Graduation 2025

Introduction:

Good evening. I bring you greetings from the 1900s.

What an honor to be here and speak to the graduating class of 2025.

I want to thank the graduates for inviting me as well as Mr. Fassler, Pastor Jon, and the board of FCS.

There is so much that could be said to you graduates. We have shared some fun memories together and you have shared many more with one another over the years.

In 1999 there was a song that got popular on the radio. A radio is that thing in your car that you plug your phone into. They used to play music and we didn’t know what song was coming on next because they played more than ten and we couldn’t skip to our favorite. There was a song called “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” performed by Bahz Lurman. The background of the song is pretty crazy but it’s basically a mock commencement speech. It starts like this:

“If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it A long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable Than my own meandering experience, I will dispense this advice now”

At this point a little groove beat kicks in and he goes on with the advice.

As I was preparing what I would say tonight I questioned, if I had one chance to speak to you all and say one thing that was reliable and was based on truth and not ONLY my own meandering experience, what would that be? You see graduates, you need solid truth and not merely the opinion of some guy from the 1900s. So here is what really matters.

My address to you dear graduates tonight is entitled:

Be Influenced and Be A Real Influencer: Messages from the Dead

Wear sunscreen.

Making friends with the tsa

Heat stroke

Forgetting the key

Just enough concrete

The kid on the horse

Jacob please eat a vegetable…

He holds the keys. Don’t look too happy to be in bondage to sin.

Holy Forever in Spanish

Up and Up

Earl the Tucan

Candles in ice cream

Jewelry shopping with Barbie and Raquel

Hi Emma

Chloence

Allie Worrall both names

Ella surviving zip line and cave tubes

Be a real influencer: Messages From the Dead

I. Keep the main thing, the main thing.

The gospel

Paul wanted one thing to be foremost about him.

REFERENCE

I Corinthians 15:3-4

Remember the focus you had in Belize. That trip isn’t just some experience you had. It is training you for what it looks like to live a life on mission every where you go.

Jesus really does hold the keys to life, death, and eternity. Trust Him and watch the effect it will have on the rest of your life.

Keep coming back. The secret is keep coming back.

Christianity is a life of repentance. (Luther quote)

Preach the gospel to yourself

You may be very sure people fall in private long before they fall in public. They are backsliders on their knees long before they backslide openly in the eyes of the world. Like Peter, they first disregard the Lord’s warning to watch and pray, and then like Peter, their strength is gone, and in the hour of temptation they deny their Lord. The world takes notice of their fall, and scoffs loudly. But the world knows nothing of the real reason.

A Call to Prayer

2. Find your joy and identity in Jesus alone.

Not in career

“Our ultimate validation can never be found in our accomplishments but only in Christ’s.” - Jared. C. Wilson

not in relationships

Both of these will hurt you and let you down. Both are good but neither is suffiecient.

Many have said that God has a great plan for your life. He does. The thing that some won’t tell you is that God’s great plan for your life might involve cancer or job loss or widowhood. If your joy is found in Jesus, you can walk through any kind of suffering.

3. Join a healthy local church.

Obeying the one anothers

4. Ask for help — Humility

remember the sunscreen smearing

5. Be prepared to defend the faith you have.

the gospel came to you because it was on its way to someone else… J.D. Greear

Apologetics is the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life.

Cornelius Van Til; William Edgar

Training in apologetics will help to make you a bold and fearless witness for Christ.

William Lane Craig

Showing Christianity to be true will involve both defensive (negative) apologetics and offensive (positive) apologetics.

William Lane Craig

The goal of apologetics is to evoke or strengthen faith, not merely to bring intellectual persuasion. Directed toward unbelievers, it is an aspect of evangelism; toward believers, it is training in godliness.

John Frame

6. Be thankful

remember what God has done

remember those who He has brought into your life.

No one is there by accident.

You are in someone else’s life for a reason.

7.

8. Serve Jesus with whatever you do

whether plumber, postman, preacher, or princess

Be ready and willing, like Sam getting thrown into a skit at the last minute in front of a hundred kids.

9. Keep learning

read and listen

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 3034 Epigram on Learning

Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

—Winston Churchill

find someone to disciple you

One night in Belize I asked you who the person was in your life that you looked up to as an example of living for and loving Jesus.

find out what those you look up to are reading

Read “old dead guys” Why?

You won’t wake up and read about them on social media disqualifying themselves. Their lives are done. The book is close and we know what we know.

Be a good Berean and measure everything against the standard of the Word of God.

10. Be present. Remember not to lock your roommates out.

Be in the moment. Don’t view every life event through the phone screen. Look at what is right in front of you. Watch more of the concert without filming it.

Whatever you do for God, do it with all your heart and mind and strength. In other things be moderate, and dread running into extremes. In soul matters fear moderation just as you would fear the plague.

Practical Religion

11. Fear God

reverent awe

Stand in awe with mouth agape at the majesty of God.

Fear nothing else.

No man was ever sorry that he served the Lord. No man ever said at the end of his days, “I have read my Bible too much, I have thought of God too much, I have prayed too much, I have been too concerned about my soul. Oh, no! The people of God would always say, “Had I my life over again, I would walk far more closely with God than ever I have done. I am sorry that I have not served God better—but I am not sorry that I have served Him. The way of Christ may have its cross. But it is a way of pleasantness, and a path of peace.”

Repentance

12. Stay close to your family. Your siblings.

lay off your parents

they did the best they knew how

13. Don’t hold a grudge.

Be quick to forgive.

Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

But also it is a symptom of a deeper sin problem in your heart. Grace is the answer.

I lost a bit of weight in the last few years. I learned that I was carrying around a lot of pounds that were holding me back from enjoying life the way I wanted. Unforgiveness will do that. It weighs you down. It’s a symptom that you haven’t truly understood the forgiveness that we have in Jesus.

14. Get married and have kids.

To live a quiet and godly life serving in a local church, raising your kids and working a job is a noble task. Desiring a family is good and noble. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. That’s how to have real influence that lasts.

J.C. Ryle, in his book “Thoughts for Young Men”, wrote, “Let it not be said of you at last, as it is of so many, that your youth was a blunder, your manhood a struggle, and your old age a regret.”

1. “Every day you are either getting nearer to God, or further off. Every year that you continue impenitent, the wall of division between you and heaven becomes higher and thicker, and the gulf to be crossed deeper and broader. Oh, dread the hardening effect of constant lingering in sin!…If you seek not the Lord when young, the strength of habit is such that you will probably never seek him at all” (11-12).

Conclusion:

Oh, and one more thing: You should definitely wear sunscreen.