We are in
the fourth week of our sermon series “Does God?” We have looked at
questions such as does God love us, does God care about us as individuals, and
does God have a plan for each of our lives.
Today, we look at a little bit different question: Does God want
me to have fun and enjoy life?
Now, my first
reaction to that question is that I sure hope so, because I have a lot of fun
and I really do enjoy my life. The
reason we ask this question, though, is that a lot of people who are not
Christians, and a lot of people who say they’re Christians but rarely if ever
come to church, think the answer is no. Also, some of them may think God
wants them to have fun, but they think the church does not.
Even though I
don’t agree with that, I can kind of understand why people look at it that way.
There’s nothing new about that viewpoint. You can see it over and over again in the Old Testament.
Whenever a prophet appears in the Old Testament, it’s because the people
have stopped obeying God and started doing whatever they wanted to do, just
living for the moment and for their own pleasure. The prophet comes in and
tells them they need to turn away from their pleasure and obey God. What
usually happens then? The prophet is condemned, his words are ignored,
and the people keep living for the moment, living the way they want to live.
We’ve talked about
this before, but nobody likes to have someone else come in and tell them what
they can and cannot do. When we’re young, we don’t like our parents
telling us what we can and cannot do. When we get older, we don’t like
our boss telling us what we can and cannot do. We don’t like the
government telling us what we can and cannot do. And we sure don’t like
the church telling us what we can and cannot do.
That’s how the
church comes across to some people: as someone who’s telling them what
they can and cannot do. In fact, most of them don’t even hear the “can”
part; they just hear the church telling them what they cannot do. They
hear the church telling them not to smoke. They hear the church telling
them not to drink. They hear the church telling them not to swear.
They hear the church telling them not to keep money for themselves.
They certainly hear the church telling them not to relax on Sunday
morning, whether that relaxing consists of sleeping in or going hunting or
fishing or just spending some time with the family.
What they hear, basically, is the church telling them not
to do an awful lot of the things they like to do. They hear the church
telling them not to do the things they have fun doing. Because of that,
the message a lot of people have gotten from the church is that God, or at
least the God they find in church, does not want them to have any fun. God does
not want them to enjoy life on earth.
Now, there are certain things that, as Christians, we’re
not supposed to do. Christians do believe in moral and ethical standards,
and that means we cannot always just live for momentary pleasure. We
cannot always just do whatever it is we want to do. There is some truth in what people hear the church saying.
The thing is, though, there’s more
to the message they don’t hear. They hear the “what”, but they don’t hear
the “why”. They don’t understand why the church is telling them not to do
things they have fun doing, and so they look at the church as being some sort
of fun police, just out to make sure no one has a good time. They think Christianity just involves
following a bunch of rules, rules that keep us from doing what we want to do,
and who wants to sign up for that? And so, many people don’t think the
church has anything to offer them.
What that tells me
is that we in the church have not done a good enough job of communicating the
“why”. Because the truth is that Christianity does not involve following
a bunch of rules. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. That’s one of
the things Jesus criticized the Pharisees for; they had become a bunch of
rule-keepers, not reaching out to anyone, not showing love to anyone, but just
worried about following the rules and thinking you could get to heaven based on
how well you followed them.
That’s not what
Christianity is about at all. Christianity is about love. Jesus
said the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest, which is
just like the first, is to love the people whom God created—love your neighbor
as yourself. The apostle Paul wrote that it does not matter how well you
speak or how smart you are or even how much you know about the Bible; if you
don’t have love, you have nothing. Christianity is not based on following
rules; Christianity is based on love.
So why do we hear
about these rules so much? I mean, we get how some of them are based on
love. Obviously, a religion based on love would be against murder and
against stealing and things like that.
But what about the others? Why would God, and why would the Christian
church, be opposed to us doing things that just seem to be fun and that don’t
really seem to hurt anybody? Why would God, and why would the Christian
church, not want us to just go out and enjoy our lives on this earth in
whatever way we want to as long as we’re not hurting anybody else?
There is a “why”.
