that right on my first try. You can see what he's trying to communicate. Like, hey, you need to know the actual canon of scripture because there's other stuff floating around out there that's fake and not good. And so then he goes through and it kind of sounds like an Iwana song where you remember the books of the Bible. Some of it is going to sound a little different to you than what you're used to because some of the divisions of the books were a little different back then, like, you know, the two books of Ezra's, that's Ezra and Nehemiah. He's clumping them there. But basically, what he gives you is just the Bible as you have it in front of you now. So that's a pretty cool deal. And in the midst of this larger work called Iambi ad Seleucum, Amphilochius makes a couple of comments about the law and what it was for, saying basically something like, The law trained the soul and restrained sin, but the grace of the word grants freedom and life, the word like Logos, like Christ. The old covenant commanded, the new bestows. He says, Faith is the route of salvation, the door by which we enter life. The law shows the path, but faith walks it with Christ. Okay, you're catching the Galatians references here, right? This ancient sermon, this ancient writing from this ancient pastor and bishop of the Church of Iconium, is channeling stuff from the letter they got way back in the day from the Apostle Paul in this writing, in this poem, in these sermons that he's writing. The law trained the soul and restrained sin. Remember the stuff from the middle of Galatians where Paul is likening the law to the stern teacher that was needed for a time. And remember how Paul then talks about the the law points us to Christ? I mean, the law trained the soul and restrained sin. This is Amphilochius, but the grace of Christ grants freedom and life. The old covenant commanded, the new bestows. Hundred years later, the bishop of one of the churches that received the letter to Galatians is still dipping into the stuff from Galatians to teach and shepherd his church. I think that is incredibly cool. And that other reference that I threw out, faith is the route of salvation, Amphilochius writes, the door by which we enter life, the law shows the path, but faith walks it with Christ. And clearly, Amphilochius is channeling what Paul wrote in Galatians 2, 16. A man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified. I hate doing this. I really wanted to get all of this into one thing, but it's such good stuff. And the payoff that is still in front of us with this Amphilochius stuff and other things he said and wrote, it's too rich. I'm not going to rush it. So I'm going to split this one up. We're going to pause here and we're going to get some really juicy stuff from Amphilochius that I am very excited to share with you next time around. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.