Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven and Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

Mark Finley

HopeLives365

05 Shining as Lights in the Night

What a blessing the book of Philippians is as we've studied it.

As our lessons go on, we'll add more from the book of Colossians.

But these 2 books provide practical lessons for Christian living, lessons for people living on the verge of eternity.

So let's pray as we jump into lesson number 5.

Thank you for joining us on this Sabbath School lesson, Shining as Lights in the Night.

Father in heaven, enable us to shine with the love of Jesus to people around us.

May we shine as lights of your glory and your grace and your goodness.

Do you remember what it says in the book of Isaiah?

It says, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people, but arise and shine for your light has come.

If there ever was a time that darkness covered the earth.

You look out over the world, a world that is consumed in materialism, secularism, godlessness, a world that is consumed with amusement and pleasure, a world that is destroying itself through environmental hazards, with polluting our waterways and our airways, And human beings that are destroying themselves through alcohol, tobacco, the drug culture.

We look out over our world and it's a world that has distorted human values between male and female.

It's distorted sexuality where often individuals become sex objects.

Somebody said ours is a world that is a sex-jaded, morally twisted, thrilled, seeking generation.

But God says to you and to me that you shine as lights in the world.

In Philippians 2, verse 14 and 15 we read, do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world." So it may be a perverse generation, it may be a crooked generation, but we shine as lights in the world.

Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 5, verse 14?

A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid.

Jesus said, you're the light of the world.

Then he went on to say that I am the light of the world.

He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.

As we follow Jesus, the light of His love, the light of His grace, the light of His truth becomes the light of our life.

And because He lights up our life, puts a sparkle in our eyes, a smile on our face, a joy in our souls, because Jesus does that, we then can be lights in the world.

Paul has talked about Jesus as the perfect example.

Then he talks about us working out what Christ works in.

Make no mistake about it, we are saved by grace through faith, not of ourselves.

Make no mistake about it, our works cannot achieve righteousness.

Make no mistake about it, what we do does not earn our salvation.

But yet, when we come to Jesus, He says, John 14, verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments.

And in Romans chapter 1, it talks about the grace that leads us to obedience.

And here in Philippians chapter 2, we read in verse 12 and 13.

Now, often I've heard people read verse 12 and they haven't added verse 13 and that has added to confusion.

But verse 12, verse 13, "'Therefore, my beloved, as you've always obeyed, not as in my presence only, Paul speaking, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

What does it mean to work out your own salvation?

Fear and trembling have to do with the reverence we place before God, that we reverence God, we take God's word seriously.

Verse 13, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.

So I can only work out what God works in.

What does it mean when it says, for it's God who works in you both to will?

God places within your heart the will, the desire to make changes in your life, to by his grace overcome something that has troubled you, some temptation you've fallen on, and to do his good pleasure.

So God places the desire in our heart to serve him through his Holy Spirit.

God empowers us to serve him through his Holy Spirit.

And so we work out only what God puts in.

If God doesn't put in our hearts that desire, we can't work it out.

If God doesn't give us the strength to make the choice, we can't make the choice.

Under Sunday's lesson it says, in these 2 verses Paul does not present a different gospel from what he outlines in Romans and in other epistles.

We can be sure his message here agrees with the gospel of justification by faith, which he also preached in Philippi and other places.

But it's also important, now don't miss this, I think it's significant, but it's also important to consider all the Bible says on a given topic, essentially on the topic of salvation that can be so easily misunderstood.

So The Bible says in Romans, and we'll look at a couple passages in Romans, the Bible says, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So we are justified by faith, by grace, through faith and Christ's death on the cross atones for our sins.

Then in Romans 5.8 it says while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

In Ephesians 2 verse 8 to 10 we have this beautiful balance between faith and works.

Ephesians 2 verse 8 to 10, For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves, it's the gift of God.

So can I do anything to earn my salvation?

But he goes on, not of works lest any man should boast.

So if salvation were by works, we could boast, that would be pride.

