In this live men’s Bible study, the host opens with a brief technical check and a prayer before reading John 11:38‑57 from the ESV. He walks through the narrative of Jesus raising Lazarus, emphasizing the scene where Jesus commands the stone removed, thanks the Father, and cries, “Lazarus, come out!” The speaker interprets the resurrection as a vivid metaphor for Christian conversion: believers are spiritually dead, bound, and need to be unbound and released by the church. He highlights the responsibility of the community to “unbind” new believers, likening it to baptism and discipleship. The study then shifts to the reaction of the chief priests and Pharisees, focusing on Caiaphas’s prophetic statement that it is better for one man to die than for the nation to perish, seeing this as God’s message through a future opponent of Jesus. The host notes the Pharisees’ fear of mass belief rather than recognition of Jesus as Messiah. He concludes by pointing viewers to study questions, commentaries, and books listed in the video description, invites chat participation, and announces a follow‑up session on John 12.
Chapters
Okay, here we are. We're a few minutes early here, so if you have the time, let's just make sure this gets all zoomed in the way it's supposed to here. See if I can't make an adjustment so it doesn't do that zoom thing. All right, looks like everything is keyed up and ready to go. So if you guys have your Bibles handy, we're gonna go through the end of John 11 today. It's gonna be a little bit shorter, um, but this one's kind of a cool one. Uh, left the end of this specifically for its own night. So I hope you guys had a great Monday. Uh, if you are reading along, I always encourage that you guys have a Bible with you. Um, I'm gonna read from the ESV. It's one that I've got, it's one I like. Um, as well, guys, afterwards, if you are looking for some questions to go along with this, uh, there are questions down below in the description. So you guys are welcome to, uh, pop into chat with your thoughts on those. Um, down the road, who knows, maybe we can peel those apart actually as part of the study. But for now, we're just gonna get going. So John 11, verse 38, I'm gonna pray and we're gonna go. Lord, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the blessings that you give us of a new week. Thank you for the challenges and trials that we may be facing in our walk as men. And just pray a blessing over our homes, over our lives, over the work that we are doing, and most of all, over our relationship with you. Bless this time that we have in your word, Lord, and I pray that we are able to open the Bible and just appreciate that time with you, what you have to say to us and speak to us. In your name we pray. Amen. All right, uh, John 11:38, here we go. Then Jesus, deeply moved, again came to the tomb, and it was a cave, and the stone lay against it. So again, what we had gotten all the way up to the point where Lazarus had died, Jesus had finally gone to be there, uh, Jesus had wept last time, so we saw the fully God, fully man portion of that, and now we're diving into, uh, him actually going to the cave. Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead 4 days. Again, picture the heat in the Middle East. I know it's a hot summer here in Ottawa right now. Hopefully it's a hot summer where you guys are. But the heat in the Middle East— you put a dead corpse inside of a cave, a big stone oven in the Middle East, it's going to get a little rank. It's going to It's gonna be a little stinky, right? Um, Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on the account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you have sent me. When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to him, unbind him and let him go. This wasn't some act. It wasn't some, uh, person that had just been kind of placed inside the tomb for the sake of— no, that this guy was wrapped for burial, hands bound, feet, face covered with the cloth. This guy was dead, or wrapped at least like he was dead, right? And Jesus's proclamation is, unbind him and let him go. Many of the Jews therefore who had come with Mary and had seen what he 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 to do? 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 the high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish. He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. Jesus therefore 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 at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. 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 He should let them know so they might arrest him. All right, so there's a couple of things in this that are kind of cool, um, that just jumped out at me when I was praying over this earlier, reading over it. And one of them is, is at the beginning here, where this idea of what does it look like for us as, as men of faith, as men of Christ, to be called by Jesus. And, and this is literally the metaphor right here. It seems as though we are dead. We're dead. We're dead in our flesh. We're dead. And Jesus cries out, come out! He calls out to us, come out! And we come out. We, we still kind of look like we're dead. We— hands bound, cloth over our face. There's work to be done. We don't come out righteous and glowing. We don't come out ready to roll, right? But we do come out at the call of his voice to live a new life. And the call then is remove the marks that you have died, right? Let go of that. Take the cloth off. Unbind your hands. Unbind your feet. There's a greater purpose than that. It's kind of an amazing section here where you get to see that. You get to see Jesus converting a man by bringing him back to life, which at the time may have seemed absolutely miraculous to the folks standing there, but that's, that's literally our conversion story as Christians today. Yeah. The next thing that I find really amazing here, and it's not often that you get to stand back and agree with the Pharisees, okay? But here Caiaphas says something that is prophetic and telling and amazing. It's in verse 49. One of them, Caiaphas— now Caiaphas is going to be important later in John, no spoilers, but he's going to kind of play a big role. But Caiaphas here, who was the high priest, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish. This is him prophesying. This is God putting a message on his heart that Jesus should die so that the nation might live. A Pharisee, Caiaphas, who ultimately is going to be the Sanhedrin that is going to push for, uh, his crucifixion. But it's, it's amazing that this, the bringing of people back to life, is the, the, the point where Caiaphas declares he has to be killed, he has to die. And the thing that they're worried about isn't he raised him from the dead, it isn't the many signs and wonders, it's the people will start to believe in him is their issue. Yeah. At no point do the hearts of the Pharisees, the minds of the Pharisees that know all of the things that God is saying will happen when the Messiah comes, at no point does anybody pause and go, do you think maybe the guy that's, that's making the blind see and the lame walk and feeding 5,000 people and walking on water and bringing people back from the dead, that this might, might be the Messiah? Not, not even in the discussions they're having here. They might believe in him and not us. They might believe in him and not us. So I see some things to celebrate here, and one is Christ calling, right? He calls out to you, Lazarus, come out. Insert your name there, whatever your name might be, right? Insert your name right there. Come out, and then unbind. And the nice thing here is it's not him saying Lazarus, unbind yourself. It's the people that are there already alive are called to go unbind him and let him go, which is a call to the church, right? As we go out and we baptize and we bring people into the faith, we help them. We help them with their walk. We help to unbind them. We help to Urge them forward and bring them forward and, and help them to walk as though they're alive. The other encouragement that we have here is that God, even through Caiaphas, is able to work amazing things. He's able to speak amazing things into truth. God speaks through Caiaphas. I mean, it— In the past, he's spoken through kings, he's spoken through donkeys, he's spoken through Pharaoh, he's spoken through There's lots of different things God chooses to speak through, but here he speaks through Caiaphas, who ultimately is going to be one of the men that causes Jesus to die. And he declares to the nation, it's better that he would die, that the nation wouldn't perish. I just think this is a really, really cool passage. That's it for John 11 tonight, guys. We're going to do John 12 tomorrow. Um, and John 12, you know, we might do all of John 12 tomorrow, who knows. But, uh, as I said down below, guys, if John 11 is something of interest to you, there are a bunch of commentaries and books that I put in the description below. There's also some questions. So if you guys wanted to pop in there, take a look at that, uh, this video will be available afterwards. You'll be able to go down and do that. And yeah, I'll catch you guys tomorrow for John 12. Have a good night.
