Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Have you ever praised God for the enjoyment of laughter?

Some of the greatest of God's people have.

When Theodore Cuyler, the American preacher, visited the great London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, they told each other the crazy things that happened in their respective ministries.

They enjoyed their laughter as they walked in the woods, and they were about exhausted after so many amusing stories.

Spurgeon said, "Let's kneel down and praise God for laughter."

So these two great men of God knelt together and thanked God for this gift.

If we are to love God with our whole being, then it follows that we are love God even with our laughter.

They were praising God for the gift of laughter.

In Psa.

126 we see God's people praising Him with the gift of laughter.

The Israelites were so filled with the delight that they were no longer captives, but free citizens back in their home land.

They laughed out loud with joy.

It would be hard to laugh and sing at the same time, but verse 2 puts them together, and their mouth is filled with laughter, and their tongues with songs of joy.

Maybe they would tell stories of their joyful return, and then laugh together, and break into songs of praise for God's providential guidance in their lives.

All we know is they were a happy people, and their laughter was a part of their praise to God.

Laughter is another aspect of the physiology of praise, for it is a bodily function whereby the heart and mind manifest their feelings and thoughts.

Dr. Paul Rees tells of the Christian businessman traveling to St. Louis who left his hotel on Sunday morning looking for a place to worship.

He asked a policeman for direction to the nearest Protestant church.

When he gave him the information he asked why he had recommended that particular church out of several possibilities.

The policeman smiled and replied, "I'm not a church man myself, but the people who come out of that church are the happiest looking church people in St. Louis.

I thought that would be the kind of church you would like to attend."

Laughter and smiling make a statement to the world about the God we worship.

There is one well known pastor in a large church in California who always ends his sermon with a joke.

It is so that people go out laughing.

That can seem somewhat sacreligious, and it can be inappropriate for some themes, but there is no escaping the truth that laughter is a powerful witness to the good things God has done for us.

The nations round about Israel were impressed with their laughter and joy, and they had to confess that the Lord has done great things for them.

God is glorified among those outside His family when those inside are full of laughter and songs of joy.

Praise like this is not just for their own self enjoyment.

It is a powerful tool for evangelism, for people want to know a God who can bring joy and laughter into their lives.

D. L. Moody said, "If Christians are gloomy and cast down, and not full of praise, the world will reject their Gospel.

It is not good news if it does not produce praise in those who have it.

Praise, joy, and laughter are a big part of our witness to the world."

A Lord who never gives laughter to His people is not appealing, but is appalling.

He is seen more as a tyrant and task master rather than a loving heavenly Father who leads His family to enjoy the fun of life, and to laugh at the funnies of life.

There are serious times in life where laughter is inappropriate, but all to often Christians have assumed that worship is one of those times that must always be somber and solumn, and not a fun time.

Time with our earthly father can be a time of rolling on the floor, tickling and telling jokes, and having a good time.

But spending time with our heavenly Father is not to be fun, but only serious.

It seems to be irreverent to laugh and carry on with hilarious songs of joy.

Yet, these are the kinds of activities that we see in the worship songs in the Old Testament.

You have to be childlike to enjoy this sort of thing, but we have grown out of that into sophisticated adults where solemnity is the only mood we feel is appropriate.

The paradox is that the people who have used the Psalms for their hymnal have been the most solumn of Christians.

Ellen Glasgow in her autobiography tells of her father who was a Presbyterian elder who was full of rectitude and rigid with duty.

She writes, "He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life he never committed a pleasure."

Many godly Presbyterians, and other Puritan type Christians, were trained to avoid all smiling and signs of enjoyment in the house of God.

Worship was serious business, and woe be the bottom of any child caught laughing.

The devil, no doubt, split a side laughing at his success in blinding Christians to the message of their own songs, which were inspired by God, and which indicated He gets the same pleasure out of His children laughing as we get out of ours.

There are few things in life more cute than a laughing child.

