April 5, 2026 SERMON

Easter 2026

Easter is a time when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of our faith. 

The resurrection is a powerful reminder of hope, faith, and the promise of new life in Christ. It is a time of joy and celebration, as we reflect on the victory over the death that Jesus achieved through His sacrifice on the cross.

I want you to imagine standing before a tomb at dawn. The air is cool, the sky is painted with the first strokes of sunrise. You expect to see a sealed stone, a final barrier between life and death. But instead… the stone is gone. The entrance yawns open. And at that moment, history changes forever.

Jesus’ resurrection is not just an event to remember; it’s a reality to live. If the stone is rolled away, why live as if it’s still there? Easter invites us to step into freedom, to embrace joy, and to carry resurrection hope into a world that desperately needs it.

For pastors each year, we proclaim the same message: Jesus’ resurrection. But how do we preach the same message year after year without preaching the same sermon year after year? Which I’ve done probably more than fifty times.

The most obvious choice for Resurrection Sunday is to preach one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s resurrection. 

(Matt 27:62–28:20; Mark 15:42–16:8; Luke 23:50–24:53; John 19:38–20:31) But today I’m not going to do that. 

But I would like to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just a historical event; it is a reality that transforms the lives of believers today. When Jesus rose from the dead, He demonstrated His victory over sin, death, and the powers of darkness. 

So, let’s look outside of the Gospels; maybe if we would look in Romans 8:11 let’s see what we find. 

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” – 

Wow, His resurrection was not for Him alone, it was for us also. Through His resurrection, we have access to new life, supernatural power, and the assurance of eternity.

Many Christians live as if the resurrection has no effect on their daily lives. They struggle with fear, sin, and defeat, forgetting that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in them. 

This means we are not called to a life of weakness and failure but to a life of victory, righteousness, and divine empowerment.

To live in the power of the resurrection is to walk in the authority and victory that Christ has provided. It means embracing the fullness of life, experiencing transformation, and fulfilling God’s purpose. 

Then if we look at Romans 4:25 we’ll find this verse declares that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

In Jesus’s resurrection, those united to Christ by faith are justified in Him. The resurrection isn’t merely proof that the cross “worked.” It’s the divine declaration that those in Christ stand acquitted and righteous before God. The resurrection is a courtroom verdict in our favor.

Isaiah 25:6-8 prophesies that God will one day “swallow up death forever” and “wipe away tears from all faces.” In this way, God will destroy “the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.”

This Old Testament vision of death’s defeat finds its fulfillment in Christ. What was once a distant hope became a reality when Jesus walked out of the tomb, inaugurating the age when death itself is swallowed up.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, presents history as defined by two representative men. Adam, the father of all humanity, plunged us into sin and death through his rebellion. 

All connected to Adam share in his sin and fate. But through Christ’s resurrection, all those “in Him” will one day share in His resurrection.

Christ was raised as the first fruits of a great resurrection harvest, guaranteeing that those united to Him will follow.  Listen, we don’t merely believe in Christ’s resurrection. We participate in it. O how I pray we would learn that.

2 Timothy 2:11-13 says our union with Christ in His death guarantees our union with Him in His resurrection. This is the believer’s hope and encouragement: Because He lives, we too shall live.

The first half of John’s Gospel is a book of signs: acts of Jesus which carry deeper meaning, signifying His divine identity. The final and greatest of these signs is His raising of Lazarus, signaling Jesus’s authority over death.

But Jesus doesn’t merely claim power to resurrect (John 5:19–29). He claims to be resurrection life itself: in John 11:25 Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” 

He embodies the very hope of resurrection, a hope He secures in His own resurrection and then shares with all whom the Father has given Him. This sign points forward to His own victory over the grave on behalf of His own.

We are born bearing Adam’s likeness, a likeness marked by sin, corruptibility, and death. But God’s Word took on a body and became the Son so that in a physical body He might abolish death and, through His resurrection, bring all those united to Him into glorified existence.

Salvation is union with and conformity to Christ. While the Spirit is morally transforming us in the present, one day we will be fully conformed into Christ’s likeness, receiving resurrected bodies like His.

