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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven and Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

03 Life and Death

04 Unity Through Humility

05 Shining as Lights in the Night

06 Confidence Only in Christ

07 A Heavenly Citizenship

08 The Preeminence of Christ

09 Reconciliation and Hope

10 Complete in Christ

11 Living With Christ

12 Living with Each Other

I'm Cameron DeBasia and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're on our ninth lesson of the Uniting Heaven and Earth Christ and Philippians and Colossians study series.

This time, Pastor Howard, the title is Reconciliation and Hope.

Well, you put talking points together this week.

So let's have a word of prayer and then you can tell us what we're getting into and lay out our talking point.

Father in heaven we thank you so much for the your Word and the Spirit of God who gives us understanding and spiritual things.

Again Lord we want to pray a special blessing on all of our Sabbath school teachers and participants as they review this lesson, that it would, that your Holy Spirit would guide in their study and discussion, that it would be a means of strengthening your church for the special time we're living in and the message you've given us to give to the world.

We ask that this would be for the upbuilding of the kingdom of Jesus and would hasten his coming, but we ask it in his name.

Well this week, Pastor Howard, as we had mentioned last week, is basically part 2 of our Colossians 1 study.

We've transitioned away from the book of Philippians, now in Colossians, and last time we only looked at verses 15 through 20 of chapter 1 of Colossians.

Now we pick up the baton and literally go from there to the end of chapter 1.

I was thinking we kind of touched on some of the, for lack of a better expression, the qualifications of Christ and now we're getting into the work of Christ.

Yeah, that's a really good way to look at that.

In fact, I simply said this lesson studies the plan of salvation from Colossians 1 19 through 29.

Now I know the lesson says it starts in verse 20 but verse 20 starts with and by him it's the middle of a sentence so we might as well go back to 19 to get the whole chain of thought but either way as is our custom we have 3 talking points this week.

And talking point number 1, God never wanted sin, but he was ready for it.

This is gonna come mostly from Tuesday and Wednesday's lesson.

Talking point number 2, the goal of the gospel is reunification.

And that's coming from Sunday and Wednesday for the most part, even though those themes run through the whole week.

And finally we have talking point number 3, Christ in you is our only hope of glory.

But to your point, this is kind of like you again got the qualifications, the preeminence, the position of Christ, and now what is the application of that in our experience?

Let's begin by reading this section of Scripture.

It's not terribly long, but I think it's a helpful thing if you would just read for verses, why don't you read verses 19, just go all the way to 29, just go for it.

Okay, for it pleased the Father that in him, that is in Jesus, all the fullness should dwell, and by him, Jesus, to reconcile all things to himself the Father, by him, Jesus, where the things on earth are things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight if indeed you continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God, which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.

The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints.

To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

To this end I also labor, striving according to his working which works in me mightily." Now this is a classic Pauline explanation, which is a whole lot of like pronouns and run-on sentences and complex stuff, but there is, as we're going to see today, there is a very simple concept, even though it's very intricate in all of its parts, of the gospel message he's trying to present here.

Well, it just hit me as we went through here that all of this he himself kind of sums up into, like, to make the saints understand it, the mystery, which is this, Christ in you the hope of glory.

And that better be the landing point of all this.

The whole thing that he's talking about is the message I've been preaching.

So this is helpful as we study through this, the takeaway, the message we're to be preaching is Christ in you the hope of glory.

Right, if this lesson doesn't end with a focus on Christ in you, then we've done something wrong, right?

Now, if we go back to the beginning of that section, verses 19 to 20, For it pleased the Father that in him, that is Christ, all the fools should dwell, and that's what we focused on last week, and now the baton passes, verse 20, and by him, that is by Christ, to reconcile all things to himself.

And then it goes on to say, verse 21, and you who were once alienated, now let's look at the language that's used here.

The implication of these statements is that there was a, at 1.1 unified creation that had no separation, no disharmony, no alienation or enemy.

Because by the very nature of these words, reconciling, you can only reconcile things that are once united, unified.

The same thing with having, you know what did he say in verse 21, you who were once alienated.

Now it doesn't merely call us aliens like God had a universe and there's other people came in from outside.

No, no, we were once part of this united cosmos, this creation of God, but we were alienated.

There was a once unified, then it got broken.

If you look again, verse 21, why don't you read that 1 again.

And you who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death.

Okay, so it talks about we were alienated quote by wicked works.

So, but the concept being that everything got along.

There was 1 mind, 1 harmony, 1 spirit, 1 love in heaven, in the universe, in fact.

And then sin, the wicked works, broke it somehow.

Starting in our minds, an action out that sin intruded into this otherwise harmonious world, universe, and broke it.

Once you look that 1 up real quick, I think it's probably a familiar passage.

And of course, Genesis 3, the story of what actually happened in our history with that sin here on earth.

You can start quoting before you get there, I bet.

Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is his ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear." Aha, your sins, your iniquities have separated you.

So there was, again, the implication is you were together and the sin broke it apart.

And we saw in the history of the world in Genesis 3, well known, how they went into the Garden of Eden.

Everything was unified, everything was beautiful.

There was a law, and as long as they kept it, everything was fine, open communion with God.

But when they ate of the fruit, the Bible tells us that their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked, and they heard, verse 8, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among so immediately sin brings this distance.

First of all the Lord called him and said where are you?

And then the follow up question, verse 11, have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you should not eat?

Have you disobeyed and thus broken the unity of the universe?

So that's interesting in fact, the enemies in your mind by wicked works, by wicked works, those works of sin brought a condition we know upon Adam and Eve where they became carnal, and the carnal mind is enmity against God.

So the wicked works led to a carnal state of mind.

Absolutely, So now we are in a condition.

And the reason I say that is because some people, you could argue that, well it's because, and sometimes you hear people say it this way, they separated from God and that's why they, and we try to explain sin.

It wasn't that, it was that, It was the wicked works that created now the after effect of that now an animosity against God and enmity.

So, Paul understood, now let's just imagine this from heaven's perspective and from the unified creation perspective.

Everything was great and harmonious, love and happiness.

And then all of a sudden, this foreign concept of disobedience enters and people act against their creator.

The rift is made, there's this chasm, and everybody's distraught, and you could think like, oh no, there's panic, but when we go back to Colossians chapter 1, there seems to strongly imply, and the rest of Scripture makes explicit, that God was not caught off guard by sin, that he had a plan.

The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints, to them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

But twice it talks about this mystery and here it refers to it as that hidden from ages and from generations.

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Series

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven and Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

09 Reconciliation and Hope

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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