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The Sermon for Easter Day, April 5th, 2026
The Lessons: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-17, 22-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-10
The Text: John 20:1-10
INTRODUCTION
Josh McDowell entered university as a young man looking for a good time and searching for happiness and meaning in life. He tried going to church but found religion unsatisfying. He ran for student leadership positions but was disappointed by how quickly the glamour wore off. He tried the party circuit, but he woke up Monday mornings feeling worse than ever.
He finally noticed a group of students engaged in Bible study, and he became intrigued by the radiance of one of the young ladies. He asked her a reason for it. She looked him straight in the eye, smiled, and said, “Jesus Christ.”
“Oh, … don’t give me that garbage about religion,” he retorted.
She replied, “I didn’t say religion; I said Jesus Christ.”
The students invited him to examine intellectually the claims of Christ and the evidence supporting Christianity. He accepted their challenge, and after much study and research, finally admitted that he couldn’t refute the body of proof supporting Christianity. McDowell received Christ as his Savior, and his research became the background for his book Evidence that demands a Verdict.
One of the major factors in his conversion to Christianity was his inability to ignore the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, a point he made later to a student at the University of Uruguay who asked him, “Professor McDowell, why can’t you intellectually refute Christianity?”
“For a very simple reason,” replied McDowell. “I am not able to explain away an event in history – the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”[1]
The assurance of everlasting life and resurrection did not come easily at first even to the eleven disciples, who did not all initially believe that the Lord Jesus Christ had risen from the dead.[2] Perhaps this was because women relayed to the Apostles the earliest reports of Jesus’ resurrection, and in those times in Jewish culture and law, a woman’s witness was not regarded as reliable. The Apostles came to believe that the Lord Jesus had indeed risen from the dead when He appeared to them repeatedly and showed them from the Scriptures of the Old Testament that his resurrection had been foretold.
JOHN 20:1-10: HOW JOHN, “THAT OTHER DISCIPLE,” CAME TO FAITH
Our Gospel Lesson today provides us with St. John’s account of how he came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He refers to himself as “that other disciple”[3] and “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”[4] Consider that Peter and John were told by Mary Magdalene early on Sunday morning that the stone had been rolled away from the opening of the tomb, and the tomb was empty. This led Mary Magdalene to conclude that the Lord’s body had been taken away and laid somewhere unknown to them.
Immediately, both Peter and John run to the tomb, John outrunning Peter. Though John saw the linen graveclothes lying there he did not at first go into the tomb. Peter sees the napkin that was around Christ’s head not lying with the linen clothes but wrapped up in a place by itself.[5] Then John enters the tomb again and sees the linen clothes and the napkin folded up separately. The sight of this causes John to believe that Christ has been raised from the dead, though he did not know the Scripture that the Lord Jesus Christ must rise from the dead.[6]
Why did St. John conclude from what he saw in the tomb that Jesus had been raised from the dead? The probability was strong that grave-robbers would not have bothered to remove the graveclothes of a corpse and fold up the napkin that was wrapped around the head. They would have taken the corpse with the graveclothes. The unlikelihood of grave-robbers leaving the graveclothes of Jesus or of folding the napkin and putting it in a place separately from the linen clothes influenced the birth of St. John’s faith in Christ’s resurrection. Clearly our Lord, or an angel, removed the napkin and folded it up in a separate place from the graveclothes. The Lord’s purpose in doing this was to lead disciples to believe in his resurrection just by looking at the empty tomb, the graveclothes and the napkin in a place by itself.
The significance of St. John’s coming to faith in the risen Christ must not escape us! The purpose of this account is to show St. John’s original faith in Christ’s resurrection was not based on the Lord’s appearing to him in his risen body; rather, it was based on the evidence of the empty tomb, the linen clothes lying there, and the napkin folded up by itself. Though he had not yet seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, he believed in his resurrection, even if at first he did not know or understand the Scripture verses that predict Christ’s resurrection.
APPLICATION AND CONCLUSION
Is your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his resurrection, unshakeable? How does this unshakeable faith influence the whole of your life and your testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
[1] Josh McDowell: The Resurrection Factor. San Bernardino: Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., n.d.; quoted on p. 250, Robert J. Morgan: Preacher’s Sourcebook of Creative Sermon Illustrations. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007.
[2] Mark 16:14; Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:11; John 20:25
[3] John 20:3
[4] John 20:2
[5] John 20:7
[6] John 20:8 & 9