Theology of Comedy

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Well, thank you, Pastor, for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to talk to your men.

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And I want to begin tonight the talk on comedy in the Christian life by telling a joke.

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But I want to give you a choice. I have a very short joke, or I have a longer joke.

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Neither one are too long, but the shorter joke is very short, the longer joke is long. And I will give you the choice, which one you want to hear, understanding that the short joke is the one that's most offensive.

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So raise your hand if you want the short joke. See, I knew it was a group of men.

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Recently a man with no legs stole my camouflage jacket. He can hide, but he can't run.

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See, that's funny, and yet offensive. You want to hear the longer one?

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A lady's going to work every morning, and she has to pass a pet shop. Every time she passes the pet shop, there's a bird sitting on the window of the pet shop, and the bird looks at her and says,

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You are so ugly. She passes it on the way there, on the way home. You are so ugly.

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Finally, she gets tired of it. She goes to the proprietor of the organization. She says, Please, make this bird stop.

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So that night, the man brings the bird inside. He sits him down. He says, Listen, I know you like to sit on the windowsill, but this lady's very offended.

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If you continue to tell her she's ugly, she's going to be mad, and I can't let that happen. So if I put you back out there, you can't tell her, as she walks by, that she's ugly.

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So the next morning, the lady's walking by. The bird's standing on the windowsill, waiting for her to come.

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He looks at her, she looks at him, and he goes, You know. A little over a year ago,

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I posted a video which connected with a lot of folks. I think some of you have seen it.

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This is the video that started it all. It's only a minute long, so I thought

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I could share it with you if you haven't seen it. Okay, guys, thank you for coming to our interdenominational meeting. And I just want to begin by saying

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I think it's very important that we no longer allow secondary issues to separate us. Absolutely. Our mutual love of Jesus should definitely help me overcome all of your deficient understanding of the

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Scriptures. Hey, is that a beer? Don't start with me. Bro, one of my church members prophesied over me

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Sunday. He said this was going to be the year of unity. So I knew you were going to call. So what's going on in everybody's churches?

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Dude, check it out. Our church just installed a 60 -foot water slide baptismal. They go down at 55 miles an hour and bam!

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And for the kids, we put in a fire truck baptistry. That way, when they get baptized, sirens go off.

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It's woo! Man, it's a party. What ages are those baptisms? Bro, we got them as young as three years old in the baptistry.

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You realize if you keep baptizing those young ages, you're going to have to apologize to the Presbyterian, right? Who could that be?

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Hey, guys, can I come in? No! All right, so if you don't know who

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I am, that's it. I posted that video on TikTok. It got 90 ,000 views in less than 24 hours.

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So somebody thought it was funny. And so from there came the shot heard around the world.

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Now the shot heard around the world was, I'm not going to show you the whole video, but it was this video. And if you haven't seen it, it's me having the denominations go shooting.

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So the Baptist has the good old -fashioned revolver. The 1911 belongs to the Presbyterian because superior theology requires superior weaponry, right?

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And so all of that made a joke. And I knew that something had clicked with people when a friend of mine who had gone on a missions trip to South America calls me.

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He said, Keith, I was in South America, and some guy came up to me with a phone.

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And he says, have you ever seen this guy? And he goes, yeah, that's my teacher. He was one of the students in our academy.

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And it was like, OK, this is getting some attention. It's gotten around. And then came that fateful opportunity.

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Oh, wait. Did you see the video? Did you all see the shooting video? Yes, sir. OK. I did want to show you this because we're all friends now.

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This is the mistake on the video. Superior theology should be able to recognize perfection. And glop is perfection.

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You forgot to put the round in the chamber. We've got to get moving.

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I think you should let the school bus go by. We're shooting this in my dad's yard.

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So I like to shoot a gun. Wait. You think somebody with superior theology would be able to buy.

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Because glop, that's perfection. Ah. What the? So it doesn't always look as good as it does in the final product.

