Things that we call fun didn’t pop up after the fall. God created the world and our capacity to enjoy Him before the fall. God created fun with a purpose, and we still, as Christians, have the opportunity to enjoy fun consistent with that purpose.

Fun was never intended to be ultimate or ultimately satisfying or to be the ultimate goal of our pursuits. Rather, our satisfaction and joy, we learned, were to be found in God alone. Fun ultimately points us to the Giver of fun. I summarized the outline from last week: fun was created by God, and it was created with a purpose. Ultimately, it points us to the Giver of fun. Having fun is a way to glorify God.

Now the second point is what we’re going to spend the first part of our time today on: sin corrupted our relationship with fun. God’s gifts don’t tempt us to sin; it’s our desires that do. We learned, if you remember, it’s the deceitful demon doctrine that would tell us, “Oh, the really spiritual, the really religious thing is: don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t enjoy.” The teaching of ascetics places the evil in the object itself, whether it’s food that our flesh might tempt us to sin with or sex in marriage that our flesh might tempt us to sin with. Those things are not where sin lies; sin lies in our heart. Good things that God gave, to be received with thanksgiving—these fun things—are not sinful. It’s the distortion of those things that comes from our heart.

John Piper says in his very good book Money, Sex & Power that money, sex, and power are from the beginning gifts of God—good gifts of God. If those good gifts sink us, it isn’t because God gave us bad gifts. It’s because something happened inside of us to turn gifts of grace into instruments of sin.

Sin Corrupted Our Relationship with Fun

Let’s consider the first sin. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3. Let’s see how that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t that God gave bad gifts, but something happened to turn gifts of grace into instruments of sin.

The setting of Genesis 3 is that God created the world and everything in it, and He declared all of it good. He created Adam and Eve in His image. He put them in the garden. He set them over all the good things that He had created. God put in Adam and Eve the capacity to enjoy all the good things the world has to offer. He put in them the capacity to have fun. Remember our definition of fun from last time: the enjoyment of or taking pleasure in experiences, sensations, people, or things in this life. That’s what we call fun.

Six days before God made man—six days before the end of creation—none of the things in this world existed. But then there were people, created in God’s image, who could take pleasure in experiences: running, riding horses, sitting on a beach watching a sunrise or a sunset, throwing things, sitting around a campfire staring at stars, dancing, laughing, singing, climbing, solving puzzles, learning new skills, inventing, gardening, hiking, swimming, feeling the breeze, listening to its silence, listening to animal sounds like the trumpeting of elephants, climbing trees, smelling flowers, exploring caves, playing with animals, observing insects, watching clouds, running barefoot through the grass, exploring mountain paths, sitting under the shade of trees, building sandcastles—you could go on and on. All these things were not intended to distract us from God but to be received from Him with thanksgiving for the purpose for which He gave them: to be enjoyed as gifts.

Before creation, none of those things could happen. There was no man with the capacity to enjoy them and none of the objects God gave them to enjoy. Think of the sensations God created. God didn’t have to make us with the ability to feel these things: warmth to feel the sun, coolness to feel the breeze, taste to enjoy food like the sweetness of fruit, the saltiness of salt, the spiciness of peppers—coffee, curry, coconut, caramel, chilies, cherries, and chocolate. Think of smell to enjoy the aroma of flowers, the scent of a freshly cooked meal, or the smell of someone you love. Sound so we can enjoy running water, another’s voice, the roar of a lion, the laughing of a hyena, or the flitting of a hummingbird—a simple melody or a complex symphony.

God put this in man: the capacity to enjoy feelings like the softness of fur or the roughness of sand, the sliminess of a frog or the smooth texture of a spouse’s lips, or sight so we can know what beauty is—to enjoy the colors of a sunset or the fruit on a tree, flowers, animals. Think of what your life would be like, the enjoyments that would be missing, if God didn’t give you sight and put in us the sensation of pleasure at seeing a beautiful thing. Consider the intangible sensations we get from experiences we enjoy: joy, peace, love, gratitude, wonder, amazement, awe, contentment, excitement, inspiration, empathy, curiosity, trust, elation, anticipation, wonderment, exhilaration, tiredness, and rest. These are not bad things; these are good things—good gifts from God that have been corrupted by sin this side of the fall.

All of these things and the ability to enjoy them are the setting before Genesis 3. He didn’t just give experiences and sensations; He gave Adam to Eve and Eve to Adam. He gave us people and intended that we make more people to enjoy this creation together. To have fun together, laugh together, walk hand in hand, enjoy long conversations, sit together in silence, share meals together, learn together, play games together, sing together, joke together, give gifts to one another, tell a good story, listen to a good story, make music, explore together, teach, learn together, build, create together, rest together, pray together, worship God together.

