2025 GLCB Wonder Junction VBS Commencement Message

My name is Prospector Tom and I'd like to welcome you all to Grace Life Church of Brookhaven's Vacation Bible School right here at the Wonder Junction. Now me and Ms. Patty, where's Ms. Patty? Yes she is, way back in the back back there. We operate the Wonder Junction gold mine and that's where we had the Wonder Junction gold mine Bible time with all these beautiful young fellas and fillies the last couple of nights. And what we talked about, the theme of our Vacation Bible School this year, we had two parts to it. The first one was to marvel at Jesus. Young people help me with the second part. What's the second part? To live for His glory.

That's right. Marvel at Jesus and live for His glory. And we had a theme verse that covered our entire Bible time. Bible school, is it going to be up there? Somebody going to put that verse up there for me? Yeah, we can say it out loud. Now something we did every night, when we got ready to recite scripture or pray, Prospector Tom kind of chilled out and my silly voice went away and my normal voice came because anytime we read scripture or pray, right young people, we don't want to do that in a silly voice. We want to do that in our normal voice. Help me out, y'all. Let's say our theme verse. Ready? One, two, three.

From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised. I always forget to do that part. Sorry. So we recited that every single day to set the standard to praise. The name of the Lord should be praised from the time the sun goes up till the time it goes down. And if you do that, you'll probably do it in your sleep while the sun is down, which would be good. Then we had a specific verse for every day. Do we have John 20 verse 31 queued up? Our verse for today. There it is right there. Help me out. One, two, three.

But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. John 2031. John 2031. Sorry. So why do we do all that? Why do we talk about those things? Why do we learn on the first night of our Bible time that Jesus Christ, yes, He is the Son of God, but He's God Himself. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the creator of everything. Jesus created that big old sun that you see up in the sky in the middle of the daytime, and He put it just right so that it's not so hot that it burns you up. It's just hot enough to ripen your tomatoes. Ain't that something?

A few inches either way, we'd either be toast or froze slapped to death. But He put it right where it needed to be. What kind of God must you be to make something that's that warm and that big from 93 million miles away, it'll still burn your eyeballs out if you look at it too long. But that God that created the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that's in them came down from the perfection of heaven to live amongst His creation. And He was born as a what, young people? A little bitty baby. Born as a little bitty baby. And we talked about that. We talked about that He wasn't just some character in history. He's God.

And then the next night we talked about how that creator that came down and was cloaked in the skin of a little tiny baby and had to be picked up and had to be fed and all of that didn't stay a baby, right? He grew just like you all did. Y'all didn't stay a baby. You grew. You learned how to walk and learned how to talk and learned how to feed yourself. Most of you, Isaac. We had to learn and we looked at how He grew. The Bible says He grew in wisdom. He grew in stature. And He grew in favor with God and man.

And we needed to learn that just like Jesus, the creator of the universe, progressed in His earthly life, we need to be doing the same thing. When He was 12 years old, His mom and daddy thought He was lost. Can I take something? Jesus ain't never been lost. He knew right where He was supposed to be. His mom and daddy just thought He was lost. And where did they find Him? They found Him up in the temple talking to the smart religious teachers, asking them questions. And He was even answering some of their questions and they were blown, blown away with how sharp this little fellow was at 12 years old.

So young people, maybe your mom and daddy need to find you sitting on the front view talking to the pastor one day, asking him good questions and giving him good answers about the Bible. So we are supposed to grow in our Christian life, right? As we're born again, it's like we're a little bitty baby like He was. But He didn't stay a little bitty baby and we ain't supposed to stay a little bitty baby either. We start out drinking milk, basic truths in the Bible, but we should be progressing to the meatier things and become sanctified. That's a big old Bible word. You'll learn that one day.

And then last night, I think last night might have been my favorite. Because we talked about the power that Jesus had. How much power does Jesus have? He's got all of it, folks. He's all powerful. Jesus Christ is the Almighty. And we talk about how when you're Almighty and you've got all power, something that maybe we don't think enough about is that means His power never gets any less. We talk about how maybe if you saw a big old strong man show up up here on the street and pick one of the front ends of one of them pickup trucks up, that'd be pretty impressive.

And he might put that thing down and be huffing and puffing and you tell him, "Do it again." And he might be a little bit harder. "Oh, you might get it up at that far second time." How many times do you reckon he's going to be able to do that, though? Not too many. If he can do it once, he'd be lucky to do it twice or three times. But God ain't like that. Jesus ain't like that. He's just as strong after creating everything as he was before it. He didn't have to wipe his brow. He didn't sweat. He didn't get tired. Yeah, the Bible says he rested on the seventh day, but he wasn't resting because he was tired, folks.

He was resting as a pattern for us. But we learned last night that he's got power over all kind of stuff, according to the Bible. He's got power over sickness. The Bible's full of stories where all he did was just touch somebody and they got willed. We learned that he's got power over nature. You ever seen anybody walk out in the middle of a thunderstorm and look up and just say, "That's it? That's enough? Stop?" And it did? Well, that's what he did. There's a story of it, riding in a boat across the ocean, not the ocean, a big old lake. And old waves coming in it. He's back there sleeping. He ain't worried. He's God.

What you got to worry about? And the disciples was worried, though. They were scared to death. And they said, "Teacher, wake up. Ain't you scared?" And he just looked up at the wind and the waves and said, basically, this is Prospector Tom's paraphrase, basically said, "Knock it off. That's enough." And immediately the wind died down and the rain stopped and all them waves stopped. Who can do that? Who can do something like that? Prospector Tom can't. No, but God can. And then we learned that he's got power over sin. And we learned the story of that paralyzed fellow that his friends dug a hole in the roof.

And we explained, parents, for the kids not to be trying to dig a hole in your roof. But they dug a hole in the roof and lowered that fellow down there, and Jesus told him, "Your sins are forgiven." And the doggone religious leaders wanted to kill him on that. Why? Because they knew that meant he was claiming to be God. But he also healed that fellow. We also learned that he has power over death. There's folks in the Bible, you couldn't stay dead if Jesus touched you.

You know, we talked about them old rules where the Jewish people back in them days, if they touched a dead person, it made them ceremony unclean and they had to go take 150 baths and that's too many, but they'd have to take a bunch. And they had to do all these other things to make themselves clean. When Jesus touched a dead body, that dead body didn't make him unclean. He made that dead body not dead no more. When he touched that dead body, it didn't have a choice but to come alive. He did that with a little 12-year-old girl. He did that with his friend Lazarus. He didn't touch Lazarus, he just hollered at him.

And Lazarus had been dead, they told him, "Lord, he stinks. He's been dead four days." That dude's been dead four days. And Jesus said, "Lazarus, come out of there." And he got up and come out. And you know what? He couldn't have done nothing else because the voice of God had called him forth. So, and Ms. Paddy brought out something I thought that was beautiful, as beautiful as it is amazing. Jesus Christ didn't just have power over the death of other people. He had power over his own death. Now, we like to think about, and it's good and biblically correct to think that the Father resurrected Jesus.

It's biblically correct to think about the Holy Spirit resurrecting Jesus. But ladies and gentlemen, the Lord Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead. You know how I know that? Because he told the people in the Bible that nobody takes my life away from me. He said, "I lay my life, I've got the power to lay my life down, and I've got the power to do what?" Pick it up again. He picked his own life up again. So he's got power over the death of other people, and he's got power over his own death. Death can't reign in the presence of God Almighty in the flesh of Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what's that all about? Why are we talking about all this?

