In American culture, one of the biggest idols that has consumed people’s hearts and minds is the god of entertainment.  We worship our entertainment and look to it to make us happy, fulfilled and alive. It consumes our time, our money, our devotion, our thoughts and our hearts. Television, computers, smart phones, i-pods and wii’s bring the idol of entertainment right into the privacy of our own homes so it can be adored and followed every single day. Sports has also engulfed our culture and we worship this god of entertainment with fanaticism and undying devotion. So many of our lives revolve around our favorite sports team and we love them with such adoration that our moods, our happiness, and our disposition is determined by whether they are winning or losing. We even know more about our famous star’s life then we know about God and the Bible. Our culture has become distorted by its obsession with fame and entertainment. I am not saying it is wrong to watch television or go to a movie or be a fan of a sports team, but everything must be put in perspective to your relationship with God. Is “American Idol” more important to you than your relationship with God? Is a sports team more your favorite and your beloved than God is? Would you rather learn about the gossip surrounding Hollywood then the awesome truths of God’s heart. Who would you rather spend time with? Who would you rather devote your heart to? Who is more important and worthy of your heart?

Unfortunately in modern day Christianity the gospel is being pushed aside for entertainment. As Leonard Ravenhill said, “We believers are lean, lazy, luxury-loving, loveless and lacking…Christ is now wounded in the house of his friends.” We want to be entertained on Sunday instead of instructed by the Holy Scriptures; we want to hear music that sounds like the secular music of the day that often has little Word of God in its lyrics instead of a sermon of fire that rightly divides the word of truth. We leave church in a hurry because we want to be entertained by the football game that starts in an hour. Preachers fear that they will lose their congregation if they don’t entertain them. Sermons are watered down so they don’t offend anyone, but Jesus Christ offended everybody as the sword of truth disrupts the systems of the world including religion. The god of entertainment has sunk its idolatrous roots into the church and each of us should pray and examine our hearts that this idol is not sitting on the throne of our hearts.

A.W. Tozer, in The Root of the Righteous , wrote an enlightening chapter called “The God of Entertainment.” His inspired words should unsettle and shake our hearts to wake up to this idol and thrust it from the center of our lives where only God belongs. Please meditate upon and take these profound words to heart for they speak like a clarion call to our generation: 

A German philosopher many years ago said something to the effect that the more a man has in his own heart the less he will require from the outside; excessive need for support from without is proof of the bankruptcy of the inner man.

If this is true (and I believe it is) then the present inordinate attachment to every form of entertainment is evidence that the inner life of modern man is in serious decline. The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his own breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.

Sohleiermacher held that the feeling of dependence lies at the root of all religious worship, and that however high the spiritual life might rise it must always begin with a deep sense of a great need which only God could satisfy. If this sense of need and a feeling of dependence are at the root of natural religion it is not hard to see why the great god Entertainment is so ardently worshiped by so many. For there are millions who cannot live without amusement; life without some form of entertainment for them is simply intolerable; they look forward to the blessed relief afforded by professional entertainers and other forms of psychological narcotics as a dope addict looks to his daily shot of heroin. Without them they could not summon courage to face existence.

No one with common human feeling will object to the simple pleasures of life, nor to such harmless forms of entertainment as may help to relax the nerves and refresh the mind exhausted by toil. Such things if used with discretion may be a blessing along the way. That is one thing. The all-out devotion to entertainment as a major activity for which and by which men live is definitely something else again.

The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of Sin. The growth of the amusement phase of human life to such fantastic proportions is a portent, a threat to the souls of modern men. It has been built into a multimillion dollar racket with greater power over human minds and human character than any other educational influence on earth. And the ominous thing is that its power is almost exclusively evil, rotting the inner life, crowding out the long eternal thoughts which would fill the souls of men if they were but worthy to entertain them. And the whole thing has grown into a veritable religion which holds its devotees with a strange fascination, and a religion, incidentally, against which it is now dangerous to speak.

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. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more than poor theatres where fifth -rate “producers” peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.

The great god Entertainment amuses his devotees mainly by telling them stories. The love of stories, which is a characteristic of childhood, has taken fast hold of the minds of the retarded saints of our day, so much so that not a few persons manage to make a comfortable living by spinning yarns and serving them up in various disguises to church people. What is natural and beautiful in a child may be shocking when it persists into adulthood, and more so when it appears in the sanctuary and seeks to pass for true religion.

Is it not a strange thing and a wonder that, with the shadow of atomic destruction hanging over the world and with the coming of Christ drawing near, the professed followers of the Lord should be giving themselves up to religious amusements? That in an hour when mature saints are so desperately needed vast numbers of believers should revert to spiritual childhood and clamor for religions toys?

“Remember, (I) Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. The crown Is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.”

AMEN. AMEN.