RESOURCE
Church Tech Check
No doubt about it. Your Easter sermon is one of the key messages you’ll preach this year. If your church is like most, you’ll see the highest number of visitors you’ll have all year long, be that in person or virtually via live streaming. New apps for churches promote audience growth more than ever before. Better yet, many of these visitors aren’t coming from other churches, but are spiritual seekers who are attending your church to learn about why Easter matters.
take a tour of pushpay’s custom church apps
But it’s not just about attendance. Your Easter sermon matters because you’re celebrating the most climactic event of human history—the resurrection of Jesus! As you share the first Easter story, you’ll have an important opportunity to tell non-believers why Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection matter to them.
Not only is your Easter sermon significant because of the opportunity you have to share the gospel, but Easter sermons tend to be tough because you have to come up with one every single year. You can’t just rinse and repeat. You’ll need to come up with a fresh way to engage your listeners with the same core resurrection message you’ve taught (and they’ve heard) many times before.
To help you prepare for Easter, we’ve outlined three sermon ideas you can preach on Easter. For each one, we’ve included key Easter Bible verses your message could focus on and some of the major points you can make.
1. SERMON FOCUS: The climax of history
Without the resurrection of the risen Christ, the Christian faith has no hope to rest upon. But since we know that God raised Jesus from the dead, this event serves as proof to validate the Christian religion.
All Christians doubt their faith from time to time. Because it’s Easter Sunday, you’ll be preaching to non-believers as well. As a pastor, it’s an ideal time to help your community understand just how reliable the historical accounts of the resurrection are in your Easter Sunday sermon.
KEY BIBLE VERSES
Because the resurrection is at the core of the Christian faith, you can find a variety of scriptures that touch on the validity of the resurrection. For this particular sermon, it’s best you focus on passages that highlight eyewitnesses to the resurrection and those who recorded the gospels.
1 Corinthians 15:3–8
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”
John 21:24
“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.”
KEY TAKEAWAY: FOUR EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE RESURRECTION
One of the biggest arguments against the resurrection is that if it really happened, wouldn’t people write about it? Why aren’t there any accounts of it outside the Bible?
The problem with this reasoning is it assumes that the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John—don’t “count” as eyewitness accounts. Jesus’ disciples were most equipped to provide a record of his ministry and resurrection, and they did.
Most people believe a man named John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. He traveled with Paul and Barnabas in the Book of Acts (Acts 12:25). We think he got much of his eye-witness details of Jesus’ ministry from Peter. It’s likely that Mark’s Gospel is actually Peter’s record of his travels with Jesus and John Mark, and simply transcribed it.
The weight of scholarship suggests that Matthew, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels with their names upon them. Some scholars debate the dates, but it seems they were likely written within the lifetimes of the apostles. Many people would have been around to discredit these accounts if they were inaccurate (or if someone could produce Jesus’ body).
KEY TAKEAWAY: NO ONE MOVED THE BODY
If someone found Jesus’ body, it would completely discredit the narrative that Jesus rose from the dead. Naturally, people argue that if Jesus’ body wasn’t in the tomb, then his followers must have moved it, making the resurrection into a hoax.
But that argument doesn’t work. Since the disciples had no expectation that Jesus would rise from the dead (and it’s clear they missed all of Jesus’ predictions of that act), they had no need to invent the hoax.
The disciples weren’t much different than most first-century Jewish people. They believed Jesus would restore the kingdom to Israel by toppling Rome’s oppressive rule. The disciples thought the movement ended when Jesus died. They were clearly confused about their next steps.
And despite Jesus’ numerous hints that he would come back from the dead (John 2:19, Matthew 12:39-40, Matthew 16:21), the disciples still didn’t understand that he had to die (Matthew 16:22-23).
But Jesus’ enemies were listening. And they sealed the tomb and placed armed guards in front of it specifically because they’d heard Jesus say he would rise from the dead after three days, and they were concerned the disciples would move his body (Matthew 27:62-66).
Even if the disciples were paying enough attention to think of this, and they were somehow able to overpower the guards and break the seal on the tomb, that leaves us with another question: why would so many people die for a lie about a resurrected Christ?
KEY TAKEAWAY: PEOPLE WENT TO THEIR DEATH CLAIMING JESUS HAD BEEN RESURRECTED
Church tradition holds that all the apostles were martyred (well, except John) and the early church fathers give more detailed accounts of how they each died. James (the brother of John) is the only apostle besides Judas Iscariot whose death is recorded in the Bible. In Acts 12, King Herod has him put to death by the sword.
Even when you set martyrdom aside, early Jesus-followers faced all kinds of persecution from both Jewish leaders and the Roman government. Above all else, the authorities persecuted them because they thought that Jesus was divine and had risen from the dead.
They could’ve recanted at any time to make it stop. But they didn’t. They continued spreading the gospel of the resurrection of Jesus Christ even though it cost them their lives. Throughout the church’s history, this has been one of the most powerful testaments to the truth of Christianity. The more people proved they were willing to die for it, the more Christianity spread.
The disciples could have told the world they’d made up the resurrection and avoided death. Instead, they made it clear they’d rather die than turn their backs on Jesus. Even as they faced death, they knew that Jesus’ resurrection meant they could also overcome the grave as they trusted in the living savior.
KEY TAKEAWAY: MORE THAN 500 PEOPLE SAW A RESURRECTED JESUS
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that Jesus appeared to others as proof of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). He’s saying, “Even if you don’t believe me, I’m not alone. All of these other people also saw him.”
The point of this argument in his letter was to validate that there were others who could support—or discredit—his claims about Jesus. Critics of Christianity may suggest that the early Christians hallucinated the appearances of Jesus. But Paul claims that a crowd of more than 500 people saw him at once. Even if you want to argue that they had a mass hallucination…are we really supposed to believe that they all saw the same thing that Easter morning?
A strong sermon is a great way to attract newcomers to your ministry and encourage them to return after Easter.
