Resurrection Sunday: Ransomed From Captivity and Adopted Into God’s Family

Ransomed from captivity is how this Resurrection Sunday message describes what Jesus did for us: on the cross He took the curse, and through His death and resurrection He bought us back out of the captivity of this earth’s curse system and adopted us into God’s family. The pastor teaches that Christianity is not visiting God only when we need help, but being adopted, given His name, and cared for by a Father who will finish what He began in us.

He moves from Hebrews 1 and Galatians 3 to the Roman law of adoption and the names of God. Below are the full video, a structured summary, every Scripture linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway, a timestamped outline and practical steps. For more Easter teaching, browse the sermon archive.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries on Resurrection Sunday and posted on April 7, 2026. It runs about 41 minutes and ends with a prayer to receive Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit. The pastor calls the resurrection the greatest event that ever took place in history, and gives his message the title ransom from captivity.

He begins with the silence between Good Friday and the resurrection. On the cross Jesus took our sin, sorrow, sickness and poverty, and freely gave up His life. Then came a quiet time when God seemed nowhere around. Believers go through seasons like that, he says, yet the quiet time is often when God does the most.

God Has Spoken by His Son

The pastor reads Hebrews 1:1–2: God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the worlds.

In the Old Testament, he explains, God spoke through anointed prophets, people like us. But when people heard the prophet’s message and then saw his shortcomings, it was a mixed message. With Jesus, His actions lived out His words perfectly. He is the Word of God.

So why did He come, and why the cross? The pastor turns to Galatians 3:13–14: Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. That is the Good Friday part of the story.

Even the heroes of the Old Testament could not walk it out. David committed adultery and then had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed to cover it (2 Samuel 11:2–17), yet he became the great king from whose line Jesus came, and his own family line included a harlot. There is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10). Jesus died to take away the curse, the sin and every barrier that kept us from God, so our faith rests in Him alone.

The weakness of the law, the pastor says, was us: it was weak through the flesh, so God sent His own Son (Romans 8:3), not to condemn us but to take the condemnation away.

Trusting the Lord, Not Ourselves

Jeremiah 17:7–8 says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.” He shall be like a tree planted by the waters, whose leaf stays green in the heat and who does not cease from yielding fruit. Israel’s hang-up, the pastor says, was trusting in their own works, abilities and accomplishments. God’s answer is to trust in Him, because what He began, He will perform. He is not a man that He should lie (Numbers 23:19).

Rejecting God is often subtle: relying on our own efforts instead of the belief of our hearts. He recalls a Bible college class on the Exodus. When Moses told the people what God required, they answered that they would do everything the Lord had said (Exodus 19:8). It gripped him so strongly that he heard nothing else in that class.

That, he says, was probably the worst statement in the whole Bible, because it represents all of mankind, and Israel failed almost immediately. Jesus does not ask us to do everything perfectly. He asks for our hearts, and He makes us family. We could not carry the curse; He did, and what happened between the cross and the throne was the legal phase that guarantees we are ransomed from captivity.

He urges everyone to read all of Psalm 107. Four times people get into trouble in their own strength, and four times, in verses 6, 13, 19 and 28, they cry out to the Lord and He delivers them. But crying out only when our backs are against the wall is what Jesus came to deliver us from. That, he says, is religion: a meaningless relationship.

Religion or Family: The Tire Shop Picture

To show the difference, the pastor tells of buying new tires for three ministry vehicles last year, at a price that shocked him. You tell the tire man what you drive, he tells you what fits, you pick up the vehicle and go on your way. That, he says, is religion: going to God only when you need something and then going on your merry way without really knowing Him. Even weekly churchgoers can live that way, equating God with a building rather than a family.

He remembers a tire shop in town where neighborhood men gathered for coffee every morning and got to know the owners well. That is closer, but still not enough. Now imagine the tire man said, I want to adopt you, give you my name and take care of you. You would get to know him far better, because you would be living with him.

