Pleasure in Moderation: Recreation in Moderation

Please turn your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 3. That can be found on page 554 if you're using the Pew Bible.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3. Please stand when you have that.

For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek, and a time to lose, a time to keep, and a time to cast away, a time to tear, and a time to sew, a time to keep silence, and a time to speak, a time to love, and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace.

Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us to understand the times that we live in. I pray that you would help us to understand the times that you've given us, and how we should approach each moment as it appears.

Recreation as a Gift in God's Ordered Times

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we continue in our series on pleasure and moderation, and among other things, we have looked at the various things that the Westminster Larger Catechism speaks of in the duties of the Sixth Commandment that we should have a sober use of, that being meat, drink, physic, sleep, labor, and now recreation.

This passage, and this whole book, speaks of the fleetingness of this life, and how God arranges the times that we live in. It speaks about the ocean coming, the ocean going with the tide, coming in, going out, and everything having its various season.

And so here in this passage, it speaks of there being different times that are appropriate for different things. And in that, there is a time for recreation. There's a time for laughing, a time for dancing.

A word used in this passage, being a word that is used to describe play, there's a time for play. There is a time for recreation. Later on in verse 17, it says, I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.

And so not just for us as we work at different times, but also for God, who is eternal. There are different times that we experience His different work. And so right now, He does not judge, but there will be a time when He judges.

And He will judge on the basis of how we have used the times that He has given us, and whether or not we have used them rightly. He has given us times for work, times for mourning, and also time for recreation.

Creation's Pleasures Show That Recreation Is Good

Recreation is a good thing. There are different passages in scripture that speak of the way that God has made all of creation that indicate that recreation is a good thing, that play is a good thing. Psalm 104, verse 26 says,.

There go the ships and Leviathan which you formed to play in it. Job 40, verse 20 says,. For the mountains yield food for Him where all the wild beasts play. Bible describes even animals as playing. God has made nature to indicate His goodness towards man.

And even the animals recreate, even the animals play. Zechariah 8, 5 talks about a redeemed city, a rescued city where the children play, and this being a sign of God's blessing, the children play. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls and playing, girls playing in its streets.

And then the word play is used even in celebrations. 1 Samuel 18, 6 -7, David comes in victory and says,. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated. Literally, it speaks of the playing women.

Saul had struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands. So play is appropriate in all these different times. Now, someone who might be struggling in their conscience, looking at the way that people recreate wrongly, trying to understand what the right posture should be towards recreation, and they might conclude that anything beyond what is absolutely necessary is not good.

And therefore, recreation, because it is beyond what is absolutely necessary, is not good. But that is not how we should think of recreation. We have already looked at God's blessings to man, one of them being wine, and how wine, unlike some of his other blessings, which already are good, good to enjoy even as pleasures, wine is not something like food or even like intimacy that would be necessary for the individual or for the human race, but something that goes even beyond that.

But God has blessed man with it. And one of the verses that speaks to this, Psalm 104, 15, it says,. And wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart.

Now, this is talking about these things being gifts. It talks about wine and oil and bread. And we looked at this verse that spoke of wine being a gift, but here it also talks about God giving oil to make man's face shine.

Just the simple kind of things that you would use in your hygiene even to enjoy life and to have it be a more pleasant thing. And so if this is the case, it's also the case with recreation. Recreation is a good thing.

You look at the creation around you, how God has made it to be enjoyed. Why is it that flowers are pleasant to look at? It's because God has made them pleasant to look at for our sake. You might say, oh no, that's just for the sake for the insects so that they would, you know, pollinate the different plants and things like that.

Well, not all of these insects, not all of these animals have the senses that we do, have the colors that we do, and some of them have additional senses. So God could have arranged it so that all of these plants were not pleasing to man and were only pleasing to the animals in order to manipulate them into pollinating things and whatever the case is in order to eat the fruit so that the seeds end up getting distributed.

But God has arranged it so that flowers and other things in creation are pleasing to us. He has made many things in such a way that are pleasing to us. One that is especially good to contemplate, one of the more well-defined recreations that you find in Scripture is music.

Have you ever thought about how odd it is that certain patterns of music sound very pleasing to you and other patterns that might even be just as mathematically precise are not pleasing to you? I think it's something where because you are so used to processing images constantly, that feels more natural to you.

But because music is something that you only think of occasionally, it might help you to think about music. How incredible it is that God designed it so that music is very, very pleasing to man. He has made it so that some of the patterns in music are very pleasing and others would not be at all.