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It takes a little while. This was my opportunity where I got introduced to the

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CREC and all the stuff that goes along with that. Because James White, as many of you know, is friends with Doug Wilson.

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Well, James White and I have been friends for many years. And the last time I saw him, we were in Tullahoma together at a conference.

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And I said, hey, wouldn't it be funny if I dressed up like Doug Wilson and we did a sweater vest dialogue?

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I do not look like Doug Wilson. I'm much heavier and much more handsome.

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No, but it was funny, right? And so what came out of that was the joke, the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson, if anybody's ever heard of that, meaning the slightly off -brand, slightly cheaper version of Doug Wilson.

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Well, then came the crown. Yes, that is a

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Burger King crown. And what this is is a group called

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Eschatology Matters had me on to talk about amillennialism, because I am an amillennialist, and so are you.

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All you post -millennialists, you're just amillennialism with extra steps. You know it. You're fancy amillennialists.

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You know it, and I know it. Well, I said that. And so Doug Wilson and I debated, sort of.

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And I became more and more the Harbor Freight Doug. So this is me and him and his lovely wife who photobombed us in the back.

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But this is us together. In October, I did my first stand -up comedy routine, something

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I had wanted to do literally since I was a little boy. I've always loved comedy, and I had an opportunity at a fundraiser for a local ministry to come in and do stand -up.

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And I enjoyed it, and I hope to get to do it again at some point, because it is a lot of fun. I have a ministry that is a podcast.

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This is not as funny, but it is real. You're Calvinist. That's my name on Twitter, and that's the ministry part of all this because a lot of the funny, and you'll be amazed how many people say,

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I came because you were funny, but I stayed because you were teaching something important. I came for the funny, but I stayed for the theology.

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And it really did have a value in that. So out of that, Pastor contacted me last

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October, right, was when you reached out to me, and said, I want you to come and talk about comedy as something that's valuable for men, as something that's valuable for Christians.

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And I thought about it, and I really did have to think about how I know in my heart why it's valuable for me, but translating that into why it would be valuable for you or why it matters was a little harder, and so I had to sit down, and I actually studied for this.

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I actually prepared. I brought notes even. Nobody seems impressed. I just want you to know,

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I didn't just come here for the good chicken. I'm just saying, I came. And so tonight, we're going to talk about a theology of comedy, a theology of comedy.

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And I hope throughout to make you laugh, but also to make you think about what we mean when we say a theology of comedy.

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Now, the verse that we're going to look at tonight is Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 22.

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So if you have your Bibles, and you want to open them to Proverbs 17, 22, you can. You don't have to. This isn't a sermon.

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You don't have to sit there and hold your Bibles open, but if you want to look at it, I have it on the screen in the

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King James Version, and it says this. It says, A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.

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So this is our text for the evening. This is what we're going to look at.

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We're going to address a theology of comedy. And if you think about it, in theological lingo, we have a name for everything.

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Theology proper is the study of the person and nature of God. Christology is the study of Christ. Pneumatology is the study of Newman from Seinfeld.

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That wasn't even a good joke, but it was there. Pneumatology is the study of? The Holy Spirit.

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Right? If you go to some universities, some universities, they call it Pneumatology, because they leave the

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P. Yeah. Listen to some teachers. They don't say Pneuma. They say Pneuma. And it's just weird, but I promise it happens.

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So pneumatology is the study of the Spirit. Soteriology? Study of salvation. But comedy is not something we usually associate with theology, and there's not really a word for the study or the doctrine of comedy.

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In fact, I don't think such a thing really exists. In fact, some people think all comedy is bad.

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And later on tonight in my talk, I want to talk about why I think that's not true. But there are people who don't think we should smile.

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They don't think we should crack jokes. They don't think we should make fun of anyone. As Pastor said, kind of my bread and butter,

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I make fun of everybody. Some people say, this one person said, I just don't like that you don't make fun of Presbyterians.