That is Christianity. God says He wants to adopt you and have you personally in His life all the time. That is why, in His prayer in John 17, Jesus asked that we may all be one, as He and the Father are one (John 17:21). Every prayer Jesus prayed was answered, the pastor reminds the church.

Jesus manifested the Father’s name to those given Him (John 17:6) and declared it so that the Father’s love may be in them (John 17:26). Getting deliverance and then living on your own is very different from carrying His name as an intimate member of His family.

Ransomed From Captivity Through Adoption

Romans, Galatians and Ephesians all speak of adoption. Galatians 4:4–5 says that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. To redeem, the pastor explains, means to buy back: a ransom. We are ransomed from captivity and brought into a new family.

None of us asked to come into the earth, he says, and the moment we arrived we were held captive in the earth’s curse system. The only way to be ransomed from captivity is a new family, a new home and a new life. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we may have life more abundantly (John 10:10). God has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:13).

Adoption, he says, creates a legal parent and child relationship between two people who have nothing in common, two different worlds brought into legal oneness. It meant more to Paul’s first readers, Roman citizens in Rome, Galatia and Ephesus, than it does to us.

He teaches that Roman law let a parent disown a natural-born child, removing the family name and all responsibility, and that it became common when children were hard to raise. The same law allowed no legal way to give up an adopted child. Parents thought long and hard, chose that child, and gave the child their name, committing to raise and provide for that child no matter what happened.

The table below sets out the contrast as the pastor draws it.

That is why Jesus told His disciples that they did not choose Him, He chose them and appointed them to bear fruit (John 15:16), and why Paul could be confident that He who began a good work in you will complete it (Philippians 1:6). On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21) and our adoption would be legal. That is not demanding of God; it is permission to expect it.

The Names of God We Receive

How can we depend on this? Because He died and came to life again for us. It pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell (Colossians 1:19). When we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we are saved (Romans 10:9–10). Jesus became the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29), and as adopted children we become heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

In the Old Testament, God revealed Himself through His names. When you give your life to Jesus, the pastor says, you have His name, and every one of these becomes yours. He walks through them one by one; the table below lists them with the meanings he gives.

You do not become holy by your works, he stresses; you become holy by Jesus in your life. As the Lord our shepherd, He leads us beside still waters and restores us (Psalm 23:2–3). As Jehovah Shammah, He has said He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). So praying “Lord, be with me today” is, he gently says, an unbelieving prayer. Better to thank the Father with confidence that He is with you today.

As our maker, He sends every good and perfect gift from above (James 1:17), and you are one of them. There is now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). We are not as good as God, the pastor admits, but His righteousness is our gift.

Holy and Unblameable in His Sight

The pastor continues in Colossians 1:19–23. Having made peace through the blood of His cross, God reconciled all things to Himself, and those who were once alienated and enemies in their minds He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present them holy, blameless and above reproach in His sight. Can you believe that, he asks? He is responsible for you because He has adopted you, if you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel.

He illustrates with two construction workers who fell into a deep, muddy pit. One begged the other to get him out, but the other was stuck too. Then a voice from the top called down that he was lowering a rope on a winch; all they had to do was hold on. That is the gospel, he says. The prophets were stuck in the same mud, but One came from heaven to lift us out, and we keep holding on, trusting Him as Savior.

So beware, he warns from Colossians 2:8–10, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him. Giving your life to Jesus is not giving anything up; it is gaining everything. Paul prayed that we would know the love of Christ which passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17–19).

What keeps us from that fullness? Under the old covenant it was our strength to obey perfectly. Under the new, it is our willingness to change our mind, which is what repent means (Acts 2:38): to think of God as a Savior, a lover and a good God. Does that mean we can live any way we like? Anyone who truly accepts the love of God would never think of it, he says; those who do were never really part of us (1 John 2:19).

