John 11:19-55

¹⁹Many Jews had come from Jerusalem to console Martha and Mary over the death of their younger brother.

²⁰When Martha heard someone say that Jesus was coming, she went along the road to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house.

²¹When Martha got to where Jesus was, she said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died because you would have healed him!

²²But I know that even now God will do for you whatever you ask concerning my brother.”

²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will become alive again!”

²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will become alive again when all people become alive again on the Judgment day.”

²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the one who enables people to become alive again and who causes people to live eternally. Those who believe in me, even if they die, will live again.

²⁶Furthermore, all those who believe in me while they are alive, their souls will not die forever. Do you believe that?”

²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord! I believe that you are the Messiah, ◄the Son of God/the man who is also God►. You are the one God promised to send into the world!”

²⁸After she said that, she returned to the house and took her younger sister, Mary, aside and said to her, “The Teacher is close to our village, and he wants to talk to you.”

²⁹When Mary heard that, she got up quickly and went to him.

³⁰Jesus had not yet entered the village; he was still at the place where Martha met him.

³¹The Jews who were in the house with Mary, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go outside. So they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb where they had buried Lazarus, in order to cry there.

³²When Mary got to where Jesus was and saw him, she prostrated herself at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my younger brother would not have died!”

³³When Jesus saw her crying, and saw that the Jews who had come with her were also crying, he was very angry that Satan had caused Lazarus to die (OR, very troubled) and disturbed in his spirit.

³⁴He said, “Where have you buried ◄him/his body►?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”

³⁵Jesus began to cry.

³⁶Then some of the Jews said, “Look how much he loved Lazarus!”

³⁷But some others said, “He enabled a blind man to see. So ◄he should have been able to heal this man so that he did not die!/why did he not heal this man so that he did not die?► RHQ”

³⁸Within himself Jesus was again very angry about Lazarus dying (OR, very troubled). He came to the tomb. It was a cave. The entrance had been covered with a large stone.

³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone!” Martha, who, as I mentioned before, was an older sister of the man who had died, said, “Lord, his body has been in the tomb for four days, so now there will be a bad smell!”

⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “I told RHQ you that if you believed in ◄ me/what I can do►, you would see how great God is! Have you forgotten that?”

⁴¹So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up toward heaven and said, “My Father, I thank you that you heard me when I prayed about this earlier.

⁴²I know that you always hear me when I pray. But instead of just praying silently, I said that for the sake of the people who are standing here. I want them to believe that you sent me.”

⁴³After he said that, he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!”

⁴⁴The man who had been dead came out! The strips of cloth were still wrapped around his hands and feet, and a cloth was still around his face, but he came out! Jesus said to them, “Take off the cloths so that he can walk easily!” So they did that.

⁴⁵As a result, many of the Jews who had come to see Mary and who had seen what Jesus did, believed that he ◄ was the Messiah/had come from God►.

⁴⁶But some of the others went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

⁴⁷So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered all the members of the Jewish Council together. They started saying to each other, “What are we going to do about Jesus? He is performing many miracles!

⁴⁸If we allow him to keep doing this, everyone will believe ◄in him/that he is the Messiah►, and they will make him their king. Then the Roman army will come and destroy our Temple and our whole nation of Israel!”

⁴⁹One of the Jewish Council members was Caiaphas. He was the Jewish high priest that year. Hinting that they should get rid of Jesus, he said to them, “You talk as though you do not know anything HYP!

⁵⁰You do not realize that it would be much better for us if one man died for the sake of the people rather than that the Romans kill all the people of our Jewish nation.”

⁵¹He said that, not because he thought of it himself. Instead, since he was the high priest that year, he was prophesying that Jesus would die for the whole Jewish nation.

⁵²But he was also prophesying that Jesus would die, not just for the Jews, but for all the people living in other lands who would belong to God, in order that he would unite all of them into one group.

⁵³So from that day the Jewish leaders started to make plans how they could kill Jesus.

⁵⁴Because of that, Jesus no longer traveled around publicly among the Jewish people. Instead, he left Jerusalem, along with us disciples, and went to a village called Ephraim, in an area near the desolate region. We stayed there for a while.

⁵⁵When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover celebration, many Jews went up to Jerusalem from other places in the country. They went there to perform the rituals to make themselves acceptable to God before the Passover celebration started.