Again, for believers, resurrection is not merely a future hope. It’s a present reality with moral implications. In Christ, we experience the resurrection in two installments: already we are raised with Christ spiritually (inwardly) and at His return will be raised with Him physically.

Since we have died with Christ and been raised with Him, we are to mortify (put down) our remaining sinful “flesh” and live out the new resurrected lives we already possess.  Our union with Christ’s death and resurrection transforms how we live now.

Ezekiel’s chapter 37 vision of the valley of dry bones is one of the most powerful passages on resurrection in the Old Testament. The people of Israel are in exile as a result of their covenant rebellion. As these bones are dry, so too the people feel as though their hopes have dried up. 

“Can,” God asks Ezekiel, “these bones live?” The Spirit works through Ezekiel’s preaching to bring these bones back to life.

This hope for resurrection and restoration finds its ultimate fulfillment in what Christ accomplishes by the Spirit through His own resurrection from the dead.

The other major Old Testament resurrection text is Daniel 12. Daniel depicts the dead as sleeping “in the dust of the earth,” echoing humanity’s creation from dust (Gen 2:7) and God’s judgment that we will return to dust (Gen 3:19). But here, God declares those who are “asleep” will awake”, some to everlasting life, others to disgrace and eternal contempt.

This Old Testament hope of resurrection to eternal life finds its fulfillment in Jesus, in whom we discover both the hope of resurrected eternal life and the authority to raise and judge the dead.

Jesus uses the historical experience of Jonah as an analogy for what will soon happen to Him, calling His future resurrection “the sign of Jonah” (Matt 12:38–42; Luke 11:29; cf. Matt 16:4). Just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days in the heart of the earth.

Peter argues that the crowd witnessing the “tongues-speaking” Apostles at Pentecost served as evidence that Joel 2 had been fulfilled—the Spirit had been poured out. But this, of course, proved that Christ was risen and ascended to God’s right hand, since He was the one pouring out that Spirit! 

So Peter concludes Christ’s resurrection resulted in His enthronement and appointment as “both Lord and Christ” (we find that in Acts 13:30–37; cf. Matt 28:18–20).

John clarifies that Jesus used the temple as a metaphor for His own body, which would undergo crucifixion and resurrection. 

This develops John’s earlier statement that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us”—God’s presence that once filled the tabernacle now dwells in Jesus.

From the resurrection forward, believers encounter the temple in the risen Christ and His Spirit-indwelt people, the church.

In 1 Thessalonia 4:13–18 Paul articulates the believer’s hope in the face of death. Because Jesus is raised, God will similarly raise deceased believers with Him when He returns.

Therefore, although we mourn when fellow believers die; we do not grieve “as others do who have no hope.” Christ’s resurrection gives us confident hope in the resurrection of all believers (see also 1 Thess 5:9–11).

The book of Hebrews regards the resurrection of the dead as an “elementary doctrine,” one of the foundational teachings of the faith. 

This shows that from the earliest days of Christianity, the resurrection wasn’t an optional belief, but a core and fundamental doctrine that every believer was expected to understand and affirm. 

In 1 Peter 1:21 we find that those who have been born again (regenerated) have already, in that sense, entered into resurrection with Christ. 

So, we look forward to the hope of eventual physical resurrection—all grounded in our living, resurrected Christ. 

Some Corinthians were engaging in sexual immorality with prostitutes, seemingly dismissing the moral significance of what we do with our bodies. Paul responds by invoking our eventual bodily resurrection as proof that God cares about our bodies.

Christ took on a body to raise ours. Salvation is not rescue from bodily existence but the redemption of bodily existence.

As such, what we do with our bodies matters now because our bodies matter for eternity. Resurrection theology has immediate ethical implications.

1 Peter 3:18-22, This text describes Christ being “made alive in the Spirit” (i.e., resurrected), after which He proclaimed His victory over demonic forces now imprisoned.

Having been raised from the dead, Jesus ascended to God’s right hand with all authorities and powers under His feet. His resurrection wasn’t merely victory over sin and death, but victory over all spiritual powers that oppose God and His people (see also Heb 2:14–15; Col 2:13–15; Eph 1:20–21; 1 John 3:8).

