John 8 - just the beginning...

Somebody was looking for activities for John 8. John 8 is a pretty heavy chapter - Jesus and the religious leaders meeting head on. Jesus is on their turf - in their synagogue, teaching. A few posts back I think I made a comment about bringing Jesus to kids, giving kids the tools to recognize Him. Another situation where religious leaders didn't recognize Him, but that comes later.

You could translate the first part of this story for kids without too much difficulty: Jesus is in the temple (like our church building). Some leaders bring a woman to Jesus who has done something really bad. And they say, "We caught her doing it. The Bible says we need to stone her. What do you say?" They are trying to enforce what the Law says but John also tells us these men were trying to trap Jesus. They were trying to trick him.

But Jesus said to them, "Whichever of you has never done anything wrong can throw the first stone."

The leaders began to go away one at a time, the older leaders first. [All this time Jesus was writing on the ground. I don't know why. Maybe you do. The obvious: Jesus could read and write. :) ]

Finally all the leaders left and Jesus asked the lady, "Where are they? No one is condemning you? No one is accusing you of wrong?"

The lady said, "No one sir." [Just an observation, but who gave Jesus more respect?]

Jesus said, "I don't condemn you either. Go. Leave your life of doing this bad thing."

Ask your kids: What do you think about this? Did this ever happen to you? What did you learn about Jesus in this story? What can we do to help us remember what Jesus did?

But there's more. This is just the beginning of this chapter. This is just the beginning of the story - at least for us as grown-ups . . .