Sermon Illustrations

AMATEUR COUNTERFEITER------

You may have read in the paper that counterfeit bills have been turning up here and there around town. What you may have not heard about, is the amateur counterfeiter that was operating here in town. It turns out that this amateur counterfeiter accidentally printed a large amount of 21 dollar bills. Only after he printed a large stack of these 21 dollar bills did he notice his mistake. At first he was just going to throw the counterfeit bills out, but upon closer examination, he saw that besides the 21 dollar amount, he did an excellent job creating these bills.

So he thought to himself, “I would love to pass these bills off…but who in Anchorage is would accept a 21 dollar bill”? Then it hit him – the Alaska state fair was in progress, certainly he could find someone at the fair he could pawn his 21 dollar bills on.

As he arrived at the fair in Palmer he was going to try giving the parking attendant one of his 21 dollar bills, but, on second thought, he figured that wouldn’t be too wise. Walking through the fairgrounds, he spotted several opportunities, various food booths, different artists…he even almost tried the honey booth, but chickened out at the last second. He thought, “All these people deal with money all day long, certainly I can’t fool them”. He became quite discouraged, perhaps the fair wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Just then the counterfeiter had an epiphany – “The Christians at the fair don’t deal with money, they just talk about religion, I’ll just go over to one of their booths”. With his new found enthusiasm the counterfeiter headed to the closest booth dealing with Christianity. After a bit of small talk with a nice young man, the counterfeiter slyly pulled out one of his crisp 21 dollars bills, held his breath and asked, “I was wondering….would you be able to give me change for a 21 dollar bill?”

“Why sure”, responded the young Christian man taking the 21 dollar bill, “would two sixes and a nine be ok”?

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