“Why in the world do you tell so many jokes?”

Steve Brown:
“Why in the world do you tell so many jokes?” the answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Finally, finally, I could throw you under the bus for doing something so sinful as telling jokes.

Steve Brown:
You’d be quite surprised if you knew how many people say that, but we’ll talk about it. By the way, that is Pete Alwinson. Be sure and go to ForgeTruth.com and there and at Keylife.org you can get Pete’s book Like Father Like Son. Both the printed hard copy, paperback copy, or audio book, and it is a life changing book. Check that website out ForgeTruth.com. Tell me about your podcast.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, we’ve got the Forge Truth podcast. And that’s, we have a lot of fun with it, where there’s three of us that do it and good synergy.

Steve Brown:
Is it once a week or more?

Pete Alwinson:
Once a week, all things for men, grace and men.

Steve Brown:
That’s good. Check it out. And they can find that at ForgeTruth.com

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right.

Steve Brown:
Okay. Listen, Pete comes in as you know, and longer than either one of us want to admit to answer questions on Friday. And we love your questions. You can call your question in 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7. You can write to

Key Life Network
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can e-mail your question to [email protected]. And, we’ll be honest, though sometimes wrong in the answer that we give. And by the way, those are places where if you could help us financially, we would appreciate it. I promise every gift you give we’ll squeeze for the glory of God. And if you can’t give, we understand that too, say a prayer for this ministry. We are, by the way, a member of CCCC in Canada and ECFA, what is it?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I don’t know?

Steve Brown:
The organization in the states. You know, when you get old, those things just happen.

Pete Alwinson:
I, yeah. I can’t remember what it’s called, anyway. The financial accountability organization.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Right. For the States. And I think, man, I’m just going to jump off a bridge. Okay? But at any rate, we’re ethical. Okay? And we’ll be faithful with your gift. And before this gets any worse, Pete, pray for us and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Sounds good. Let’s pray. Our Great God, what a joy it is to come into your presence today on this Friday, to be able to stop and relax for a minute. And remember that you are the sovereign God of heaven and earth. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we worship you, we thank you that we belong to you, that you have shaped the way we, reshaped the way we think and feel and act. All because of the gospel of grace because of the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ. You know us, you know our need for you, right this very minute. And we pray Holy Spirit, that you would come and infuse into us, your power, grace, and wisdom. And then, we just ask that you would bless this time of Q&A. And, thank you for Steve and this ministry. And we just commit it all to you and ask that you would use this to your honor and glory. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. ECFA and I thought of it before our producer put up a sign to let me know what it was.

Pete Alwinson:
There it is.

Steve Brown:
You know, I’ve only said it 5 billion times on this broadcast.

Pete Alwinson:
And I’ve heard it that many times and I couldn’t help you.

Steve Brown:
So, now you need to know that most ministries would edit that out and the mistake would be covered. And I would sound perfect. And so would Pete, but we’re not going to do that.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And that’s why you should send money. Okay. Pete, this is an e-mail question. Why do you use stories, illustrations and humor in your teaching? Why not just stick to Scripture?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, you’ve got to answer then I’ve got a follow up.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Well, I use illustrations cause Jesus did. You know, if it was good for Jesus, it ought be okay for me too. And the humor I do. I tell jokes cause they’re funny. There’s no other reason. No, sometimes the jokes are the illustrations and I have just, as you know, and we’ve been saying this on our website, we’ve just had a book go out. New Growth Press and it’s called Laughter and Lament. And if the person who asks this question will buy that book, they will understand. I’ll do anything to sell a book.

Pete Alwinson:
Why not?

Steve Brown:
You can check it out, but Jesus also used humor. Elton Trueblood, who was a Quaker, Biblical scholar and a great man of God, who’s in heaven now, wrote a book called The Humor of Christ.

Pete Alwinson:
I know, you recommended it to me years ago and I read it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. So there you go.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, and really when I first met you and you began to mentor me in my speaking, as I listened to your tapes. You know, nobody knows what a cassette tape is anymore, but I would get your cassette tapes in New England. But I realized what a stress reliever, sometimes humor is, so that people can relax from the heaviness of what maybe went before. And then take in more truth and that grace really does energize laughter.

Steve Brown:
It does.

Pete Alwinson:
And we should take ourselves less seriously and God more seriously.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. And if you are in a place of God’s people and there’s no laughter, Jesus left the building because when you really get it, you say with Mercy in Pilgrim’s Progress, I did laugh and laugh and laugh.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. There’s great joy in the journey of following Jesus and they need to read your book.

