“What about the evil of this world? Should there not be justice?” “Some would say, ‘Well, that is too harsh. God should show love to everyone.'” “Some people say, ‘You have to prove to me that there is a God.'” In this video I want to share three reasons why Jesus’ death and resurrection are so significant. I think one of the strangest stories in the whole Bible is when God asks a father to sacrifice his only son on an altar. And this is not just any father-and-son combination; this is Abraham and Isaac. The Bible’s storyline is that God promised Abraham, “I am going to make of thee a great nation. I am going to give you a new land, and in your old age you are going to have a son.” Years go by, and it is not happening. Abraham goes out, takes a concubine, and has a son with her, but that son, Ishmael, was not the promised son. The descendants of Ishmael make up many of the Muslim peoples surrounding Israel today. But Abraham was promised a seed. God promised him a seed, and when he tried to do it his own way, God said, “No, we are going to do it My way.” Eventually Abraham is a hundred years old and his wife is ninety, and against all natural odds, miraculously, they have a son, and Isaac is his name. Again, one of the strangest stories in the Bible is when God tells Abraham, in Genesis 22:2, “And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” That Mount Moriah is a connection to the New Testament, and we will get to that in a minute. As a matter of fact, I preached this on Easter Sunday 2026, and we wrote a little booklet of the sermon, not exactly a transcript, but we took the sermon notes and put them into both a brochure and a little booklet, and I want to talk through that in this video today. If you are new here, my name is Pastor Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. On Easter Sunday we connected the stories of Abraham, David, and Jesus.
Abraham and Isaac
When God tells Abraham, “Sacrifice your only son,” he gets up very early the next morning. You can read all of this in Genesis 22 for yourself. He takes a couple of servants and his son Isaac, gets some firewood, and goes three days to Mount Moriah, and Hebrews 11 gives us some insight on this as well. They leave the servants at the base of the mountain, and Genesis 22:5 says, “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” Abraham believed he was going to come back with his son; Hebrews tells us he believed God would raise him from the dead. So Abraham and Isaac start climbing the mountain, and verses 7 and 8 say, “And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.” I just imagine some nervous laughter: “Dad, what is going on here?” And Abraham said those prophetic words: “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” It is so strange, because throughout the Bible we see animal sacrifices, but not human sacrifice, and now Abraham is being asked for a human sacrifice. It is like, “God, are You sure about this?” And yet it was so clear that Abraham literally laid his only begotten son on the altar. Verse 10 says, “And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” That does not seem right.
Why a Blood Sacrifice?
But what is the whole deal about sacrifice anyway? Why does something have to die for God to be appeased? Can we not just burn a candle or some incense, or leave some food in front of an idol, as other religions do? Why a blood sacrifice? That idea goes all the way back to the beginning of creation. Adam was the first one created. He was in the Garden of Eden, a place of perfection. He walked with God and talked with God face to face, but he disobeyed God’s command and broke God’s law, and from that time on the curse of death fell on all mankind because of Adam’s sin. Here is the super broad overview of the message of the Bible: we used to be pure. We used to walk with God, but our sin broke that purity and that fellowship with God. Having broken God’s commands, in order for God’s demand for perfect holiness to be satisfied, for us to get back to that purified state and come back into His presence, a substitute has to be made for our sin. God had warned Adam that the punishment would be death, and that is where the blood sacrifice comes in: for justice to be satisfied, something must shed its blood. And yet in His grace He allowed that sacrifice to be made in the place of another, so that mankind’s blood did not have to be shed. When Adam sinned, God made coats of skins to cover him and his wife. Blood was shed, but not their blood; it was blood shed in place of their sin. Apparently there was further elaboration on this, because their sons, Cain and Abel, were both instructed in sacrifices. Cain brought a food sacrifice, fruits and vegetables, something he had grown, but Abel brought a blood sacrifice, and only Abel’s sacrifice was accepted, and Cain killed Abel in a jealous rage. My point is that it goes all the way back to the beginning. A blood sacrifice is not just a law-of-Moses thing. We think the Jews had all these rituals, so it is only a Jewish thing. No, that comes much later. The whole idea of sacrifice comes from the mind of God, from the beginning, by the design of God. Mankind broke God’s law, and justice must be paid, so a blood sacrifice must be made. But in God’s grace, He allows it to be placed on a substitute, a sacrifice made on our behalf, and that is where the animal sacrifices come in. Animals could take the place of man as substitute sacrifices, and we see that all through the Old Testament.