That's the same sin that led us back, that led Lucifer to be cast out of heaven.

Verse 10, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So when we are saved by grace through faith, we then through the power of the Spirit have changed lives and we recognize that we were created for good works.

So we do not serve God to present our works to him as a sacrifice to earn our salvation.

We do good works not in order to be saved, but because we are saved.

Apple trees don't produce apples to make them apple trees.

Apple trees produce apples because they are apple trees.

Our good works reflect what we are in Christ.

We work out, according to Philippians 2, what Jesus has worked in.

When we do that, Monday's lesson, we become light in a dark world.

We witness in the darkness of this world.

Philippians, chapter 2, verse 15 and 16, Put it this way, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine less lights in the world.

Holding fast the Word of Life so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I've not run in vain or labored in vain.

So Paul says this, he says if you want to be lights in a dark world, hold fast, hold fast the word of light.

The note here says this, the blacker the sky, the more clearly the stars stand out.

The greater the moral darkness around us, the starker the contrast between the lives of God's true followers and that of worldlings.

How important it is then not to let the artificial lights of worldly ideas, pressures, and practices cause our witness to fade into the background.

Now, in Philippians 2, it uses some interesting words.

It talks about the fact that we are faultless without a reproach.

That it simply means that we have unmixed, pure faith in Jesus.

It means that we have an undivided heart.

History Records the Moment The Sabbath Changed

There is a question that refuses to go away.

What day did the earliest Christians actually keep holy?

Few questions stir more passion and more confusion than the Sabbath.

Now the Old Testament is particularly clear.

The seventh day of the week is the Bible Sabbath, given at creation, kept through the whole Old Testament.

What did Jesus teach regarding the Sabbath?

And what does early Christian history actually teach us?

And when you look at the first, second, and third centuries, is there evidence there that early believers kept the Bible Sabbath?

We're gonna look at those original sources and we're also gonna look at some original Catholic sources on the Catholic Church's acknowledgement that they changed the Sabbath and the challenge that the Catholic Church gives to Protestantism.

This may surprise you, but all of this was predicted in the Bible, in the prophecies of Daniel, particularly Daniel, the seventh chapter.

Now we're not going to rely on human opinion, we're not going to rely on tradition.

We will let the original sources speak for themselves.

You'll see evidence, plain, direct, undeniable, that the Sabbath was observed by Christians for centuries after Christ.

And then we'll ask the unavoidable question, If the Sabbath was changed, when did it happen?

First, the New Testament evidence by Jesus himself.

In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus speaks of end time events.

He talks about wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, floods, strife.

He talks about lawlessness in our society, the gospel going to the end of the world.

And in Matthew chapter 24, Jesus blends to events the destruction of Jerusalem that's coming as a type of the destruction of the end of the world.

The disciples, sitting on the Mount of Olives, looking across the Kidron Valley at that beautiful temple with its massive blocks and stones that build the temple, ask Jesus, when shall these things be and what shall be the site of your coming and the end of the world?

In other words, when will Jerusalem be destroyed?

And Jesus, using the destruction of Jerusalem as this example of the end of the world, eventually says to his disciples, talking about their flight from Jerusalem as the Roman army's approach, pray that your flight, that is your flight from Jerusalem as the Roman armies approach, be not in the winter or on the Sabbath day.

Now Jesus was talking to his disciples just before his crucifixion in 31 AD, But the question becomes, why would he tell his disciples to pray that their flight from Jerusalem be not in the winter on the Sabbath, if indeed the disciples would not be keeping the Sabbath, because the destruction of Jerusalem didn't come until 70 AD.

Jesus made that statement precisely because if the Roman armies came and indeed the disciples were in the temple, they would easily be destroyed.

If the Roman armies came and they could find all the believers worshiping in 1 place, it would easily be possible for them to attack them and kill every 1 of them.

So Jesus was clear that the disciples would be keeping the Sabbath even 40 years after the cross.

What about the evidence in the New Testament?

Well, we see, for example, in the book of Acts, a number of instances where the disciples kept the Bible Sabbath.

