John 11 — Read & Listen Online | Father's Heart Bible™

Lazarus of Bethany

Chapter 11.

Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, from the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived. It was this Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. So the sisters sent word to him, saying, "Lord, the one you love is sick."

When Jesus heard it, he said, "This sickness will not end in death, but is for the glory of our Father, so that the Son of our Father may be glorified through it." Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go back to Judea."

The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, just now the Jews were trying to stone you, and you are going back there?"

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the daytime, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world." But if anyone walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him. After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up."

So the disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get better." Now Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he meant natural sleep. So then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, so we can die with him."

So when Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, ^a and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary stayed seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." "But even now I know that whatever you ask of our Father, he will give you."

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even though he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of our Father, the one coming into the world."

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, telling her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." When Mary heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. So the Jews who were with her in the house consoling her, when they saw Mary rise quickly and go out, followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. And he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."

Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man from dying?"

Then Jesus, again deeply moved within himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by now there will be a strong odor, for he has been dead four days."

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of our Father?"

So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me." "I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of linen, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

The Council Gathers

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, "What are we doing? For this man performs many signs." "If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all." "Don't you realize it is better for you that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should perish?" He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the scattered children of our Father. ^b So from that day on they plotted to put him to death. Therefore Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. So they were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, "What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?" Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should report it, so that they might arrest him.

❤️ FHB? Review Now