Sermon Notes

The Invitation: Part XXV

“In This Hope”

Romans 8:12-39

11/19/17

  1. While there were a number of passages that we could have chosen as we concluded our series on The Invitation, looking at the ______of Christ, the ______ and the New Earth, I thought that this one was the best as it not only ______ points us toward that day, but it also, perhaps more importantly, points us to ______day in the light of ______ day.
  2. And, that leads us without delay, or broader introduction, to the central ______ of our reflection this morning – to a ______ that lies at the very heart of the Christian life – the principle of ______.
  3. ______ it, and you’ve mastered the ______life; ______it, and you’ve not ______ of the Christian life at all.
  4. ______: “The ability to ______ an impulse (temptation) to take an immediately ______reward in the _____ of obtaining a more ______ reward in the future.”
  5. The first thing for us to see here related to the Christian life and the principle of ______ gratification is that life offers us ______from which we can only ______. (vs. 12-17)
  6. Choosing between the desires of the ______and the desires of the ______. (vs. 13)
  7. Choosing between the ______of this life and the ______ of Christ. (vs. 17)
  8. Jesus makes this same point when he reminds us that we cannot ______. (Mt. 6:24)
  9. And, his description of the ______ in the parable of the sower.
  10. This choice is all the more ______ to make, and to be faithful in, because the ______of Christ are so very ______ to live with. (vs. 35-36)
  11. At the very time that this was being ______, believers were ______ those kinds of things throughout the ______.. The same is true as ___ are ______ it.
  12. And the worse our ______becomes, the ______ will be the experience of ______. (II Tim. 3:1-15)
  13. The Christian life of ______gratification is ______ to unbelievers because it ______to them of the day of ______ to come.
  14. It isn’t that our lives are designed to be ______– far from it. But our _____ is to be created by the ______ that we are waiting for. (vs. 18-24)
  15. The ____ in which we were saved was not a wispy ______ existence, but one in which our very _____ (and the ______in which they live) are ______, and transformed into all that they were created to be.
  16. All of the ______of the flesh have a ______ version – a version we cannot experience in this fallen______with these fallen ______ and spirits. However, in the ______ to come we will have life, and have it to the ______.
  17. Doing without the ______ of this world is not to do without pleasures ______, but to wait for the blessed ______ where we will experience the ______of pleasure and ______, in holiness, with the Lord.
  18. This is the ______ of our lives until the glorious day of his appearing: to live with a ______perspective of ______: setting aside living for the desires of the ______ now, in order to experience the ______ of our new bodies then, and the pleasures and ____ that life will bring.
  19. As Jim Elliot said: “He is no ______who ______what he can never ______to _____ what he can never ______.”
  20. Let us live that way as well – in the ______of the ______of our ______.

For further discussion:

  1. Have you truly come to embrace the reality that you cannot serve two masters?
  2. Do you accept the fact that this choice lies at the heart of The Invitation?
  3. What aspects of the desires of the flesh are the most difficult for you to resist?
  4. What help have you sought it resisting them?
  5. To this point, what has been the role of looking ahead to the glories of the life that is to come in your struggle against the flesh?
  6. What aspects of the life to come are you most longing for?
  7. What do you think the role of imagination might be in helping us to live for the life that is to come?