Audio Transcript
It’s not hard to imagine, so imagine with me for a moment. You’re 25 years old — a Christian. You want to be a good Christian. You want to cultivate a tender soul. You want to avoid what will deaden your affections for God. You take inventory of your life and everything that is being offered to you by this world. A lot of it is fun. It’s enjoyable. You can fly to just about any Instagram spot on the planet. You can have endless hobbies. The digital things you can watch or read or listen to can all be enjoyed in the time it takes to download them. Physical things you buy online can be delivered to your door by the end of the day. You can wear new clothes every week and enjoy great coffee every day. Even on a tight budget, there’s an abundance available beyond what our grandparents could even imagine.
Then, you open your Bible and read cautionary tales like the two we just read today in our Bible reading. In 2 Timothy 4:10, Demas fell away by falling in love with this world. In Luke 18:18–25, the rich young ruler refused to part with his wealth to follow Christ. Love for this world will separate your heart from God forever, and it all raises a hard question. Today on Ask Pastor John: The pleasure trap.
The question is from an anonymous woman, 25 years old, reading her way through 2 Timothy. “Pastor John, thank you for the podcast, which is part of my every-week rotation. As I look over the list of sins for the last days, I find it terrifying. Paul groups ‘lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God’ right next to people who are ‘abusive’ and ‘heartless’ in 2 Timothy 3:2–4. A little later, he drops the news that Demas deserted his gospel mission because he was ‘in love with this present world’ in 2 Timothy 4:10. My honest problem is that sometimes ‘this present world’ feels way more satisfying to me than the hope of the coming of Jesus. If Christian Hedonism says I’m supposed to pursue maximum satisfaction in God, how do I know when my love for a hobby or a relationship has crossed the line into the sin of Demas? Wouldn’t it be more spiritually safe to just kill all my capacity to enjoy any earthly thing?”
Universal Battle
I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that every Christian has struggled with what this young woman expresses when she says, “My honest problem is that sometimes ‘this present world’ feels way more satisfying to me than the hope of the coming of Jesus.” I just think that’s probably a universal temptation and experience and struggle.
And one of the reasons why that is a universal battle, first, is because this present world has access to our souls through bodily senses. We can taste this world with our physical tongues, we can hear this world with our physical ears, we can see this world with our physical eyes, we can touch this world with our physical fingers, and we can smell this world with our physical noses. That’s not the case with the risen Christ.
Peter says in his first letter, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). So, Peter believes that, by the Spirit of God and the word of God, our experience of Jesus can be so real in this present world that we love him with inexpressible and glorified joy. That’s possible for Christians — for ordinary people who are full of the Holy Spirit.
But what if we don’t? What if the world is so strong we have more pleasure in the world than in Christ? This young woman wonders whether the solution to that battle is that she should just kill all her capacity to enjoy any earthly thing. Now, the answer to that question is no. That’s not the strategy to take for several reasons.
Send Your Heart Godward
First, it’s impossible. God designed the tongue to taste, the skin to feel, the nose to smell, the eyes to see, the ears to hear. You cannot stop these senses from sensing things that are pleasant or unpleasant — you can’t. Things are going to register with you virtually automatically as pleasant or unpleasant through your senses, and you can’t stop it. God made you that way. No matter how much of an ascetic you try to be (go live in a cave somewhere and wear clothes with scratchy things on the inside), some pleasure is going to sneak through one of your senses or your imagination. That’s the first reason. You shouldn’t try to kill every possible pleasure because it won’t work. It’s impossible. It’s a dead-end street. God made you to sense these things as pleasant or unpleasant.
The second reason is more important — namely, you shouldn’t try to do that because the Bible teaches that the pleasures of this world are, in their proper measure, a gift from God to be enjoyed for God’s sake. That’s the basic, biblical, theological, spiritual reason.
For example, 1 Timothy 6:17: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” That’s God’s design. He’s the one who created the things, and he created the pleasure that the things elicit.
“Every pleasant thing that you taste during the day is meant to send your heart Godward.”
In fact, Paul says it can be demonic to turn against the pleasures that he has given us. For example, in 1 Timothy 4:1–5 he says that it’s a teaching of demons — it’s just amazing — to “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” as Christians. “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:3–5).
So, some were teaching in Paul’s situation that sex and marriage and food were to be avoided. They were trying to do what our young friend is asking whether she should do. Wouldn’t it be better just to kill all my capacity to enjoy any earthly thing? That’s basically what they were saying, and Paul’s answer in 1 Timothy 4 and 6 is “No, these pleasures are God’s gifts to be received with thanksgiving.” In other words, they are meant to send our hearts Godward — that’s the point. Every pleasant thing that you taste during the day is meant to send your heart Godward — not away from God, but toward God. They are not an end in themselves. They communicate something of God, and we are to know him and worship him through earthly pleasures. If we can’t, we’re doing it wrong. They have become an idol.
God’s Witness
Here’s the way Paul put it in Acts 14:17. He said God “did not leave himself without witness [what’s his witness to himself?], for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” Paul calls food and gladness a witness of God to God. This is God’s witness to God. “Hey, heads up, folks. You’re feeling glad because of something you just ate? That’s my witness to you. It’s about me, folks. Wake up.”
It’s not good to ignore God’s witness to God. We are supposed to receive God’s witness and send our hearts Godward because of every earthly pleasure, which brings us then to the question she asked: “How do I know when my love for a hobby or a relationship has crossed the line into the sin of Demas,” whose love for the world led him away — away from God, away from the Christian faith rather than to God (2 Timothy 4:10)?
And I think Paul gives us a way to think about this in 1 Corinthians 10:23. He says, “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.” So, what he’s saying is things can be legitimate and yet unhelpful — legitimate and yet unedifying. They don’t build faith. They don’t make you stronger. They make you weaker.
So, what that points to is this: You can test your pleasures by whether they are helpful and edifying. For example, you mentioned a hobby and a relationship. Does the hobby and relationship help you love Christ more? Does it help you with the intensity and authenticity of your prayers? Does it help you in the clarity and boldness of your witness to Christ? Does it intensify or diminish your affections for Jesus? Does it cause Bible reading to feel more desirable or more burdensome? Does it undermine your peace with God, or does it nurture that peace? Does it make the fruit of the Spirit more natural and pleasing and prevalent in your life, or does it hinder love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23)? Does it push wholesome thoughts out of your mind and replace them with thoughts that trouble your conscience? Does it make you more or less desirous of godly company or less godly company? And the questions, of course, could go on.
If those tests convict you, then there are two things you might try. One is a partial fast from the activity. Like we fast from food for a season, fast from the activity. Noël and I build, as it were, fasts into our lives where certain activities we enjoy (and we could just do them morning and night, day after day, and we just don’t) — we set limits to just check our hearts. Do it less often to break what may be an excessive hold on you. The other thing that you can try is to make a studied effort to let the innocent pleasures that it gives you — that your hobby gives you — turn your heart Godward. Focus on that so that the pleasures are changed, transformed, transposed from temptations to idolatry on the one side to occasions of worship on the other side.
