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It Is Written

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

Eric Flickinger

Clinton Wahlen

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

13 lessons, 13 weeks, where we look at how God wants to unite heaven and earth.

We're looking at Christ In the books of Philippians and Colossians, a powerful picture of Christ and the gospel and what God desires to do in my heart and your heart so that our lives, by the grace of God, can be used by Him to change the world.

We're going to begin with prayer and we'll dive right in.

Father, we thank you for drawing us together today.

We ask that you will bless our time together and that as a result of our studies, you will work in our hearts to make us more like Christ.

We ask your blessing on us today and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Well, we're grateful that you are here, but we are also grateful to have the author of this quarter's Sabbath school lesson with us.

Waleen is an Associate Director of the Biblical Research Institute, and he has an area of expertise in New Testament and in hermeneutics.

It's a delight to be here with you, Eric.

So this is going to be an exciting quarter, but before we delve right into week number 1, you're an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute.

Now that sounds like a really fancy place full of all sorts of great ideas and theological depth and so forth.

I assume it's more than just people sitting around and thinking a lot.

Well, we do spend a lot of time thinking, but also studying the Bible.

What a wonderful opportunity we have to research and study the Bible.

Though it is a book of many ages ago written, there are many new things.

And archaeological discoveries all the time enlighten it further.

We have a newsletter we publish 4 times a year called Reflections.

In fact, Elder John Bradshaw, in a recent article, has the lead for our Reflections issue recently, navigating differences of opinion in the last day church.

And we'll get into that as we study the books of Philippians and Colossians, there were differences in the church of that time too.

And there are lots of materials on our website, adventistbiblicalresearch.org, free, some books free to download.

Also our bookshop where we have additional books.

We've published recently on a couple of volumes on the Trinity, on ethics and technology, on what it means to be a human being.

So you all produce a great deal of material for us to be able to benefit from as we look at these different themes from a biblical perspective, which is fantastic.

Now, this quarter, we're looking at uniting heaven and Earth, as we mentioned, going into the books of Philippians and Colossians.

How did this quarter's lesson, how did what we're studying right now, kind of come into being?

How did it get to where we're holding it in our hands right now?

Well, it's a process, as you might imagine.

So about 5 years ago now, I was asked specifically to write this series of lessons on Philippians and Colossians.

And I have to say, it wasn't something I thought about doing myself.

But as I got into it, as we do sometimes when we study the Bible, it became more and more exciting, and I realized there is a lot here to share.

And I had a wonderful time writing the series of lessons and the companion volume, Uniting Heaven and Earth.

This was a wonderful study of how God wants to draw heaven near to us.

What a wonderful idea it is to think heaven is very near.

And so we have the study lesson that we're going to be going through.

There's the companion book that you just mentioned.

We're watching the program, we're making the programs right now.

So there's a lot to study to get out of this quarter.

Lesson number 1 is called persecuted but not forsaken.

We think of Paul as this great in Christendom.

He made so much of a difference, he wrote so much of the New Testament, but he didn't always do that from a place of freedom.

He didn't always do that able to go as he wished and say what he pleased and so forth.

And you think it must have been difficult for him.

It would be difficult for, I think, any of us.

But how did Paul relate to his imprisonment?

Well, it brings now right down to earth the idea of uniting heaven and earth, doesn't it?

Because even in the prison cell, Paul sensed the presence of Jesus.

And we start here because he wrote 4 epistles while he was a prisoner in Rome during this period.

Philippians and Colossians are 2 of them, and the other 2 are Ephesians and Philemon.

And he wrote them while he was not under, not in this dark dungeon-like prison we sometimes imagine, that came later, but he was under house arrest.

And he was free, actually, to receive visitors.

We will look at that probably in Acts shortly.

Because as you said, we've got 4 books in the Bible in the New Testament that were written from that type of situation that he found himself in.

We're looking specifically this quarter at the book of Philippians and Colossians.

So Paul had different relationships with those 2 churches, with those 2 cities.

Break down the relationship that he had with Philippi and with Colossae.

Well, with Philippians, he established this.

You might remember that they wanted to go further into Asia and the Holy Spirit said no and they then you know had to shift gears and Paul had a vision in the night that people were calling, come to Macedonia and help us.

And this is what led them to cross into Europe from Asia to Troas, the port there, and then they didn't stop there, but they went to the chief city of that area, which was Philippi, a very special city, actually.

If you were born in that city, you were automatically a Roman citizen.

They spoke the official languages, Latin.

They didn't have the taxes that other places had imposed on them.

And because Paul personally established it, he had a very close connection with the people in Philippi.

Now, when we come to Colossia, this is different.

This is hundreds of miles away, further to the east, what is today Turkey, present day Turkey.

It hasn't really been excavated, just started, is now starting to be excavated, but we don't really know that much about the city from excavations.

Most of what we know about it is from this letter in Colossians.

And so we can actually learn quite a bit about this interesting city from what Paul wrote to them.

