Thursday, September 6, 2007

Exegetical & Hermeneutical & Theological Mis-givings

As most of you who will read this Blog are aware, I spend lots of time in my pick-em-up truck - on the road to or from missions services in some of our Church of God churches. One of my favorite things to do as I travel is listen to the AM radio, especially to Gospel radio broadcasts. On a recent trip from Franklin, Indiana I tuned in to a station where I heard the following:

"My text today comes from Matthew 20:1 'For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.' The speaker then mentioned his conjecturing thoughts about this householder with a vine-yard. Now the key to understanding here is to pronounce this as two words; Word number 1 is VINE, and word number 2 is YARD. So that's not a vineyard. It's a vine yard. "Vines all over th place. Well," he allowed, "the man probably had 20 or 30 apple trees - and maybe some pear trees - and coulda even had some peach trees here - but the bad part was that these here vines was a coverin' the trees and a killin' th' fruit. And that's whats wrong with a lotta Christians today. God has planted some good fruit trees in their lives - but they keep a lettin' them vines choke out th' fruit from their lives!!!" Thirty minutes of program time, and most of it was consumed with this theme about the vines that grows in Christians apple and pear and peach orchards. "When there are too many vines you don't have an orchard - you've got a vine yard!" Whoop! I'd like to hear T. Tommy Thompson get hold of that and preach it!

That reminds me of a few other choice exegetical efforts I've heard over the years. One of the recent ones was a preacher in East Tennessee as my friend Dr. E.L. Williams and I drove along together. The preacher read from the scripture where four men carried a lame man up on the housetop, tore away part of the roofing, and let their lame friend down through the roof in front of Jesus. The passage is found in Mark 2:2-3 "And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them. [3] And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four." The preacher read it this way "...which was BORNED of four." His comment that followed almost made me lose my teeth! "Now", said he, "This here man was borned of four. Now I don't understand how that could happen, but the Bible said it and I believe it. Of course we all know he only had one Mama, but the Bible says he was borned of four! But let me tell ya. These men wasn't all bad. At least they had enough sense to get the lame man in front of Jesus! And that's what you oughta do. You need to get people in front of Jesus! That's what somebody done fer me. They got me in front of Jesus!"

7 comments:

Travelin' On said...

I really needed this "inspirational post" today! LOL
This is good stuff!
Keep it coming....I know you gots lots more stories where these came from. :)
Whoop!!

L A Brannen said...

God has really 'blessed' you by putting you in the right spot at the right time so that you could hear those kind of things. And furthermore, you can remember all of them. Well, I don't know how much of a blessing that is, and it may be that God put you in the wrong place at the wrong time. No! God doesn't do anything wrong. Does He? Anyway, If you would write a book on that kind of 'theology' it should be a best seller. Whoop haaaaa!

Unknown said...

I believe I was a loo a li ahh, lung struck...you know, I had that wheeezin' disease! And even though I was only born of one, I am so glad you brought me before Jesus!!! That's the heart of it. Thanks for keeping me smilin' although I will and have made some pretty bad bloopers myself.

Fred Alton said...

Just for you Tabi - Who? Me? Make a blooper???

Fred Alton said...

Yes, Tabi, that really did happen...when the Evangelist was trying to read about the man who had a son that was lunatic.

K E Alexander said...

Oh this is so good. Can't wait till T. Tommy hears about it.

Corky Alexander said...

This is a really good one. You are REALLY GOOD at this blogging thing. Thanks for visits and TTT plug.