David’s Altar
2 Samuel 24, where we were on Easter Sunday, is a text about David. This is about a thousand years later. The children of Israel are in their Promised Land, and David is the second king of Israel. In chapter 24 he sins in numbering the people, and God judges his sin with a pestilence, a plague that sweeps through the land for three days. As the plague gets closer, the prophet Gad tells David to go build an altar. Here it is again: for David’s sin, blood must be shed to cover that sin. So he buys this hilltop, which verse 18 calls the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and verse 25 talks about his offering burnt offerings and peace offerings. In the burnt sacrifice the whole animal was burnt up. The peace sacrifice was like a celebration of the peace we have with God: He would no longer judge, because the payment was satisfied. We are completely forgiven, and now there is peace. These sacrifices represent that, and we see it through Jesus Christ.
There are a couple of responses to that. Some would say, “Well, that is too harsh. God should show love to everyone.” But if He gave a blanket forgiveness to everyone, what about the evil of this world? Should there not be justice for those who have done wrong? And what about the people who have been wronged? They would expect justice. On the other side, some would say, “That is not harsh enough. What about all the evil people out there? Are you saying God just forgives people?” On one side, “God is not fair. It was not that bad. It is too severe.” On the other side, “It is not severe enough.” Some of you think it is going too far to have a blood sacrifice: “That is cruel and mean.” Or you think He is not going far enough, and you have to grapple with the forgiveness of all the heinous, evil people in this world. Can they have peace with God? Would God drop all charges against them? The gospel message says pretty much exactly that: all charges can be dropped. The worst person on this planet can be forgiven, all charges against him dropped, as long as a blood sacrifice takes his place.
God Will Provide Himself a Lamb
I left you hanging with the Abraham story. Just as he was lifting the knife to slay his son, a voice from heaven called his name and stopped him, and Abraham’s words came true: God provided Himself a sacrifice. When Isaac asked, “I see the wood and the fire, but where is the sacrifice, Dad?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” In verse 13 of Genesis 22, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.” Hebrews 11:19 says Abraham simply believed God. He had faith in God; he believed God would raise his son up from the dead. That is where faith in the words of God comes in: “God, You said this was my promised son, so I am going to believe You. Even if it does not fully make sense, I am going to believe You right now. I accept what You said by faith. You have never lied to me before. You have been trustworthy so far, so I am going to trust You.” Not everything in Scripture can be proven. Some people say, “You have to prove to me that there is a God,” or that you have to be able to prove there is no God. But to prove means to show that it cannot be any other way. I suppose Abraham could not prove that God would raise his son from the dead, but he placed his faith in the evidence that God had been trustworthy up to that point. I said in our Easter promotional video, regarding the stipulation that you have to prove everything: I cannot prove that my wife will not kill me in my sleep. I cannot prove that my lunch is not laced with arsenic. We do not live by proof, though; we live by evidence. The evidence so far is that my wife loves me and cares about me and does not want to poison my food. I do not carry a test kit to make sure my food is not poisoned. I live based on the evidence that my wife loves me, and at our family gatherings I do not have to worry about that; I think the food will be fine. Maybe you think the probability of one thing is higher than another, but nobody lives with an absolute burden of proof on every action in life. In the same way, Abraham could not prove everything he followed God on, but he believed God was trustworthy. The evidence in his life of how God had come through in the past was good enough for him to launch out in faith for the future. As it turns out, he was right. God was vindicated. The sacrifice was right there beside him. God told him to go, so Abraham just launched out, and three days later he got up to Mount Moriah, and God provided a ram, a substitute sacrifice for Abraham’s sacrifice.