We also told him last night, the reason we talk about all this, because he's not only got power over all that stuff, he's got the power to make you a whole new person. And what I pray that the Lord will bring to your attention, young people and mamas and daddies alike, is that your only hope in front of a holy God is that he makes you a whole new person. Because the person that you're born to be would get burned up. Jesus had one more power, and that was the power to live a perfect life. Did you know that the Bible says that in order to make it into heaven, you've got to be perfect? Anybody done that? None of us have, but Jesus Christ was.

He had the power to obey every single law that was laid down by his Father. He lived his entire life without ever committing a sin. Sometimes we don't think enough about why that is. We've heard since we were little fellas ourselves in vacation Bible school and Sunday school and whatnot, that Jesus died for our sins. He died for the sins of those who would believe. And that's absolutely true. And so that's one half of the great exchange that took place on the cross. On that cross, the first thing he did was, sorry about that, he took my sin on his shoulders and he suffered in my place.

He paid the price for me breaking the law, but that's not all of it. Remember I said you had to be perfect? Even if I'm forgiven, I'm still not perfect. I'm still not perfect. All that garbage, all that sin I committed. So the other half of that great exchange, and it's the most unfair thing that's ever happened ever, he took my sin. You know what he gave me? He gave me his perfection. He gave me his perfect righteousness. So little children, when I stand before God, God will not see all the bad things that I've done anymore. He will see the perfect righteousness of Christ that's wrapped around me like a robe.

It won't be like this old ratty looking flannel shirt I got on or these big old fat man overalls I got on. It'll be like a perfectly clean righteousness. Now, some of you may be thinking, I don't need that. Let me ask you just a handful of questions to see if that's true. The Bible says most men will proclaim each one his own goodness. We all kind of think we're pretty good. And that's because we compare ourselves to people like Adolf Hitler and super, super bad criminals. And yeah, we might look all right when we compare to folks like that. But that's the wrong comparison. You should compare yourself to God's perfect law. Ask yourself this.

How many lies have you told in your life? By the way, just one makes you a liar, right? How many murders does it take to be a murderer? Just one. And the Bible says all liars will have their part in a lake that burns with fire. It says no murderer will enter the kingdom of heaven. Have you ever stolen anything even if it's small regardless of its value, even if it's a paperclip? If you've stolen a paperclip from work, you're a thief in the eyes of God. Perfection is a hard standard. If you've ever taken the Lord's name in vain, you're a blasphemer.

If you've ever looked at a person of the opposite gender with unclean thoughts, you're an adulterer, the Bible says. That's what Jesus said. You've heard it said of old, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But I tell you, whoever looks at a woman like that has committed adultery with her already in his heart. How are we doing? How's your scar card looking? Don't answer out loud.

If you will but believe in the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ, the all-powerful Creator who came to the earth as a baby, who grew in stature and wisdom, who died on a cross to pay the penalty for sin, if you will just believe that that applied to you, God will clean your conscience like... I'm going to tell you something. Pastor, is there anything sweeter in the universe than a clean conscience? There's nothing sweeter than a clean conscience. God will give you a clean conscience, and He will give you a clean slate, and then you can begin, like that little baby we learned about, begin to grow in wisdom and stature.

You can begin to grow through the Word of God, and He can begin to sanctify you, and you can begin to tell others about Christ. So, yeah, we've had some fun. We've had some fun, and I'm glad we did have some fun. I had a fun time, but I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something.

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I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I remember when a 20-something year old or 30-something year old or whatever age is born again and they stand up and give their testimony in front of the church. They talk about how I remember when Prospector Tom and Ms. Patty talked about this and such. I remember when Ms. Chelsea took a poo noodle and bent it over and made it look like a horse's head and shared the gospel. These things can have eternal impact because you are eternal and all-powerful. Lord, I just pray that what we've said here tonight so far will make an impact.

I pray that people within the sound of my voice would bend their proud necks and humble themselves before you and realize they're lost and they need your mercy. They would cry out for your mercy because, Lord, I know you won't disappoint. You are eager to save and eager to show mercy. We love you. We marvel at you. May we live our life to your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.