Easter Sunday 2025

Celebrate Jesus Christ and the hope that He brings! Welcome to the 2025 Easter Sunday service at Burke Community Church…

At Easter, followers of Jesus Christ love to say, He is Risen. A refrain always follows: He is risen, indeed. Both statements are made emphatically, not emotionally, because biblical, logical, and extra-biblical data clearly show that Jesus not only lived in time and space, but He rose from the grave on the third day just as He, THE prophet, had prophesied.

⁴⁰ for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matt. 12:40)

And just as Jonah metaphorically “rose from the dead” on the third day, Jesus stated He would literally rise from death in the same time span, and He did.

All of this is why millions of people have traveled to Israel to see the crucifixion hill called Golgotha, located just north of what used to be the wall of Jerusalem. Here on this barren, windswept hill, Jesus, the sinless sacrifice, died for our sins.

Just to the left of this hill was a massive tomb cut into the soft limestone.  Near this tomb was a deep cistern that provided water for the lovely garden located in this ominous area of town. John tells us that Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man and member of Israel’s high court, the Sanhedrin, buried Jesus in this tomb (John 19:37-41). He did this because he, along with another member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, had bravely become Christ-followers.

The tomb now stands as a perpetual proof that Jesus rose from the dead as prophesied. And to think that the first Adam plunged all of mankind into sin with his willful fall from grace in a garden (Rom. 5:12-21), so now, the second Adam, Jesus, defeated sin and death in a garden setting. No wonder, then, we joyously say, He is risen!

Christ’s resurrection is the most monumental event in human history. Nothing comes close to its significance. By rising to life, Jesus is now positioned to give hope to people like you and me. What hope does His resurrected life offer you? Several things come to mind as I reflect on how the Holy Scriptures answer this all-important question.

We Have Hope Of Being Justified (Rom. 4:25)

Because there is no way any of us can escape the biblical reality of inherited sin. As David stated in Psalm 51:5, “⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” He knew his propensity to sin with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, wasn’t culturally conditioned. No. The desire to commit adultery was hardwired into his very nature, and that hardwiring originated in the womb of his dear mother. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that David’s theological statement is our statement.  We are all born into this beautiful world as spiritual rebels.

Looking at this spiritual situation, Paul, who became a Christ-follower after personally seeing and having a conversation with Him as he headed north to Damascus to persecute and slay Jews who had dared to become believers, made this enlightening statement in his letter to the Roman church:

²⁵ He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification. (Rom. 4:25)

The first clause correctly informs us that Jesus was delivered up to crucifixion because of our sins, not His. Why did this have to occur in the Father’s scheme of things? Sin against a perfect, holy Father called for a sacrifice of equal magnitude to defeat the impact of the sin. Enter Jesus, the perfect, holy sacrifice.

The second part of this sentence informs us that Jesus was raised explicitly from the dead to provide justification for sinners in the Father’s heavenly courtroom. In the next chapter, Paul expands on this concept:

¹ Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . (Rom. 5)

Note the cause/effect relationship here between being justified by faith, not personal religious works, and possessing eternal peace with God. At the moment of faith in Jesus’ historical death and resurrection He gives you, the sinner, peace with God, you are pronounced righteous, or holy, in God’s court of law. And how do you obtain this immediate peace between you and God? It comes through, or by means of (the preposition dia with the genitive is classified as denoting “the means” by which something occurs: ¹ Δικαιωθέντες οὖν ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; Rom. 5), the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

What hope. It is hope that your sins aren’t just forgiven; you are declared righteous before the Father because Jesus stepped in and deemed it so based on your faith. I have that hope, as do many of you. But the real question this Easter is clear: Do you have the hope that in God’s courtroom you are justified and made holy because of your faith in the risen Savior? He waits to hear from you.

Second…

We Have Hope Of Deliverance From Divine Judgment (Rom. 5:9-10)

Paul develops this hope concept a little further down in our reading of Romans 5:

⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Rom. 5)

Justification by faith in the person and redemptive and resurrected work of Jesus, not personal religious works, causes a sinner to be instantly delivered from the future wrath of God. That wrath is a sure thing, too (Rom. 2:1-5; 2 Thess. 1:8-9). The Scripture, while ominous and unsettling, could not be more explicit. As Paul remarks here with the closing clause: “We shall be saved by His life.” His life, which was lived to become our sin-substitute, now ensures that at death we are saved from the Holy Father’s wrath against sin.

In 1993, Liz, I, and the kids drove 8 eight hours from Stockton, CA, to San Diego to see her twin sister Maribeth. She was at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla battling the impact of breast cancer. None of us knew that not long after we arrived, she would be in the Lord’s presence. No sooner had I walked into her room and prayed with her, while she sat Indian style in her bed, than she lay back and drew her last breath of earthly air. Her next breath was heavenly air as the angels escorted her, a child of God by faith in Jesus, into God’s incredible presence. Yes, she experienced love and acceptance at that precise moment, not wrath and judgment, because her living Lord saved her.

That young woman courageously stared down cancer itself because she firmly believed in the hope of divine deliverance from divine judgment. Do you have that same hope right now?

