Why Did They Try to Stone Jesus? | The Death Penalty & Group Dynamics

Gospel of John - pt. 19b

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​In today’s lesson, we continue our deep dive into the story of Jesus at the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4). If you haven’t seen the previous teaching, we highly recommend watching that first to catch the full context of today’s discussion. Click here

At the end of the last lesson, we saw how the crowd in the synagogue turned on Jesus in a moment of intense fury—so much so that they tried to throw Him off a cliff. This wasn’t just mob violence; this was an attempted stoning according to the practices of ancient Jewish law.

In this episode, we ask an important question: If God commands the death penalty for certain crimes, and only says "by stoning," then how exactly was that supposed to be carried out?

​What principles guided the process? What safeguards were in place to protect justice and prevent abuse? And how might those principles inform the way we think about justice and the death penalty even today?

But that’s not all. We’ll also explore the psychology of group dynamics. Just a few verses before their rage, the synagogue crowd was speaking well of Jesus. What causes such a rapid shift in group behavior? How does anger spread through a crowd? And more importantly—what warning does this story offer to us as modern church communities?

Join us as we study the Hebrew background behind this dramatic moment and uncover lessons that are just as relevant today as they were in the first century.

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