A husband and wife are to enjoy life together, get to know each other, care for one another, laugh together, giggle together, bask in marital bliss, joy, loving kiss, or a sweet embrace. All of these things—the experiences, the people—were given by God to the creatures made in His image, to whom He gave the capacity to enjoy these gifts. In the setting before Genesis 3, in His loving wisdom, God put some limitations on enjoyment. He created all these things, and He knows and has the right to establish the best way for them to be enjoyed. He declared some ways in which they shouldn’t be enjoyed. In the setting of Genesis 3, enjoy your own wife with whom God made you to be one flesh. At this point, there was only one couple, but we still have limitations on our marital joy—don’t enjoy others like you enjoy your spouse. He made His creation not to be worshiped and loved above Himself. Worship and love God the Creator, not the created things. Even before the fall, these created things weren’t to be kept for themselves. God said be fruitful and multiply; don’t be selfish, but imitate God’s self-giving love by loving others as you love yourself. Then God gave the explicit command: you can eat from the fruit of all the trees in the garden except for the one in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God gave really good gifts, tons of things to enjoy, and the capacity to enjoy them. He put some limitations on those gifts—not to withhold joy or fun or enjoyment, but to maximize them and use them for their intended purpose: to point to Him as the Giver of the gift, that those who receive them should trust in God. Then we read in Genesis 3:1:

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, “You shall not eat from it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.”’ The serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”

This was a lie, a temptation—that God is holding back, that there’s actual greater joy in going outside what God has given you. The problem wasn’t in the gift; it wasn’t even in the existence of a potential pleasure not to be received. The problem was in the desire inside Eve, rooted in a distrust of God and wanting to seek pleasure outside of the pleasures God provided. As soon as that desire took hold, it gave birth to sin. Sin led to death.

There was a belief that God’s provision was not sufficient, that His constraints restricted, rather than provided for, a better life. You see, there was not greater joy to be found in going outside of God’s provision. Look what happened then: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise.” See—delight, desire—these capacities for joy that God created to glorify Him, they pursued sin, which would ultimately corrupt our relationship with those joys. She took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. Then they heard the sound of Yahweh walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the God for whom all these gifts were supposed to result in more fellowship, more joy together—the one these gifts were to point us to—they hid from. The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

Eve was lured and enticed not by the fruit but by her desire for something she didn’t have but now wanted. God had given good gifts and their constraints to be received by faith, and Eve stopped trusting God and got carried away by her own lusts and desires. Adam followed where he should have been leading, and likewise he sought to use God’s gifts in a way God forbade. Sin was born; suffering too, and it led to death. Life became a lot less fun because from now on, humanity would be characterized by the inability to find satisfaction in God’s gifts, since we had separated God from His gifts and began to live as if pleasure could be found apart from God.

Corrupting Our Relationship With God’s Gifts

James 1:13 gives commentary on what happened in the garden and on what happens in us when we’re lured and enticed by our own desires into sin. It shows that sin corrupts our relationship with fun. It’s not God’s gifts that tempt us to sin; it’s our desires. James 1:13 says: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”

When God gives us things or withholds things from us—fun or the absence of fun included—His purpose is not to induce us to sin but rather to strengthen our faith. His goal is to point us to Him. But it’s our desires that take God’s good gifts and corrupt them. Financial difficulty or the absence of things we want to enjoy can tempt us, but God’s intention in this difficulty is to test our faith in order to prove its genuineness and produce endurance and maturity in His people. That’s how the book of James starts in 1:2–4. God intends difficult things as a gift for our good. But testing doesn’t only come from financial difficulty. In many ways, having much is more of a trial than having little. That’s the context in Philippians 4:12–13. Paul says he’s learning to be content with being filled and going hungry—having an abundance and suffering need. That’s hard, actually impossible, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Sometimes having much can be a test of our faith that’s harder to endure than having little. Jeremiah Burroughs, in his book Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory, says if you can deliver yourselves from the deceits of prosperity, it will not be very difficult to resist the temptations of adversity. So if you’re given money so you can buy fun things to enjoy, recognize that money is a gift from God, and the fun things it provides are likewise gifts from God. That’s what James 1:17 says and what 1 Timothy 6:7 declares: one of the purposes of God’s good gifts to the rich, or anyone, is to supply us with good things for what purpose? For us to enjoy.

