Did Jesus use humor in his sermons?

Jewish teachers in Jesus’s time often used exaggeration as humor to make lessons memorable. Jesus frequently employed hyperbolic imagery that would have made his audience laugh while reinforcing deep spiritual truths.

One example is the speck and the log (Matthew 7:3-5). Jesus paints an absurd picture—someone with a plank in their eye trying to remove a tiny speck from another’s. The humor exposes hypocrisy in judgment. Similarly, the camel through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24) exaggerates the difficulty of a rich person entering God’s kingdom, using an impossible visual to drive home the point.

Another humorous critique of hypocrisy is straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:24). Pharisees meticulously filtered drinks to avoid unclean gnats, yet Jesus pictures them gulping down a massive, unclean camel—ridiculous, yet convicting.

Jesus also used humor for wisdom. “Don’t cast pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6) is a silly image—pigs trampling priceless pearls—making the lesson clear: don’t waste sacred truths on those who won’t value them. “Do grapes grow on thornbushes?” (Matthew 7:16) is another obvious absurdity, emphasizing that people’s actions reveal their true nature.

This exaggerated humor was common in Jewish culture. The Talmud and other rabbinic texts used similar hyperboles, showing Jesus’s words fit within this tradition. His humor was memorable, disarming, and sharp, making truth easier to receive.

Jesus used humor to challenge, convict, and inspire.