The Same Mountain
On that same mountain, Mount Moriah, fast-forward not quite a thousand years, is where David is. After three days of pestilence sweeping through the land, he offers a sacrifice on the same mountain where Abraham sacrificed. Here is the wrath of God against sin spreading through the land, and he offers a blood sacrifice, an ox that gave its life on behalf of David and the people. So not only did Abraham sacrifice on that hill, and not only did David sacrifice on that very same hill, Mount Moriah, but that very hill became the place where the future temple was built. Solomon was the king who built the temple, and 2 Chronicles 3:1 says it is the same site: “Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.” I am not making this up just to get a cool story; that is the incredible nature of the Bible. The temple of God was built right there, and in the temple of God was the ark of the covenant, which marked the presence of God. Between the cherubims, on the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, was the place where the high priest would take the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it on the mercy seat once a year, signifying that although the people had sinned, their sin was symbolically covered for another year. God forgave their sin through the act of this sacrifice that took their place. Their sin was covered by the blood of the sacrifice. The wrath of God was appeased, and justice was served, because a substitute sacrifice took the place of the sins of the people. In theological terms, it is called substitutionary atonement. David had that altar, and Solomon had the ark of the covenant there in the temple, but that is roughly 1000 BC, a thousand years before Christ. That means a thousand more Passovers came year after year, and faithful Jews would gather with their families, slay a spotless lamb, and eat it as a memorial of the day Israel was released from bondage in Egypt. Back in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was put on their doorposts. The father would spread the blood over the top and on the sides of the doorway, and when the death angel came through the land and saw the blood, he would pass over that household, and they would be saved. In the same way that an animal’s skin covered Adam’s sin, a ram took Isaac’s place on that altar, an ox took the place for David’s sin, a goat took the place of all Israel on the Day of Atonement, and the Passover lamb was slain.
The Lamb of God
Right there by that same hill, Mount Moriah, within visual distance, just a few hundred yards away, is another hilltop called the place of the skull, Golgotha, or Mount Calvary. Our church is named after that place. Jesus of Nazareth comes into His public ministry, and when John the Baptist sees Him, he says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” What was he talking about? John saw Jesus as the sacrifice. All the sacrifices of the Old Testament were pictures pointing ahead to Jesus Christ. Just like the lamb, the ram, the ox, and the goat, it was prophesied that Jesus would be the sacrifice, the substitute for man’s sin, on that cross on Mount Calvary. Jesus lived a perfect life, was unjustly sentenced to a cross, and was killed on that cross, and some of His last words were, “It is finished.” The skies went black, and all the sin of humanity was placed on Jesus that day. The Father turned His back on His only begotten Son, and He who knew no sin was made sin for us. There are so many parallels in the Bible: Jonah spending three days in the whale’s belly, Abraham walking three days to Mount Moriah, David’s three days of pestilence. And in the story of Easter, if you know it, Jesus suffered on the cross and died and was placed in a tomb, and for three days and three nights He was in that grave. On that incredible Easter morning, Sunday morning, the day after the Sabbath, very early in the morning, a great while before day, He rose from the dead. That tomb of Jesus is empty. Last Easter we showed many of the evidences for that, going through The Case for Christ, and the case for the resurrection specifically, by Lee Strobel. We have talked about that book in these videos before, and I have shared some of those written materials before. But in this video I want to share three reasons why Jesus’ death and resurrection are so significant.