Let no one say when he’s tempted, “I’m being tempted by God.” God’s purpose in the trial is not to tempt you to evil or destroy your faith, whether He withholds the things you want or provides them. In God’s gift of Eve to Adam, she was a helper, but in Genesis 3:12, Adam did what we’re tempted to do—rather than take responsibility, he blamed the good gift: “God, the woman You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” He blamed the gift that God gave him, instead of owning what came from his own heart. We’re tempted to do the same. Fun and the things with which we have fun can be used by our corrupted heart, this side of the fall, to pull us away from God. Indeed, for those who have not been saved, that is the entirety of their relationship with God’s gifts—they don’t know God, so they cannot relate to those gifts rightly. Instead of blaming God or thinking the problem lies in the things our heart tempts us with, we need to declare to ourselves: “These gifts that You gave me, God, they didn’t make me sin; my heart and its desires made me sin. These gifts that You gave me for Your glory, I’ve twisted them. I’ve corrupted my relationship with them by following sin.” God did not tempt you. Every good and perfect gift is from above, from our Father, and we ought to relate to those gifts that way. Our pleasures were never meant to be ultimate. James 4:3 says that if you ask and don’t receive, it may be because you ask with wrong motives—so you can spend it on your pleasures. Your pleasures were never meant to be ultimate. Philippians 3:19 describes people who make their god their belly; their minds are set on earthly things. We were made to live for God and enjoy the things He gives us as we live a life with our minds set on God. But as soon as we start living for the stuff, as if the stuff and the enjoyment of it are ultimate, we lose the capacity to truly enjoy it.

Living for Fun Robs Us of the Capacity to be Satisfied

Sin has corrupted our relationship with fun. It’s not God’s gifts that tempt us; it’s our desires. Living for fun robs us of the capacity to be satisfied in it. Turn to Ecclesiastes 5:10. The world lives for under-the-sun pleasures—things confined to this life that ultimately don’t last. In this sin-marred world, the things themselves are waiting for restoration. Ecclesiastes describes how those who don’t know God live for these things. Because they love them, they don’t have the capacity to be truly satisfied by them. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its produce. This too is vanity.” If we seek to find ultimate satisfaction in this world—in money, experiences, pleasures, fun—we’ll never be satisfied. We were made to be satisfied in God alone. If we live for the stuff God gives us, we’ll never be satisfied. Instead, we’ll always want more and be robbed of the capacity to truly enjoy it, because in our sinfulness, we’ve disconnected it from God. That’s the point of the book of Ecclesiastes: that we fear God and enjoy His gifts in light of that fear of God.

Ecclesiastes 6:1–7 shows that those who live for this life and the things of this world as ultimate will not be able to enjoy them. Verses 1–2 say: “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun and is prevalent among men—a man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not empower him to eat from them, for a foreigner eats from them. This is vanity and a sickening evil.” If you become the father of a hundred children, live many years, but your soul is not satisfied with the good things, how is that any better than one who never lived? We were meant to live for God. If you’re living just for the stuff, you will not be satisfied. If you love money, you won’t be satisfied with money; if you love wealth, you’ll never be satisfied with your income. This is why often the richest are the most miserable. After encountering the rich young ruler, Jesus said, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” Our flesh twists wealth, making us try to find ultimate satisfaction in what cannot satisfy. A gracious God often withholds pleasures from us to teach us that our satisfaction and joy don’t exist in those pleasures but in Him.

Surveying the Bible, I don’t know any example where God wooed someone to Himself through the provision of stuff. Instead, it’s very common for God to withhold gifts as a trial of deprivation, so a person comes to Him. Then, and only then—when they know God—can they enjoy good gifts rightly. The rich young ruler was offered eternal life with God, at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore, but he went away sad. It was a lopsided trade, to trade eternal life for worldly possessions that can’t satisfy. He worshiped stuff and money and the fun it could buy, not God. How tragic. His appetite would never be satisfied if he loved money. How tragic that those non-satisfying gifts made him walk away from the only One who can truly satisfy—the One who realigns our relationship with fun.

That same foolish trade is repeated when people say, “I’m going to give up God—where true satisfaction is found—and I’m going to cheat on a test, steal, lie, hold on to these things and worship them. I’m going to make my belly my god instead of You, Lord.” Ecclesiastes 5:10 says he who loves money will not be satisfied with money. Yet a little earlier, Ecclesiastes 5:18 says there is something good and beautiful: to eat, to drink, and to see good in one’s labor under the sun, during the few days of life God has given. That is our portion, and if He gives riches, He empowers you to enjoy them—this is a gift of God. Even unbelievers get glimpses of it, but they’re never satisfied. They go for the next hit instead of letting that gladness point them to an eternal gladness. Similarly, 1 Timothy 6 warns us about the vain love of money. “But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by aspiring to it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” The solution is not to avoid money or the stuff it can buy. The problem isn’t the things; it’s the misplaced love of the things that pushes out love for God. Godliness with contentment is the solution.

