Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of Le’Andria Johnson singing … Cast the First Stone, poignantly singing of our need to let Jesus deal with our sins and avoid casting stones at or judging others who transgress against us.
Highlight Passage: John 8:7 [NKJV] …
7 So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”
… Jesus turns the challenge of the Pharisees back on themselves.
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Highlight Passage: 8:1-11 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… The Pharisees came to test Jesus, sending an adulteress into His presence.
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Reference Passage #1 … Lamentations 3:22-23 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God’s willingness to extend His mercy never ends but is only available to those who’re in surrender to His grace.
Reference Passage #2 … John 14:19-21 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus showed that the way to His heart is through showing our love for Him by being obedient to Him and sharing God’s love with others.
My Journal for Today: … Our Daily Bread author, Randy Kilgore, uses a familiar story about Jesus’ forgiveness to remind us of our need to forgive others. He writes: As a group of religious leaders herded an adulterous woman toward Jesus, they couldn’t know they were carrying her within a stone’s throw of grace. Their hope was to discredit Him. If He told them to let the woman go, they could claim He was breaking Mosaic law. But if He condemned her to death, the crowds following Him would have dismissed His words of mercy and grace.
But Jesus turned the tables on the accusers. Scripture says that rather than answering them directly, He started writing on the ground. When the leaders continued to question Him, He invited any of them who had never sinned to throw the first stone, and then He started writing on the ground again. The next time He looked up, all the accusers were gone.
Have you ever been in a place where you wanted to pick up a stone [well at least figuratively] and cast it at someone in your life whom you blamed for some transgression? I’d speculate that we’ve all been there and have worn that t-shirt, haven’t we?
Well, the story in John 8 tells that familiar encounter Jesus had with the pharisees who were to trying to trip our Savior up by casting a known adulterous before Him; and we know that Jesus turned their hatred on themselves by asking which of them had no sin and could cast the first stone.
Well, my friends, I don’t know about you; but I’ll not be throwing any stones at anyone else today.
Today’s Prayer: Lord, forgive my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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