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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

13 Standing in All the Will of God

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

We're now on lesson 11 of our whole Uniting Heaven and Earth, Christ in Philippians and Colossians series.

Of course we're on the Colossians half of this study series.

The back half actually we're coming into.

Yeah there's only 13 lessons of course this quarter so we're on 11.

This week is titled Living with Christ and it kind of plays off the dying in Christ as if last week and now living with him in this week's lesson.

Before we do though I wanted to mention I'm wearing a nice new shirt here.

It says Youth Rush on it and you'll see from time to time we promote different ministries or have little advertisements.

The beginning was we don't want to just have Sabbath school be a thing where you just you know come together and study a lesson academically, it's interesting, pray and go home.

Well we want to promote ministry activity too.

And so whether it's literature, well specifically Youth Rush in the Michigan Conference has young people out every summer going door to door canvassing, selling literature, and spreading the good news.

There's many conferences have similar programs.

If you are of that age or you know someone in your life who's of that age or in your church family and a summer literature program could be just the thing for them.

So contact your conference or contact our conference here for the Youth Brush program and can't recommend it enough.

We actually do trainings in conjunction with that with these young people every year fantastic young people it's a great program so yeah look into it amen but back to this week's lesson this was like I said there was really look at Colossians chapter 3 is a follow-up naturally to Colossians chapter 2 that we studied last week.

And before we do, why don't I go ahead and pray and you tell us what, as you put the lesson together this week, what we're getting into.

Gracious Father in heaven, we do thank you so much for this blessed study we've been having in Philippians and Colossians.

We ask the Spirit of truth to guide us in our understanding.

And Lord, as we review this lesson in this episode of Talking Points, we pray it would be a blessing to the teachers and participants in our Sabbath schools around the world that would help strengthen us in our own faith commitment, that it would help us be more focused in mission, and that it would help us to prepare this world for the soon coming of Jesus.

Yes, again, the title is Living with Christ and the little introductory comment I have here says this lesson examines the practical realities of our new life in Christ as described in Colossians 3, 1 through 17.

So Colossians chapter 3 does extend to beyond verse 17.

It goes through 18 past that all the way to 25.

But that's gonna be wrapped up in the next week's lesson, and that's where it gets even more intensely practical.

So this week is essentially the shift from the philosophical theological concept of being in Christ to the practical realities of what it means in daily living.

Talking point number 1, conversion means to die and live like Jesus.

That's coming from Sabbath and Sunday's lesson primarily.

Then we get into talking point number 2, to be a new creation, the old man must die.

So we're talking about a lot of the difference between the new man and the old man and how they live in reality for daily living.

Monday is where we're getting most of that from.

And then finally, talking point number 3, we need to replace the old man with a new man.

And that's coming from Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Conversion means to die and live like Jesus.

Now if you would please read Colossians chapter 2 verse 20 and then Colossians chapter 3 verse 1.

Okay, verse 20 says, therefore if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world.

Why as though living in the world do you subject yourself to regulations?

And then chapter 3 verse 1, if then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

So you see in chapter 2 chapter 3 the if then you were raised is playing off of the same material from chapter 2.

So clearly when Paul originally wrote this letter he didn't say like my thought is concluded in chapter 2 and I'm going to start a new, there were no chapter divisions in verses.

So there's a single flow of thought that's being developed here.

The emphasis in chapter 2 is the dying experience and now he's transitioning to if then you've died, now it's time to think about the living.

Right, the Bible doesn't leave us dead in the Christian experience, Praise the Lord.

The implication is if there's the death, then there's going to be a life as well.

So, Paul, well let me just put it this way, the change we need is only possible as we appropriate Christ's death and resurrection to our own experience.

So the practical reality is it could be easy to talk about a theological construct, the in Christ motif or something like that, but Paul is now focusing more on what our connection with Christ spiritually does for us practically in living everyday terms.

Yeah, I was thinking of Romans 6 and then I saw you had it in the notes as well.

Romans 6 1 to 4, very similarly to what we just read, says, What shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we should walk we also should walk in newness of life." Yeah that's a great passage and there's reason to send the notes there because it is the same Paul who's describing death and resurrection and Colossians here is in Romans now doing the same thing.

And notice the emphasis is he starts with that rhetorical question, what then shall we say?

What is the main point of all this is that well if we take that experience of death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, what does it look like in our life?

Well, we appropriate that to our life by faith and we manifest it in baptism.

So we say, Lord, I want to be with you and you take on in a spiritual sense.

You don't physically die, but you spiritually go through that death, burial, and resurrection process.

Well, what strikes me is what I hear him saying is, what then shall we say?

You know, in Christianity today, a lot of Christians want to focus on the fact that Jesus died on the cross.

We say there's salvation, the plan of redemption.

In no means do we want to diminish that, but it's almost as if Paul's saying, if that's the reality, aren't we gonna live different?

Isn't something gonna be different in us?

In other words, if he died, we died with him and if we died with him, are we gonna live a new way now through him?

Yeah, Paul is definitely not just focusing on the what that Jesus did, but the now what do we do with it?

I mean, the blessing of the Christian life is that we can be new creatures in Christ.

It's been said that a person who struggles with alcohol, I struggle is an overstated word, because a person who's an alcoholic who isn't bothered by their alcoholism really doesn't long to be free from it, but a person who struggles with it and abhors himself because of it wants a new way of life, and so it is with a sinner.

There are sinners who love to sin and they're happy in their sin and they don't want to be bothered.

And if they can get a little ticket into heaven and still be a sinner, they're gonna be okay.

But a true seeker for Christ longs to be free from sin and live a new kind of life.

And this is Paul saying we can have a new life in Jesus.

Well and the whole thing about Jesus died and was buried and resurrected and ascended into heaven.

All of that is true, praise the Lord, but Paul's point is because of that, how does that impact us?

Well we have to appropriate that and say, well I need that experience too.

If I'm gonna be free from sin, it can't just be on paper, it's got to be in person, it's got to be real, so how do I make this a reality in my life?

And now this is why he emphasizes that the baptism is not just a some sort of mystical rite that we go through, but it's a transformative experience that we can have.

In fact, Paul says, I die daily, that obviously he doesn't get baptized every day, but that the concept of it can be appropriated to life every day.

So we go back to Colossians now as our time is ticking away.

It says then if you read again verse chapter 3 verses 1 now let's go to 1 and 2.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

All right, so now he's basically saying, so if this is true, that Christ died and rose again, and we are applying that in our lives, then the logical conclusion is The past is behind us, so now what?

And Jesus, the logic of this is so self-evident.

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

11 Living With Christ

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

06 Confidence Only in Christ

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