Third…

We Have Hope of A Divine Intercessor (Selected Texts)

What do you need a divine intercessor for? Well, just because you become a child of God at the moment of faith in the person and redemptive work of Jesus, doesn’t mean you still won’t struggle with sin. Positionally, your sinful status is forgiven; however, practically, you will, as Paul argues in Romans chapter 7, constantly struggle with the sinful urges that come with a fleshly body.

¹⁹ For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. (Rom. 7)

All believers know this daily battle. Paul gives us more insight in his letter to the Galatian believers:

¹⁷ For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. (Gal. 5)

The flesh and the Spirit, who reside in the believer (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13-14), fight against each other in the believer’s body moment by moment. As Paul teaches in the ensuing verses, each produces their own fruits. But right after he describes the fruit of a victorious life lived on the Spirit’s power, he offers this challenge:

 ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Gal. 5:17)

Living by the Spirit is a conditional choice for each Christ-follower. The fact that it is conditional means you can choose not to live in this obedient, submissive fashion. When that occurs, you sin.

What happens when a Christian sins? For one, the Spirit convicts and calls us to repentance to restore our intimacy with the Holy Trinity (John 16:8-10; 1 John 1:9). For another, Jesus steps in as our defense attorney to thwart the nasty, vicious accusations of our adversary, the Devil. John tells us this much in his first of three letters:

¹ My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous… (1 John 2)

I don’t know about you, but I find great comfort in the fact that when I blow it, spiritually and morally speaking, I’m not without legal representation in God’s courtroom. We know how the Devil brought charges in this legal setting against the righteous man named Job (Job 1). But God interceded for Him. God still intercedes for us, and Jesus, the risen God-man, does the legal defense to shut the Devil’s mouth before all the angels. Jesus steps forward and says, “Back off, Devil. That is my child, and their faith in my death and resurrection for their sins has made them holy for all time.”

Do you have the hope of divine legal representation before the Holy Father? You get Jesus on retainer the moment you, by faith, confess your sin and ask for His forgiveness (Eph. 1:7-14). And because He is quite alive in the heavenly sphere, He will answer you, and then prepare Himself to be your defense attorney until you see Him face to face.

Fourth…

We Have Hope Of Life Beyond This Life (1 Cor. 15:20-23a)

Speaking with the Corinthian believers about the value of Christ’s resurrection, Paul makes this comforting statement midway through his argument:

²⁰ But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. (1 Cor. 15)

Underscore the cause-and-effect relationship here between the historical resurrection of Jesus and His new role as the “first fruits of those who are asleep.” Sleep here, of course, is a euphemism for death, and contextually it denotes saints who had died up to this point. Without getting into all the rich and exciting theology of this tremendous passage because of time restraints, let us focus on the meaning of the term “first fruits” as it relates to Christ’s resurrection.

“First fruits” comes directly from the feast of first fruits as decreed to Israel by God in Leviticus 23:9-14.

⁹ Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ¹⁰ “Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. ¹¹ ‘And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. (Lev. 23)

In this one of seven annual feasts, God commanded Israel to pause and offer a sacrifice from their crops to Him before they proceeded to take for themselves.

Pragmatically, this is how the feast played out. When the farmer noticed seedlings germinating in his field, he cordoned this area off because it was considered the best of his planting. Later at harvest time, he would take from this area and give it to God’s priestly representative in the Temple. By waving it back and forth between the worshipper and himself, the priest denoted that God accepted the offering.

By giving the first of his crop, the farmer also stated that God should be given the best, not the leftovers. Further, by giving the first of his crop, the farmer also understood that there was more to come that he would personally enjoy.

Applied to Jesus’s death and resurrection, Paul’s cultural point is clear: Jesus was the first man to rise from the grave in a glorified body fitted for the wonders of heaven, and his resurrection merely highlights the fact that there is more to come, meaning there will be other resurrections to follow from His. Paul’s teaching here has a two-fold meaning. On the one hand, there is the resurrection of the saint’s spiritually dead body at the moment of conversion. This resurrection of the spiritual man allows that man, or woman, to walk into God’s presence at the moment of physical death. Later, at the great resurrection, which I believe happens in a big fashion at the Rapture of the Church (1 Thess. 4:13-18), saints who are alive at the time will be instantly see their bodies transformed and fitted for heaven, as saints who had gone before them will also be given new resurrected bodies at that marvelous moment that will be like Christ’s resurrected body.

Does hope get any better than this? I don’t think so. Whether we are alive or dead, we, as saints, have the hope that Christ’s resurrection to eternal life will be ours. Put differently, because He lives, we shall live.

And because we shall have life even in the face of death itself, the last hope I will speak about today comes naturally into view:

We Have Hope Of A Heavenly Home (John 14:1-6)

I know this is true because of what Jesus taught the fearful disciples in the Upper Room (John 13-17) before His crucifixion:

¹ “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. ² In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way where I am going.”

As the disciples sat around the u-shaped table called a triclinium, they sensed something tragic was about to occur.

