A. How many of you have seen the 2005 romantic comedy called Fever Pitch?
1. It is a funny story about a guy who is a Boston Red Sox fanatic.
2. Here’s an interesting tidbit that you might not have known: Fever Pitch was actually first released outside the United States and Canada with the title The Perfect Catch, because it is actually a remake of a 1997 British film by the same name that was about soccer not baseball.
3. Anyhow, the movie Fever Pitch is about a guy named Ben who is a 30 year old single guy who meets a workaholic gal named Lindsey.
4. Lindsey finds Ben to be so sweet and charming, and he is so attentive to her.
5. She couldn’t figure out how he with his personality could still be single, but then baseball season rolled around and Ben’s obsession with the Red Sox became an obvious problem, as his whole life then revolved around the Red Sox.
6. Lindsey saw Ben on ESPN in Florida acting like an idiot at the Red Sox Spring training.
7. Later, when Lyndsey gave Ben the opportunity to go to Paris with her, he turned it down, because Seattle was coming to town to play the Red Sox who were 3 1/2 games behind the New York Yankees and Ben said that the Red Sox need him.
8. The most offensive part of the movie is that Ben uses toilet paper, which bears the New York Yankees insignia – That just so inappropriate!
9. The movie has a sweet ending, as most romantic comedies do, but it provides a good picture of how the god of entertainment can take over our lives and bring about chaos and destruction.
B. In our world as a whole, and certainly in American culture, one of the biggest idols that has consumed people’s hearts and minds is the god of entertainment.
1. We look to the god of entertainment to make us happy, fulfilled and alive.
2. The god of entertainment consumes our time, our money, our devotion, and our minds.
3. Television, computers, smart phones, gaming systems, Alexa and google assistant bring the idol of entertainment right into the privacy of our own homes so it can be adored and followed every single day.
4. Sports has so engulfed our culture and lives that our favorite sports team controls our schedules and our happiness, and so our mood is determined by whether our team is winning or losing.
5. Sadly, many people know more about their famous star’s life than they know about God and His Word.
6. All this is evidence that our minds, hearts and lives have become distorted by our obsession with entertainment.
C. Before we go any further in this lesson, allow me to clarify the fact that entertainment is not wrong in and of itself.
1. Interestingly enough, for centuries the church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for what it was – a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability.
2. And so, churches and preachers railed against going to the theater, or watching moving pictures, or playing with face cards.
3. Perhaps the church went too far in coming down so completely against entertainment, but the dangers are clearly there and it is a hard thing to keep in the right balance and perspective.
4. Just like the other two things we have discussed in our series – food and sex – entertainment can also be a good gift from God, but Satan takes God’s good gifts and twists them into something that draws us away from God.
5. So, it isn’t wrong to watch television, or to go to a movie, or to be a fan of a sports team, but all these things must be put in the right perspective with our relationship with God.
D. One indication that the god of entertainment has taken precedent over God the Father is the way that many people give far more time, attention, money and effort toward their entertainment, than toward their relationship with God.
1. Kyle Idleman opens his chapter on this subject with this revealing illustration.
2. Try to imagine a world where on Sunday mornings, people set a backup alarm clock to their alarm clock to be sure they get up on time and don’t miss church.
3. When Sunday comes, they load up the car and head to church hours before service begins.
4. They do this because getting to the church early is a must, and the later they go the further they may have to park, sometimes a mile away from the church.
5. When they park their car in the parking lot, many other church members are already there tailgating with their portable grills and lawn chairs.
6. It doesn’t matter if it is sunny and warm, or snowy and cold, people are tailgating, and with great excitement everyone is discussing last week’s sermon and Bible class, and there is such hope about what will be presented today.
7. When the doors open, the crowd files in, and everyone is on their feet the whole service, singing their praises and shouting their “amens.”
8. There are even groups of people with letters on their shirts that communicate messages when they stand together, like: “God is good,” “Preach the Gospel,” and “Get your tithe on!”