His last verse is Romans 5:10–11: if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Paul wrote that to people who had already given their lives to Jesus, telling them to keep holding on. Now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2), because none of us knows what tomorrow, or even this afternoon, holds.

Living as an Adopted Child This Week

The pastor closed by leading everyone in prayer: confessing Jesus as Lord, believing God raised Him from the dead, and asking for a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26) and the Holy Spirit. Here are practical steps drawn from this message about being ransomed from captivity:

• Move past the tire shop. Do not visit God only when something breaks; spend time with Him as family every day.
• Remember what you were bought from. When old habits pull at you, thank Jesus that you have been ransomed from captivity and adopted.
• Trust instead of striving. Stop promising to do it all, and thank Him that He will complete what He began in you.
• Pray with confidence. Instead of asking God to be with you today, thank Him that He never leaves you.
• Learn His names. Pick one name from the list each day and thank Him for being that to you.
• Keep holding the rope. In a quiet or hard season, keep believing the gospel rather than looking for another way out.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Ransom from captivity: the greatest event in history
• 1:10 The silence between the cross and the resurrection
• 2:21 God has spoken by His Son: Hebrews 1:1–2
• 3:35 Redeemed from the curse: Galatians 3:13–14
• 6:07 Blessed is the man who trusts: Jeremiah 17
• 8:17 We will do everything: the worst statement in the Bible
• 10:30 They cried to the Lord: Psalm 107
• 11:34 Religion and the tire shop
• 14:47 What if the tire man adopted you? John 17
• 17:01 Galatians 4:4–5: redeemed to receive adoption
• 19:45 The Roman law of adoption
• 22:21 You did not choose Me, I chose you
• 23:45 All the fullness: Colossians 1:19
• 24:59 The names of God we receive
• 27:31 An unbelieving prayer
• 28:48 No condemnation: Romans 8:1
• 30:00 Holy and unblameable: Colossians 1:19–23
• 31:08 Two workers in the pit and the rope
• 33:25 Complete in Him: Colossians 2:8–10
• 34:46 The fullness of God: Ephesians 3:17–19
• 35:55 Saved by His life: Romans 5:10–11
• 38:20 Now is the day of salvation
• 39:28 Prayer to receive Jesus

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened between Good Friday and the resurrection?

The pastor describes it as a time of silence, when even the disciples could not see what God was doing. He teaches that the epistles reveal what took place between the cross and the throne: a legal phase that guaranteed our redemption. When you go through a quiet season where God seems absent, he says, it is often when He is doing the most.

Why does the pastor call Israel’s promise the worst statement in the Bible?

When Israel told Moses they would do everything God had said, they were promising to obey perfectly in their own strength. The pastor says it represents all of mankind, and Israel broke it almost immediately. The gospel works the other way. Jesus does not ask us to do everything perfectly; He asks for our hearts and promises to bring His work to completion in us.

Once I am ransomed from captivity and adopted, can I lose my place in the family?

The pastor points to the Roman law Paul’s readers knew: a natural child could be disowned, but an adopted child could not legally be given up, because the parents had chosen that child deliberately. Jesus said He chose us. The pastor adds that the condition is to continue in faith, grounded and settled, holding on to the gospel, and that people who truly accept the Father’s love would never want to walk away.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Hebrews 1:1–2 — God has spoken by His Son
• Galatians 3:13–14 — redeemed from the curse of the law
• Jeremiah 17:7–8 — the man who trusts in the Lord
• Psalm 107 — they cried to the Lord in their trouble
• Galatians 4:4–5 — the adoption as sons
• John 17:26 — I have declared Your name
• Colossians 1:19–23 — holy, blameless and above reproach
• Colossians 2:8–10 — complete in Him
• Ephesians 3:17–19 — filled with all the fullness of God
• Romans 5:10–11 — saved by His life

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If this Resurrection Sunday message reminded you that you belong to God’s family, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep growing as His child.