We know God feels the same, and Bildad was right when he said to Job in Job 8:21, "He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy."

Eccles.

10:19 says, "A feast is made for laughter..."

You cannot have a feast without a lot of food, but if everybody just sits silently eating, it is still not a feast, for there has to be merriment in conversation, and jokes that lead to laughter to make it a feast.

The Bible links laughter to joy and to feasting, and these are both vast subjects in the Bible, making laughter a major aspect of the godly life.

A study of all the Hebrew words dealing with laughter revealed 91 references to either mocking or merry laughter.

It is a major part of life, and it is a major part of the biblical depiction of life.

Let's keep in mind that laughter is not just a response to humor.

It is also a response to pleasure.

It may be physical pleasure, or the mental pleasure of good news, or the psychological pleasure of any positive exciting event.

People don't just cry at weddings, they also laugh for joy.

They laugh with pleasure when they see their team make a clever play and score.

They laugh in endless ways at that which is pleasurable.

Amazement and wonder, which are so much a part of biblical worship, are also capable of producing laughter if we let ourselves express the pleasure in such wonder.

It is not just the silly, but the sublime, that can lead to laughter.

There are records of early Christians getting so excited about the truth of Easter that they laughed, and it became a common phrase to talk of Easter laughter.

In the Greek Orthodox tradition the day after Easter was a time to gather and tell jokes and stories.

Laughter was their way of celebrating the big joke God played on Satan.

It was funny how God tricked Satan and conquered hell by means of death.

Satan thought the cross was his victory, but it spelled his doom, and allowed Jesus to enter His kingdom and take the keys of death and hell from him.

It was the most serious business of all history, and yet it was the basis for laughter, because God used Satan's greatest evil to accomplish His own greatest good.

Abraham and Sarah were so amazed that they could have a child in their old age that they laughed.

It was such a wonder that they named their baby Issac, which means laughter.

It was funny for a 90 year old woman to have a baby.

It was so unusal and odd that it produced both wonder and laughter.

We had an experience like this once when our grandson Jason was about 10 months old.

We had a dog named Cuddles who could leap into the air and catch a frizbee.

When Jason saw that he burst into laughter that was so deep it came all the way from his toes.

Lavonne and I exploded with laughter at his laughter, for we had never heard anything quite like it.

We kept at it until we were exhausted.

It was the perfect state of happiness.

A child's laughter had the power to produce a worshipful spirit, for it made us thankful to God for His gift of life, and the gift of love and of laughter.

It is rare when laughter can produce that kind of pleasure and gratitude to God, but Psa.

126 reveals that it is a God ordained experience.

This Psalm is not dealing with an everyday experience.

They had been in captivity in Babylon for 70 years, and they had not spent a lot of that time laughing and singing.

But now they are back home, and it is like a dream.

This is the only place in all the Psalms where the word dream is found.

They were in a state that seemed to good to be real.

After 70 years of exile where it seemed hopeless to ever return, they are now free and at home.

Pinch me, they are saying, I must be dreaming, for this can't be real.

This was a way of describing what seemed to good to be true.

Polybius described the joy of the Greeks when they were unexpectedly rescued from the Macedonians.

"Most of the men could scarcely believe the news, but imagined themselves in a dream as they listened to what was said, so extraordinary and miraculous it seemed to them."

The saying is, if it seems to good to be true, it probably isn't true.

This is a valid view to take when looking for investments, but lets not forget the Gospel itself falls into this category.

It is hard for people to believe that they can be set free from all their sins and guilt by trusting in Jesus Christ, and believing that His death paid the judgment they deserve.

It is like a dream to hear you can be liberated from bondage to all the sins that keep you captive to powers over which you have no control.

Many hear the Gospel and their response is, "What a joke!"

And they laugh it to scorn.

The Bible is full of this response to the things of God.

Mocking, and skeptical laughter is very common in the Old Testament, and Jesus had His share of it too.