1-2 Jesus had a friend called Lazarus, and he lived in a little town in Judea country called Bethany. He lived there with his sisters, Mary and Martha. (Mary was the woman that, later on, rubbed Jesus’s feet with special perfume and wiped them with her hair.* Luke 10:38-39; John 12:3)

One day, Lazarus got very sick, 3 so Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus. They said, “Your good friend Lazarus is very sick.”

4 When Jesus got the message, he said, “Yes, Lazarus is very sick, but that sickness will not finish him up. He is sick so that people will see that God is really powerful, and they will respect God. And they will see that God’s son is powerful too, and they will also respect him.”

5 Jesus was really good friends with Mary, Martha and Lazarus, 6 but after he got the message he stayed in the town where he was for another 2 days. 7 Then Jesus said to his special workers, “Let’s go back to Judea country.”

8 But his followers said, “What? Teacher, are you going to go back? When we were there a little while ago, the people there wanted to throw stones at you and kill you.”

9 Jesus said, “You know, there is day-light every day until the sun goes down. The sun is the light for the world. It lets people see where they are walking, so they will not fall down. 10 It’s only at night time that people do not have that light. Then they can’t see where they are walking, and they will fall down.” When Jesus said that, he was telling them that, just as people can walk until the end of the day, he had to keep on working until the end of his life, and it wasn’t time yet for him to die.

11 Then Jesus said to them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep. I am going to wake him up.”

12 His followers said, “Sir, if Lazarus is asleep, he will soon get better.”

13 Jesus was really saying that Lazarus was dead, but his followers didn’t understand that. 14 So then Jesus told them straight, “Lazarus is dead. 15 But I am happy that I wasn’t there before he died. Because now you will see what I am going to do, and you will believe in me properly. Come on. We will go to him now.”

16 Thomas said to Jesus’s other followers, “All right, let’s all go, and we will die with Jesus.” (Thomas’s other name was the Twin.)

17 Then Jesus and his followers went to Bethany. As they were getting near to Bethany, somebody told him that Lazarus died 4 days ago, and his family put his body in a cave, and they put a big stone there to block that cave.

18 Bethany was about 3 kilometres from Jerusalem. 19 Mary and Martha were really sad, so a lot of people from Jerusalem came and sat down with them, to be sad with them and help them feel better.

20 Martha heard that Jesus was coming and that he was getting close, so she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. 21 Martha said, “Sir, you were not here to stop my brother from dying. 22 But we know that God listens to you, and even now, I know that you can ask God for anything and he will give it to you.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will come back to life again.”

24 Martha said, “Yes, I know he will come back to life, on the day when the world will finish up, when everyone will be alive again.”

25-26 Jesus said, “Martha, I am the one that makes dead people come alive again, and I am the one that gives people real life. If people believe in me, I will make them come alive again after they die, then they will live for ever and never die again. Do you believe that?”

27 Martha said, “Yes, sir, I believe that you are the Christ, the special man that God promised to send. You are God’s son, and you came to us people in the world.”

28 Then she went back to the house to get Mary. She said to Mary quietly, “The teacher is here and wants to talk to you.” 29 As soon as Mary heard that, she got up quickly and went to Jesus. 30 He was still outside the town, at the place where Martha met him. 31 There were other people with Mary at the house trying to help her feel better, and they saw her get up quickly and leave the house. They thought she was going to cry at the cave where they put Lazarus, so they followed her.

32 But Mary didn’t go to the cave, she went to see Jesus. She got down on her knees in front of him, to show him respect, and she said, “Sir, you were not here to stop my brother from dying.”

33 Jesus saw Mary and everyone else crying out loud, and he felt really upset and sad for them. 34 He asked them, “Where did you put his body?”

And they said, “Sir, come and we’ll show you.”

35 Then Jesus cried.

36 The people saw Jesus crying, and some of them said, “Look at him. He really loved his friend.”

37 But other people there said, “He made a blind man see. Why didn’t he stop this man from dying?”

38 Again Jesus felt upset and sad. He went and stood in front of the cave. 39 He said, “Move that big stone away, so that it doesn’t block the cave any more.”

But Martha, Lazarus’s sister, said, “No, sir. Don’t get them to move that stone. He has been dead for 4 days, so the body will smell really bad.”

40 Jesus said to her, “I told you before that if you believe in me, you will see God’s great power.”

41 So the people moved the stone away from the cave. Then Jesus looked up to God, and said, “Father, thank you for listening to me. 42 I know that you always listen to me, but I say these words out loud, so that these people will believe that you sent me here.”

43 Then Jesus called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out of the cave.” 44 And Lazarus came out. There were still long bits of cloth around Lazarus’s arms and legs, and some cloth over his face. You see, people used to tie long bits of cloth around dead bodies to cover them up.

Jesus said to the people there, “Take that cloth off him, so he can walk around.”

45 A lot of people were with Mary and Martha that day, and they saw what happened. A lot of them believed in Jesus. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisee mob and told them what Jesus did. That Pharisee mob were strong for the Jewish law, so they didn’t like Jesus.

47 The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies, and the Pharisee mob, they called a Jewish Leaders Council meeting. They talked about Jesus at that meeting, and said, “This man is doing a lot of powerful things. What can we do to stop him? 48 We have to do something. If we don’t stop him, all the people might believe in him, and they might make a lot of trouble. Then the Roman soldiers might come and smash God’s ceremony house here, and finish up our nation.”

49 The big boss of the Jewish ceremonies that year was Cayafas. He said, “You mob don’t know anything. 50 Listen. You have to understand this. It is a lot better for you if this man dies, so that the Romans will not come and kill all of our people. Yes, Jesus has to die instead of the people.”

51 Cayafas didn’t think up those words by himself. He told them, “Jesus has to die instead of the people,” but those were really God’s words that he said. You see, he was the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies at that time, so God used him to say that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation. 52 And he was also going to die for all God’s people, everywhere. He died to join all of God’s people everywhere into one mob.

53 From that day, the Jewish leaders talked to each other, saying, “How are we going to kill Jesus?” 54 Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he stopped going to places where there were a lot of people. He left that country and went to a town called Ephraim, that was near the desert, and Jesus and his special workers stayed there.

55 It was nearly the time for the Jewish people to have their ceremony called Passover, to remember that a long time ago God got their grand-fathers out of Egypt. A lot of Jewish people from everywhere went to Jerusalem to get ready for that ceremony, and they washed themselves in a special way.

56-57 The Jewish ceremony bosses and the Pharisee mob told everyone at that ceremony to look for Jesus. They said, “If you see Jesus, you have to tell us, so that we can grab him.”

So a lot of people looked for Jesus at God’s ceremony house. They asked each other, “What do you reckon? Do you think Jesus will come to this Passover ceremony?”