Sermon Tone Analysis

Dr. Doug Sager is the pastor of FBC Concord in Knoxville, TN.

He was recently elected chairman of the IMB's board of trustees.

He shared this hilarious story in chapel last Wednesday.

Use with discretion, please!

-- Mark

SAGER: I come from a part of Tennessee where many people believe that if you go to school you’re a liberal and so I remember talking to a guy, he was a young preacher, but he was talking to a pastor search committee and that’s always a thrill.

So the chairman of the committee looked at him and said, “Son, you’re might young.

Do you know the Bible?”

He said, “Yes sir, I know it from Genesis to Maps.”

The old man said, “Well, that about covers it, don’t it?”

He said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Well, do you know the Old Testament?”

He said, “Yeah, I know all that.”

He said, “Well, do you know the New Testament?”

He said, “Yeah, I know all that, too.”

He said, “Well, do you know the parables?”

He said, “Yeah, I know all them.”

He said, “Well, would you give us a parable?”

He said, “I’d be glad to.

Once upon a time there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus a ruler of the Jews.

And the same went up to Jerusalem by night and fell on stony ground and the thorns sprang up and choked him half to death.

And he said, "What shall I do?

I will arise and go to my father’s house."

So he arose and climbed a sycamore tree.

And the next day Solomon and his wife Gomorrah came by and they got him out of the tree to take him down to Jerusalem so Moses could take care of him in the Ark.

But as they went through the Eastern Gate he caught his hair in the limb of a tree and he hung there for 40 days and 40 nights.

And afterward he was hungered and the ravens came and fed him.

The next day the three wise men came by.

They took him down to Nineveh.

There was Jezebel sitting on the wall with the soldiers and he said, "Chuck her down boys."

They said, "How many times shall we chuck her down?

Until seven times?"

He said, "No, seventy times seven."

So they chucked her down 490 times and she burst asunder in their midst.

They gathered up twelve basketfuls of the fragments that remained.

They question is, in the resurrection, who’s wife will she be?"

The old chairman heard the story and looked at the rest of the search committee and said, "I don’t know about ya’ll, but I think we ought to call him, 'cause he really knows his Bible!"