Here in Acts chapter 13, the apostle Paul is preaching in the synagogue.

And somebody says, well, he did this for evangelistic purposes.

You know, he just went into the synagogue to preach to the Jews.

But we'll see something quite fascinating here.

But when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.

Now notice, the Jews are in the synagogue.

The Gentiles leave the synagogue, and they say, preach to us the next Sabbath.

Does he say, you come back on Sunday and I'll preach to you?

Verse 43, now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who speaking to them persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

So they continued in God's grace, which led them to obey God's law and keep the Bible Sabbath.

So grace and law and Sabbath are not distinct or separate.

That's why Jesus said, if you love me, John 14, verse 15, keep my commandments.

But notice verse 44, the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God.

So the whole city comes to hear the Word on the Sabbath.

So it's obvious from Acts 13, verse 44, that the New Testament Christian believers are not worshiping on the first day of the week, they're worshiping on the Bible Sabbath.

When you come to Acts chapter 17, verse 1 and 2, you see that just like Jesus had a custom, you remember back in Luke chapter 4, verse 16, it says about Jesus as his custom was, he went into the synagogue to worship on the Sabbath.

When Acts 17, we find the apostle Paul had a custom, verse 1 and 2.

Now when they had passed through Amphibolus and Apollonina, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

And Paul, as his custom was, went into them for 3 Sabbaths and reasoned with them concerning the Scriptures.

So this was not merely an evangelistic strategy that Paul had.

In Romans 3, verse 31, we read, Do we then make void the law through faith?

So from the Old Testament, from the days of Genesis, 2, 300 years before the Jewish race, down through the 10 Commandment law, down through the faithfulness of God's people in the Old Testament, through the New Testament period, the believers, the faithful men and women of God, kept the Bible Sabbath.

Do we have extra biblical evidence, evidence outside the Bible, that in those early centuries, say the first century, the second, the third, believers were keeping the Bible Sabbath.

Josephus, the early Jewish historian, puts it this way.

He writes that there was no city, I'm quoting, where the seventh day Sabbath had not spread.

So here you have Josephus writing, there's no city in the first century where the seventh day Sabbath has not spread.

Then you have Philo, a Jewish philosopher, contemporary with some of the apostles in the first century.

He calls the Sabbath, and again I quote, a festival belonging not to 1 nation, but to the entire world.

And then you have an amazing description of what indeed is going on here, and that description reveals that God indeed has a Sabbath down through the centuries.

Let's look at the second to fourth century, for example.

He records almost all churches throughout the world, celebrate the Sabbath in its mysteries every week, yet the Christians of Rome and Alexandria do not.

Why do the Christians at Rome and Alexandria not observe the Sabbath?

Because in Rome you have the Roman Empire falling apart, and you have the attempt to disassociate from Judaism, and so church and state unite, as we'll show you a little later in the video, and as they do, Constantine passes the Sunday Law in 321 AD to close the workshops on the venerable day of the sun.

Now that wasn't a worship decree, it was a social decree, but by the time you come to the Council of Laodicea in 364, you come to a point where church and state unite, Sunday worship is introduced now into the Empire.

That's why here Socrates Scholasticus says, almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath every week, but the Christians of Rome, because they have begun to compromise, and Alexandria, where you have a very high influence there of Christianity and sun worship.

Sunday observance was the exception, not the rule.

Now, additional historical sources affirm that Gentile Christians observed the Sabbath, that the Sabbath united believers with the life and teachings of Jesus, that Christians followed not only Christ's example, but Christ's command.

For over 400 years, the historical record is consistent.

So that leads to a very serious question.

He says, if you love me keep my commandments.

The disciples couldn't do it because they didn't have the authority.

In fact, it was Peter in Acts 5, verse 29, it says we ought to obey God rather than men.

And God certainly wouldn't do it because in the book of Malachi, God himself says, I am the Lord and I do what?

Well, in Daniel 7 verse 25, the Bible talks about the change of God's law.

