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Sermon for Easter Sunday
1 Corinthians 15:12-22,47-49 + Matthew 28:1-10
Dear baptized believers in the risen Lord Jesus, my fellow redeemed:
Yes, redeemed. Redeemed in the fullest sense of the word. Or, almost the fullest. We’ll come back to that in a moment. First, let’s walk through the familiar Easter story again, because our redemption, in every sense of the word, hinges on this simple story, which we do well to ponder.
Remember the women who made their way to the tomb early on that first Easter Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene was there, and another Mary, and Salome, Joanna, and maybe others with them. The faithful women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, and who had worked so hard to serve Him during His ministry, weren’t done serving Him yet. They went to Jesus’ tomb to show reverence for their Lord’s body, to do a better job wrapping it in the burial cloths, with the extra spices they had bought, because the men had had to hurry to get Him in the tomb before sundown on Good Friday, when the Day of Rest began. They weren’t expecting this to be the greatest day of their lives, or to be a day that would be celebrated for the next 2,000 years, with these women playing a prominent role. They expected to find Jesus there, still lying in the tomb, still locked in behind the heavy stone that had been rolled across the entrance, still wrapped in His burial linens, still dead.
But, hadn’t He told them, often, that He would rise from the dead on the third day? Isn’t that why the Jews had placed a guard there, to keep His disciples from stealing His body, since He said He would rise on the third day? Yes, but those words of Jesus never sank in, not for them, not for the apostles, either, just as His predictions of His death on a cross never sank in, until it happened.
When the women arrived at the tomb, they found an awesome sight. The soldiers who had been guarding the tomb were unconscious, lying on the ground. The stone had been rolled away from the entrance—by an angel, we’re told, the same angel they saw sitting there on top of the stone now, in pure white clothing and with a shining face. He had rolled the stone away, not to let Jesus out, but to let the world in, to see that the Lord was no longer there, no longer dead. The angel told the women as much. Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Not where He “lies,” but where He “lay,” past tense. The only thing lying in the tomb at that moment were the neatly folded burial linens that the risen Lord had left behind.
The angel also gave them a message: Go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. So they started back to the city. But Jesus suddenly met them along the way. Greetings! He said. And they took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. And He didn’t stop them. If He accepted people’s humble worship before He was crucified, in His state of humiliation, how much more now, in His state of exaltation, now that He has demonstrated, by rising from the dead, that He is the very Son of God, at whose name every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus repeated what the angel had said. Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. The last time the apostles had been with Jesus, in the Garden on Thursday evening, they had all abandoned Him. Peter had even denied Him three times. Yet, still, He called them “My brothers.” But, what’s so important about the meeting in Galilee? He had talked about it even before His crucifixion. Then the angel mentioned it to the women. Now Jesus says it again. I mean, He would see them later that same day, in Jerusalem, when He appeared to all of them except for Thomas, and then the next week to all of them, including Thomas, still there in Jerusalem. What would happen in Galilee? That’s where Jesus would begin the next phase of our redemption.
Matthew tells us what happened when they all finally met in Galilee. Jesus met with His eleven remaining apostles on a mountain, in Galilee, and commanded them to go and preach the Gospel to all creation, baptizing all nations and teaching them to observe everything He had commanded them. We sometimes refer to it as the Great Commission. But, what does that have to do with redemption?
We’ve been talking quite a bit about redemption this week. If you recall, Phase 1 of redemption—the incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh, so that He might save the human race from sin, death, and the devil—was complete. Phase 2, which included the perfect life of obedience on our Redeemer’s part, and His innocent suffering and death as the price or the cost that was necessary for mankind’s redemption—that was also complete, as of Good Friday. And with the resurrection, we have verification that Phase 2 was, indeed, complete. Without the resurrection, Jesus would have been a liar and a fraud, and you’d be on your own against the devil, and you’d still be in your sins, without any way to buy your way out of the devil’s kingdom, destined for an eternity in hell. But Christ has been raised from the dead. And that’s how we know that the world has been redeemed. That is, the cost for the world has been paid.
But redemption in the Bible includes more than paying a purchase price. In fact, the word is normally used in Scripture for actual deliverance out of danger, for rescuing someone from trouble, for bringing people into safety. The trouble, the danger we were in because of our sins was condemnation before God’s righteous throne, and being held in the devil’s kingdom, and being destined for death, and a death that would last forever. In order to rescue us, in order to deliver us and redeem us from that trouble, Jesus had to rise from the dead, for our justification, that is, in order to justify us before God, to make us righteous in God’s sight. How? By the Great Commission. By sending out His Gospel to be preached, and His Holy Spirit with the Gospel, to tell us the good news of God’s plan to redeem the world, and about the cost God has paid for our redemption, to draw us to faith in the Lord Jesus, who now stands as our living Mediator before God, urging us in the Gospel to seek the forgiveness of sins God has promised to all who believe in Christ, the risen Redeemer.
If you’ve been baptized in Jesus’ name, if you rely on Him to reconcile you with God, then you have truly been redeemed. As St. Paul says, God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. You Christians, you believers in Jesus, have been redeemed, delivered, rescued, made safe from sin, death, and the devil. You have been justified in Jesus’ blood. And if anyone came here today, or is listening to this sermon, who hasn’t yet known the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer, now is the time to believe in the Lord Jesus, and you, too, will be saved.
That’s Phase 3 of our redemption, and baptized believers live each day in the knowledge and the peace of God’s forgiveness, the peace of knowing that you have been redeemed by God, in the fullest sense of the word—almost.
There is one phase of redemption that still remains, the fourth and final phase, and it depends on the resurrection of Jesus just as much as the second and the third phase do. St. Paul says, talking about the trials we face in this life, We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. The Holy Spirit, Paul says, is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. He’s talking about the redemption that happens on the Last Day, on the Day of the resurrection of all flesh, unbelievers to the resurrection of condemnation, and believers to the resurrection of eternal life, when our bodies are raised and fixed and made perfect.
As you heard in today’s Epistle, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. If our bodies don’t take part in Christ’s redemption, if they remain in the grave after we die, then there was no point to being a Christian at all. Death was victorious after all, because to be human is to be the body-and-soul creatures God created us to be! But now, Paul says, Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. That’s the part of our redemption we’re still waiting for, still hoping for.
And because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that He will also keep His promise to return for our bodies, to pick up the ones He once purchased with His blood and to take His purchased possession home with Him into a life we can’t even imagine yet. Then God’s plan of redemption, which He made already before the foundations of the world were laid, will be truly and fully complete, for all who have believed in the Lord Jesus and who remain in the faith until the end. The Redeemer rose from the dead to come to our rescue, and He lives to see that redemption through to the end. Amen.
