Sermon text: Matthew 28:1-20
Matthew’s account of the resurrection unfolds in three parts, each building on the last: the truth revealed, the truth concealed, and the truth taken afield.
The truth revealed (verses 1-10) opens with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arriving at the tomb, followed by a dramatic scene—an earthquake, an angel descending to roll back the stone, the guards collapsing in fear, and the angel’s declaration: “He is not here, for He is risen.” This passage functions as an early apologetic for the resurrection, structured around a standard familiar to a Jewish audience: Deuteronomy 19:15 required the testimony of two or three witnesses to establish any matter as true. Matthew’s account delivers exactly that pattern. The angel serves as the first witness, delivering truthful testimony as God’s messenger. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary serve as a second and third witness—and their credibility is reinforced by Matthew 27:55-61, which places them at the crucifixion, at the burial, and now at the empty tomb, giving them direct, continuous observation of the entire sequence. A fourth witness even appears in verse 9: Jesus himself, alive and greeting the women directly.
Category: New Testament
Why Palm Sunday?
Sermon texts: Matthew 21:1-9; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-40; John 12:12-19; Zechariah 9:9-10; Psalm 118:26
The name “Palm Sunday” itself is worth examining closely, because the palm branches, while present in the narrative, aren’t actually the focus of what’s happening in the triumphal entry. Comparing all four gospel accounts side by side reveals something more precise: what did Jesus and his disciples actually initiate versus what did the surrounding crowd do on their own? Scripture often reports events accurately without necessarily endorsing every action within them—there’s a difference between passages that are prescriptive (telling believers what to do) and those that are simply descriptive (recording what happened).
Don’t Settle for Second Best
Sermon text: Colossians 2:8-15
The church at Colossae, located in what’s now southwestern Turkey and never personally founded by Paul, was wrestling with a problem still recognizable today: syncretism—the practice of cobbling together a belief system from multiple, often contradictory sources. In Colossae’s case, this meant blending Jewish legalism, pagan philosophy, and elements of the Greek Stoic and Epicurean thought Paul had already challenged on Mars Hill, with genuine Christian teaching mixed in somewhere alongside it all. The result, later termed the “Colossian heresy,” produced a faith system that couldn’t withstand scrutiny because its individual pieces contradicted one another. This pattern shows up constantly in modern belief systems too—people picking up a bit of Christianity, a bit of Eastern religion, some New Age influence, whatever resonates emotionally, until the resulting patchwork faith collapses under any real examination, unable even to stay internally consistent.
The Original Fellowship Meal
Sermon text: 1 Corinthians 11:17-34
The church at Corinth was a mess in many ways, which makes it an unusually instructive case study for what not to do in church life. Paul had already addressed divisions over leadership loyalties and spiritual gifts, but here he confronts something more fundamental: how the church handled its shared fellowship meal, connected to their observance of the Lord’s Supper.
Is That Your Final Answer?
Sermon text: Matthew 21:28-32
By this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is deep in a series of tense confrontations with Jewish religious leaders. Just before this passage, they had challenged his authority, and he had turned the question back on them regarding John the Baptist’s authority—they refused to answer, so he refused to answer them. Their religious system, built on rigid tradition and personal profit, was actively blinding them to genuine faith, even as they insisted publicly on their own righteousness.
The Race Before Us
Sermon text: Hebrews 12:1-3
Hebrews 12 opens with “therefore,” and understanding that word requires looking back to chapter 11—commonly known as the Hall of Faith. After defining faith in its opening verses, the chapter catalogs figures like Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and the prophets, each commended for trusting God’s promises before those promises were ever fulfilled. The book of Hebrews itself, written by an unnamed author (despite some older Bible headings attributing it to Paul) to Jewish believers wavering under mounting persecution and tempted to return to Judaism, builds a sustained case for one central idea: Jesus is better—better than the law, better than the priesthood, better than anything Judaism alone could offer.
Humble Instruction
Sermon text: Acts 18:24-28
This passage introduces Apollos, a Jewish man from Alexandria—at the time the second-greatest city in the Roman Empire, renowned for its library, lighthouse, and university. Described as eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, Apollos would have been trained in the more vivacious, emotionally expressive rhetorical style typical of Alexandria, distinct from the more reserved delivery favored further north in Greece and Rome. That stylistic difference likely explains some of the factionalism Paul later addresses in 1 Corinthians, where believers had begun aligning themselves with favorite teachers—Paul, Apollos, Peter—based on delivery and personality rather than substance, even though all were preaching the same gospel. Paul himself, by contrast, explicitly rejected relying on polished rhetoric, telling the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 that he came to them in weakness and trembling, deliberately avoiding persuasive human wisdom so that their faith would rest on God’s power rather than eloquence.
There’s So Much More
Sermon text: John 6:26-29
A recent Barna Group study found something notable: for the first time in years, Gen Z (ages 15-30) and millennials are attending church more frequently than older generations—roughly every other week, nearly double their pre-pandemic attendance. Barna attributes this to a rising spiritual openness, a desire for authentic belonging, relational connection, and spiritual mentoring, along with a documented craving for real, in-person community following the isolation of the pandemic years. Interestingly, young men in these generations are now out-attending young women, apparently drawn by a search for structure, purpose, and traditional values in an unstable world.
This is Serious!
Sermon text: Revelation 1:18
Rather than approaching Resurrection Sunday through the usual gospel accounts, this sermon centers on a single, striking verse: Jesus’s self-declaration in Revelation 1:18, spoken to the apostle John in his vision on Patmos as Jesus prepares to address the seven churches: “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.”