9. And after several hours of worship, everyone is hoping the sermon goes into overtime!
E. How is it that we can easily offer those kinds of sacrifices to the god of entertainment, but often offer so little to God the Father?
1. The god of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are not the only entertainment deities.
2. The god of video games is a very popular one.
a. Studies show that nearly one in ten kids between the ages of 8 and 18 could be classified as clinically addicted to video games.
b. A fifteen-year-old video game addict is described as displaying “all the characteristics of a heroin addict and the telltale collateral damage of a heroin addict: withdrawal from his family, withdrawal from his friends, and lies to cover up his addiction.”
3. The god of Facebook is another popular god.
a. Consider the amount of time we spend on social networks like Facebook?
b. Users of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, spend on average, 50 minutes on each of the apps each day.
c. If you use all three, then that’s almost 3 hours a day!
4. The god of TV is perhaps the most universally popular god of entertainment.
a. The average American watches more than four-and-a-half hours of television every day.
F. Again, let me repeat and emphasize the fact that entertainment is not evil as a whole.
1. Like food and sex, entertainment is a gift from God – it is something that is good until it is turned into a god.
2. What is the purpose of entertainment?
3. Consider the fact that life as God made it is full of entertaining things.
a. How can we not be entertained by God’s creation?
b. How do you think God intends us to respond to a rainbow, the mountains, the ocean, or the galaxies?
c. God didn’t just give us a bare, functional place to live; He gave us a universe of wonders.
4. And what did God expect people to do on the seventh day of rest that he commanded?
a. We can’t sleep for 24 hours – or at least most of us can’t.
b. Worship and entertainment can be the rest for our mind and emotions that we need.
5. Our God is a God of joy and He wants us to know that joy.
a. 1 Timothy 6:17 says that He “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”
6. Entertainment should be life-giving – a means of engaging with our world rather than retreating from it; It should not be a substitute for life.
G. As with all things, the problem comes when we turn the gift God has given us into our focus and purpose, our end goal and the thing we worship.
1. Solomon, one of the greatest figures of the Old Testament provides us a good, bad example of the pursuit of entertainment.
2. Solomon was the son of King David, and the third king of Israel.
3. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes is basically the journal he kept while he pursued entertainment looking for pleasure and purpose.
4. In one of his early entries, he wrote: “I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ ” (Eccl. 2:1)
5. Solomon, who had incredible wealth and power, spared no expense in trying to entertain himself.
a. He began with the pursuit of laughter, and found no lasting joy in it.
b. Next he tried the life of partying, and quickly discovered its emptiness.
c. He tried to entertain himself with great building projects, but they didn’t satisfy.
d. He brought in choirs of men and women, and of course, he had a harem of women.
6. In the end, he declared, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”
7. The problem was he was trying to make a good thing into the main thing.
8. He was looking for the meaning of life in amusement, but amusement is meant to be a sideshow, not the main event.
H. And just as we have seen with all of the counterfeit gods so far, there is a bait-and-switch tactic in play.
1. They offer us the high, but deliver the low.
2. The pursuit of food leads to an insatiable hunger; the pursuit of sex ends in shame; and the pursuit of entertainment results in a restless boredom.
3. Have you ever wondered why so many people are bored today?
4. Science writer Winifred Gallagher says that boredom is largely a recent problem that is absent from many cultures.
a. Our word boredom didn’t appear in English until the Industrial age, which is about the time modern entertainment began to evolve.
b. Translators among some African tribes struggled to come up with an equivalent to the word boredom, but there is a disconnect because those cultures don’t understand the concept and the closest word they could come to is “tired.”
5. The word amusement actually comes from the world of worship.
a. Amusement has as its root the word muse.
b. The Muses were the female Greek gods who were said to inspire great writing, science, and artistic achievement - They were the gods of reflection.
c. And when you add the prefix “a”, it brings the idea of “lacking.”
d. So amusement is a the lack of inspiration, the lack of reflection.