He established it through other coworkers, but he had this connection.

So the church in Philippi, he started, and As you said, he chose this city.

06 Confidence Only in Christ

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

♪ Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We are taking a look at some fascinating books in the New Testament.

We're looking at uniting heaven and earth and finding Christ in the books of Philippians and Colossians, a fascinating study.

And this week we are looking at lesson number 2, Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer.

Father, we're grateful to be here today as we continue to learn more about Christ through the writings of Paul in the books of Philippians and Colossians.

We ask that you'll bless us today as we learn more about him and more about your desire to have a close relationship with us as well.

Well, we're also glad in addition to having you with us, to have the author of this quarter's Sabbath school lesson with us as well, and that is Dr.

He is an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute.

His expertise is in the areas of New Testament and hermeneutics.

This is lesson number 2 of 13 that we're going to be doing together, looking at Philippians and Colossians.

And this week we're looking at reasons for thanksgiving and prayer.

It's interesting when you take a look at Paul's letters, he often begins his letters with a greeting.

Let's kind of unpack that greeting a little bit and see if it can help us understand thanksgiving and prayer for this week's lesson.

All right, well, of course, Philippians 1, verse 2 says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it's interesting, Eric, that this greeting, as Paul's greetings generally do, combine ideas that we find in the Greek world and also in the world of Israel of the first century and even far beyond that.

Grace was a typical greeting, when they would say kaira in Greek, that would be like hello or greetings.

And that's the word Paul uses here in Greek.

And in a Hebrew environment, in Israel, shalom, even today, is a common greeting, and that means peace.

So he combines greetings that the Greeks would be familiar with, and Jews would be familiar with, and already it's a reminder that the church is a combination of everyone.

Gentiles, Jews, everyone, and it's for everyone.

And so just in the introductory verses of this, we're seeing this theme that we're exploring throughout the quarter here in Philippians and Colossians, of course, as you said, in Paul's other writings as well.

There's an interesting passage here in Philippians chapter 1, just a little bit beyond where what we were just talking about, in verses 3 through 8.

And I want to read those verses because Paul expresses some, his thankfulness for many things.

And his thankfulness might be a little different than some of the things we find ourselves thankful for on a regular basis, but maybe there's something we can we can learn from this.

So let me read Philippians 1 verses 3 through 8.

He says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy.

For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace.

For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ." So he's thankful for a lot of things.

Walk us through some of these things that he's thankful for.

Well, the first thing is that he's thankful for the Philippians.

You know, he established the church in Philippi.

They were close to his heart, as he reminds us right here, as were all the churches to which he wrote.

Even Colossia, which he never visited in person.

And that's so important for Paul and for the church being established and really also today.

You know, the fellowship that he refers to here, or koinonia in Greek, in verse 5, your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

You know, this talks about the common bond that we have with, through Jesus, that the differences that we have melt away as we are 1 in Christ, and that's so important.

And it's interesting to me that he focuses not on himself, although at the very end he does talk about his chains, and yet it's almost like he's thanking God for his chains because he's able to, and we'll get into this more as we look further at the book of Philippians, but he's looking to the defense and confirmation of the gospel that he has opportunity to do even in as a prisoner in Rome.

So these are things that I'll speak on your behalf for the sake of argument.

If we found ourselves in prison, if we found ourselves in difficulty, the natural response would probably not be, oh, thank you that I'm in these change, in these difficulty, in this prison.

That's not the natural human response to trials and difficulties and tribulations.

And yet Paul seems to be able to find, even in those challenges, things to be thankful for.

And you might recall that, you know, when they were in Philippi, Paul and Silas, they were put in prison there.

And instead of complaining, as many of the other prisoners no doubt did, and arguing and fighting, Paul and Silas are singing hymns of praise to God.

So much so that, so different of course, that the jailer, his attention was arrested and eventually He was converted to the faith of the gospel and faith in Christ.

So this is actually a vivid example of what it means where Jesus is uniting heaven and earth.

That he is through us, he is imparting to the people around us an idea of what heaven is like and what he wants our life to be like.

And so we've got a key whole view of it here, just, and these are the introductory statements or comments that Paul makes in this book.

And already this idea, like you said, of uniting heaven and earth, they're coming together for us to understand.

He continues with his prayer in verses 9 through 11.

And he kind of, he dwells on something similar and yet a little bit different.

Verse 9, he says, And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and the praise of God." So what are some takeaways that you think Paul wanted us to walk away with as he's writing, of course he's writing to the church in Philippi, but by extension to us, lessons for us to learn.

What does he want us to learn from those verses?

Well, again, Erekat is imbued with the love of Jesus, what it is like to walk with him.

So he talks about their love, which of course comes from God.

Everything we know about love on earth has nothing really connection with God necessarily because love can mean many different things to different people.

And so this is something that they experienced, and Paul wants them to experience even more.

I like that because we will never get enough of God's love.

Even once we are in heaven and face-to-face with the Lord, we will still understand more deeply, more profoundly, through the ages of eternity, what God's love means.

