Study Desk

When Jesus heard this, he said, "This sickness will not lead to death, but to God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

But if anyone walks around at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him."

After he said this, he added, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him."

(Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.)

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

So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary was sitting in the house.

But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you."

(Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had come out to meet him.)

But some of them said, "This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn't he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?"

I knew that you always listen to me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing around here, that they may believe that you sent me."

But some of them went to the Pharisees and reported to them what Jesus had done.

(Now he did not say this on his own, but because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation,

and not for the Jewish nation only, but to gather together into one the children of God who are scattered.)

Thus Jesus no longer went around publicly among the Judeans, but went away from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was going to betray him) said,

(Now Judas said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money box, he used to steal what was put into it.)

For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me!"

Now a large crowd of Judeans learned that Jesus was there, and so they came not only because of him but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead.

(His disciples did not understand these things when they first happened, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him and that these things had happened to him.)

I tell you the solemn truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain.