This is Part 3 of a 7-Part sermon series titled “Easter according to Paul” preached at Mt. Gilead UMC in Georgetown, KY. Click here for Part 2.

If you want to listen to the whole worship service, click this first link below.

If you want to listen only to the sermon, click this second link below.

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

What is Death?

• What is death? That’s what we’re looking at this morning.
• There are a lot of different ideas and opinions about death out there today.
• It is said that death wait for no man.
• Nobody wants to die.

What Death Is Not

• Death is not natural.
  • Scientists and naturalists say that death is just natural, just a part of life.
  • Gen 1-3: We were made to live forever.
• Death is not your friend.
  • Seeing someone die is one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced in my life.
  • Some say that Christians should not be afraid to die. Why?

What Death Is

• Death is God’s punishment for sin.
  • On the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die. Not just spiritual death.
• Death is our enemy, the last enemy (1 Cor 15:26-28).
  • Rev 20:11-15 – the new Jerusalem/heavens/earth come after death is destroyed.
  • Paul says that death is the last enemy to be overthrown and then God will be all in all.

So What?

Death is not the last word. Paul says in v. 26 that death, the last enemy, is most certainly going to be wiped out, abolished, brought to naught. And that doesn’t mean that all of those who have died are now wiped out, but instead that they have been released from death’s hold. When Jesus returns, death will be no more. Death is certainly not the last word.

I know that many of you have lost many loved ones within the last few years. It’s easy for me to talk up here abstractly about death, when it is a very harsh reality to most of us here this morning.

We’ve been through it too. It was the hardest few years of our life and marriage losing Paige’s mom. I wish y’all could’ve known her. She would’ve bless you all so much. We were serving at a church in Versailles when she passed away and, boy, did she have an impact on the people in our church, even though she had only been there a dozen times. It was small, averaged 25 in attendance like here, and Tammy only came down to KY to visit us once every couple months. But she got to know everyone in our church. She was a people person and talked with everybody and just genuinely cared for others. She’d talk your ear off sometimes too. But I really wish that she was still here to know you all as well. She believed in me and Paige so much. She supported us when others thought we were crazy to follow God’s calling. She called Asher her little buddy (1.5). She didn’t really get a whole lot of time with Ayla (only 3 months), and only through Christ does she know now that she’s got a third grandchild, little Adelynn whom we named after her. And I’ll never forget her funeral. It was beautiful and I held it together throughout the service. I even sang her favorite worship song during the service. But I lost it at the grave site. But I was reminded in that moment of something that one of my Bible professors once told me: death isn’t a “Goodbye,” it’s a “See you later.”

Death is not the last word, my friends. It is the last enemy, the final foe that God will crush. He will and has stopped at nothing to bring us back into relationship with himself through Christ, and that relationship isn’t complete if we’re just souls forever. If we’re just bodiless souls, then death truly has had the final word. But we aren’t just souls. We are soul, spirit, and body, and God has and will save every part of us. I cannot wait for that day when death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire as Revelation 20:11-15 prophesies. I can’t wait to see my mother-in-law again, and not just how she was when she had cancer, but see her in glory, when Christ transforms her lowly body to make her like his glorious body. And I know that that same longing is in your hearts for those that you’re missing this morning.

I want us all to take a moment here and close our eyes for a minute and think about those whom we miss, whom we’ve lost, whom we know are with the Lord right now. And I want you to pray. Don’t just pray half-heartedly, but pray with that emotion, with that longing, with that grief, with that deep sense of love for whoever it is that you miss and long for. Take what you feel and put these words to it:

Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus. Bring your kingdom here on earth as your kingdom is in heaven. Return, O Lord. We want to see you coming on the clouds of heaven, with your holy ones—your angels—but more than that with all those who have said yes to you, even with our loved ones, Lord: with Tammy Booth, with Jerry Ettinger, with Richard Wooten, with Nina Trout, with Faith King, with Jeannie Wright, with Kristine Kestel, with Connie and Jim Trotter. Lord, they are yours and they are with you. We long to see them in glory. We long to see you in glory. Come, Lord Jesus. We know, Lord, that death is not the last word, that it is not “Goodbye,” that it is “See you later.” Lord, may later be now. Come, O Lord. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.