And so this prayer is asking that that grow, but notice that it is to grow in a special sense, in knowledge and in all discernment.

It's not just a vague, vacuous kind of, you know, feeling of love, but it actually has to do with the knowledge of God.

That's how we know what love is, how he has dealt with us.

I have to say, you know, that I learned more about what it means to be a father, being a father of 2 children from God than from any earthly father, because how he's treated me.

You know, we may not know a father that is a Christian.

You know, many may not have a Christian father, may not have a Christian example, model, but we have a wonderful model through our heavenly father.

And so Paul tells us that we need to know him, to know Jesus, and through that, we also would understand discernment, that we would know and be able to distinguish what is harmful from what is spiritually helpful.

Of course, we learn that most of all, most clearly, through God's Word.

And you look at the world around us today, and there is a wide range of understandings of what is right and what is wrong.

And to a great extent, people are making those decisions based on their own ideas, rather than having an objective standard, which obviously the Bible would be that standard that we should go by, but not everybody does.

A beautiful picture here of God wanting us to know Him better and Christ better through His words so that we can have that discernment.

Clinton, we're looking right now at reasons for thanksgiving and prayer.

And the lesson study is fantastic, it goes through a lot of things.

But there's more to this than what we've been able to, or what you've been able to get in the lesson study.

So there is a companion book to this quarter Sabbath school lesson.

Why might somebody want to pick that companion book up?

What's in chapter 2 that goes along with our lesson number 2 that would help us to understand reasons for thanksgiving and prayer a little bit more clearly and thoroughly?

Well, of course, Eric, there's a lot more in the book than can be covered in the lesson in such a short space.

And so in connection with prayer, there are actually scientific studies that have been done about the benefits of prayer.

03 Life and Death

04 Unity Through Humility

We are taking a look at how God wants to connect heaven and earth together, especially as we look at Christ in the books of Philippians and Colossians.

This week is lesson number 4, Unity Through Humility.

Father, we thank you for bringing us together this week, as you have for the last several weeks.

We're looking at pictures of Christ that Paul gives us in the books of Philippians and Colossians.

And we ask that once again, you will help us to see how God wants to unite, how you want to unite heaven and earth together.

We're also glad to have with us this week, as we have for the last 3 weeks, Dr.

He is an Associate Director of the Biblical Research Institute.

And we're looking at Paul's letters, as we've said, to the Church in Philippi and to the Colossians.

And the Church in Philippi wasn't really unified real well.

They had some challenges, some difficulties, some issues.

I guess those are some words we could use to describe it.

What were some of the factors that led to this disunity that we see in the Philippian church?

Well, as the title suggests, lack of humility was part of it.

And honestly, that's something that probably quite a few of us struggle with from time to time.

And so if we would look at Philippians chapter 2, the first 3 verses, most of them, I think it will help us understand the problems that they face.

Therefore, Paul writes, if there is any consolation in Christ, if 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." Apparently, that didn't exist very well.

Verse 3, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit.

It's mentioned a couple of times, this selfish, conceit, selfishness.

This is at the root of all disunity, ultimately, selfishness and conceit.

We think more of ourselves than we ought and less of others than we should.

Yeah, unfortunately, that's not human nature.

Human nature is the way that it is, and we see the results of this.

So a lack of humility and it was an interesting phrase here, selfish ambition, selfish ambition.

And much of our ambition really is selfish.

The vast majority, I think it's safe to say, is selfish.

And so they were seeing that here in the church.

And yes, ambition, if we're honest, touches all of us.

We all want to be better, do better, you know.

And Sometimes that gets in the way of what God wants for us.

So a lack of humility, we could call that pride, selfish ambition, these are things we all struggle with.

It's things that the members of the church in Philippi struggled with.

Paul is writing to them to try to help them to recognize the problem, clarify in their own minds that it exists, and then to help them through the problem by the grace of God.

What kind of advice, what kind of guidance, what kind of instruction does Paul give to the Philippians to help them over these obstacles that they're facing?

And in case we missed it, He puts it right there very clearly.

If there is any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, you see, it's knowing Jesus, Knowing what we have received and how needy we are is what helps us to realize that selfishness, selfish ambition, conceit, pride, these are our enemies.

If any affection and mercy, you know, the affection and compassion, you know, this is who Jesus is.

You know, He told a couple of parables that exemplify this, and often it mentions that he had compassion on the multitudes.

But think about, for example, the Good Samaritan.

This man is by the side of the road, And the religious people we expect to help pass by on the other side.

They're more concerned about themselves, their reputation, who they are.

And the Samaritan, who was despised, had compassion on him and binded up his wounds, took care of him, took him to where he could get rest and recuperation and help.

Another parable, of course, the famous parable of the prodigal son who wandered off wanting his own way, when he finally realized what he had, what he left behind.

His father looked far off, it says, had compassion, ran on him and fell and kissed him on his neck.

Series

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

07 A Heavenly Citizenship

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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

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