This is something that indicates that God has made the world in such a way that we should enjoy it, not just receiving those things that would be for our need. But also in recreation. Calvin said that if you were to say that the only kind of pleasures a man could enjoy are just those things which are necessary, you would have to reduce man to being a block.

Because there are so many things, so many pleasures that God has made in creation that it would be impossible to go and avoid all of them without man just becoming a block and shutting off all his senses to everything.

Thomas Fuller, a, I believe he is 18th century, I might be off on that, he might be 17th, but an Anglican who's also a historian, he wrote this, recreation is a second creation. He's playing on the etymology of recreation.

Recreation is a second creation. When weariness hath almost annihilated one's spirits, it is the breathing of the soul which otherwise would be hurled with continual busyness. There is a story that is retold by theologians.

It's obviously legendary, and I do not think we have much reason at all to think it's a true story. But the story is of a hunter who came by the Apostle John. And the hunter saw the Apostle John holding and petting a bird.

And he thought that this was very undignified for one who was an Apostle to be just sitting around enjoying this bird. And he talked to him about it. And John spoke to the hunter who had a bow, and he asked him whether or not he kept the bow at all times strung.

And he said, no, of course not. He says, well, why not? Because if it were always strung, then it would lose its ability to remain taut when I am using it. And John in this legend responds, so it is with man that if he does not take time to enjoy creation, he will become less fit for his actual duties of work.

Recreation Can Refresh Us for Work and Intellectual Pleasures

Now, I mentioned earlier animals playing, children playing, times of celebration. Some of the greatest kinds of recreation that are described in Scripture are intellectual ones, things that would be beyond the capacities of animals.

We see for Samson, it speaks of him as having riddles that he tells his companions. And then there's also the statement in the Proverbs that the wise tell their riddles. In 1 Kings 4 .33 of Solomon, it says that he spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall.

He also spoke of beasts and of birds and of reptiles and of fish. So someone today might be able to get a job as being a botanist or might be able to get a job as a biologist or someone who studies these matters.

Back then, this was not a well-paying position. You would have to actually just be interested in it for the sake of recreating and engaging in intellectual study. So Solomon is someone who spends his time studying these things for the sake of pleasure and to pass on this information to others.

In Ecclesiastes 2 verses 4 through 6, another passage from Solomon, I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted them. All kinds of fruit trees.

I made myself pools from which to water the forest growing trees. So he made parks. Parks are for pleasure. Parks are for recreation. Gardens, the kind of gardens that he's talking about are not just to harvest things out of.

It's not talking about farming. This is talking about a garden that's designed for pleasure. This is recreation. And this is not something where as you look at this and you examine his reflections that he determines it is useless.

He does acknowledge that it's vanity in the sense of being fleeting, in the sense of being short-lived. But it is not something that he concludes is therefore worthless. In fact, he goes on and explains that these are the gifts of God that he has given that man should be able to do work.

Man should be able to enjoy the fruit of his hands and including this recreation that he describes building parks and enjoying things. Of course, I mentioned also that we see music in Scripture. A number of examples of musicians, but most especially David who plays his lyre so well that for Saul it causes the evil spirit that afflicted him to flee.

First Samuel 16, 23, whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. And what you have being described there is not just playing instruments. What's needed in order to be able to play instruments is the making of instruments, which itself is a kind of recreation.

Now, once again, we have so industrialized all recreations that maybe you just think of these things as profitable jobs in their own right. But apart from them being profitable jobs in their own right, they would still be valid recreations.

Recreation Must Not Displace Work, Piety, or Our Purpose

Now, of course, while recreation is good, excess recreation is evil. Excess recreation is evil. The primary way that you should be thinking about this is the sense in which this passage speaks about it as a matter of time.

There's a time to weep and a time to laugh, time to mourn and time to dance. There are different times that are appropriate for recreation. There are times that are not appropriate for recreation. And there is an amount of time that is appropriate for recreation, amount of time that is not appropriate for recreation.

If you think about one time the Bible says is not appropriate for recreation, Proverbs 25, 20, whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day or like vinegar on soda.

Now, I don't know whether or not they had the science experiment back then with the volcano, but they knew about vinegar and soda. You put those together and it agitates and it erupts. This is what it is like to recreate at a time that is inappropriate to sing songs to a heavy heart.

