Who Needs a Resurrection?
An Easter Message by Dr. Dwight A. Moody
SUNDAY IN THE HOUSE, April 20, 2025
Easter celebrates the resurrection power of God. It is the central event of Christian history and theology. It is the essential hope of Christian living. We celebrate it today along with all Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians. We confess freely and gladly that, on the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead.
Throughout his life, Jesus channeled God’s power to do amazing things: heal the sick, counter the Pharisees, endure rejection, even raise the dead. All of these episodes illustrate the nature of God’s power: focused in one place for one moment to achieve one purpose.
Normally, God’s power is like the sun, diffused all around us. Today is a beautiful day and the sun is shining all around us. This equal and everywhere distribution of solar energy makes things grow, makes people happy and healthy, and lights up the whole creation. Like the sun, the resurrection power of God is available to everybody all the time and we use that power to love our neighbor, share our wealth, welcome a stranger, and forgive a wrong.
Just this week, I received a text from a friend in another state. A few years ago, I traveled to his city to attend the funeral of his wife. She was running one morning, her regimen of health and fitness, when a driver lost control of her car, ran upon the sidewalk, and struck the running women. It killed her. She was 72 years old. That was November of 2021. Her widowed husband wrote me this week, following our phone conversation: “I did not have time to share how I have forgiven the woman who hit my wife. I shared the story at my church on March 30 in hopes that others might forgive someone whom they need to forgive.”
You know what that is? Resurrection power! Do you need some resurrection power today: to forgive, to decide, to contribute, to survive, to change, to embrace what God is calling you to do?
It is possible for you or me to take an ordinary magnifying glass, hold it in the sun’s rays, and focus that sunlight to one spot. If we hold it long enough, that focused beam of energy will start a fire! A more advanced application of this same idea is the laser, focusing a beam of normally disbursed energy toward one spot, toward one outcome. That is what happened to Jesus early on Sunday morning. He was crucified on Friday, he laid in a grave throughout Saturday, but on Sunday morning, God raised him from the dead. God focused his energy on one person, for one moment, for one purpose: to raise from the dead Jesus of Nazareth.
One day, that resurrection power of God will be focused on you, and me, and everyone. Paul the great apostle of God, put it this way when writing that letter to those first Christians in Corinth: Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. (15:20). The old word is “first fruits.” It is an agricultural metaphor. The first crops to ripen for the harvest season are a sign that the whole field will ripen and be ready for a harvest.
In the same way, Jesus was a sign that one day all of us will be pulled from death and dying by the resurrection power of God. Later in that same letter, Paul wrote this: Let me reveal to you a wonderful secret: not all of us will die but we will all be transformed! He meant that when the great Day comes, God will raise the dead and transform the living, all by the resurrection power God exercised when God raised Jesus from the dead. This is the gospel of God.
Jesus needed the resurrection power of God, because he had been beaten down by the unrighteous power of political and religious authorities. The gospel accounts tell us that Jesus was arrested by soldiers, incarcerated by political authorities, judged by one high priest and two Roman governors, and executed by soldiers of the empire. After dying, the governor gave permission for Jesus to be buried, but soldiers conspired to tell a lie to help explain why his body went missing on Sunday morning. Jesus was arrested and condemned without due process; he was convicted and crucified without the support of the law. It was a series of injustices that put Jesus in the grave.
I have thought about all that this week. This holy week has been dominated by the story of another man, arrested without being charged, deported without due process, and incarcerated without hope. His name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He is in a prison in El Salvador. That prison was built to accommodate 40,000 inmates. It opened in 2023. Soon, it was holding 65,000 inmates. I wonder how many of them are like Kilmar Abrego Garcia: without criminal charges, without due process, without judicial conviction, without outside advocates, without hope.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia needs some resurrection power. I believe hundreds if not thousands of people in that infamous prison in El Salvador need resurrection hope. They need the resurrection power of God.
Let me point you to another event this week. A 20 year old man named Phoenix Ikner took a gun belonging to his mother, went to the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee and shot eight people. Two died, six are injured. Ikner is in jail. These are the facts. There is a lot of video recording of things surrounding these events. Here is what will happen. Ikner is presumed innocent until proved guilty. He will be given a lawyer. He will appear before a judge and a jury. They will hear the evidence, including perhaps evidence of mental illness, and render a verdict. Then he will be sentenced. That is what we call justice and due process and fairness. That is the American way.
That is precisely what Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not have. He was whisked away at night and put on a plane out of the country in order to avoid these common steps of justice. Like Jesus, he was arrested and incarcerated without just cause and without due process. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled nine to zero that the government must bring Kilmar home. Then, Saturday at one a.m. in the morning they ruled that the federal government must not send anybody else to El Salvador until they had their right to justice and due process. In other words, a little bit of resurrection power has put a stop to these injustices, and many people are praying every day for a lot more resurrection power. There are many people in that concentration camp in El Salvador that need the resurrection power of God.
You may not be in jail, you may not be diagnosed with cancer, you may not be so poor you cannot pay your electricity bill, but you may still need enough resurrection power to set you free from something, heal your disease, and pay your bill. Do you recall what Jesus said to launch his earthly ministry?
The spirit of the Lord is on me. The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord sent be to proclaim release to the incarcerated. The Lord sent me to announce that the blind will see. The Lord has anointed me to set free the oppressed. The time of the Lord’s favor has come! (Gospel of Luke 4:18f)
That is the gospel description of resurrection power. Do you need some resurrection power today? Call out to God. Trust God. Believe God. Go with God.
