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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 DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're continuing our study of uniting heaven and earth, Christ in Philippians and Colossians.

We're actually now going in the phase of all the way up to number 6.

Yes, up to number 6, and it's titled confidence only in Christ.

And as I was about to say, at first it gave an introductory on the first lesson and they kind of put some Colossians and Philippians together.

But now we've been going sequentially through the book of Philippians and we're, I don't want to give too much away that next week is the end of our study of Philippians and we'll turn our attention to Colossians.

So Pastor Howard, you put together our talking points for this week and what is this sixth lesson, what is the section of scripture we're looking at today?

Well we're rounding the corner from chapter 2 and going into chapter 3 and a little over halfway through chapter 3 and We'll get into that.

Basically that's what we're doing just walking through and explaining, you know Paul's Experience here as he's explaining it to the Philippians.

Okay, well as I said, you put the points together, so let me have a word of prayer for us to get started and you can walk us through the lesson.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the application we can have for it in our lives and the opportunity we have to study together in the Sabbath school class.

Help our hearts to be receptive to what you want us to know.

In our outline I have put our lesson intro as follows.

This week's lesson explores, and I actually quote from Sabbath Afternoon's lesson, the role of faith and works in the experience of a follower of Christ.

Much of that can be found in what Paul has to say here in the beginning of Chapter 3.

Go outside of that a little bit, as we'll see.

Our talking points, as I've drawn them out of lesson, I have to say that As I went through the quarterly, we brought up a lot of good points, but to me, I kind of followed more of just Chapter 3's flow as far as the order of things.

And so talking point number 1, and the lesson basically follows the same flow.

Talking point number 1 is that legalism always aims for the low bar.

We call it the low bar and we'll explain that.

Primarily Sunday through Tuesday on that point.

And then talking point number 2, we receive the righteousness of Christ by receiving Christ.

And that is drawn primarily from Wednesday.

And Then talking point number 3, Christ's goal for every believer is perfection.

And that's a little bit, you know, edgy because I well understand the word perfection is filled with all kinds of connotations, but it is a biblical word that Paul addresses here and so we want to see it in that context.

Well you can tell by the content or the topic that we're covering here that there's already going to be plenty of opinions and conversation in Sabbath school, but we want to have an informed opinion according to God's word.

So let's make sure to study the text first.

Well, you mentioned here the low bar of legalism.

I want you to read there just the first 3 verses of chapter 3 of Philippians, if you would.

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, for to me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe.

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation, for we are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." Now Paul goes on to talk about this idea of confidence in the flesh.

Doesn't say a whole lot more necessarily about circumcision.

So it almost seems like you drop this thing in here like what?

Beware of mutilation in the circumcision.

But if any of you have read through Paul's letters, you know that this plagued him throughout his ministry.

In addition to the book of Acts, actually, they had an entire church council because there were what we sometimes call the Judaizing teachers, Jews who believed but wanted to push circumcision, they followed Paul throughout his ministry.

And so you'll find little things in all of his letters because these guys would come in and they would try to grab his converts and say, well, yeah, okay, you're a convert to Paul, but did he tell you you need to get circumcised?

Well, we know exactly what they were saying, Acts 15, verse 1, and certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, quote, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

So for them, it wasn't just a cultural thing.

It was literally a salvation issue, this right of circumcision.

And so, yeah, we'll explore that a little more as we go.

So as Paul has been counseling this church, they're going through some hard times, some of them suffering persecution just like Paul, of course, they're looking at Paul in prison.

Paul's encouraging them to live out their faith to emulate the humility of Christ and we've looked at all these things so far here he begins to address a concern that they would be drawn away to follow these false teachers and so it's not it's only implied here when he says beware of dogs, of evil workers, and the mutilation.

The lesson goes into some of this a little bit.

But all of these are just synonymous referrals to these false teachers who are pushing circumcision.

And that becomes fairly clear in verse 3 where he contrasts he says for we are the circumcision who were versus them being the circumcision and so they're coming and they're trying to push something on you he says don't don't feel that you need their gospel.

Rejoice in what you have and what you've received from me.

We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

And we're going to see the significance of that as we continue on.

So the lesson appropriately points out the contrast between what they call uncircumcised believers, the Philippians, who rely fully on Christ for their salvation and put no competence, competence, that too, no confidence in mere human works such as circumcision.

So you're contrasting, here's the Philippians who aren't circumcised but they trust in Christ.

Then you have the circumcised ones who aren't trusting in Christ.

Exactly, I'd rather have an uncircumcised faithful person.

Now this would say, in fact, I want you to read that little note from Sabbath afternoon paragraph 2.

Though circumcision might not be an issue today, the principle it deals with certainly is.

So you know we could be looking at this and saying, oh what in the world?

You'd be surprised how much it has to do with us because circumcision for these false teachers and for the Jewish nation in Christ's day actually kind of became a key point of entry to the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, if you were circumcised, it would trump anything else.

It would serve as almost a substitute for any other religious qualification.

And so circumcision became, you know, when Christ was being urged to follow Christ and this, that, and the other, it's like, well, you know, really what you need is circumcision.

And again, we need to flesh that out a little bit.

So I want to talk about legalism a little bit and then we're gonna tie back into the circumcision things.

This will sound totally disconnected for a minute.

We are still talking about circumcision but circumcision we need to take out of just the act but it's the it's what that act represents is legalism right because it isn't inherently legalism in in in Abraham's case it wasn't legalism it was a sign of the faith that he had in God but by the time we come to Christ's day the traditional practice of it had become a very legalistic.

Okay, so we need to talk about legalism itself.

Yes, because part of the problem is, legalism is a word we throw around all the time in the church today and we think we know what we're talking about.

And I'll tell you that there are more forms of legalism that don't seem to be legalism.

In fact, many of the things we call legalism aren't, and many of the things we would never call legalism are.

All right, we've got to unpack that a little bit.

So legalism, while often characterized as strict obedience to God, is actually, I have this in our notes, is a disguised avoidance of obedience to God.

Okay, for example, if you go to Matthew 23 23, this is a well-known passage where Jesus is kind of taking the Pharisees to task over their hypocrisy.

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Series

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

06 Confidence Only in Christ

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

30m

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

31m

03 Life and Death

30m

04 Unity Through Humility

30m

05 Shining as Lights in the Night

30m

06 Confidence Only in Christ

30m

07 A Heavenly Citizenship

30m

08 The Preeminence of Christ

30m

09 Reconciliation and Hope

30m

10 Complete in Christ

32m

11 Living With Christ

30m

12 Living with Each Other

30m

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