You're not to recreate at the wrong times. Additionally, you're to make the best use of your time, which often is not in recreation. It's not in playing games many times. Ephesians 5, 16 and Colossians 4, 5 say, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Days are evil. We have a limited time on this earth that's fleeting. It would be senseless to spend all the time in recreation. So we should not spend all of our time in recreation. We should recognize that there are times that are appropriate and there are times that are inappropriate.

You want to engage in recreation in a way that is helpful to your duties and not harmful to your duties. Now, many people engage in recreation in ways that are harmful to their duties, that make them less fit for the duties.

Spend all the time on social media, on the internet, on all kinds of play and all kinds of recreation so that they are not fit for the things that they are actually supposed to be doing and so that they cannot enjoy other kinds of blessings that God would give because their mind is so numb from the other blessings that they are enjoying in excess.

Additionally, we need to be fit for piety. We need to be fit for time spent with God. If our mind is always so stimulated by the most banal sorts of recreations, we will not have the capacity to spend time with God in prayer, to enjoy time spent with the saints in worship.

These are things that are very difficult for our error because we are so stimulated, not even by good recreations too much, but by very poor recreations so much that it becomes hard to spend our time in real sorts of focus.

Recreation Should Not Distract Us from God or Become Our Purpose

Now, beyond that, we do not want to engage in recreations in such a way that it would take our thoughts off of God. Isaiah 5, 12 says, they have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute, and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands.

This is many people. Many people have feasts. They have wine and tambourine. They have all kinds of recreation, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the works of his hands. This is the average person.

The average person has their life so full of recreations, but spend no time actually seeing the one who has blessed them with those things. They fill their lives with blessings so much that they become a curse to them so that they do not recognize the Lord himself.

Now, we should avoid all kinds of recreation that would be distractions to us. Distractions from the things that we have been commanded to do are all kinds of ways that we can do this. We can enjoy recreations in a way that becomes a substitute for purpose, for meaning.

Says in Ecclesiastes 2, 1 through 2, I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, it is maddened of pleasure. What use is it?

What's being described here is not just enjoyment. What is the madness of it? Is that becoming the sole purpose? Job 21, 11 through 13, describing the wicked says, they send out their little boys like a flock and their children dance.

They sing to the tambourine and the lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe. They spend their days in prosperity and in peace, they go down to Sheol. Now, the irony is they're going down to Sheol just having numbed themselves to everything, just doing whatever they want, not having the right kind of purpose in their life.

And so for many people, recreation is their purpose. They work in order that they would have the time to go watch the movies they want to watch, enjoy the recreations that they want to enjoy, and they don't have any kind of purpose greater than that.

Mark 6, 22 speaks of distracting recreation. For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you wish, I will give it to you.

So Herod, recreating in a way that was excessive, ended up being so distracted from his purpose to rule well as a king, he ended up slaughtering John the Baptist because he was so distracted by recreations.

That is how the story continues, so that he is impressed with her dancing and she ends up asking him for the head of John the Baptist and he gives it. You also don't want to recreate in a way that replaces the function of work.

So for example, many people, the reason that they so enjoy video games is because video games simulate the accomplishments that happen in work and they do so in a very precise and satisfying way that is trying to remove a lot of the excessive difficulties that you experience in work.

And so people enjoy many kind of recreations as a substitute for the satisfactions that they are supposed to be getting out of work. Many people also use recreation as a way to pursue the financial gain that they should be getting from work instead of actually working.

They try to gamble in order to support themselves. Right now, there are different apps that are designed so that you can gamble on just about anything. Polymark and Calshi, these things are designed so that you can, so that instead of doing good honest work, you instead support yourself financially in theory by just being really good at gambling.

I think that believers should be very cautious about this because the world is so obsessed with recreation. I mentioned earlier that many jobs are focused on recreation. Because there is a place for that, because there is a place for recreation, there's a place for jobs that are focused on recreation, like someone who would make instruments, for example.

But I do think that people should be cautious about this. They should not so embrace every work as equally dignified and should recognize if something is a form of excess recreation that they would be supporting.

We live in a software area. If you get an offer for a job that's for some kind of mindless site designed to distract people, you should think twice about that. You should think twice about it. I'm not saying every single opportunity would be wrong, but it is worth considering these things.

There are people who their whole job is to play sports and they get paid many times more, orders of magnitude more than anyone in this room, just to play sports. That is, on one hand, it is excellent that we are so blessed that we may spend time in recreation, but it is something to reflect on how much of an economy there is around recreation.

