Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - One Died for the Many | The Gospels | John 11:45–57

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Why did the religious leaders reject Jesus after witnessing one of his greatest miracles? Can God still accomplish his purposes through evil? What if your worst days aren't evidence that God has lost control? In today's episode, Keith unpacks John 11:45–57 and reveals how God turned Caiaphas's death sentence into the greatest news the world has ever known: one man would die for the many. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 11:45–57

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In December of 1990, a bulldozer was working on a park in southern Jerusalem when it unintentionally broke through the roof of a cave that had been sealed there for nearly 2,000 years. Inside was a first-century family tomb, and inside the tomb were a dozen limestone bone boxes where dead persons' bones were kept. Most of the boxes were unmarked, but one of them was carved with floral patterns. It looked like the box of someone who had money and standing and status, and then scratched into the stone was the name Caiaphas. Inside were the bones of a man who died at approximately 60 years old.

Most scholars believe that those are the bones of the high priest that presided over Jesus' trial. The man who, in the passage we're looking at today, drops a theological truth bomb, all the while plotting a murder. The truest words about why Jesus had to die weren't spoken by Peter or John or any of the disciples. No, they came out of the mouth of the man who wanted him dead, and the man didn't even know all of what he was saying. Let's pick up the scene in John 11.

Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead, and now Lazarus is walking around his hometown. The response of the religious leaders is not to worship. It's not to find out more about who Jesus' is or his claims, it's not even to figure out how he raised Lazarus. No, their response is to call an emergency session of the Sanhedron, of the Jewish Leadership Council. And when the Sanhedron meets, here's what happens, verse 47. They ask, what are we to do? For this man performs many signs. So do you get this? The Sanhedrine concedes the miracle. I mean, they don't dispute that Jesus

raised Lazarus from the dead. How could they? Everyone saw it happen. It was very very, public. They're not standing around saying, look, it was a trick, or the man was only sleeping, or anything like that. And the official records of his enemies in a private meeting where they had every reason to be honest with each other, their verdict is clear. He really raised Lazarus, and that's not all the miracles that he's done. So this should retire forever, the idea that people reject Jesus because of a lack of evidence, the people closest to the evidence, the people who had the most access and the most expertise, they looked at a documented resurrection and they saw a problem that needed to be solved. Why did they refuse to worship Jesus? Why did they refuse to

follow him? The next verse tells what actually scared them. Verse 48. They say, 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. Did you hear it? What do they really care about? Our place and our nation. They loved their position of power more than they loved the truth. They were scared of losing something important to them, and that was power, that was position, that was prestige. But they hide it. They don't say, look, we're worried about our jobs.

They say, we're worried about the nation. They dress up their fear in language that is more respectable and acceptable. And I'll just say it. It's the most ordinary, common thing in the world. I mean, who hasn't presented to care about a principle when what they're really doing is protecting themselves and their own interests? And then Caiaphas, the high priest talks. Here's verse 49. He says, 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. Do you hear the cold heart? Do you hear the arithmetic? He's weighing one life against many lives. Caiaphas says, sacrifice the one life to Rome and save the institution.

It's the oldest political calculation there is, and Caiaphas runs with it. There's a name for what he's doing. The French thinker René Girard called it the scapegoat mechanism. What you have here is a frightened community, and they discover that they can purchase their own peace in unity by agreeing to destroy a single victim. Find the one, blame the one, be rid of the one, and in our religion, will all feel close again, we'll all be protected, we'll all keep our power, we'll all keep our place. Caiaphas didn't invent this kind of thinking. He's just honest enough in the privacy of a meeting with his peers to say it out loud. But Caiaphas doesn't know the full meaning of what he said.

John goes on to tell us he did not say this out of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied. When John says that Caiaphas prophesied, he means that God used him to say more than he knew, more than he intended, more than he even believed. What Caiaphas meant was, killed his troublemaker before he gets us all killed. What God meant was, yes, one man will die for the people, and that is exactly the point. Caiaphas is doing political math. God is preaching substitutionary atonement, and he's using the high priests to do it. The one who will die for the many, the innocent for the guilty, the shepherd will die for the sheep.

the man condemning Jesus actually explains why Jesus came now think about what that does to the cross we sometimes tell the story of good Friday as if it slipped out of God's hands as if the powerful men won and God was grieving and he only managed to recover the situation on Sunday with the resurrection but that's not true Jesus said I have the power to lay my life down and to take it up again Jesus was in control the whole time God was not surprised by any of it. Because here before a single soldier had been summoned, the plot was already serving the plan. The very meeting called to stop Jesus is the meeting where God announces what Jesus's death is for. They think they're protecting their place by killing him, but by God's power and planning,

they're arranging the salvation of the whole world. Their freedom to choose is real. The Sanhedron is guilty and God's sovereignty is total and both of those are true at the same time the cross is something done to Jesus by self-interested men and at that very same moment in that very same cross God is doing something through him God is doing something through them for his own purposes that should encourage you because if God can run his rescue through the political hatred of Caiaphas. Then there's no sin in your life, no betrayal, no failure that's final, no failure that's so final that God cannot work in it and through it. The hands that meant it for evil are not the hands that are in control. God's in control. And God's got a good plan of how to use everything in your life for your good. Here's the difference between Caiaphas's logic and gods. And it's the whole gospel. Caiaphas says sacrifice one of them to save us. make a victim of someone else so that we survive. God says, I will sacrifice my own son. I will sacrifice myself to save them. God runs the scapegoat in reverse. He doesn't find a victim to expel.

He becomes the victim. He is the one who is killed on behalf of the many. Every other version of one dies for the many is somebody's power preserving itself at someone else's expense. This is the only time where the powerful one lays down his life for the powerless. That's not something that Caiaphas would have ever agreed to. He probably could have never even comprehended it. We would much rather find a scapegoat than become a sacrifice. But while we were looking for someone else to blame, God was busy becoming the one to die.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, the one for the people, the one for the many. Now look, it would be easy to feel superior to, Caiaphas to say I would never do something like that. But that's the trap, right? He's just like us. He's a man protecting his place and respectable language by finding someone to sacrifice, and that same man lives in all of us. So the application is don't be like Caiaphas, as if you could try hard enough to be cleaner than the high priest. The application is to notice that you've already run this arithmetic this week. We all keep a quiet ledger of who can be sacrificed

to protect our standing. Maybe we sacrifice a co-worker by throwing them under the bus. Maybe we sacrifice a family member that we keep at a distance from ourselves. Maybe we sacrifice a reputation that isn't ours. And then we have to look at the cross and see that God refused to play that game with you. When you were the expendable one, when you were the far off one, when you were the one whose numbers should have come up, he put himself in the box instead. stop telling the story as if your worst days are proof that God has lost control. The meeting that was supposed to destroy Jesus was the meeting where God preached the gospel through the lips of the high priest who was his enemy.

If he can do that with Caiaphas, he can do with whatever's happened to you. You're not promised in explanation. You may never understand why or how or anything that you want to know. You may never have your questions answered. But you are promised that God is working underneath the good and the bad, and he's doing it for your good. The truest words ever spoken by an enemy of God turned out to be the gospel. It is better that one man die for the people.

Caiaphas meant as a death sentence. God meant it as good news. That means that Jesus died for you. Amen.