6. We seek amusements because we don’t want to think.
a. Haven’t you ever wanted to come home and plop down in front of the TV and just vegetate, watching something mindless?
b. And certainly that’s fine up to a point.
c. But here is where some of the danger begins: instead of inspiring our bored and apathetic existence, the god of entertainment makes us even more that way.
d. Have you ever watched your fourth straight “reality show” or flipped through hundreds of channels and concluded “there is nothing on TV.”
7. Thirty years ago, Neil Postman wrote a book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”
a. In that book, he argued that popular culture is dumbing down our world at a startling fast rate – He died in 2003, but imagine if he were alive to see what is happening today!
b. The god of entertainment promises us life, but takes away our lives and our ability to truly think one 30 minute sitcom or reality show at a time.
I. Solomon used an interesting phrase 29 times in Ecclesiastes as he defined the parameters of his search to “under the sun.”
1. Solomon had been looking everywhere under the sun – he had seen many things under the sun – he had found no meaning under the sun.
2. No wonder he was tired and frustrated and empty – his sights were aimed too low.
3. What Solomon was really looking for is out there, but it isn’t found under the sun.
4. C.S. Lewis, the great Christian philosopher put it this way: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger…well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; there is such a thing as water…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
6. Ultimately, the gods of pleasure cannot satisfy our deepest desires.
a. What we need most cannot be found through the stomach, through sexuality, or through amusement.
7. We want and need pure, unadulterated joy, and that desire finally leads to God Himself.
8. At the end of Solomon’s book, he reached that conclusion: “Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.” (Eccl. 12:13 NLT)
J. We were made for God, and until He is our greatest pleasure, all the other pleasures of this life will lead to emptiness.
1. Augustine expressed it well nearly 15 centuries ago: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee.”
2. A. W. Tozer wrote about the restless heart in an essay called “The Great God Entertainment.”
a. He said that the more vibrant our inner lives are, the less we need from the outside – that is, the more active we are in mind and spirit, the less we need to fall back on external media and other input.
b. He wrote: “The present inordinate attachment to every form of entertainment is evidence that the inner life of modern man is in serious decline.” (that was written in the 1950s!)
3. Certainly, there is a place in life for relaxation through various forms of entertainment, including sports, television, movies, music, and games, but the question is: do we seek to fill the spiritual vacuum inside us with empty entertainment, or is it the empty entertainment that is creating the vacuum? (which came first, the chicken or the egg?)
K. Allow me to suggest that the god of entertainment has not only taken many captive to secular entertainment, but the god of entertainment has also taken over much of Christian worship.
1. In modern day Christianity, true spiritual things are being pushed aside for entertainment.
2. Leonard Ravenhill said, “We believers are lean, lazy, luxury-loving, loveless and lacking…Christ is now wounded in the house of his friends.”
3. As you probably know, for about 8 centuries all churches worshiped without instrumental worship, because they believed that the singing with their voices was the purest form of worship as God commands.
4. Then after some churches began to use instruments, other Christian leaders and Bible believing churches continued to oppose the use of musical instruments, including Martin Luther, John Wesley and the Baptists, many of them until the 1800s.
5. In our entertainment-oriented culture, many churches find themselves trying to out do themselves with more and more elaborate additions to worship.
a. What began as special music by a choir has become a full orchestra with professional singers.
b. What began as an organ or piano is now a full band with lights and smoke.
c. What began as dramatic readings and skits has now become full Broadway stage productions with dancing, flag waving, and in some places aerialists like Cirque du Soleil.
d. As long as those who come to worship enjoy what is offered, then anything goes.
6. The expectation is that sermons will be shorter, wittier, and more positive.
7. Anything in worship that cannot be “jazzed up” must be abandoned as boring or unappealing, because there is nothing worse than being bored, right?
a. That’s one of the main reasons that most churches don’t partake of the Lord’s supper every Sunday, but do so only once a month, once a quarter, or once a year.
b. It takes too much time away from more entertaining things, and it is too dark and gruesome to talk about death and blood.
8. The problem with this entertainment orientation is that the very reason and object of worship is forgotten and lost.
a. God is the audience in worship – worship must be directed to Him, not to the whims of the worshipers.
b. Our worship is to be God-centered and not man-centered, and entertainment-centered.
c. To worship God in spirit and in truth as Jesus said in John 4:24 is to worship from the heart, and to worship in exact obedience to God’s commands, not according to our desires.
9. God’s regulations for worship as set out in the New Testament are neither boring nor out of date and they are designed and given to feed us spiritually.
L. As we have done with each of the counterfeit gods, let’s ask some personal questions for introspection.
1. What are my favorite forms of entertainment?
a. What is your leisure diet? How wholesome or unwholesome is it?
b. Do I watch high quality movies, read well-written books, listen to edifying music, and look for intelligent TV broadcasts?
c. If the entertainment is unwholesome, then it doesn’t belong in a Christian’s life at all.
2. How much time am I spending on entertainment?
a. Is it an appropriate amount, or has it taken over?
b. What other, better uses of your time, should you be giving attention to?
c. Ephesians 5:15-16 offers helpful guidance with the use of our time: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
3. Where and when am I exhibiting the most commitment, passion and excitement?
a. Am I truly more invested emotionally, physically and otherwise, in my relationship with God or my relationship with my sports team, vacation spot, or TV shows.
4. What is effecting my worldview the most?
a. Is culture and pop culture having a greater impact on my character, goals, and mindset than is God and the Word of God?
5. Am I addicted to entertainment?
a. Am I addicted to video games, or Facebooking, or web-browsing, or binge watching TV shows or movies?
b. Perhaps a fast from entertainment would do some good to see if anything is out of balance or out of control.
c. Maybe turning off the TV, logging off Facebook, turning down the music, unplugging the game console for a short time would allow us to turn our eyes upon Jesus.
d. Let’s always keep in mind the promise of Jesus: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt. 11:28-30)
e. If we are looking for rest and recreation from entertainment, let’s not forget this offer from Jesus, for we find in Jesus what we really need – rest for our souls.
M. Here’s a helpful acronym called M.E.D.I.A. (from Mind Over Media by Kris Roberts)
M – Message – What is the message and how is it coming across?
E – Effect – What effect does this have on me?
D – Damage – Will I suffer damage from this?
I – Instead – What could I be doing instead? (productive, constructive)
A – Ask God – Does this glorify God? Does God approve? Would I feel comfortable with
Jesus in the room?
N. Let’s end with Kyle Idleman’s devotional thought: “Jesus My Passion.”
The god of entertainment promised us a circus. And in our adult world, which can be gray and drab, filled with obligations and responsibilities, that sounded pretty good.
We looked for attractions and surprises and amusements to create in us a sense of wonder. Maybe we would find it in music or in movies or in games or in sports. The god of entertainment was hawking them all, like a carnival barker: “Step right up! Be amazed, be amused! Come one! Come all!”
But in the end, the music was flat, the movies were formulaic, and the games were rigged. The circus would leave town and we wait impatiently for another one to take its place.
Then we found our passion in Jesus. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, I get that it should ridiculous – how could a dusty old Bible character compete with big-budget movies or action-packed games or soulful tunes? But once you know Jesus and passionately pursue him, it seems ridiculous that we thought we could ever find what we wanted on a movie screen, a website, or a playlist.
Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
O. The real thing we are made for and that our desires point to is not found “under the sun,” but is found in heaven above.
1. True life and joy and happiness are found in God, everything else leaves us wanting.
Resources:
gods at war, Kyle Idleman, Zondervan, 2013
Five Questions to Ask about Entertainment, by Judy Allen
The God of Entertainment: An Idol that is Consuming America, goodnessofgod2010
Worship of Entertainment, www.housetohouse.com/worship-of-entertainment/