Recreation Must Not Harm Others or Celebrate Idolatry

That itself is not a good thing. So in addition to distractions, we do not want to have any kind of recreations that would be harmful. That would be harmful. So in Proverbs 26, 18 through 19, it says, Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, I'm only joking.

That word for joking, once again, that same word for play that I've been pointing out. I'm only playing. He's saying I'm only recreating. This would be an inappropriate time that would be harmful to someone else.

Second Samuel 2, 14 through 16, we read that not too terribly long ago. And Abner said to Joab, let the young men arise and compete before us. And Joab said, let them arise. And that word for compete is the word for play.

Let them play before us. And Joab said, let them arise. And they arose and passed over by number. Twelve for Benjamin and Ish-bosheth, and the son of Saul, and twelve for the servants of David. And each caught his opponent by the head and thrust a sword in the opponent's side.

So they fell down together. Therefore, that place was called Helkath Hazarim, which is at Gibeon. Judges 16, 25 has something similar. And when their hearts were merry, they said, call Samson that he may entertain.

That's a word related to that word for play. That he may entertain us. So they called Samson out of the prison and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. So here you have people recreating, people playing.

And the joy that they're deriving is from the harm that is caused to others. There are many ways that people recreate in a way that's harmful. The early Christians had to deal with the gladiators, right?

The arena where it was common to go see brutality. And this was a way that people were entertained and Christians stood against that. Now there's a place for martial arts and learning how to fight as being a form of recreation.

But when it goes into entertainment based on brutality, based on actual violence that is— by violence, I don't mean the act of fighting. I mean by violence, the act of harming. That is something that is beyond what God would desire.

And this is how many people enjoy themselves. Okay, you look at things like UFC and stuff like that. It is frequently the case that people are watching this because they enjoy the brutality. Not just because they enjoy the skill of martial arts.

And they may lie to themselves often and say that it's over the skill. But often it is the brutality. The statistics on what people find satisfying in a match show that it has to do with that decisive destruction of another person.

Beyond harming people, we should not play, recreate in idolatrous fashion. Exodus 32, 6 says,. And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Frequently in scripture, play is associated with idolatry. And even today, that is why people recreate, why people celebrate. You look at our own area. They have the pride parades. These are celebrations.

They are recreations dealing with idolatrous ideologies. Chances are, if you work at one of the companies around here, you've been invited to a Diwali celebration, right? A celebration for pagan things.

Don't engage in any kind of idolatrous recreation. But the vast majority of recreation that exists when it comes to consuming content, when it comes to the movies, the TV shows, even the books, other things that people enjoy, it's very idolatrous in praising all kinds of matters that are displeasing before God.

And that is the nature of the entertainment. The nature of the entertainment is to celebrate the evil thing. Whether it be a vengeance that is not the kind that God has authorized, the kind of vengeance that he says, Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

Whether it be sexual immorality, whether it be theft, all kinds of things, all kinds of ways that evil is celebrated, and that is the substance of the entertainment. If you have lived your life consuming these things and see that as normal, step back and be aware of what you are doing.

This is not gratitude to God for what he has done to give us the capacity to record motion pictures and things like that. That is taking his blessings and then celebrating those things that are directly opposed to him.

Recreation Offers a Foretaste of Future Joy

In this passage here, in Ecclesiastes 3 verse 4, it says,. A time to weep and a time to laugh. You may have noticed that for each of these, or for most of these depending on how you read them, starts off with the more negative one.

Guess the one exception to that would be, well there might be multiple exceptions to that, but several of these in here, most of these in here, talk about the more negative one first and the more positive one after.

And that is the case here with time to weep, time to laugh, time to mourn, and time to dance. This is the typical trajectory for life. This is the way it is supposed to be. That this life is full of hardship.

On that final day when we go to be with Jesus, we will rejoice. Many people, the reason why they are so focused on recreation, is because they are trying to grasp the time. They do not like the times that God has given them.

They do not like that they live in days that are evil, and they need to redeem the time. Instead, they want to grasp at time as though it is something that they can keep, that is not fleeting, that is a different time that they have been put in.

And they want to pretend that the time that they are placed in is appropriate for non-stop recreation, or for far more recreation than is necessary. Far more recreation than is good. Let's put it that way.

This is, this is foolishness. But, notice that what God has called us to is not to weep and mourn throughout the entirety of this life, though He says, blessed are those who mourn. But instead, He, in inaugurating His ministry with the wedding at Cana, explaining to us that He is inviting us into joy, has given us the privilege of having four tastes of heaven, so that when we recreate, we do not do so as the world does, which is essentially in denial, failing to recognize what is coming, and entertaining themselves in ways where they are distracting themselves from the reality that is to come.

