Who Shall Have The Last Word?

April 5, 2026
Who Shall Have The Last Word?
Sermon Audio

CENTRAL TEXT: ECCLESIASTES 12:8-14

8 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.

Eccl. 12:9   Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

Eccl. 12:11   The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Eccl. 12:13   The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

CALL TO WORSHIP: Luke 24:1-6

LEADER: But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you. . . .

He is risen!

ALL: He is Risen indeed!

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 13:20-21

LEADER: Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

POST SERVICE: 1 Corinthians 15:54-55

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Illustrations:

Father Jud’s and Benoit Blanc’s first exchange from Wake up Dead Man.

Quotes:

You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.
- C.S. Lewis 
Eliza: And when my time is up 
Have I done enough? 
Will they tell my story? 
Company: Will they tell your story? 
Who lives? 
Who dies? 
Who tells your story? 
- “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” from the musical Hamilton 
The Son of God did not come to make good people better but to give life to the dead. 
 - Fleming Rutledge
I can only answer the question, “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question, “Of what story do I find myself a part?” 
 - Alasdair McIntyre
I do not know how to come closer to God except by standing where a world is ending for one man. It is still dark, and for an hour I have listened to the breathing of the woman I love beyond my ability to love. Praise to the pain scalding us toward each other, the grief beyond which, please God, she will live and thrive. And praise to the light that is not yet, the dawn in which one bird believes, crying not as if there had been no night but as if there were no night in which it had not been. 
- Christian Wiman 
Imagine a person totally committed to your best interests, devoted to seeing you flourish, fighting for you against all enemies, determined to eliminate everything destructive from your life, attentive to every detail of who you are, never thinking of himself at all but only you. That is Jesus I relation to us all—sacrificial in his life sacrificial in his death. 
- Fleming Rutledge
“The Gospels contain a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories...But this Story has entered History and the primary world...There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. 
- J.R.R Tolkein (On Fairy Stories)