Just A Few Jokes

Yesterday I received a forwarded e-mail with some “Christian one-liners”:

Some people are kind, polite, and sweet-spirited
until you try to sit in their pews.

That’s something a visiting preacher just included in a sermon. I heard it as I was comfortably ensconced in my regular right side, third row, where I sit every service. Fortunately, I know that I will be kind, welcoming and smiling when I welcome new people who are seated in that spot – it’s happened before.

It is easier to preach ten sermons
Than it is to live one.

That’s not a joke. That’s true. Preaching is really easy – simply use scripture. It can be read aloud and have the same awesome truth as when it was first given. Living what we read, believe, is much more difficult.

Some minds are like concrete
Thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

That’s no joke, either. While there is absolute truth, we must be open to His word as we learn more and more from one scripture. Take the Sermon on the Mount as an example. When I first read it, I did not realize the progression from poor in spirit to the point where one is reviled for their beliefs. It took several lessons before I could see that Jesus went up into a mountain and called His disciples – was this sermon for them, not multitudes?

We're called to be witnesses, not lawyers or judges.

Again, where’s the joke? Non-believers are very quick to quote scripture:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7:1 KJV)

I’m always tempted to come back with the following verse, but that’s not what Christ gave as the Great Commission:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:20 KJV)

“All things” would include Matthew 7:1, so we’d better be certain we teach it and not ignore it while we would like to focus on 7:2.

God loves everyone,
but probably prefers 'fruits of the spirit' over 'religious nuts!'

Now that one did bring a smile – but, again, there’s truth here. We’ve been told what the fruit of the spirit is:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV)

We’ve also been told specifically what pure religion is:

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (James 1:27 KJV)

That goes back to living that one sermon, right?