But is instead, recognizing God's gifts from His hands as being a foretaste of what is good and what is to come. Jesus Himself has blessed recreation, as He has blessed the church with song. This is not something that He had to do.

He did not have to give us song and music as one way of worshiping Him, but He has blessed us with something that otherwise would just be one form of recreation. But He has taken that into what is holy, into worship.

So blessing it. The Proverbs, excuse me before I go there, Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2. It says, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.

For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools, and thus this also is vanity. So why does He say it is better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of rejoicing?

Because it is something that corrects us and reminds us where we belong. And so right now there is an appropriateness to the heaviness that exists. There's appropriateness to the difficulties. Yet we have been blessed with the ability to enjoy recreation in a way that is not as the world does in denial.

Proverbs chapter 8 speaks of Jesus Christ in terms of wisdom. Now if you've never heard that before, let me explain that to you. Proverbs chapter 8 speaks of wisdom, but listen to how it speaks of wisdom.

Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills I was brought forth, before He had made the earth with its field, or the first of the dust of the world, when He established the heavens, I was there.

When He drew a circle in the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him like a master workman.

Okay, this is speaking of Christ. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ is wisdom itself, speaks of Him this way. He is the master workman who is forming creation alongside the Father.

And then what does it say right after that? Then I was beside Him like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man.

You want to know what the word for rejoicing is there? It's that same word that was used in Ecclesiastes 3, 4, and many of these other passages with different English renderings. It is the word to play.

It says He was playing before Him always, playing in His inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man. This is a picture of the Son of God having created the world, being described, wisdom Himself as recreating, as playing in this world that God has created, and delighting in the children of man.

Us, having been united to Christ who has conquered, no longer experiences any suffering, for He sits at the right hand of God. He has blessed us, and He has so indicated that blessing, even with the Lord's Supper, that we will celebrate together.

He invites us into joy, and He is one who Himself plays, has played in this inhabited world, and one day when we are with Him, we will play with Him in the inhabited world forever. Recreation is a good thing.

Choosing Recreation Wisely and Making the Best Use of Time

Excess recreation grasps at the times as though we should be given something that we haven't, and fails to recognize the goodness of what is to come. I would give you a few thoughts about how to be strategic in your recreation, how to make use of the time for the days are evil, some things that you should consider, and the options that you have for recreation.

None of this is to make hard and fast rules that say what kind of recreations are lawful or what are not. I am only trying to give you the different dimensions on which they would be measured. Now some, as we said, are not lawful, but that's not my point right now.

My point is to evaluate the way you spend your time, and to think about whether or not it is as edifying as it ought to be. Here are several dimensions. That which is costly versus not costly. Many people pick very expensive hobbies that lead them, make them broke, and make it so that they cannot pass anything off to their children, and they end up failing in a lot of their duties.

No, there's a difference between restoring classic cars and restoring bikes, right? There's a difference between deciding that you're going to be a mountain climber versus a runner. Now, none of these things are necessarily prohibitively expensive, but I'm saying that you should know that as you choose what you are going to do, some things are going to cost you much more, and that needs to be weighed in the balance about whether or not you can handle it, whether or not you can receive it with gratitude, and recognize the temptations that you will face as your hobby may cost you more or less money.

There are things that are inactive versus things that are active. There's a difference between sports and video games. There are things that are creating versus things that are consuming. For example, the difference between filmmaking and film watching.

There's a difference between learning versus something that would be more gaming, or just distracting yourself. So, for example, real study of intellectual topics versus just reading novels. And there's recreation that is more thoughtful versus less thoughtful.

There's a difference between reading classics or reading pulp fiction. There's a difference between these things that are more harmful versus things that are more helpful, or things that are more risky versus things that are not risky.

There's a difference between... There's some recreations, I see people do them, and it seems like this is a great thing, but very few people should do it, because if many people did, there would just be many deaths.

Yeah, you look at some of the acrobatic stunts that some people do, and it's a very good thing that only a few people even attempt such things. You know, another example of harmful versus helpful. There is a difference between UFC and wrestling, or UFC and firearm training, to actually learn how to defend yourself, and not necessarily with the harm of another.

There's a difference between recreation that's social versus antisocial. And this is a real problem today, that many of our activities are antisocial, whereas many recreations before were more celebratory, more social in nature.