It talks about a power arising out of Rome that would claim the authority to change God's law.

04 Unity Through Humility

Our Sabbath School lessons this quarter, from the books of Philippians and Colossians, have deep spiritual insights for the Church and for our lives personally.

Our lesson this week, lesson number 4, is unity through humility.

So let's ask God to give us a humble spirit, a teachable spirit, a spirit of a learner as we study together.

Dear Father in heaven, we're thankful for your love and grace.

Give us a teachable spirit and a humble heart as we study together today.

May spiritual insights leap off the pages of this lesson in scripture to move our hearts closer to you.

A number of years ago, when I was a younger pastor, a senior pastor, a real good friend of mine, great theologian, 1 of the leaders in the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, was discussing with me about a meeting that he and a number of other theologians had with a particular person, a particular theologian, who was getting off rails a little bit, teaching things that were not in harmony with the Adventist message.

And he made this statement, my friend made this statement.

He said, you know Mark, the problem with this gentleman is that he's never wrong.

And I've thought about that a great deal.

The problem with this gentleman is that he's never wrong.

That in theological things he has to be right.

1 of the things that creates dissension in a marriage, in the home, in a Sabbath school class, in the church, is if we feel that we are always right and can never make a mistake.

Humility is the opposite of arrogance and pride.

It's a humble spirit that takes the spirit of a learner.

It's a selfish, selfless, self-sacrificing spirit.

In our lesson this week, the memory text, Philippians 2, verse 2, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love being of 1 accord and of 1 mind.

When a family is of 1 accord and 1 mind in unity and love, that is reflected to the people that come into the home and the people they come in contact with.

When a church is of 1 mind, has the atmosphere of unity and joy, you walk into that church and you sense that there's a oneness here, a commitment to Christ and a commitment to Bible truth, a commitment to the Adventist message.

I like the way our author puts it in the first paragraph.

First paragraph on Sabbath afternoon's lesson.

But knowing what is true is not the same as doing it.

We fail sometimes despite our best efforts at unity.

But that's not the same as deliberately undermining unity.

In our humanness we certainly make mistakes, we certainly can fail, we certainly have to say I'm sorry.

But then there is this concept of intentionally undermining unity.

Can you think of a time in scripture where a being, a heavenly being, an angelic being, consciously attempted to undermine the unity of heaven?

Certainly, Lucifer's fall was done because Lucifer did not take a humble spirit, a listening spirit, an obedient spirit.

He rather was filled with pride and arrogance and therefore undermined the unity of heaven.

And through that chaos, the angels in heaven rebelled.

1 third of the angels were cast out of heaven, came to earth.

And again, when you look at Adam and Eve, what was the fundamental sin?

The fundamental sin was not trusting in God, not having a humble spirit to obey God.

We look at Philippi, And we look at the subject of disunity in the book of Philippians.

Throughout the book of Philippians there is this emphasis on the unity of the church.

We want to look at some of these bigger issues.

Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, what does that mean, consolation in Christ?

It means if we can follow the example of Jesus, if there's any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of 1 accord, of 1 mind.

What is it then that brings disunity and what is it that brings unity?

Arrogance, pride, conceit, self-inflated importance brings disunity.

Unity comes as we attempt to follow the example of Jesus.

Unity comes as the love of Christ comforts our hearts, as Paul says in Philippians 2.

Unity comes as the Holy Spirit brings us in fellowship with 1 another.

Unity comes when our hearts are filled with compassion or affection.

Unity comes when we have tolerance or mercy for others' mistakes.

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All Teachings

05 Shining as Lights in the Night

25m

History Records the Moment The Sabbath Changed

30m

04 Unity Through Humility

26m

Many Will Use the Name of Jesus and Still Be Lost

47m

03 Life and Death

23m

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

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01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

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The Sabbath vs. Sunday: The Coming Global Conflict

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Pr. Mark Finley Analyzes Charlie Kirk’s Sabbath Book

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13 Choose this Day!

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12 God is Faithful!

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11 Living in the Land

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