Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents
Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude
Confronting our freedom
[Bible references: Genesis 3:1-24; Deuteronomy 7:6-14; 30:18-20; Joshua 24:14-16; John 7:17; 15:16]
To be creatures designed in the image of the transcendent creative, loving God, we needed a kind of independence so that we could choose to love – or not love – and to be free to imagine and create wildly new and different things as proper for God’s image-bearing creatures. We were free to do this in a place where everything was very good and designed so that we could flourish. However, that very freedom which gave image bearers the possibilities of independent thoughts, also gave those image-bearers the opportunity to also confront temptation.
While the image-bearers were given the opportunity to meet with God and to walk with him in a specially designed garden, they were also allowed the opportunity for questions. They could even question the motives of the God who made them:
- Was something good being withheld from them?
- Were they being deprived of some power?
- What would be available to them if they violated the restriction?
- Would they actually die?
- What special knowledge were they being deprived of – particularly this knowledge of good and evil?
- Everything they had encountered had been good, why would their thinking about violating this one restriction not be good?
- Was the Creator so good anyway?”
Observe
Read Deuteronomy 7:7; 30:18-20; Joshua 24:14-16. The ability to love is not possible without the ability to choose. What did the Israelites choose to love (or not love)?
Dancing In The Kingdom 