Our Unexpected God: The God Who Conquers Death

Easter morning began not with celebration, but with grief-stricken women carrying spices to anoint Jesus' body. They had forgotten His promises and lost all hope. Yet in their deepest despair, God revealed His greatest miracle. The angels asked a profound question: Why do you look for the living among the dead? This question became the first Easter sermon, reminding us that resurrection begins with hope, not understanding. Peter, despite his shame from denying Jesus, ran to the empty tomb when he heard the news. He didn't have all the answers, but he sensed the story wasn't over. Easter shows us a God who defeats death without violence and brings hope without conditions, exactly as we are.

Transcript

All right, church, if you have your Bibles, I'm going to invite you to open them up. And open up to the New Testament, the. Sorry, the Book of Luke, chapter 24, verses 1 through 12. I always highly encourage you bring your Bibles right in the margins, underline stuff that you might need to Google after we're done. I love it when people open their word.

And if you don't have them today, it's okay, we've got it on the screen for you. But every chance you get, man, bring your Bibles. It helps. I. I promise we're going to read a little bit together from Luke 24:1 through 12. Hear now the word of the Lord for us this morning.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took their spices that they had prepared and they went to the tomb. They found the stone. The stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them in their fright.

The women bowed down with their faces to the ground. But the men said to them, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee, the Son of man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.

Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven. To all the others, it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women because their words seemed like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and he ran to the tomb.

Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying there by themselves. And he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Friends, like every other single morning ever, Easter morning begins in darkness, right? It doesn't start early in the morning with trumpets or Easter lilies or celebration. Instead, if you read the Scriptures, Easter morning begins with grief. It starts out with confusion, with women carrying spices to anoint somebody who they loved, who was murdered. Easter begins with people who expect nothing.

They don't even remember Jesus words. They don't expect a miracle. They don't expect resurrection. And in that moment, they have no hope.

And I'm going to tell you this, and I want you to hear this. Sometimes I think that's exactly when God likes to work the most, when we've lost our hope. God starts to act in those moments. I believe that Easter is the ultimate revelation of our unexpected God, a God who even turns death inside out. So, you know, the women that come early in the morning to the tomb, they're faithful to come to the tomb.

They're doing what they're supposed to do as Jewish women to come and anoint the body, but they're also in that moment, grieving. These women set out in pitch darkness to do what love does when hope is gone. They sing the anthems of death. On their way to the tomb, they were weeping and most likely doubting everything that Jesus had showed them. I mean, after all, the man who said he was the son of God has been crucified in this moment.

Before sunrise on Easter morning, the women were once again living in a world where the empire had silenced a voice of hope that threatened their power.

But when they get to the tomb where Jesus had been laid, the stone was rolled away, the tomb is empty. And the angels there are saying, why do you look for the living among the dead? And this becomes the first Easter sermon. The simple resurrection question exposes for us what some of our assumptions are. Why do we look for the living among the dead?

And then they go on, he's not here. He's risen. Remember how he told you? And then they're like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I remember, yeah. At the empty tomb that morning, the angels didn't give them any brand new information.

They just remind the women of what Jesus had already told them. Because resurrection isn't a surprise to Jesus. Jesus knew it was coming. He even dropped hints. He kind of gave spoiler alerts.

It may have been a surprise to these women, but Jesus knew all along what was going to happen.

It may come as a surprise to us in an era where we send people around the dark side of the moon, it may be a surprise to us to hear that God still acts in miraculous ways when we have science and technology. But Jesus knew, and he told everyone he could exactly what was going to happen. But in the midst of their grief, these women, they'd forgotten what they were supposed to hope for.

And today, if you're suffering with grief and a loss of hope, man, there's no better place to be than in the church. And after their experience, these women, they run back to tell the disciples. On that first Easter morning, the first evangelists, the first preachers of the gospel truth are women. They were the first evangelists to share the news of Jesus resurrection. And the disciples, right, the big strong men who knew Jesus about better than anybody else says they don't believe them.

It said the women's words to them were like, nonsense. I will not say another word about that.

So often, men, how do we think we know so much? And we neglect the voices of those who sometimes offer wisdom every single day. Where did I put my keys? Did you use your special eyes? That's the refrain I get every day from my wife.

But for the disciples, right? They're standing here in this moment, and they're like, I don't know, ladies. I don't know that I believe you. It's because resurrection is unexpected, right? Death is death.

It's permanent. That's it. That's the end. Resurrection is impossible. It's too good to be true.

And the resurrection of Jesus in this moment proves to us something that many of us have come to understand about human nature. Sometimes the hardest part of resurrection is believing. Good news. After a bad season, you would get into this perpetual hopelessness. How could anything good come?

I'm so down. I just hate everything. Everything is just so hard. I hurt my finger.

And we give up on hope. We let the moments dictate our lives. Think about that. I heard a story. This is not in my sermon, so I'm probably going to mess this up, but I heard a story once about a person who said, I had a bad day.

Come to find out, there was like two minutes in their whole day that were bad. And then that moment dictated the rest of their day for them. Do we do that right? Seasons of hopelessness tend to want to dictate to us how our lives are going to be. And we're going to have to say no.