He just shockingly said that one of the trusted disciples would betray him to the spiteful Jewish authorities (John 13:21-30). Then He turned and talked about how the time of His glorification was here and that He would only be with his men just a little longer (John 13:33). His following statement stunned them even more when He remarked that they would not be able to follow Him to His next destination (John 13:33). Peter pushed him by asking why they couldn’t follow Him. Jesus responded, “Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward” (John 13:36). Where was He going? To the cruel, splintery cross and ultimately to heaven.

No wonder the disciples’ hearts were troubled. They thought this beautiful, magnificent run with the Lord and Savior was drawing to a close. They couldn’t have been more wrong, as Jesus points out. His redemptive mission would lead to Him heading to heaven to personally build magnificent homes for His followers. You might need to read that again to let it sink into your mind and heart. Jesus, the master carpenter, headed to heaven after His resurrection with one goal: to prepare a spectacular place for each of His followers to enjoy for all eternity.

If you think this will be a shack, think again. Think of how He fashioned the cosmos we thoroughly enjoy, and I believe you’ll get a taste of what is coming. Our universe and world are chock-full of mind-boggling complexity wrapped up in extreme beauty and variety that is off the proverbial charts.

• Jesus didn’t just give us one flower to enjoy, but countless varieties: daffodils, tulips, peonies, roses, chrysanthemums, lilies, iris, orchids, carnations, hydrangeas, dahlias, sunflowers, periwinkles, and so forth. Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?
• Jesus didn’t just give us one tree to enjoy, but countless varieties: white oaks, tulip trees, black walnuts, silver maples, dogwoods, crepe myrtles, and crape myrtles to name a few. Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?
• Jesus didn’t just give us one type of mountain to enjoy, but countless types of mountains: Consider the Zugspitze in Germany, which stands some 9,718 feet above sea level. Located in the Alpine range, from its height, you can see Germany, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, plus four hundred various peaks in the distance. Consider the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, which I enjoyed last summer. They are simply stunning. Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?
• Jesus didn’t just give us a clear sky to look at the sunsets. No, He gives us ever-changing splashes of spectacular color that no camera can ever adequately capture. I’ve stood on the beach in Maui and been dumbfounded by the magnificence of a tropical sunset. Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?
• Jesus didn’t just give you one type of cloud to consider as you look up or fly through them in a plane. No, He gives you a wide range to enjoy: altostratus, altocumulus, stratus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, cirrus, cumulonimbus, to name a few. Who hasn’t looked out the plane window at sunset, only to be dumbfounded by the majesty and glory of the cumulus clouds in the distance? Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?
• Jesus didn’t give us a simple DNA chain to form as the basis for our lives. No, He carefully and thoughtfully designed one that our scientists are still trying to figure out. John Lennox, an Oxford-educated mathematician, observes: “… in each of the ten trillion cells of our body, we humans possess a ‘word’ of mind-boggling length, the human genome. This ‘word’ is 3.5 billion ‘letters long,’ written in the four chemical ‘letters C, G, A, T. Francis Crick and James Watson’s Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA that carries this genetic information has given rise to the molecular biolgy revolution-the study of large, information-bearing macromolecules like DNA.”[1] Since He builds like this, what will the eternal home He builds for you be like?

In the book of Revelation, chapter 21, Jesus gave John a peek at what the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, looks like in His transdimension. From the numbers the Lord provides, we understand that the heavenly city where your new home will be located is a cube that is 1,600 miles in each direction. According to the astrophysicist, Hugh Ross, a structure this large in our dimension would implode upon itself because of gravitational pull. Since this city does not implode, we must surmise that gravitation differs in God’s dimension. In addition, Ross continues to describe the city:

“All these descriptions suggest the enormity of our new habitation. If its population exceeds 10 billion, the new Jerusalem alone would give each person the equivalent of about 40 billion cubic feet of living space (equivalent to a 14 square mile home with a 100-foot high ceiling). What we will do with all that space we cannot yet know. We can’t even picture what ‘space means in the new dimensions of the new creation. However, our habitat will be better than all the splendors of this earth, from ocean depths to mountain grandeur.”[2]

No kidding. When Jesus said He was going to heaven after His resurrection to build you a dwelling place, we must conclude it is off the proverbial charts in a city we can’t even begin to describe. And since He promised that if He left, He would return for us and take us there, He will not disappoint.

The question is straightforward in light of all this info from Christ’s teaching in John 14: Do you have a heavenly home waiting for you to enjoy for all eternity? It is all bought and paid for by the rich, red, and royal blood of Jesus Christ. How do you make sure you know the way to this new home? That’s the question ol’ doubting Thomas posed to Jesus (John 14:5). Christ’s answer couldn’t be more definitive:

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. (John 14)

Jesus waits right now to see what you are going to do. If He is your way to all the things I’ve described, then give Him praise and enjoy the hope you possess. If He’s not your way, I think there is no better day than today to trade roads.

[1] John Maxwell, Seven Days That Divide The World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 100.

[2] Hugh Ross, Beyond The Cosmos (Covina: RTB Press, 2017), 188.