Steve Brown:
And, you know what you said about getting, you know, a lot of teaching that we have to do, me on the broadcast, you on the broadcast, in our churches when we were pastors or some of it’s hard.

Pete Alwinson:
Heavy.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. It really is heavy. And we used to, when we taught the Born Free seminar, Peculiar People, Charlie and Ruth Jones.

Pete Alwinson:
Love them.

Steve Brown:
Oh, they’re amazing. And still are and they do dramatic sketches and a lot of those were funny and we placed them specifically after a half an hour, or maybe even an hour of very heavy teaching. Made the difference in the world.

Pete Alwinson:
All the difference.

Steve Brown:
All right. This is from somebody who says they have a bad marriage. How can I fix it?

Pete Alwinson:
What does the Bible say about having a good marriage and fixing your marriage? You know, marriages go through phases, don’t they?

Steve Brown:
They really do.

Pete Alwinson:
Seasons of a marriage. And so, what does the Bible say? Bible says a lot about marriage. Let me say this and then you comment on it and clean up the heresy here. I read a book once by Larry Crabb about what is the difference between a man and a woman. And I go, okay cause I do men’s ministry, I’ve got to read this book. Chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter and the number one thing he mentioned was selfishness. I’m going Larry, talk about the difference between a man and a woman and all he kept coming back to was selfishness. And then toward the very end, he talked about some things that were different. But I thought, you know, it’s really, selfishness is a major

Steve Brown:
Ego at the center.

Pete Alwinson:
keep growing in Christ and growing in humility toward one another and love for one another will go a long way.

Steve Brown:
And you’ve got to, it takes a while to find the diamonds. You know, you’ve been married a long time and I’ve been married a lot longer than you have. I think I’m up to about 56 years.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow. Congratulations, to the same woman.

Steve Brown:
And to the same person.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow.

Steve Brown:
She’s a Saint.

Pete Alwinson:
She is.

Steve Brown:
But I often tell people, I’m the saint, it’s hard to live with her, but they know the truth and they laugh. But the truth is, they’re family secrets that nobody knows but us. There are jokes that we know the punchline to that nobody knows. And there are memories that we built for a lot of years that nobody else shares.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And it’s worth it. So, I’m gonna write a book on marriage.

Pete Alwinson:
Good. I’d like to read it.

Steve Brown:
It’s going to be a best seller.

Pete Alwinson:
It will be.

Steve Brown:
But the problem is, it’s only going to have two words to it and the words are, don’t leave. Don’t leave until you get to the good part because you’ll find that it’s worth it.

Pete Alwinson:
And we know, we know that there are some situations that don’t get fixed because of physical things or emotional, psychological. And sometimes the man, or sometimes the woman gets stuck in behavior that leads to a disfunctional, difficult marriage. We get that. We’re sympathetic to that. And so, still your words don’t leave are powerful.

Steve Brown:
And divorce is not the unforgivable sin. You know, used to be when I would preach on marriage, I would say if you’re divorced, I don’t want you to listen to anything I’m going to say for the new next 15 minutes. And I’ll talk to you when I finish. And then I’d go after them. I would say, who do you think you are? You’re violating what God says, he hates divorce. And man, I was Jonathan Edwards. And then when I finished them now, I would say, I want to talk to you, who’ve gone through divorce. That’s painful, isn’t it? It’s hard, but God starts where you are now and he doesn’t love you any less. And his grace is always sufficient.

Pete Alwinson:
Amen. Amen. Amen. And we have to come back to that, but we do have to keep working too. We have to keep grace energized. Grace is the energizing power of all transformation. And so, preaching the gospel to ourself, living in our identity in Christ, and then seeing our partner in that way.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. What I’ve been doing here is looking for a really, yes, no answer question

Pete Alwinson:
can’t find one

Steve Brown:
cause we’re running out of time and we don’t have time for a detailed question.

Pete Alwinson:
Am I handsome? Yes.

Steve Brown:
Yes.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay

Steve Brown:
Of course you are.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Are you wise and handsome?

Steve Brown:
Yes, of course. And I’m more handsome and I’m wiser than you are.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s exactly right. Yes. We love mutual admiration society, even though we don’t agree on everything, most things we agree on.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We really do. And so, we’ve got 30 seconds to chit chat.

Pete Alwinson:
And I’ve got a question for you though. I’ve got one that we can do. What is the Bible teach about cremation? It’s hot. It’s very hot. We answered it. There it is.

Steve Brown:
Pete, you’re bad. You really are. You found the right yes, no question. And you get three free sins and you’re way behind. Folks, we’ve got to leave. But before we go, I have one other thing to say, and it’s this. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.