We have the hope of resurrection. We. We have a hope that goes beyond this moment, a hope that is eternal.

So Peter hears the women's report, and something inside of him refuses to stay in his seat. So he gets up and it says that he runs, too. Not because he understands what's going on, not because he expects it or he believes it, but because in that moment, he catches a glimmer of hope. Even that fragile hope that what Jesus said is true has a way of pulling him out of his seat so he can run to see for himself.

Remember who Peter is in this moment, right? This is the third day after he denied knowing Jesus three times.

He's the same one who swore he would never abandon Jesus. And then in the midst of Jesus worst moment, Peter. Peter turns his back and walks away. In that moment, Peter is carrying unimaginable shame, regret, confusion. He's carrying a heavy weight of a story that he thinks he has ruined.

And yet when he hears the news of the empty tomb, that hope forces him to run. So he goes to the tomb and he bends down and he sees the linen cloth. He sees the emptiness of the tomb. And then something breaks open inside of himself in that moment. Guys, Peter doesn't have resurrection theology.

He doesn't know all the answers. He's not systematically figuring out how this correlates is this penal substitutionary atonement. Like there's none of that happening. Peter's just trying to figure out where Jesus is in that moment. Peter doesn't have a sermon to preach, and he certainly doesn't have any certainty.

But in this moment, there's a spark, a flicker, There's a holy disruption inside of Peter. He walks away amazed. And it says that he wonders to himself what had happened. Because for the first time since Friday, Peter senses that the story may not actually be over.

CHURCH Resurrection doesn't begin with understanding, but with a heartbeat of hope that refuses to die. Peter doesn't know everything in this moment, but he knows one death didn't win.

And for a man who thought that he had failed far beyond repair, that's enough to start the journey back toward life.

Easter morning reveals to us a God who defeats death without violence. There's no uprising or revolt when Jesus is crucified, right? There's no rebellion against the people who follow Jesus against the Roman Empire. God acts in that moment against violence, with peace and with an empty tomb.

Easter shows us a hope that doesn't have conditions. Easter is not God waiting for us to get our act together. It's not God saying, come back when you believe enough or trust enough or pray enough or understand enough. Remember, the resurrection happens while the disciples are still in hiding in an upper room. Peter's in shame.

The women are crying and grieving. Hope in this moment is at its lowest point. God doesn't wait for perfect faith to bring about perfect love. God moves first. That Sunday morning, he moved in the darkness.

He moved in the shame. He moved in the moments where the disciples felt the most lost friends. That's the same God that we believe in today. That's the same God that we still believe reconciles us to himself.

CHURCH the resurrection of Jesus shows us that we don't serve a God who avoids suffering, but instead we serve a God who goes through suffering on our behalf and then defeats death. For you and for me, the risen Christ comes to people who are confused, afraid, doubting, and still running to figure out what's going on. And he brings hope to us exactly as we are. He doesn't tell us we got to get our junk together. No spiritual performance review, no conditions.

Because resurrection hope is not something that we can earn. It's something that God wants us to have freely.

Friends, Easter is God restoring hope to people who didn't ask for it, didn't expect it, and certainly didn't deserve it.

This is the heart of our resurrection, our loving God meeting us in our lowest places to bring us back to hope, even before we know what it feels like to hope again. Just as he did for Peter, for disciples, and for the women who found Jesus tomb empty.

This story that happened 2,000 years ago, friends, meant a ton to them. But what does it mean for us today? It has to mean this. If it's nothing else, it has to mean this. Easter Sunday should not just be a single Sunday event.

Easter Sunday for us is a pattern, right? We talk about Lent. Anybody actually give anything up for Lent this year? A few of us, maybe. So Lent is that season of preparation that leads us up to Easter.

But everybody questions me every year. What do you mean? You get Sundays off, right? So I did a fast this year, and every Sunday I was allowed to eat. So from sun up to sundown, I didn't eat anything.

But Sundays are kind of like this free day, because as Christians, we believe that every Sunday is a resurrection Sunday. Did you know this? It's an interesting part of our Christian history. Because I'm going to go even further. I don't think every Sunday is a resurrection Sunday.

Every day, friends, we live in resurrection. Every day we have hope. And oftentimes the world doesn't see that hope in us. We've got to be people who say, every day I've been resurrected. And every day you need to know that you can be resurrected too.

Resurrection for us means that no matter how broken you feel in this moment, your story is not over. It means our failures are not final. Jesus is still working to restore us, even in this moment. Resurrection means that our grief is not the end, even when darkness is all around us and we face what we expect will be a stone in front of our own tombs. God is acting to open up the dark places in our lives, to roll away those stones.

Church tombs are not our future. There's an empty grave to prove my Savior lives.

Our dead places are not beyond God's reach. So here's the invitation for this morning.

Stop looking for the living among the dead. Stop assuming that the story is finished. Stop believing that the tomb is the last word. Stop believing that there's no hope. Because, friends, there is.

Let resurrection continue to surprise you. Let hope rise again in your life, no matter how dark things look in our world. Let Jesus meet you in those places that you thought might be the end. And most importantly, church. Live like resurrection matters, because it does.

And the world needs to know it. Let's pray together.