April 5, 2026

“Resurrection Life” 

Message by Rev. Alan Perkins

Good morning, and happy Easter! What we celebrate today is the central, defining event of the Christian faith. On this day, all over the world, Christians gather together—in great cathedrals and in shopping mall storefronts, in crowded cities and remote villages, in America, and Europe, and Asia, and Africa—just as they have done for twenty centuries; all bearing witness to the joyful news that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. This morning, we add our voices to that great global chorus of hope and joy, as we declare our faith in a risen Savior. Jesus Christ has indeed risen from the dead. 

This simple affirmation of faith is what makes Christianity different from every other religion or philosophy known to mankind. Every other person you could name, who started a movement, or who gained a following as a teacher, or a moral philosopher, or a religious leader, every man or woman in history who claimed to have discovered the meaning of life, who claimed to know the way to God—every one of them is still dead. For example:

• Confucius was a highly influential moral philosopher, whose teachings have guided Asian culture for hundreds of years. But Confucius is also still in his grave. It's located in Qufu, in Eastern China. 

• The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, is believed by his followers to have achieved spiritual enlightenment. But they don’t claim that he rose from the dead. His body was cremated, and the ashes were distributed to various sites across India. 

• The founder of the Islamic faith, Muhammad, is buried in what is called “The Prophet’s Mosque”, in Medina, Saudi Arabia. 

• The Greek philosophers whose insights were highly influential in the Western world—Aristotle and Socrates and Plato—are all still sleeping the sleep of death. 

None of these people rose from the grave. Christianity is unique in bearing witness to a founder who came to life, physically and literally, after having died. This event, the resurrection of Jesus, is at the core of the Christian message, the good news of forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Christ. And so this morning, I’m going to draw out some of the implications of this event for us as his followers. Because the resurrection of Christ is more than just an amazing historical fact. It also gives us a completely different perspective on the world, and on our lives. 

Let’s start with how the apostles and the early church viewed the resurrection. They saw it, not just as one part of the gospel, or one part of the Christian faith, but as the essence of the gospel itself. And so, when they went out to spread the good news, they began by proclaiming Christ’s resurrection. Let me give you a few examples. Soon after the day of Pentecost, Peter and John were preaching, and in Acts  4:1-2, we read this:

“The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.” (Acts 4:1-2)

What was their message? They were “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead”.
Again, a few verses later in this same chapter, we read in Acts 4:33 that, 

“33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 4:33)

What were they testifying to? “the resurrection of the Lord Jesus”. That was their focus.
I’ll give you one more example. When the apostle Paul was in Athens, he preached first in the local Jewish synagogue, and then went out into the public marketplace to proclaim Christ. This was in the Agora, the place in ancient Athens where people would go to debate ideas and discuss philosophy. And so we have this scene in Acts chapter 17, verse 18:

“18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.” (Acts 17:18)

What was Paul’s message? Again, it was “the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.” 

In the 27 books of the New Testament, we have a treasure trove of teachings concerning every aspect of our faith. But it all begins with, and depends upon, the resurrection. I am emphasizing this because I think that, ironically, we tend to gloss over the resurrection.
It’s almost as if, because it is so fundamental, we tend to take it for granted and focus on other things. But the New Testament treats the resurrection of Christ as being central to our faith; not merely one of the key events which brought the church into existence, but the central fact upon which everything else that we believe and practice rests. Without it, nothing else would matter. Without the resurrection, Jesus would be just another moral teacher, and Christianity would be just one philosophy among many. 

Listen to what Paul writes concerning its importance:

“14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 

16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then
those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 16-19)

If not for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul writes, our faith would be “useless” and “futile”. It would be a worthless, empty philosophy, unable to save us or to reconcile us to God. We would still be dead in our sins, and not forgiven. Without the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, it would not be a hopeful or glorious thing to be a Christian; on the contrary, Paul says that it would be a sad and pitiful thing. Christians would be a pathetic group of deluded and desperate people, clinging to a false hope.
That’s how important the resurrection is. It’s everything. If Jesus Christ had not been raised from the dead, nothing else would matter. As Paul writes just a few verses later, 

“If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” 

(1 Corinthians 15:32)

If there were no resurrection, in other words, then we might as well just give ourselves over to seeking pleasure, and just enjoy our food and drink. Because nothing in life would really matter, and death would be the end. And we see that attitude in the lives of many people today, don’t we? A modern version is the motto YOLO, Y-O-L-O, for You Only Live Once. That attitude seems upbeat and fun, and positive: you only live once, so you should make the most of every day. But below the surface, it’s essentially nihilistic, rejecting
the idea that life has any real, inherent, meaning. And many people without faith in Christ live their lives like this, as if nothing really mattered. They’ve given up trying to make sense of life. And so, whether in desperation or resignation, they give themselves over to all kinds of sensation or pleasure-seeking: food and drink, alcohol, drugs, pornography. Mindless television watching; hours of video gaming; endless social media scrolling. They run after all kinds of experiences to distract and amuse themselves. Anything to fill that void in their lives. But in their heart, none of it means anything to them. It’s just a way to pass the time, and dull the pain, until the final curtain comes down on their lives. That’s life without the hope of resurrection, says Paul. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’

