Knox’s Alpha

The Promise

Recap

•      Tradition…

•      Trinity….The Dance…

•      Humanity & Sin

•      Today: Jesus’ Invite to rejoin the dance…

Many Ways to Read the Bible

•      Not a Novel

–   Different Genres

•      Thread of the Promise

–   Always Vulnerable

Myth of Redemptive Violence

•      Example: Films

–   James Bond

–   Rocky Balboa

•      Society

–   Pre-emptive Strike

–   Surveillance Society

•      Even view Jesus this way…?

The Testing and The Hope

•      Adam: Expelled – Grace compromised

•      Noah: The Flood

•      Abraham: Old – Sacrifice

•      Israel: Exiled/Occupied

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Jesus: Our Promise

•      Jesus: Ordinary Artisan

–    Rejected and Executed

•      Could have ended there…but it didn’t – The Cross

–    Died for transgressions, raised for justification

–    To offer…To teach

•      God the Son, the Lord of the Dance

–    Meets us where we are and helps us in our weakness…our rebellion…

•      But it is not over….

–    The ‘in-between time’

•    Between the first-fruits and the fulfilment

Jesus: Our Hope

•      One day, he will come again

–    Draw all people…Put all things under His feet

•    Every knee will bow…Tongue confess

•      One day the Lord of the Dance will come

–    Not to offer hope, but to judge

–    And to lead His own to a place where there is no….

•      This is our Hope

–    May seem a ‘weak hope’

–    But our call…the narrow gate….

Our Challenge

•      So what is the challenge…?

–    The Challenge of Witness

•    The proclamation of hope…

–   Society: Denies God…ethics & morals

•    Baptism is a picture of this.

–   God will bring to fruition the seed planted….

•      Will we walk that hard road?

–    Proclaim that hope…?

–    Learn again to dance the dance or love with Him…?