John 2 has two scenes. At a wedding in Cana, Mary told the servants, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” and they filled six stone waterpots to the brim before Jesus turned the water into wine, His first miracle. Then at Passover, Jesus found the temple courts turned into a market, with oxen, sheep, doves and money changers. He made a whip of cords, drove them out, overturned the tables and said, “make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise” (John 2:16). The manual asks what we treat as sacred and what might need clearing out of our own lives.
John 3: Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night. Jesus taught that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being “born of water and of the Spirit” (3:5): baptism by immersion and the gift of the Holy Ghost. For your class, this is the doctrinal key to temple work. If baptism is required of everyone, what about the billions who died without the chance? Paul mentions people being “baptized for the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:29), and the Lord restored that ordinance through Joseph Smith (see D&C 128). Starting in January of the year they turn 12, youth may receive a limited-use temple recommend and be baptized for their ancestors, so several of your class may have just gone for the first time or be preparing now. Elder David A. Bednar’s conference talk “Ye Must Be Born Again” is a good read if you want more.
John 4: at about noon, a tired Jesus sat at Jacob’s well in Samaria and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink. Jews and Samaritans usually avoided each other, so she was surprised He spoke to her at all. He offered her living water that becomes “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (4:14). He knew things about her life no stranger could know (keep this detail simple), and He told her that true worshippers worship the Father “in spirit and in truth” (4:24). Then He told her plainly that He was the Messiah. She left her waterpot, ran into town, and many Samaritans came to hear Him themselves.
The thread for 11–14s: Nicodemus came in the dark with questions, the woman came at noon with a complicated life, and Jesus met both of them where they were. Deacons pass the sacrament, which renews the covenant made at baptism every week; the temple lets them offer that same covenant to people who never had the chance. Today is fast Sunday: skip food and drinks, and keep the living-water demo as a pour-only, no-drinking visual.
