The Power of the Resurrection: A Look at 1 Peter 1
Easter at New River Church opened not with a hymn but with a film clip — one of the most famous scenes in Les Misérables. Jean Valjean, fresh out of prison, has stolen the bishop’s silver and been dragged back by the police. And the bishop, instead of pressing charges, scolds him for forgetting the best part: “Why didn’t you take the candlesticks? They’re worth at least 2,000 francs.” Then, as the stunned thief stands free, the bishop leans in: “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil. With this silver, I’ve bought your soul. I’ve ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.”
Pastor Keith Roberson let the scene breathe, and then named why it was playing on Easter morning: that moment is a shadow, a small picture, of why the church gathers at all. Jesus paid a price for us and ransomed us from fear and hatred — even when we were turned away from God, even when we ran. Through his life, death, burial, and resurrection, he purchased the chance for us to have new life.
But Keith pointed out one detail that carries the whole sermon. If you know the story, that scene with the candlesticks happens at the very beginning of Les Mis. Everything Valjean becomes flows out of it. And that’s the claim of Easter:
“The resurrection is not the end. It’s actually just the beginning of what God has to do in our lives.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
What this sermon is about
This Easter message argues that the resurrection is more than a 2,000-year-old event to commemorate — it’s a present-tense power. Yes, it’s the culmination of God breaking into our chaos, brokenness, failures, sickness, and sin. But it’s also the start: a new birth, a living hope, and a power that’s as available on a Thursday afternoon as it is on Easter Sunday.
If you’ve ever wished for a fresh start — after a tough week, a tough year, or a failure that feels final — this message was preached for you.
The resurrection is just the beginning
To make the case, Keith reached for the man with the most embarrassing résumé in the New Testament: Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends, who on the morning Jesus was taken to be crucified denied even knowing him — not once, not twice, but three times. One of the most painful failures recorded anywhere in the Bible. And yet after the resurrection, we find Peter with more power, leadership, and purpose than he ever showed while Jesus walked the earth. It’s that Peter who writes:
1 Peter 1:3 — “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
In other words, the resurrection of Jesus is, in actuality, a brand-new start for you and me. Keith reached back to his childhood cul-de-sac — the neighborhood playground where all the kids’ games would be going perfectly until some adult drove a car through the middle of it. And what did every kid yell? “Do over! Do over!” Fresh start. Start again from scratch.
That’s what the resurrection does. What has been broken can be erased, and you — right now, today — can have a fresh start. Not as a metaphor. Jesus had this exact conversation with one of the great religious scholars of his day, a man named Nicodemus, who heard “you must be born again” and asked the honest question: how does that even work? Do I climb back into my mother’s womb? And Jesus said no — you’re only born once in the flesh, but you can be transformed today. Made fully alive, not by flesh but by the Spirit of the living God. It’s how Jesus describes his own finished work in the very last book of the Bible: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
And here’s what Keith would not let the room miss: it’s not dependent on your effort, and it’s not dependent on what anyone else thinks of you. You can have had awful things spoken over you. You can be seriously broken, even hostile toward Jesus, sitting in an Easter service out of obligation — and you can have the do-over, the slate wiped clean, right now. Because how boring, how awful, would it be to celebrate some distant party from 2,000 years ago and not have it be alive today? That would be a waste of everyone’s morning.
Living hope vs. little hopes
So what exactly is this thing Peter says we’re born into? A living hope — hope that is fully alive 24/7. Not dependent on a church service, an Easter celebration, or any religious thing.
“It is hope that is as alive on a Sunday morning as it is on Tuesday afternoon at 4:00 when you’re waiting for 5:00 to roll around so you can go home.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
To show the difference, Keith offered himself as the cautionary tale. He grew up in Texas, which meant he was indoctrinated as a Dallas Cowboys fan — and as a teenager in the early ’90s, it was glorious. He was living the dream. But since 1996 — thirty years — every August arrives full of hope (“liked the draft, good free agent pickup, I think we’ve got a chance”), and every season his hope has been dashed upon the rocks of despair.
Every one of us is carrying little hopes like that, and they all run the same play. If I could just get the job to change, fix the marriage, land the career, gain the influence — then everything would be okay. And every time, the little hope falls short. There’s only one living hope, and it isn’t circumstance changing. The resurrection says you don’t have to go back to slavery — to the ups and downs of this life, to your failures and shortcomings, to every place you wish you were greater or better or had more.