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I said, first of all, I'm not a Presbyterian. But I still do. I make fun of everybody.

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I'm an equal opportunity offender. I make fun of everybody. Because I want us to stop taking ourselves so seriously.

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And I want us to be able to step back and smile about some of the things that make us unique in the body of Christ.

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But before we get much further into that, let's look at this proverb. This proverb is what is known as an antithetical parallelism.

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See, I went to seminary. I graduated. Antithetical means what?

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It means it's going to give you the opposite of something. It's going to tell you one thing. It's going to make a thesis.

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And then it's going to give an antithesis. It's going to say something that is. And then it's going to say something that is the opposite of that thing.

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We have different types of parallelism in the scripture. We have synonymous parallelism. Psalm 120 says,

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Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and deceitful tongues. What's a lying lip? It's a deceitful tongue.

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It's the same thing. It's a synonymous parallelism. But we also have what's known as the antithetical parallelism.

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And that's what this is. We see a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.

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That's the opposite. And the two objects in view that are being contrasted are a merry heart and a broken spirit.

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The very first sentence says, A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. The NIV, that nearly inspired version, says,

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I'm not a King James onlyist. I know I'm in Pensacola, though. If I was, I would be the man. Because Pensacola is the heart of it.

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I can't drive anywhere out here without seeing 1611 on the bumper stickers. People are very proud of that year.

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I'm right. Y 'all know I'm right. That's uncomfortable. I don't care. It's funny. Cheerful heart is good medicine is what the

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NIV says. The New English translation says, A cheerful heart brings healing.

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Interesting way of translating it. The word translated medicine is only found in this verse.

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This is one of those words which is only found in one place in the Bible, and it's just this place.

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So translators have to come to this word and try to figure out what that word means when it says a cheerful heart is this thing, and this thing is only mentioned once.

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They have to go outside and look at how this word is used in other places and bring that in and try to understand how this word is being used.

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And the word is used for healing, relief, and medicine in other places.

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So certain commentaries would say that that's exactly what it is saying. It's saying that a cheerful heart is like medicine.

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Kiel and Delitz, which is just another commentary, it says, The heart is the center of the individual life, and the condition and the tone of the heart communicates itself to this life, even to its outermost circumference.

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The spirit is the power of self -consciousness, which, according as it is lifted up or broken, also lifts up or breaks down the condition of the body.

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That was a long sentence to basically say, your countenance, your condition of your heart can affect the condition of the rest of your body.

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We're not talking about that blood pumping muscle. We're talking about the condition of your disposition. The disposition of the heart can actually affect your body.

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Now, I'm going to quote from a book that's not in the Bible. Don't get mad, but there are books that were written outside of the

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Bible that still have wisdom, even though they're not inspired and they're not infallible.

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But have you ever read from the book of Ecclesiasticus? Hands? A couple. All right.

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That's apocryphal. Well, in that book it says, the gladness of the heart is the life of man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongs his days.

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Well, it's basically saying the same thing, that a merry heart is like medicine. And this passage reminds me of something

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I really came to realize as I was putting out funny videos and I was getting people's attention.

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And let me just say this, because I did skip this a moment ago. Comedy has been a big part of my life since I was a small child.

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I've loved humor since I was a kid. I've always tried to make people laugh. I've always tried to make people have a smile on their face.

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It's just part of who I am. It's something I enjoy. My favorite comedian growing up, if I said his name, it might offend some of you now, because he's not a great guy anymore.

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But at one time he was the greatest guy in the world, and that's Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby's, you know, not a great dude.

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But let me tell you something, I used to go to bed at night listening to Bill Cosby's stand -up tapes, and I would listen to them for hours, because he could tell a story like no one else could tell a story.

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And those stories stuck with me, that humor stuck with me. And at 16 years old, you know what I did as a job?

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Most of my friends were working at McDonald's or delivering pizza. You know what my job was? I was a professional magician.

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At 16 years old I was a magician. That's what I did. And it doesn't sound like a real job. I worked for Deland Entertainment.

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I did conventions. I did all kinds of things where I would go and do magic, because I loved to make people smile, and I loved to make people laugh.

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And I loved to bring a merry heart. That was just part of my disposition. So getting back to this concept of a merry heart does good like a medicine,

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I've come to find that comedy is therapy. It's a form of therapy.

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And I want to tell you two stories. Neither of these stories is funny, but both of these stories,

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I hope, will at least in a way help you understand what I mean when I say comedy is therapy.

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And by the way, I have permission to tell both of these stories, because both of these stories are not funny.

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They're very personal, very hard, difficult stories. The first one is one of my dearest friends in the world.

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He's one of my elders at our church, and he and I have been friends for ten years.

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In one year period of time, he lost two sons. He lost one, and then within a year later, he lost a second son.

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Both of them, one was 21, I think the other was 18. That's not funny.

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And it was probably the most difficult thing I've ever, as a minister, had to minister to.

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The second call took my breath away.

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I almost fainted when he called me, because I was out of town. And I was in Alabama.

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I had to drive all the way back that night so that I could get there at 4 a .m. the next morning and sit with him, because his son was still alive, but was dying from the injuries.

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And so I sat in the room with him, and we cried, and we prayed, and we talked. And it was very hard.

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The days after his son died, he wanted me to come to his house every day.

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And so I did. And for the first son who died, I was there probably for a week.

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Second son, it was even more. And I would go to his house, and I would just sit and talk.

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And because I am who I am, we would inevitably talk about things that have some humor in them.

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And he would smile, and we would laugh, and then we'd stop laughing, and we'd cry.

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But then we'd laugh again, and then we'd cry again. But he said, every night when

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I left, he said, it got real dark when you left.

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He said, because when you're here, I can smile. When you're here,

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I can laugh. But when you leave, it's like I can't laugh when you're not here.

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So come back tomorrow. So I said, comedy is therapy. I'm not standing up being a fool with this guy.

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I'm not joking, even though I do think one of the best jokes I ever told was during that week. Because he asked me, we were sitting there again.

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This is one of the smartest theological guys I know. He is a tremendous theologian.

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And he asked me in that week, he says, do you believe in infralapsarianism or superlapsarianism? And I said,

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I don't care. And he just thought that was hilarious. And if you don't get it, he got it, because he's the pastor.

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But he said, which are you? I don't care. And he just thought that was funny. And he still talks about that to this day.

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He just thought that was hilarious, that I didn't care. So that's the first story.

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If you want to know what I mean when I say comedy is therapy, if you want to know what I believe this verse means when it says, a merry heart doeth good like a medicine,

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I think there is something to be said for the countenance of the soul, that we can actually help each other smile when things are hard.

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And we can smile together. Second one is this week. Second story literally happened yesterday.

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My wife's mother is very ill. I thought I wasn't going to get to come tonight. About a week and a half ago, my wife's mother began to get very, her health went down very quickly.

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And she has emphysema, COPD, and congestive heart failure.

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So it's just a terrible situation for her to be in. Her oxygen levels fell to 70, really bad.

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Fingers turned blue, lips blue. I mean, really bad situation. So every day this week, my wife has had to be at the hospital with her mother, trying to figure out what they can do.

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It's a terrible thing. My wife asked me, please go. I want you to go.

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And so I drove today. I'm going to drive back first thing in the morning so I can be back with her. But yesterday, her mother asked for a piece of pizza.

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And the nurses said, she can't have pizza. It's not good for her.

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And I'm like, dang the law. You give that woman a piece of pizza. You give her whatever she wants.

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I'm on the phone with my wife. I said, you don't deny that woman pizza. Well, in the midst of this, my father -in -law, he said to my wife, he said,

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I haven't had pizza in 50 years. He said, because 50 years ago, I was eating pizza and drinking moonshine.

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And I got so sick that I spent the night throwing up the pizza. And I told

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God that if he got me through it, I would never eat pizza again in my life.

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So it's been 50 years. And my wife said, dad, don't you think it was the moonshine and not the pizza?

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But I just love that story because in the midst of this terrible thing, they're in the hospital room.

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They're there with my mother -in -law who is reaching the point of the end of her life.

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And the doctor said it would probably be within six months. It's a terribly difficult time.

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They still were able to smile. My wife was still able. And my wife's so much funnier than me.

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If you like the videos, give my wife all the credit. She helps me write all the scripts. And she helps me do all this.

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But when she said to her dad, don't you think it was the moonshine? And she came home and told me that story. I just fell over laughing.

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I think that's exactly her personality. So when I say comedy is like therapy,

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I think it really is. Laughter is the best medicine. We've heard that all of our lives.

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But do you realize that that is not just a colloquialism? That's not just a phrase. It actually has some truth behind it.

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It has some science behind it. According to helpguide .org, which is a mental health and wellness site, it says this,

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Laughter decreases stress hormones, increases immune cells, and infection -fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.

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Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural feel -good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well -being and can even temporarily relieve pain.

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Laughter may even help you live longer. A study in Norway found that people with a strong sense of humor outlived those who don't laugh as much.

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The difference was particularly notable for people battling cancer. Comedy is therapy.

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Comedy can have a therapeutic value. So if somebody says, what you're doing has value, Keith, you're just making people laugh on the

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Internet. I hope so! Because it's doing them good. I hope so.

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Because it's what I want to do. Because this is the opposite. Remember, it's an antithetical parallelism.

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It means it gives you the thesis and then gives the antithesis. And the antithesis is, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.

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The drying of the bones is being contrasted with the idea of medicine. It's being contrasted with the idea of healing.

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And a broken spirit can actually be bad for the body. Jameson Fawcett Brown, which is just one of those old commentaries that we all use because it's free and it's online.

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Tell me I'm lying. Everybody uses it because it's free! Get it on BibleHub.

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But if you look this verse up, this is what it says. It says that when this says that it dries the bones, it's as if the marrow were exhausted.

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As if the marrow of the bones were exhausted. It destroys life.

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It destroys vigor. And I think it is a tragedy, a genuine tragedy, to live a life devoid of joy, happiness, humor, and laughter.

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I genuinely think it is. Not everybody has to be a comedian. Not everybody has to do the kind of foolishness

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I do. But to live a life devoid of humor, to live a life devoid of laughter, is not what

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I think God created us to be. One of the things I like about CREC, and we're not part of the

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CREC, I'm the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson, so I'm the Harbor Freight CREC, I guess. Off -brand theology.

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But one thing I like about you guys is, and I got to go to Fight Laugh Feast this year, and I got to see it more on a larger scale, but I see it here too, is

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I see men who are sitting together, laughing together, talking together, poking at each other, but in a way that's loving, giving each other that loving, brotherly encouragement.

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It's a good thing. So when somebody asks the question, Is comedy a sin? Is comedy bad?

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Should we avoid all things comedic and only be serious all the time? Well, let's look again to the

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Scripture. Because that's what they do. The people who say that will often run to the

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Scripture, and they'll say, See, the word comedy comes from komos, and komos means to revel or to celebrate.

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And if you find that word in the Scripture, it's always in the negative. Romans 13, 13, and Galatians 5, 21, and 1

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Peter 4, 3 is the word komos, and it's always in the negative. And that's true.

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But if you find the translation and how that word is translated, it's almost always translated as orgy.

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It's almost always translated as carousing. That's a far cry from what we mean when we talk about comedy.

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Some cite the Bible's command to be sober -minded. Ephesians 5, 4 says, Neither let filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor jesting, which are not convenient.

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Don't let those things happen. And they say, Well, you're a jester. You're jesting. Therefore, you're wrong.

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But if you look at that verse in its context, and by the way, you should look at every verse in its context, because that's how you figure out what it means.

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It says this, and this is Ephesians 5, beginning of verse 1. It says, But be therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself as an offering and a sacrifice to God as a sweet -smelling savor.

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But fornication and uncleanness and covetousness let not be once named among you as becoming the saints, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which is not convenient, but rather give thanks.

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So in what context is this jesting? It is in the context of filth, lewdness, and unwholesomeness.

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Beloved brothers, there are lines we shouldn't cross. There are areas that we ought not go.

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And that's something I have to deal with, because I make comedy for a lot of people, right?

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And there have been times where I'll put a joke in something, and later I'll say,

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No, that might be funny, but that is not representative of Christ.

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So I have to be honest with myself, and say, Okay, there are things I am not going to do.

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There are certain jokes that are out of place for believers. There are certain things that we ought not be about.

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And that's the jesting I believe Paul is forbidding there. But not simply making each other laugh, because a

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Christian man is not called to be a Stoic. You understand who the Stoics were, right?

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They eliminated all of the worldly joy of life, all of the things that are pleasurable.

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They sought to eliminate those things as bad things, and in doing so, they sought to demonstrate their own discipline and fidelity to what they considered to be the truth.

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And we have people like that through Christian history. They were called the ascetics. And you know what

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Paul says in Colossians? We are not that. He says we're not the ascetics. We're not the

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Stoics. That's not who we are. In fact, the early Christians, they considered them, they didn't know what to think of them, because they actually gathered together to feast.

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And they had these agape meals, and they had wine, and they had bread, and they had all of this, and it was a feast, and it was joyful, and they were singing, and they were enjoying themselves, and they were laughing, as the

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God who they worship also laughs. Now, we are not to be

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Stoics. But also a man cannot be a constant clown either.

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A man who can never be serious can never be trusted. But one must not assume that funny is the opposite of serious.

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It's not. Funny is the opposite of not funny. G .K.

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Chesterton. This is a quote from Chesterton's works.

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By the way, if you are a fan of Doug Wilson, which I assume many of you are, he's a big fan of G .K. Chesterton. So I'm glad I found this quote.

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He's quoting about a man, and he says, Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious, but only funny, because Mr.

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McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and nothing else.

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By the way, that's funny. But it's also true. And I love this quote, and this is a book, if you're interested in a book on this subject, there's a book called

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What's So Funny About God? by Steve Wilkins, and he says this. He says, Perhaps the main reason Christian scholars haven't taken humor seriously is that they don't think that humor is serious.

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Let me tell you something about humor. Humor is serious. Humor is sometimes one of the best ways to shine light on something that is ridiculous.

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And again, I'll quote Doug Wilson. Have you ever heard the message Doug gave called Winsome Tartness?

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Oh, I don't see everybody doing this. Go home. Have you heard it, brother? 2018.

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He preached a message called Winsome Tartness. And what he was saying is this. He said,

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The world is going crazy, and people are doing all kinds of foolish things. He said, And there are those among us who want to approach the world with a very sophisticated apologetic response.

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So you see someone who is a man obviously dressed up like a woman, and you want to give a sophisticated apologetic response when what we should be saying is,

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I don't think so, Skippy. That should be the response. That is funny, but it's also true.

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Because we look at the ridiculous, and we respond, I don't think so,

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Skippy. I'm not doing this. You are trying to take me down the road. I'm not going with you. I make fun of United Methodists, not because I don't love them, but because their church, in many ways, has become a joke.

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Now if you're a United Methodist, or your parents are, whatever, I'm not trying to offend you. There are good Methodists out there, but the denomination has become a parody of itself.

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And how do you shine a light on that? Standing in a pulpit, pounding on the pulpit, saying, look at what the

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Methodists are doing! Or do you put on a pink polo, put a bun on your beard, and talk like this?

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And a hundred thousand people watch, and say, he's right. That is dumb.

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And maybe we shouldn't be doing that. See, humor does have a power to drive past the bull and just point out the truth.

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Some of the most important people in the political arena are the satirists.

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The people who will point out the foolishness and say, it is foolish.

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So humor has value. It's not just therapy. It's another way of shining a light in a dark place.

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And some of the greatest men in church history, who no one would think of as comedians, have been some of the men who have made us laugh the most.

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Again, I mentioned Doug Wilson. Or disbelieve.

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I'm fond of saying, if I were president of the United States, what a glorious three days that would be.

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That's just in the middle of a talk. He says, if I were president, what a glorious three days. But how many of you know

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Votie Bockham? And if you can't say amen, you've got to say ouch, or that dog won't hunt.

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Why do you remember that? Because it's funny. Because it's funny. Steve Lawson is not funny.

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He's a good preacher. Not necessarily funny, but this is funny. I know you are a beautiful woman.

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Literally in the Hebrew, it means she was drop -dead good -looking. She was stunningly beautiful.

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Dark in complexion, dark hair. She was heartthrob city. At this time, she's 65 years old, which gives some of the ladies hope here today.

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That's funny. Sorry. All right, let's close in a word of...

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He knew it. He knew as soon as he said it. That was it. That's what people are going to remember. He's not a comedian.

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He's not a clown. He's not a fool. But he understood the value in a moment of being funny.

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And some things are funny that aren't supposed to be. And the punishment was too severe?

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What's wrong with you people? I'm serious. I mean, this is what's wrong with the

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Christian church today. We don't know who God is. And we don't know who we are. I was there.

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I remember the conference. I remember right where I was sitting. It was in Orlando, Florida. And when he said that,

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I looked at my wife. I said, that's going to live forever. Why? Because that's funny.

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But he wasn't being funny. I said, that's going to live forever because that's funny, but he wasn't being funny.

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What's the very thing? People laughed and he said, I'm serious. We know, but you can't help being witty.

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See, wit is a form of humor that drives in a truth. And what he said there, you've all seen that, right?

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I didn't even have to show the video. I just put up the picture. What's wrong with you people? You know? This one.

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I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. Anybody not know what that is?

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Paul Washer. This was before Paul Washer was really popular here in the United States. He was speaking at a conference of thousands of young people.

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He had just talked about how the Christian church was inundated by the Britney Spears culture and how people were dressing like the world, living like the world, loving like the world, and doing like the world.

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And they all clapped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you.

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And the whole room went, whoop. It was like that scratch on the record. Everything stopped because truth hit them in the face.

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And now we look back at it and we say, that's funny. It's not funny in the moment. Nobody there thought it was funny.

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But 20 years later, we can look back and say, that's pretty funny. Because he just rope -a -doped every one of those young people.

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He backed them into the corner applauding and then smacked them all with the truth. 20 years later, he's at a

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Shepherds Conference and he's preaching to preachers. If you don't know what the Shepherds Conference is, it's John MacArthur's conference that he does for preachers.

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And he's preaching to preachers and oh, they're clapping. And he stops in the middle of his sermon.

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He said, I don't know why you're clapping. And everybody, ah! They laughed.

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Why? Because it was funny. And he knew it was funny. And that's why he said it.

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You see, funny is not the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny.

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So we can be serious and still be funny. We can be serious and have a sense of humor. We can be serious and still laugh.

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I pastored the same church for 18 years. January is now, right? We're in January? I started

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January 2006. Pastor Sovereign Grace Family Church. I have over 1 ,500 sermons online.

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I've given expositions of entire books of the Bible. I've written two books. One on ecclesiology, one on the doctrine of the

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Trinity. But nobody cared until I put on this bow tie.

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I'm just trying to be funny. I don't care if anybody cares about me. It's not about me. But, in the last year,

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I've had more than a dozen pastors reach out to me and say, I just need somebody to talk to.

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And you seem like the kind of person who will listen. I need to have a conversation. I live in Jerkwater, Georgia, where there ain't nothing but trees.