Three Reasons the Empty Grave Matters
First, because the Bible teaches that animal sacrifices were not sufficient to cover our sins forever. The best the animal sacrifices could do was roll them over another year. Here is what God says in His Word about that, talking about Christ, in Hebrews 9:12-14: “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” There it is: Jesus became that sacrifice for us. The animals were created; they were only temporary, and their sacrifice was only temporary. Our sins have offended an eternal God, so they needed an eternal payment, and the only sacrifice that is eternal is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the eternal God. That is another reason for the deity of Jesus Christ. His eternality means we have a sacrifice that satisfies, eternally, the injustice of our sin, which has broken God’s eternal law. We need Jesus to be our eternal sacrifice, and Hebrews 9 tells us He is that eternal sacrifice, offered through the eternal Spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” When you accept Christ’s free gift of salvation, all your sins are forgiven. “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” All your sins, all the issues, all the laws you have broken: there was handwriting against you, contrary to you, but Christ took it away, and the Bible says He nailed it to His cross. We needed that eternal sacrifice, and that required an eternal God to sacrifice Himself for us.
Second, the empty grave is significant because it shows that God is more powerful than death itself. In the greatest chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, near the end, verses 55 through 57 say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” No matter how far science and medical treatments advance, the last great enemy on this earth is death itself. But Jesus made a way to defeat death and undo all the wrongs of this life. That is why the empty grave is so significant.
Third, the empty grave is significant because if it is true, it changes everything. You have to do something with it. If the resurrection is true (and this is the argument of 1 Corinthians 15), then you have to respond. There is a God in heaven who is calling you to trust Him, and all who reject Him will end up paying for their sin themselves in an eternal hell, forever separated from God, and that is by their own choosing. We will not be dragged into heaven against our will. You say, “Well, I do not choose to reject Him. I just do not want to decide today.” No, refusing to choose is a rejection of the free gift of salvation, and I think that is too great a risk. You might have heard of Pascal’s wager. There are two options: either Christianity is true or it is not. And each of those has two options as well. If it is not true, you can believe it or not. If Christianity is not true, those of us who believe it are just wasting our time, and poof, when we die we disappear into nothingness. If Christianity is not true and you do not believe it, no harm, no foul. You did not believe it, it was not true, you go out into nothingness, and believing or not did not hurt you. But on the other side, Pascal’s wager says, if Christianity is true, you still have two options: you can believe it or not. If you believe it, man, you have everything to gain, and if you do not believe it, you have everything to lose. The weight of that decision is just so huge. The evidence says there was a man named Jesus who lived in Nazareth and did many great things. Even skeptical scholars agree that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross; even the most skeptical historians believe that. But the evidence also points to an empty grave. There were cowards who turned into courageous men of God. There is a literal empty tomb, and no body has ever been produced. There were eyewitnesses. Similar to the Twin Towers being hit on 9/11, a historian could re-create the scene today, twenty-five years later, from the eyewitness accounts of those who were there. From the time of Jesus’ resurrection to the first written record of the earliest resurrection creeds, we are dealing with one generation, twenty years. And there is a great turning point in history based on this singular event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, I was not there. I cannot prove it; again, prove means to show that it cannot be any other way. But the evidence points to an empty grave and a resurrected Lord, and if that is true, it changes everything. If it is true, I owe Him everything; at least, that is what He said He expects of us.
That is why Christians are sometimes a little urgent with the gospel message. We believe it, and we literally think your eternity is at stake if you do not believe it. We literally believe that tomb is empty, that Jesus rose from the dead, and that He is calling you to repent of your sins and turn to Him in faith today. You can do that. You can call on Him and be one hundred percent positive that you are on your way to heaven. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” Every lie you have told can be forgiven. Every lustful thought you have had can be wiped clean. Every sin of anger, every blasphemy against God, every covetous thought, every greedy intention, every curse word you have uttered can all be forgiven, nailed to His cross forever. I am not talking about joining a church or giving an offering or doing good works. No, Jesus has done all the work necessary to save you. We simply respond to Him in faith. We trust Him completely. We turn to Him in repentance and faith, turning from sin to Christ, and we believe Him. I will close with John 3:16; you might know it: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I am so thankful for our great Substitute, the One who took our place. Would you trust Him today? God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