The takeaway for Peter’s readers: Because Christ suffered and defeated the forces of evil, we too can “suffer for righteousness’ sake” without fear. Suffering Christians can look to Christ, who also suffered and is now victorious over whatever evil they face.

Early Christians saw Psalm 118’s rejected-stone-made-cornerstone as a prophetic picture of Christ’s death and resurrection. Jesus was rejected unto death, but God raised Him up and exalted Him as the foundation of God’s spiritual temple-building project. 

In 1 Peter 2:4–8  God constructs His new-creation temple on the foundation that is Christ, with believers functioning as living stones built upon Him to form a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices. 

In Acts 2, 13,17 and 26 Paul reasoned from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead. As such, Jesus’s resurrection proves Him to be this promised Messiah. 

Christ’s resurrection completes the story of the Old Testament, vindicating Him as its Messiah.

In Hebrews 7, Jesus’s resurrection operates to validate His priestly identity. Jesus functions as a Melchizedekian priest who abides forever by virtue of His resurrection (Heb 7:23–25; 7:16). 

Unlike the former priests who died, Jesus “holds His priesthood permanently, because He continues forever.” He possesses an “indestructible life” (resurrection-life), meaning He “always lives to make intercession” for those who draw near to God through Him. 

Paul counts all His prior religious credentials as “trash” for the sake of knowing Christ, that is, being found “in Him” (Phil 3:7–8). This entails receiving His righteousness and sharing in His sufferings, but also eventually participating in His resurrection (Phil 3:9–11).

For Paul, believers eagerly await Christ’s return from heaven, when we will fully experience our heavenly citizenship (Phil 3:20). We will be fully conformed to Christ in bodily resurrection (Phil 3:21).

Resurrection hope is thus both personal and spiritual. He will transform our bodies even as He subjects and transforms all of creation (cf. Rom 8:18–25).

Although many Jews believed in a general resurrection at the end of history, the apostles proclaimed that in Christ end time resurrection has already emerged.  Paul, on trial for preaching Jesus’s resurrection, frames this as being on trial for “the hope of Israel.”

With the resurrection of Jesus, the new world has already broken into the old. Christ has inaugurated the “last days.” The hope of resurrection is now found in Him. 

John 5:19–29 establishes Christ’s divine authority over resurrection and demonstrates that there is no eternal life outside of Him.

Jesus is one with the Father. As the Father has life in Himself, so Jesus has life in Himself and is therefore able to raise others to life. As God raises the dead, so Christ raises whomever He wills.

Revelation presents Jesus as the lamb who “had been slain” (past tense), but is now risen with authority to claim His ransomed (Rev 5:6–14). So, the book opens with Jesus’s self-identification as “the living one” who “died” but is “alive forevermore.”

As He who has personally conquered death, He has acquired possession of its keys. Jesus is greater than death and hell. He has conquered them.” So, He will “loose the pangs of death for His people. As the one with the keys, He will deliver the dead by resurrection.” 

Christ’s resurrection serves as God’s guarantee that He will judge the world through the risen Christ. The resurrection is God’s public validation of Jesus as the appointed judge and therefore demands a response of repentance from all people.

So going back to the beginning of this message let’s don’t just celebrate that the stone was rolled away for Jesus; celebrate that it can be rolled away for us. 

Whatever has sealed us in, whatever has kept us from living fully, God’s power is greater. The stone wasn’t just rolled away to let Jesus out — it was rolled away to let us in… into life, into hope, into eternity. 

Easter is not just about an empty tomb — it’s about what that rolled-away stone means for us today.

When the stone rolled away, heaven’s message broke through: “He is not here; He is risen!” God’s voice still speaks into our silence today, calling us to hope, to courage, and to action.

Let’s think about what it means to live in the power of resurrection and how we can activate this power in our daily lives.

Maybe we should identify our Stone: What’s the barrier in our life that feels unmovable? Name it. The resurrection is proof that God can move what we cannot. Don’t just admire the miracle — walk into the new life it makes possible.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen!