“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
When Jerry Seinfeld is complaining about the modern state of comedy, you know there’s a problem. His recent complaint was linked to the fact that because of the scourge of wokeness and microaggressions and fears of offending someone, somewhere, resulting in being cancelled, many comedians are afraid to let loose and be funny. As the Joker once asked Batman, “Why so serious?” I was reminded recently just how good it is to be able to laugh. Even in the midst of a divided and partisan culture, when we can learn to not take ourselves so seriously and laugh together, then even when we disagree, we can still be friends and neighbors.
“The Egyptians set out in pursuit – all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen – and went into the sea after them. During the morning watch, the Lord looked down at the Egyptian forces from the pillar of fire and cloud, and threw the Egyptian forces into confusion. He caused their chariot wheels to swerve and made them drive with difficulty. ‘Let’s get away from Israel,’ the Egyptians said, ‘because the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt!’ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the water may come back on the Egyptians, on their chariots and horsemen.’ So Mose stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal depth. While the Egyptians were trying to escape from it, the Lord threw them into the sea. The water came back and covered the chariots and horsemen, plus the entire army of Pharaoh that had gone after them into the sea. Not even one of them survived.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I was on the Scholar’s Bowl team when I was in high school. Imagine little jeopardy competitions but without the answers needing to be in the form of a question. It was a ton of fun. (Yes, I know, I was a nerd.) But while I was pretty good at knowing or otherwise coming up with an answer in my areas of specialty (science, culture, and random, useless knowledge), what I struggled with was being fast enough on the buzzer. Knowing the answer was one thing. Knowing the answer and then buzzing in fast enough to beat the other team was another. You didn’t get any points if you buzzed in late. As the Egyptians chased after Israel into the dry seabed of the Red Sea, they realized they had made a mistake. Unfortunately, for them, they realized this too late. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.
“Come to Bethel and rebel; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tenths every three days. Offer leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do! This is the declaration of the Lord God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
On occasion I’ve heard a popular Christian speaker joke that he has the spiritual gift of sarcasm. Formally defined, sarcasm is “the use of irony to mock or express contempt.” Irony, of course, is expressing one thing by saying it’s opposite as a means of drawing attention to it. The speaker’s point is that he’s got a knack for poking fun at things that don’t fit with his worldview framework. Sarcasm can be funny, but it can also be pretty mean-spirited. Either way, it can be an effective way of expressing a point in a certain context in fairly unmistakable terms. One of the places we wouldn’t normally expect sarcasm, but in which we nonetheless find it remarkably often, is the Scriptures. Here is a perfect example. Let’s talk this morning about why God is being sarcastic and what we should do with it.
“But the Lord asked Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, saying, “Can I really have a baby when I’m old?” Is anything impossible for the Lord? At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)
There’s a genre of kids movie that could be called the everything-goes-wrong film. Home Alone is a classic of this genre. So is the more recent film, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day with Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner. In the movie, which is based on the classic children’s book of a generation ago, an increasingly ridiculous series of things happen to Alexander and his family. The comedy is not simply that one of these possible-but-unlikely events happens to the family, but that the whole series of them do all in a row. Sometimes it seems like that’s how God works.
The Nexus 