We see that in the lives of some celebrities, people who have all the money, and fame, and success that anyone could want, but who go from relationship to relationship, and experience to experience, trying to find something that will fill the emptiness in their souls. And we also see it closer to home, in the lives of people we know, people who live in the communities around us. For example, we know that drug abuse is a problem in our communities. Here’s a grim statistic: in 2024, just in Ohio, over 6,000 people went to the hospital because of an Opioid drug overdose. And that is truly sad, a tragic waste of human potential. Because the truth is that death is not the end, and our lives do matter. And that’s because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

How then, does the resurrection give meaning and hope to our lives? What difference does the resurrection make to us, as followers of Christ?  I’ll give you three things to consider. First of all, it is because Christ rose from the dead that we—you and I— have a hope of resurrection and eternal life ourselves. Death was not the end for Jesus, and therefore, death is not the end for us. As Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 15:19-20:

“19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20)

Christ is the “firstfruits”, the first part of the harvest. And Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:14:

“14 . . . we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself.” (2 Corinthians 4:14)

That promise of our own resurrection, guaranteed to us by the resurrection of Christ, means that we no longer need to fear death. And deep down, most people do fear death, don’t they? The comedian, Woody Allen, once wrote, “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”. He also wrote that, 

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

And most people are like Mr. Allen, in this way: they fear death, whether they view it as the extinction of the self, or whether they worry about what may come after death. This dread of the afterlife is famously expressed in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech, in which he expresses apprehension about “what dreams may come” in the sleep of death. I’ll read just
a portion of his soliloquy. And if quoting Shakespeare gives you flashbacks to high school English, consider this your trigger warning; you can plug your ears for a moment. But in this speech, Hamlet is giving the reason why he hasn’t taken his own life. He says,

Who would burdens bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose border

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all

What Hamlet is saying is that the conscience, the awareness of one’s sin and guilt, makes people fear what may come after death. Perhaps Mr. Shakespeare knew his Bible. Because the author of Hebrews speaks to this same fear:

“14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too [Jesus] shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

How does the fear of death make us slaves? It makes the preservation of our lives an absolute requirement, so that we shrink back from doing anything which carries with it a risk of ending or shortening our life. For the person who fears death, the need to stay alive at all costs is a master that controls and enslaves them. It leads them into sin and cowardice. Satan will exploit that fear to tempt them into doing things that they should not do, and into accepting things that they should not accept, all to protect their lives. Thus the fear of death is the enemy of courage, and integrity, and morality. Because when any of those virtues conflict with the need to preserve life at all costs, that virtue has to go. 

As long as I’m quoting Shakespeare, I might as well go all in. In the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes, “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” True? Yes. The fear of death makes men cowards. 

But the hope and promise of resurrection in Christ frees us from that fear, and frees us from that slavery. We are free to obey God, and to do what is right, regardless of the consequences, even if it could mean our death. We are free to follow God’s call on our lives, even when it involves danger or peril. Because we know that death cannot keep us in its grasp, just as it could not keep Christ. And so even if following Christ costs us our lives in this world, we will be raised to eternal life in Him. 

I’ll give you an example. You may be familiar with the story of Jim Elliot, a missionary to the Quechua people in Ecuador. In 1956, he went on an expedition to the isolated Auca tribe in the Amazon jungle. This was a tribe who had virtually no contact with the outside world and who were known to be violent toward outsiders. He and four other men journeyed to the area where the tribe was living and attempted to make peaceful contact. All five of them were attacked and killed. Jim left behind a wife, Elisabeth Eliot, who wrote about this in her book “Through Gates of Splendor”. (Worth reading, by the way). He also left behind a young daughter. At the time, the deaths of these men seemed like a pointless tragedy. But amazingly, two years later, Elisabeth and their daughter returned to live among the tribe who had killed her husband, learned their language, and shared the gospel with them. And many of them came to trust in Christ, including some who were involved in the killings.

I thought of this example because of something that Jim Eliott wrote in his journal several years earlier: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Eliott knew that he could not keep his life; that no matter what, he would eventually lose it, whether to old age, or illness, or some kind of accident. But he also knew that death was not the end, that he would someday be raised to eternal life. And so because of this hope, he was willing to risk his life, and to lay down his life, in order to bring the good news of the gospel to a group that he knew would be hostile and even violent. He was not afraid to do so; he was not a slave to the fear of death, because he knew that in Christ he would be resurrected. 

