The God of the Bible is Lord of history. He shows who He is in what He does for His people.

In the Old Covenant, Yahweh was the God of the patriarchs, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and finally the God who brought Israel back from exile. Ask a Jew, Whom do you worship? and he would answer, The God promise, the God of Exodus and New Exodus.

This doesn’t change in the New Covenant. God continues to identify Himself by what He does. Now, though, the God of Israel identifies Himself supremely in what He does through and to Jesus. Whom do we worship? We worship the Father, the God who through the Spirit raised Jesus His Son from the dead.

When we say this, we are saying something not only about what God does, but about who He is. We are saying something about His eternal character.

One of the things we are saying is that the God we worship is a God of surprises. Bringing a dead man back to life is surprising, to say the least, and the disciples were as surprised as anyone when they found the tomb empty and when Jesus appeared to them. Jesus had told them again and again, but it had not sunk in. In raising Jesus from the dead, God reveals Himself to be the God of news, of good news, of surprising good news.

God raised Jesus, Paul says, for our justification. By the resurrection, God has canceled sin. This is the revelation of Easter: Not only the fact that the dead Messiah lives again, but the good news that our Father no longer holds our sins against us.

This too is a surprise. A just and holy God, who punishes wickedness and rebellion and sin, who by no means clears the guilty, justifies the ungodly, reversing the death of sin by the resurrection of forgiveness. The God of Easter is the Father who raises Jesus from the dead; and the surprising God who clears our sins.