Immediately preceding that warning in 1 Timothy 6:9–10, look at 6:6–8: “Godliness is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. And if we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.” Isn’t it crazy that those who only have food and a house over their head, but are rightly related to God, will actually find more joy in that simple provision than the richest of the rich who live for this world? Solomon tried living for everything as if he could find joy under the sun. Ecclesiastes is his confession of repentance at the end of his life. Then 1 Timothy 6:17 echoes Ecclesiastes 5:10. Paul says, “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty or to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.” That verse is a key for our theology of fun. Fun tries to pull you away and make you set your hope on the uncertainty of riches or the uncertainty of fun, but God is the One who gave you those gifts to enjoy. So, enjoy them when you have them, be content when you don’t. Paul goes on: “Command them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.” The things in this world promise, “This is life!” But that’s not life. Eternal life is found in God alone. If you seek to find your pleasure in this life, it might pull you away to the point where Jesus will send you away in judgment. Ultimately, living for pleasures in this world will fail you when you need it most.

Luke 12:16–21: Jesus told them a parable. “The land of a rich man was very productive. He reasoned, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. I’ll tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I’ll store my grain and my goods.’ He presumed upon tomorrow, enjoying his stuff without thought of God. ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you’ve prepared?’ So is the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” Sin exchanges the glory of the Creator and ultimate satisfaction in Him for created things. That is the foundational definition of sin: exchanging the glory of the immortal God for substitutes.

The Rich Young Ruler & Exchanging God for the Created

Let’s end in Romans 1. Since the creation of the world (Romans 1:20), God’s invisible attributes—His eternal power, His divine nature—have been clearly seen. When you look at the Grand Canyon, you ought not say, “That canyon is great,” but “God is great.” When you look up at the stars, you say, “God is huge,” not just “the universe is huge.” Professing to be wise, humanity became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man (Romans 1:22–23). We worshiped the things God made, instead of the One whose glory those things were meant to reflect. What did God do? He judged us. He gave humanity over to impurity, dishonorable passions, and a depraved mind to do things that aren’t proper. If you look at that list in Romans 1:29–32—unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, murder, envy, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, disobedient to parents, on and on—all are rooted in someone who wants more for themselves and refuses to find those things in God. That’s exactly what happened in the garden. Sin is an exchange of satisfaction and joy in the Creator for the pursuit of satisfaction and joy in creation. The ultimate futility is to know something of God through what He made, then reject Him and trade Him away. That God-rejecting exchange is at the heart of all our misuses of fun. Even as a Christian, when we misuse fun, we’re walking back in the way we used to be, willing to sin to get more fun. The problem isn’t in the fun; it’s in pursuing it as if it’s ultimate, stepping outside the limitations God put on it. The result is no satisfaction, and ultimately, death. God’s will for us is much better. Through the gospel, He sets us free from slavery to lusts. For the first time, when we’re saved, we can love God. We can know God, and the result is that we no longer live in the passion of lusts like those who don’t know God.

1 Thessalonians 4:3–5: “For this is the will of God, your holiness… that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like those who don’t know God.” Not knowing God means living for your passions and lusts. When God saved you, He made you able to know Him rightly. Now you can relate to all these things He made for you to enjoy, and your use of these things is sanctified. First Timothy 4:4 says your use of these gifts is sanctified through the knowledge of God and prayer. That’s what we’ll talk about next time in part three: Christians are the only ones who can truly have fun in this world, because we are the only ones who truly know God.

Conclusion & Prayer

Let’s pray. God, thank You for the gospel. Thank You for not leaving us in our rebellion—living for this world as if it’s ultimate, only to have it all taken away at the end. Then we’d be face to face with You as Judge, cast away into hell where there is no more enjoyment, no more stuff, no more pleasure, zero fun, and only wrath. I pray You would use this message and these reminders of what sin is and the way sin has tainted and corrupted our relationship to fun, to make us use Your gifts—and the fun in those gifts—to point us to You as ultimate. That our joy and our satisfaction, whether we have fun or You’ve withheld it from us in this life, would be in You and for You alone. In Jesus’ name, amen.