John 11 - Simple English

1Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

2(This was the Mary who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick.)

3So his sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, "Lord, look, the one you love is sick."

4When Jesus heard that, he said, "This sickness will not end in death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

5Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

6So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.

7After that he said to his disciples, "Let us go into Judaea again."

8His disciples said to him, "Master, only a short time ago the Jews tried to stone you. And are you going there again?"

9Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world."

10"But if a man walks in the night, he stumbles, because there is no light in him."

11He said these things, and after that he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus is sleeping. But I am going, so that I may wake him out of his sleep."

12Then his disciples said, "Lord, if he is sleeping, he will get well."

13But Jesus was speaking about his death. They thought he was speaking about resting in sleep.

14So then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead."

15"And for your sakes I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

16Then Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to the other disciples, "Let us go too, so that we may die with him."

17When Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the grave four days.

18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs away.

19Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.

20So as soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. But Mary stayed sitting in the house.

21Then Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

22"But I know that even now, whatever you ask of God, God will give you."

23Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

24Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

25Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even if he dies."

26"And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

27She said to him, "Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into the world."

28When she had said this, she went away and called her sister Mary in secret. She said, "The Master has come, and he is calling for you."

29As soon as Mary heard that, she got up quickly and came to him.

30Now Jesus had not yet come into the town. He was still in the place where Martha met him.

31The Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. So they followed her, saying, "She is going to the grave to weep there."

32When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping too, he groaned in his spirit and was troubled.

34He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."

35Jesus wept.

36Then the Jews said, "See how he loved him."

37But some of them said, "This man opened the eyes of the blind. Could he not have kept this man from dying?"

38So Jesus, groaning again within himself, came to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay over it.

39Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by now he stinks, for he has been dead four days."

40Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?"

41Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was laid. And Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me."

42"I knew that you always hear me. But I said it because of the people standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."

43When he had said this, he called out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out."

44And the man who had been dead came out. His hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Untie him, and let him go."

45Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary and had seen the things Jesus did believed in him.

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

47Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, "What are we doing? For this man does many miracles."

48"If we leave him alone like this, everyone will believe in him. And the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."

49And one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all."

50"You do not consider that it is better for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish."

51He did not say this of himself. Being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for that nation,

52and not for that nation only, but also to gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad.

53So from that day on they planned together how to put him to death.

54So Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews. He went away from there to a region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and he stayed there with his disciples.

55The Jews' Passover was near. Many people went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover, to make themselves clean.

56So they looked for Jesus. As they stood in the temple, they said to one another, "What do you think? Will he not come to the feast?"

57Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given an order that if anyone knew where he was, he should tell them, so that they might arrest him.