April 17 Sermon: Death Vanquished

It is in joy and in hope that we gather this morning. While every Lord’s Day is to be a celebration of the resurrection hope that we have in the Lord Jesus there is something about the celebration of Easter that brings out in us the joy of the hope we have in Christ. There are many reasons for this, I am sure. Some years when we celebrate Easter, not this one most certainly, we have the feeling of new life that comes from the bright colors of spring beginning to burst forth. Maybe it is the fact that we are finally making our way out into the world after a feeling of being in hibernation during the winter months. As I was contemplating this idea, I decided to review the different accounts of the resurrection in the gospels but when I started doing this, I realized that the key to understanding the joy and hope we find goes further back into the story.