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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.

Pastor Howard, we are still studying through this wonderful lesson called Uniting Heaven and Earth, Christ in Philippians and Colossians.

Yes, we're making a little lane change this week.

We're going from Philippians to Colossians.

We are at a transition point from the 1 book to the other and this lesson 8 is titled the preeminence of Christ.

I wasn't sure what you were about to say.

I was like well go with wherever that's going.

Obviously we're looking at Jesus as we always are this is Christ in Philippians and Colossians But it seems like we're looking at specific theological nuances and insights about Jesus this week.

Yes You know, I'm even now looking at the clock and thinking there's a lot of things to cover and yet I was telling you as we were preparing That we're really looking at 5 verses this week.

So we did an introduction of both books Okay, and then this week we you know, we went through Philippians Now we're coming to Colossians chapter 1 and we're zeroing in on 5 verses that highlight the significance of the preeminence of Christ, and yet they're 5 packed verses.

And the lesson drills down into these verses, and I think that's a good thing, but I told you that as I was going through it, I felt like sometimes you get so focused, tightly focused on something that you lose, you can lose a sense of the bigger picture.

Like a single word or phrase or something like that?

So I gave you the illustration like I could go out and take a picture of the wheel on my car, the aluminum wheel, so close that all you see is a shiny silver that fills the whole screen and then say guess what that's from?

And you're so close you can see all kinds of little detail but you're like I have no idea what it how it fits but if you zoom back you think oh it's a wheel on a car right and I feel like sometimes and this is not to detract from this week's lesson but hopefully we'll we want to find a balance I guess I'm saying this so their teachers will find a balance.

You can drill down into the Greek and the Hebrew and get into the nuances of stuff and that's like zooming in on that silver of that wheel when oftentimes the context itself will reveal the meaning more clearly.

This is why when you go back to William Miller's principles of interpretation, it was not to drill down into the original meanings.

It was to compare Scripture with Scripture and see the cut and not to take away from the lesson.

Again, that's not to say that Greek and Hebrew aren't important.

Sometimes drilling in, we got to do that, but you got to have to keep in mind that balance.

So yes, and part of the challenge with the lesson is because we're going through Colossians and we don't have time to, we're gonna just take this segment of verses.

And so I'm gonna go verses 15 to 20 and hey if I went from from verse 15 all the way through the end of the chapter for example, oh it might give a different perspective.

I've got good news for you because next week, not to give too much away, but we're gonna continue this study.

So really you could view lesson 8 and 9 at least as parts 1 and 2 complemented because they're coming from the same section of scripture and to your point that provides that expanded context.

Yeah, we actually break the argument in this week to pick up next week versus sometimes you transition so there's a chapter and there's a change, but this week we're kind of right in the middle.

Well, in your Sabbath school class, if you have visitors saying, hey, if you got this week, you can't miss next week because we got to conclude this.

We've just been talking and then I'm gonna pass the mic back to you and you're gonna lead us through this week's lesson.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this particular portion of Scripture and all of the Word of God that reveals Christ to us.

Help us to understand Jesus, His ministry, His preeminence, and His relevance in our lives today as we seek to become more like Him.

Okay, as stated, we are resuming our study of Colossians this week, considering why Christ holds such preeminence in the plan of redemption.

Paul, in our previous study way back in Lessons 1 and 2, we looked at the beginning verses of Colossians, and in verses 13 and 14 it says, "...he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins." So we've been conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

Now Paul's about to tell us the significance of this Son.

And I'm gonna have you pick up in verses 15, but before I do that, let's...

Our talking points this week are as follows.

Talking point Number 1, Jesus is the invisible God made visible.

Talking point number 2, Jesus is the beginning of a new humanity, Tuesday and Wednesday.

That's such a big concept and it's 1 of 3 points this week, but yes, it's what we got to do.

And talking about number 3, all things are reconciled to God through Christ primarily from Thursday's lesson.

So, Jesus is the invisible God made visible.

I'm going to have you start out by reading verses 15 to 20.

The entire section, right, of our lesson.

Colossians 115 goes on to say, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.

And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself, by him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross." Okay, so that idea of reconciliation continues on, but in those few verses they are just packed.

You can take a part of the verse, a phrase, and drill down into it, which is what this week's lesson does, which is why I made the point that I did about zooming in.

So we'll try to keep the larger context while still maybe discovering more about some of these more particulars.

So Paul describes Jesus first as the image of the invisible God, and the lesson goes into the word image, what it means in the Greek, etc., which can be helpful, but to me just lying right on the surface there, Paul says that he's the image of the invisible God, and the explanation seems to be pretty straightforward that God is invisible, but Jesus is visible, and so what we don't know and can't know about God because we can't see him, What I have in our handout is that Paul's point is that in Jesus we finally see what God is like.

He was real, literal, on the earth walking.

John could say we handled him, we touched him, we heard him, we saw him.

Obviously there's perception too and we weren't there but we do have eyewitness testimony that through Jesus we have a perfect picture of what God is like that we never had prior to his incarnation.

No, I was, I, well, there's so many scriptures that back that up.

You have a few listed in the notes there, like how he's, he's seen God the Father.

No 1 else has seen him, but Jesus has seen him, right?

Well, the, the, the, that's because the lesson asks the question, where is it on Sunday, why is Jesus uniquely able to reveal the Father?

And so I rephrased it here in our bullet point, it says Jesus is uniquely able to reveal the Father because first, he has seen the Father.

Yes, it says, no 1 has seen God at any time.

The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." Okay.

So none of you have seen him, but I have, you know.

And the idea of being in the bosom of the Father, and we'll see more of this as we go on, like he didn't just, it wasn't an acquaintance, This is a close relationship.

So he, because of it, and well, the next thing is that, so Jesus is uniquely able to reveal the Father because he has seen the Father, according to that verse.

He has pre-existed with the Father, which I think that verse touches on, but John 17 verse 5, Jesus says, and now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

So this talks about the fact that they've had a long relationship.

And then finally, Jesus is 1 with the Father, according to John chapter 10 and verse 30.

Where he simply declares, I and my Father are 1.

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Series

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

08 The Preeminence of Christ

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