Monday, December 7

²⁵Then some of the residents of Jerusalem began to say, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? ²⁶Yet here he is, speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him. Do the ruling authorities really know that this man is the Christ? ²⁷But we know where this man comes from. Whenever the Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

²⁸Then Jesus, while teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “You both know me and know where I come from! And I have not come on my own initiative, but the one who sent me is true. You do not know him, ²⁹but I know him because I have come from him and he sent me.”

³⁰So then they tried to seize Jesus, but no one laid a hand on him because his time had not yet come. ³¹Yet many of the crowd believed in him and said, “Whenever the Christ comes, he won’t perform more miraculous signs than this man did, will he?”

³²The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about Jesus, so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. ³³Then Jesus said, “I will be with you for only a little while longer, and then I am going to the one who sent me. ³⁴You will look for me but will not find me, and where I am you cannot come.”

³⁵Then the Jewish leaders said to one another, “Where is he going to go that we cannot find him? He is not going to go to the Jewish people dispersed among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he? ³⁶What did he mean by saying, ‘You will look for me but will not find me, and where I am you cannot come’?”

³⁷On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and ³⁸let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’” ³⁹(Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.)

⁴⁰When they heard these words, some of the crowd began to say, “This really is the Prophet!” ⁴¹Others said, “This is the Christ!” But still others said, “No, for the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? ⁴²Don’t the scriptures say that the Christ is a descendant of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” ⁴³So there was a division in the crowd because of Jesus. ⁴⁴Some of them were wanting to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

⁴⁵Then the officers returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why didn’t you bring him back with you?” ⁴⁶The officers replied, “No one ever spoke like this man!” ⁴⁷Then the Pharisees answered, “You haven’t been deceived too, have you? ⁴⁸None of the members of the ruling council or the Pharisees have believed in him, have they? ⁴⁹But this rabble who do not know the law are accursed!”

⁵⁰Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before and who was one of the rulers, said, ⁵¹“Our law doesn’t condemn a man unless it first hears from him and learns what he is doing, does it?” ⁵²They replied, “You aren’t from Galilee too, are you? Investigate carefully and you will see that no prophet comes from Galilee!”

⁵³[[And each one departed to his own house.