THE LAST WORD

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.”  (John 20:1 NIV)

Early on the first day of the week, some of those who had loved Jesus the most came to pay Him love’s continuing respect. Especially, there was Mary of Magdala. She had been such a bewildered, mixed-up, self-destructive soul until Jesus came into her life, and He had turned her all around. But now He was gone. She had heard the last word: death. She had heard it right from hell, for hell is always trying to tell us that it has the last word.

When she got to the tomb, she found the body missing. This seemed like the final indignity, cruelty heaped on sorrow, for she felt someone had stolen His body. So she stood there weeping. That’s what you do, if you think the last word is the devil’s word: you weep.

Then a voice asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?” Mary was so broken by sorrow that she didn’t even look up, and so dulled by tragedy that she didn’t recognize the voice. “Sir,” she said, “if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.” She may have been grief-stricken, but to her credit, she hadn’t stopped loving.

Then Jesus said just one word. “Mary.” He called her by name. It must have been reminiscent of that day, months or years before, when He spoke her name and in doing so, called her out of the darkness and confusion which had so long characterized her life. At any rate, it was all she needed. “Teacher!” she cried. Then she hurried back to the disciples. “I have seen the Lord!” she told them. Which is to say -- death was not the last word. It wasn’t even the next-to-last word. Hell tried to tell her, when they took her Lord from the cross and carried Him off to a tomb, that the last word had been spoken, but it hadn’t. Because the last word is God. And then, the exclamation point.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas (1923-2015), excerpted from a sermon entitled “In the End, the Exclamation Point”, February 28, 1990 

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JESUS’ LAST INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE ASCENDING

People often save their most important instructions, their most profound thoughts, their deepest concerns, and their most heartfelt expressions for last…

The Holy Spirit did not miss the opportunity to record the last words of Jesus before He left this earth.  And as we might expect, those words are deeply significant.  In both the Gospel of Matthew and the book of Acts, we read our Lord's parting instructions to His disciples --  and to all who follow Him -- before He was taken up from sight.

Think of it!  We have a written record of the very words the Son of God uttered before ascending to the right hand of His Father in heaven.  And these are the words -- perhaps more than any others -- that Jesus wanted to echo in His disciples' ears as He left them.

[There are many things] He didn't say…

What He did say was as clear as bright sunlight on a cloudless morning.  There was nothing obscure or hazy about His final instructions.

“Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, ‘Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’  And He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.  But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’”  (Acts 1:6-8)

-- David Jeremiah in “Jesus' Final Warning”

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