1Every year Jewish people came to Jerusalem for a special ceremony called Passover. They ate flat damper at that time. Well, Jesus was in Jerusalem 2 days before that ceremony was going to start. The leaders of the Jewish ceremonies and the law teachers wanted to kill Jesus, so they met together to work out a way to sneak up on him and grab him. But they said to each other, “Everybody likes Jesus so we have to wait a bit. We can’t grab him while there are lots of people here for the ceremony. They will get angry with us and we will have a very big fight.”
3Jesus went to the town called Bethany. A man called Simon lived there. (Before that time Simon was sick with skin sickness but then he got better again.) Jesus went to Simon’s house and was eating dinner there. A woman came into the house with some special perfume in a pretty bottle. That perfume smelled really good and it cost a lot of money.
4She opened the bottle and poured the perfume on Jesus’s head. Some of the people there growled at her. They said, “Why did you spill out that perfume?
5Why didn’t you sell it and get a lot of money, and give that money to poor people?”
6But Jesus said to them, “Leave her alone. Don’t make trouble for her. She did something really good to me.
7You will always have poor people with you and you can give them money whenever you want to. But I will not be here with you much longer.
8I will die soon and they will bury my body. This woman poured the perfume on me to get my body ready. She did a good thing.
9Listen to me now. This is true. Wherever people will tell God’s story, everywhere in the world, they will tell about this woman and the good thing she did today, and lots of people will know about her.”
10Judas Iscariot was one of the 12 men that Jesus picked out. He changed sides and went to the Jewish leaders. He said, “I can help you catch Jesus.”
11They heard him say this and they were very happy. They promised to pay him money. So Judas kept thinking about this and waited for the right time to help them catch Jesus.
12The day came for people to kill a young sheep to cook it and eat it. That was the start of the ceremony time called Passover. They ate flat damper too at that time. On that day some of his followers came to him and asked him, “Where do you want us all to eat this dinner. We can go and get that place ready.”
13Jesus said, “All right. You 2 go over there into Jerusalem, and after you get there you will meet a man. He will be carrying a big jug of water. Follow him, and he will go into a house,
14You talk to the boss of that house. You tell him, ‘Our teacher wants you to show us the room you have for visitors. He wants to eat the Passover dinner there with his followers.’
15Then that boss will take you upstairs to a big room that he’s got set up and ready. You can get the dinner ready for us there.”
16Those 2 men left him and went into Jerusalem. Everything happened just like Jesus told them. So they got the food ready for that special Passover dinner.
17When the sun went down, Jesus and his close followers came to that house to eat the Passover dinner.
18While they were eating, Jesus said to them, “One of you men that is eating with me here right now, will help the people that want to kill me.”
19His 12 followers were sad, and each of them said to him, “Not me. You didn’t talk about me did you?”
20Jesus said, “It is one of you that is eating out of this dish with me right now.
21I’m God’s special man from heaven, and I have to die just like God’s book says, but the man that helps my enemies to catch me will get really bad trouble from God. He will wish he was never born.”
22After that, while they were still eating their dinner, Jesus picked up some damper and thanked God for it, then he broke it into pieces and gave it to his friends. He said, “This damper is my body, take a piece and eat it.”
23Then he picked up the cup of wine and said thank you to God for it, and he gave it to them and they passed it around and each one drank a little bit of wine.
24He told them, “This wine is my blood. I will die and pour out my blood for many people. It’s like this, God has agreed to save people, and I will die so he can do that. My blood will come out, and it is like I’m using my blood to sign God’s new agreement with everyone.
25I’m telling you straight, I will not drink any wine again until the day that I sit down with God and all his family, and he will show everyone that he is the biggest boss.”
26After Jesus said this, they all sang a song to God, and then they went out of that house to go to the hill called Olive Trees.
27As they walked along the road, Jesus talked to them. He said, “All you mob will run away and leave me. A long time ago God got one of his men to write about this in his book. He wrote, ‘God will knock down the man that looks after the sheep and all his sheep will run away.’
28I will die, like that man wrote, but after that God will make me alive again. Then I will go ahead of you to Galilee country and wait for you there.”
29Peter said, “Maybe all the others will run away, but not me. No way.”
30But Jesus said to him, “Listen to me, Peter. Tonight you will talk and you will lie to people. You will say that you don’t know me. A chook will yell out tonight, just like it always does before the sun comes up. But people will hear you say 3 times that you don’t know me before that chook yells out 2 times.”
31But Peter talked really strong to Jesus. He said, “No. People might try to force me to say that. They might even tell me that they will kill me, but I will never say that I don’t know you.” All the other followers talked the same way.
32Jesus and His followers came to the place called Gethsemane. He said to them, “I want you to sit here and wait for me. I’m going to pray to God.”
33He asked Peter, James and John to go with Him, and they walked away from the others. As they walked,
34he said to them, “I feel really sad right now. I feel so sad, it’s like I’m dying. Stay here and keep looking out for trouble.”