Christian history is full of examples of martyrs who chose death rather than deny Christ, and many others who risked death in order to serve and proclaim Christ. Inspiring stories. But how do we apply this freedom to our own lives? Most of us don’t face the prospect of death for our witness to Christ or our obedience to Christ. Here’s how. Death is the ultimate loss. Death takes away everything we have, and everything we ever will have, in this world. But the principle of fearlessness applies not only to the ultimate loss that death brings, but to lesser kinds of loss as well. No matter what it is that we lose, or risk losing, as a result of following Christ, we will receive much more at the resurrection. And so we can face death without fear, but we can also face every other kind of loss without fear, because what we lose in this life cannot be compared to the glories of our inheritance in the next. As the apostle Peter writes:

“3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5)

All right. Let me suggest a second way, related to this, in which the resurrection gives meaning and hope to our lives as followers of Christ. The resurrection guarantees that everything we do for Christ will be rewarded. Here is Christ’s promise to us:

“40 “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 42 And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42)

What Jesus is telling us here is that any kind good work that is done as an act of service or obedience to Christ will be rewarded, even including the tiniest acts of kindness, such as handing someone a cup of water. And when will those rewards be received? At the resurrection. Here’s another example:

“2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)

Now, some people find the idea of heavenly rewards distasteful, or mercenary. They feel that we should serve God from a sense of gratitude, out of thanksgiving for all that he has done for us. They feel that we should serve God because he deserves our worship and our love. And they’re absolutely right. We should serve God for those reasons. We owe him everything we have, and everything we are, and everything we can do. In fact, Jesus tells us in Luke 17:10 that even if we did absolutely everything we were commanded to do, which none of us does, we would still only be doing our duty. And so we need to keep in mind that nothing we do to serve and obey God is meritorious; that the rewards which God has promised to us are not something that we earn. What are they then? They are his gifts to us. They are by grace, just as our salvation is. God promises us rewards, not as something we can earn or deserve, but as a gracious incentive, because he loves us and wants to help us to obey. And he knows our nature, and he knows that people respond to incentives. 

Now, in spite of that, if you still say that you don’t need the incentive of a reward to serve and obey God, remember what we read a few weeks ago in Hebrews 12:2, that Christ went to the cross “for the joy set before him”; that is, because he was looking forward to the blessings that he would receive for doing so. And the apostle Paul, likewise, wrote about running the race of life with an eye on the prize (Philippians 3:13-14). And so there is nothing wrong with serving God in hopes of a reward; on the contrary, that is what he wants us to do. That is why Christ told us about them. The Bible tells us that we will receive rewards for every good thing we do: for giving to the needy, for bearing up under persecution, for loving our enemies, for praying and for fasting, and for the “planting” and “watering” that are involved in spreading the gospel. Paul writes this in Ephesians 6:7-9,

“7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.”

Why does Paul say that we should serve wholeheartedly? Because we know that the Lord will reward us. And when will we receive those rewards? Remember, Paul said that if our only hope was in this life, and in the rewards that we might receive in this life, then we would be, of all the people on the earth, the most to be pitied. No, our hope is not in this life. All of those rewards we will receive when Christ returns, at the resurrection of the saints. What those rewards will be like we don’t know, but I am absolutely sure that none of us will be disappointed. That’s all we need to know for now. In the words of that great theologian Kenny Rogers, “You never count your money while you’re sittin’ at the table; there’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.” 

Let me give you a third and final way in which the resurrection gives meaning and hope to our lives as followers of Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ means that there is
no such thing as a lost cause, no such thing as an impossible situation. Because the one thing that everyone thought was final and hopeless; that country that no one ever returns from, as Hamlet said, is death. And yet Christ came back from the dead. He overcame death, the one enemy that everyone thought was invincible. He broke its power. And so,
if even death can be defeated, then there is no enemy, no circumstance, no tragedy, that God cannot overcome, that God cannot redeem for good. Amen?

In Romans 4, Paul is writing about Abraham and Sarah, who were promised a child in their old age. The Bible says that they were “very old” and that Sarah was past the age of childbearing. Here is what Paul tells us:

“19 Without weakening in his faith, he [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God” (Romans 4:19-20)

God took a man and a woman, Abraham and Sarah, whose bodies were as good as dead, and from them came a son, Isaac, as God had promised. And so even in the Old Testament, God overcame death; he brought life out of death. As Paul writes in verse 17:

“He [Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” (Romans 4:17)

Our God is a God who “gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not”.
And so, let me ask you: what in your life seems to be irredeemably and forever broken? What have you lost that you can never get back? What relationships seem beyond repair? What hope seems forever out of reach? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead shows us that God is more powerful than we can imagine, and that there is nothing that is beyond his ability to overcome, not even death. And so, if he can raise even the dead to life, then he can intervene powerfully in your life, and do things you thought were impossible. He can redeem hopeless situations and bring good out of them; he can overcome loss and tragedy and glorify himself through them. 

That’s the kind of God we serve; that’s the kind of God who has called us to himself in Christ. And if you are here this morning and do not yet know him, what you need to do today is simple:

“40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

Look to the Son, Jesus Christ, and believe in him. And you will have eternal life, and God will raise you up with him on the last day. That’s the hope which is promised to us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate on this Easter morning. May we rejoice in that hope, and trust in that hope, every day. Amen.

The First Baptist Church of Richwood - April 5, 2026