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And there's not another church that believes the Bible close by. But you put your email in all your videos, and you said email me if you have a question.

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And so I have a question. And because I made them smile, God gave me an open door to talk to them about things that matter.

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Comedy can have value. It can matter in the lives of people.

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Remember, funny is not the opposite of serious. It's the opposite of not funny.

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Alright, so I'm going to close with a story. I don't know how long I've gone. I don't know if I'm too long, too short.

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And I know we have some questions to ask. But I want to close with this story. And this is a story from a humorist, comedian.

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Some of you may have heard of him. How many of you have ever heard the name Mike Warnke? Really? That's more names?

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Do you know who I'm talking about? Mike Warnke was a comedian in the 80s.

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He was a Christian comedian. He ended up getting involved in some scandalous stuff and come to find out some of the stories he told weren't true.

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And so there's a little bit of a history. If you look him up, you'll find out there's some history behind. It really disappointed me because alongside

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Bill Cosby, I used to listen to Mike Warnke's records all the time. But one of the stories he told always stuck with me.

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And anytime I get an opportunity to talk to a group of young people or men, I think this story is helpful.

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You may think it's dumb, but I hope so because that will make you laugh. There was an old man and a little boy who lived at the head of a holler in the mountains.

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And they lived very meager lives. And they had very little to their name.

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But they owned a donkey. And the donkey's name was Hiney. That's important for later.

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One day, the old man says to the little boy, that donkey is worthless.

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But if we take him to town, maybe we can sell him and at least get a little bit of money for the house.

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He's not doing anything but eating grass every day. So we're going to take Hiney to town and sell him.

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So the next morning, they get out, and they put the bridle on donkey, and they begin to walk him to town.

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Well, as they're walking to town, and as the sun is coming up over the mountains, there are people that are gathering in their yards to have coffee and meat and everything.

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They're having their morning rituals. And they pass by two men. And the two men of the house are sitting on the front porch.

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And one looks to the other, and he says, look at those stupid men. Both of them are walking when at least one of them could be riding.

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The old man did not want to be considered stupid. So he jumped up on the back of the donkey, and he began to ride.

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They go a little further, and they get to a little church, and the lady's Bible study was getting out. And the lady said, oh, goodness, that man is making that little boy walk.

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I can't believe he'd be so mean. The old man did not want to be considered mean. So he got down off the donkey, and he put the little boy up there.

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The little boy rode, and he walked. A little further, they get to another group of people, and that group of people says, oh, look at that mean little boy, making that old man walk like that.

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He ought to be ashamed of himself. Well, now the old man doesn't want the little boy to feel like he's mean either. So they both jump on the back of the donkey, and now they're both riding the back of the donkey.

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Well, now they go past the veterinary's office. A vet walks out. I can't believe you'd mistreat an animal that way.

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There's too much weight on the back of that animal. And so the old man and the little boy get off, and they begin walking again as they were in the beginning.

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Now they are again walking with the donkey. They get to one final house, and the men outside the house, arms over the fence, look and say, there ain't going to be enough of that donkey left to sell by the time you get him to town.

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So the old man and the little boy get up underneath the donkey and pick him up, and they're now carrying him to town.

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Well, between where they were and town, there was a little footbridge. And the little footbridge had a place on it that had gotten shiny, where feet had rubbed it nice and slick.

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And the old man didn't realize there was a spot that was that slick, and when he got to that spot on the bridge, he slipped.

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And he and the little boy tossed Heine over the side of the bridge where he fell 200 feet to the bottom of the gorge and was killed dead.

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The end. There is a moral to the story.

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If you live your life trying to please everyone, you'll lose your Heine. Now that may be the dumbest joke you've ever heard, but I like it.

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Because you know what? I do what I do because I'm not trying to please everyone. I'm just trying to make people laugh. And I hope that through that I'm pleasing

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God, because a merry heart does good like a medicine. All right. That's it.