35Then Jesus walked away from them a little bit and lay down on the ground.
36He said to God, “Father, You can do anything. You can take this trouble away from me. It’s too hard for me. But you do what you want to do, not what I want.”
37Jesus went back to his 3 friends and found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Wake up, Simon. Can’t you stay awake with me for just one hour?
38Stay awake and pray to God so that the devil will not get you to go wrong. I know you want to do the right thing, but your body is weak and wants to sleep.”
39Jesus left them again, and prayed again. He kept asking God the same thing.
40The 3 friends of Jesus were very tired and just couldn’t stay awake. Then Jesus came back to them again and they were asleep again. After they woke up they were so ashamed they didn’t know what to say to him.
41Jesus went away and prayed to God again. Then he came back to his friends and said, “Are you still asleep? You can’t sleep any more now. Look. I’m God’s special man from heaven, but those bad men will soon come and get me.
42Hey, get up, we have to go now. See, here is the man that is helping them catch me.”
43At that same time, the leaders of the Jewish ceremonies and the law teachers and the Jewish elders were back in the town, and they told a big mob of men to go with Judas to grab Jesus. Those men all had long knives and fighting sticks. Judas was one of the 12 close followers of Jesus, and he went to Gethsemane with this mob of men. Jesus was still talking to his friends
44when the mob got there, and Judas walked up to Jesus and said, “Teacher. Teacher,” and kissed him on the cheek, to show those men which one they had to grab.
46So they grabbed Jesus.
47One of the friends of Jesus was standing right there and he pulled out his long knife. He cut off the ear of a man that worked for the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies.
48Jesus said to the mob, “Why have you got all these long knives and fighting sticks? I’m not a dangerous man. No way.
49I was in God’s ceremony house and I taught the people there every day, but you didn’t grab me then. But you can grab me now. A long time ago the men that told God’s message said that you will do this. They wrote about it in God’s book.”
50Then Jesus’s followers got frightened and ran away and left him there.
51There was a young man there that followed along a little bit behind Jesus. He was just wearing a sheet wrapped around him.
52That mob tried to grab him, but they only grabbed the sheet and he ran away naked.
53The mob took Jesus to the big house of the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies. That house had a yard with a wall around it. Peter followed a little bit behind the mob, then he walked into the yard of that house and sat down with that mob near their fire. All the other leaders of the Jewish ceremonies and elders and law teachers sat down together at that house.
55Those bosses tried to get witnesses to say, “We saw him do wrong things,” so they could kill him, but nobody told a strong story against him.
56Lots of people stood up and told lies about Jesus, but they didn’t agree with each other. Their stories were all mixed up.
57Some men stood up and told this lie.
58They said, “We heard this man say, ‘I will knock down God’s house and build another one in 3 days. Lots of men built this one, but I will build the new one just by myself.’”
59But even these men had their stories mixed up and they didn’t agree with each other.
60The big boss of the Jewish ceremonies stood up in the meeting and said to Jesus, “All these people said that you did bad things. You heard them. What do you say?”
61But Jesus didn’t answer him. He just kept his mouth shut. Then that boss said, “All right, tell us this. Are you the special one called Christ, that God promised to send? Are you the son of God?”
62Jesus said, “Yes, I am. I’m God’s special man from heaven, and one day you mob will all see me sitting there in heaven on the right-hand side of God, the powerful one. And you will also see me as I come back here in the clouds.”
63Then that big boss of the Jewish ceremonies got so angry that he tore his clothes and said to them, “Did you hear that? He said that he is the same as God. We don’t need anyone to say anything more. We heard it ourselves. So what do you reckon, did he break our law or not?” They all said, “He did that. He broke our law. He’s got to die.”
65Some of the people in that meeting spat on him. They tied a rag across his eyes so that he couldn’t see, then they hit him with their hands and said, “Hey. You reckon that God has made you clever, do you? All right, tell us, who hit you?” Then the guards got Jesus and bashed him.
66All this time Peter sat next to the fire in the yard of the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies. One of the girls that worked in that house came along and saw Peter there. She looked at him and said, “Hey. I think you were with this man from Nazareth called Jesus?”
68But Peter said, “No. I don’t know what you are talking about.” Then Peter went back to the gate of that yard. Just then a chook yelled out.
69That working girl saw Peter at the gate and started to tell the people, “This man is one of his mob.’”
70But again Peter said, “No, not me.” A little bit later those people there at that gate said to Peter, “You talk like the Galilee people talk, and Jesus comes from Galilee, so you have to be one of his followers.”
71Peter got really wild and he swore and said, “I’m telling you I don’t know this man. I don’t know what you are talking about. God knows that this is true, or if not, he can kill me.”
72Straight away that chook yelled out again. Then Peter remembered what Jesus said to him before, when Jesus said, “People will hear you say 3 times that you don’t know me before that chook yells out 2 times.” When Peter remembered these words, he was so sad he cried. He could not stop himself.
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