Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. Genesis 1.31

Good News – really!
The Kingdom of God is Good News – really Good News. Jesus proclaimed it as such, as did the Apostles and all those down the ages who have heeded God’s call to join Him in His Kingdom and glory (1 Thess. 2.12).

The Kingdom of God is Good News because it ushers all who receive it into God’s good plan for their lives, a plan which brings them, among other things, pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16.11).

Human beings were made out of and into the goodness of God (Gen. 1.26-31). It pleased God to create human beings, to establish them within an environment overflowing with goodness and abundance, and to promise them all the pleasures of everlasting life in His presence and according to His will.

God created people to know pleasure – to enjoy life, to delight in human intimacy and community, in making new and beautiful things, partaking of creation’s bounty, wondering at the diversity, splendor, colors, majesty, power, and potential of the vast cosmos, and engaging in good, satisfying, and wholesome work unto the Lord.

God intends people to enjoy life, and the Good News of the Kingdom of God is that enjoying life and all its pleasures, just as God originally intended, is within the reach of all who have made the Kingdom turn by believing in Jesus for forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.

Pleasure
It’s clear from Genesis 2 alone that God created people to know pleasure – all kinds of pleasures. Pleasure is that state of happiness, wellbeing, peace, delight, and satisfaction that everyone seeks in one way or another. God wants us to know pleasure – aesthetic, gustatory, olfactory, sensual and sexual, vocational and creative, communal and spiritual. We are made for pleasure in all these ways.

But the problem that has plagued humankind from Genesis 3 on is that we tend to seek pleasure as an end in itself. We want to know pleasure for its own sake – really, for our own sake – and so we make pleasure, of one kind and degree or another, the thing we seek above all else in life. In the process, we forget about God or relegate Him to a secondary place in our experience. If we look to Him at all it is so that He might facilitate our achieving the pleasure we seek from this, that, or some other experience or thing.

God Who made us for pleasure becomes for many of us just a means to the pleasure we seek, not the end and greatest pleasure of all. Pleasure thus becomes our god, supplanting God Himself and setting us on a quest for that which can only disappoint.

Gods or God’s?
When we make pleasures our gods we become fools, as Solomon discovered the hard way (cf. Eccl. 2). No earthly pleasure of any kind, nor any combination nor accumulation of earthly pleasures, nor any pleasures we can imagine, can fulfill the deep-seated desire for lasting, pure, perfect pleasure which God has planted in the human soul.

When pleasures are our gods, we are on a course of fleeting happiness and long-term disappointment, disillusionment, and defeat.

When our pleasures, however, are God’s pleasures, then we are on a course to know all the fullness for which He created us.

The pleasures of this life are gifts from God and tokens of the greater pleasure to be enjoyed within the orbit of His gracious rule and glorious presence. In Scripture, the idea of pleasure is addressed from two planes. First are the pleasures we derive from partaking of or participating in created things. All such pleasures – whether of eating and drinking, making and sharing, celebrating or loving, viewing or touching – all such pleasures are legitimate and meant to be enjoyed, but only when we receive them as gifts from God. When we pursue such pleasures as endsin themselves, then we are deceived and we run the risk of falling under the displeasure of God.

The second plane is the plane of pleasure as God intends it – divine pleasure, or, pleasure according to the will and pleasure of God. God gives the pleasures of this life as gifts and tokens of the greater pleasure to be enjoyed in knowing Him. The pleasures we know in our earthly experience should turn our hearts with gratitude to God and lead us to seek the greater pleasure that comes from communing with Him.

The Kingdom of God is the arena within which human beings may discover true pleasure, and may partake of the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore which can be known in God and what pleases Him. The better we understand pleasure as God knows and intends it, the more truly pleasurable our lives will be within the Kingdom turn.

Next steps: I think that, for many Christians, “pleasure” has a self-centered and negative connotation. Think: “pleasure-seeking” or “pleasures of the flesh.” Why is this? And how can we learn to think about pleasure as part of our calling within the Kingdom turn? Talk with some fellow believers about these questions.

T. M. Moore

This week’s study, Kingdom Pleasure, is the seventh of an eight-part series on The Kingdom Turn, and is available as a free download. T. M. has written two books to complement this eight-part series. You can order The Kingship of Jesus by clicking here, and The Gospel of the Kingdom by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.