There is a reason. It’s based in love—God’s love for each one of
us. The reason God tells us not to do certain things, the reason God
tells us not to just live for momentary pleasure, the reason God tells us not
to do certain things even though they’d be fun and enjoyable and would not hurt
anybody else, is that God knows we’ll be happier if we don’t do those things.
These “rules” we talk about in the church are not there to deny us a good
time; they’re there to make our lives better. It’s not that God is going
to send us to hell if we don’t do everything exactly right; it’s that God knows
we will live better, richer, fuller, happier lives if we don’t just live for
momentary pleasure, but live the way God wants us to live.
The author of the
book of Ecclesiastes thought it might be wonderful to live for pleasure.
By tradition, the book of Ecclesiastes is said to have been written by
King Solomon. Solomon was the richest,
most powerful person you could find. He had more money, for his time,
than Bill Gates has today. He had more power than any king or president
or ruler on earth.
You can see why,
at the beginning of our reading, he says to himself, “come now, be merry; enjoy
yourself to the full.” He had everything anyone could ever want.
Why should he not sit back and enjoy it?
So he did.
Solomon decided he was going to look for meaning in life in every kind of
earthly pleasure there was. He spent his time enjoying humor and
laughter. He spent his time drinking. He spent his time engaging in
silliness and foolishness. He spent his time building himself great
houses and gardens and parks. He spent his time acquiring money and
possessions. He spent his time with the fine arts, enjoying great choirs
and orchestras. He even tried spending his time in hard work.
He tried all these
things, and yet none of these things gave his life any meaning. He enjoyed
them, for a while, but ultimately, there was no meaning there. It was all useless. Chasing after
earthly fun and enjoyment was like chasing after the wind. We think we’re
able to grasp it, but when we close our hand, there’s nothing there. We
spend all this time and energy chasing after pleasure, and in the end, all
we’re left with is emptiness.
What was left?
Here is what Solomon concluded:
“So I decided that there was nothing better for a man to do than to
enjoy his food and drink, and his job. Then I realized that even this
pleasure is from the hand of God. For who can eat or enjoy apart from
him?”
You know, when I
look back at that list of things people hear the church telling them they
cannot do, it strikes me than none of them are absolute prohibitions. There’s nothing in the Bible that says we
cannot smoke, other than the general statement that we should take care of our
bodies. I’m not suggesting that smoking is a good thing, but I don’t see
anything that says it’s sinful. There’s stuff in the Bible that says we
should not get drunk, but there’s nothing that says all use of alcohol is
sinful. The statement that we should not take the Lord’s name in vain has
more to do with taking vows to God seriously than it does with not using cuss
words. The Bible does not say that money and possessions are evil in and
of themselves; it just says we should not worship them.
Even going to
church, as important as that is, was never intended to be a burden. Honoring
the Sabbath, and worshipping God, is something we do to help us. It’s
something we do to keep us close to God, to help us feel the love of God. As
Jesus said, God did not create humans for the Sabbath. God created the
Sabbath for humans.
That’s the “why”
about all these so-called rules. None of them exists to deny us a good
time. God did not tell us to live our lives in a certain way because God
wanted to make it hard for us or punish us. God is not sitting in heaven
hoping to catch us doing something wrong.
You see, these
so-called rules are not rules at all. They’re gifts, gifts from God. They
exist not to keep us from enjoying our lives, but to help us enjoy our lives
all the more. They exist not to keep us from having fun, but to allow us
to have even more fun, because the fun we have will give us satisfaction and
give our lives meaning.
As Solomon found
out, we cannot find true enjoyment in our lives apart from God. Living in
the way God wants us to live keeps us close to God. The closer we can get
to God, the more fun and enjoyment, and the more satisfaction and meaning, we
can have in our lives.
Does God want us
to have fun and enjoy life? Yes, of course! What kind of a God would
create this incredible world and give it to us and then not want us to enjoy
it? Of course God wants us to have fun and enjoy life. God wants that so
much for us that God told us the best way to do it. These “rules” exist
to keep us close to God.
God gave us rules
for living because God loves us and wants us to be happy. If we do our
best to live the way God wants us to, we will stay close to God. Then, we
will have the fun and enjoyment that God wants each one of us to get out of life.
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