And then the promise underneath the promise. How do you get hope that doesn’t die? God answers: I’ll make my home inside of you.
Romans 8:11 — “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
The same power that raised Jesus out of the grave can actually be in you and with you — as much on a Monday as on a Sunday. There is quite literally nothing that can disqualify you from it. The only question, Keith said, is: will you open your hands and receive it? It’s a gift.
More than a good person
Of course, there’s a respectable Franklin-sized objection to all of this: can’t I just be a good person? Treat people nice, work hard — isn’t that enough? Keith took the question seriously, because we all feel the deeper ache it’s trying to medicate. Every human knows they need something more — it’s every movie, every story, every song. If I could just get the right job, the right position, the right person, then I’d be whole. Except, Keith grinned, you married the love of your life and then discovered they snore like a freight train, or eat cereal in a way that is offensive to humanity. You love them — but they can’t carry your hope. Spouse falls short. Kids fall short. Job falls short.
Then he read a passage that he challenged the room to hear as a description of 2026:
2 Timothy 3:2-5 — “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”
That last line is the one that lands on the good-person plan: a form of godliness, but denying its power. You can look really good and do really good things and not really be alive.
“Being good does not mean being alive.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Keith included himself, as he always does: the best husbanding he can do, the best parenting, the best pastoring he can do apart from God and in his own strength is empty. But resurrection power means you get to be more than a good person — you get to be part of changing worlds. Generational curses broken off your family line. The trajectory of your life and family rewritten. Even your sordid past transformed into a story that testifies to the greatness of God. And if you’re thinking “I’m frail, I’ve fallen short” — welcome, Keith said, to the club of seeing what God can do with broken vessels. You and I aren’t fighting for scraps from the table of the world, scrolling Instagram wishing we were someone else. Resurrection power is available right now. This is what we were always meant to have with God — sin stole it, and Jesus came and gave it back.
Resurrection power on a Thursday afternoon
It all sounds good from a stage. So Keith ended with what it looked like in his own house — that very week.
He and his wife Megan were talking through life, and Megan paused and started listing what was actually piled up: several genuinely heavy things in their own world, plus hard things happening to people they love and feel responsible to care for. The list got overwhelming. So Megan said, “I think we should pray and just ask for God’s radical authority over all this.” Keith sat down in the chair next to her, grabbed her hand, and for eight, ten, twelve minutes they did nothing fancy. They just named, one by one, every hard and heavy thing. They confessed that they are not God. They confessed their need for him — that without him, the temptation would be to try to fix it all and spin their wheels in anxiety. Then they asked God to come, to touch each thing, to have his way — and they took authority over their home, their kids, and their marriage: no enemy has any place here; you purchased this for us.
“Nothing was magically changed on the outside, but we were changed in a moment.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
That, Keith said, is the whole difference — when resurrection power moves from a Sunday morning thing to a Thursday afternoon thing. You hand every heavy and broken thing to the one who already took it into the grave and walked out victorious, and you don’t have to sit underneath it all week, fearful and worried.
The service closed with Megan Roberson joining Keith to pray over the room — for anyone who had never surrendered their heart to Jesus, and for anyone who did long ago but has been running, or gone cold. Megan testified to her own story of being delivered from fear and shame, “and if he did it for me, he’ll do it for anyone in here.” And she pointed to the promise that Scripture literally says God is near to the brokenhearted — not far off in the distance, but right here, extra near to whoever feels extra broken. The invitation Jesus has always made stood open one more time: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Claim the do-over. Whatever has you convinced your story is already written — the failure, the year, the thing said over you — the resurrection says it can be erased and you can start fresh. Peter denied Jesus three times and became Peter. Ask for the new birth; it isn’t earned.
- Audit your little hopes. Name the “if I could just get ___, then I’d be okay” running in your head this week. Cowboys-fan hope gets dashed every season. Move the weight off circumstances and onto the one hope that’s alive on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m.
- Stop settling for “good.” Being a good person is a form of godliness without the power. This week, trade self-improvement for surrender: invite the Spirit who raised Jesus to actually dwell in you. Being good is not the same as being alive.
- Try the Thursday afternoon prayer. Sit down with your spouse or a friend, grab a hand, and spend ten unhurried minutes naming every heavy thing out loud. Confess that you’re not God. Hand each one over. The circumstances may not change in that moment — but you will.
Watch the full message
The full message — “EASTER: Resurrection Power,” our Easter Sunday celebration — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
