Gambling An Addiction of Money

Introduction

It’s good to be back with you today. Good to see each and every one that is able to be with us this morning. We still have quite a few of our number who are away and traveling and on vacation. We certainly have a good number who are visiting with us today. We want you to know that we certainly appreciate you being here and invite you to come back anytime you have the opportunity. We’ll meet again this evening at 5 o’clock. If you can, please come back at that time. We have an exciting month ahead of us here. Next Lord’s Day, Lord willing. Brother Wally Hayes, a doctor, Dr. Wally Hayes, a brother in Christ, we may say, from Massachusetts, is going to be with us. And it’s going to be speaking on some ethical issues as you scan the newspapers and you see different issues that come up, whether it be abortion, whether it be stem cell research, biomedical research, whatever it may be, that there are some challenging questions that we as Christians have not had to face before.

And we’re going to be faced with these questions for years to come. And Dr. Hayes has done quite a lot of extent, done some extensive research into these areas. And he’s going to be examining some of these questions with us. In fact, next Saturday night, he’s going to be examining some of these questions with our teenagers. And then Sunday, on three times on Sunday, he is going to be speaking to us about those matters. And then only two weeks after that, our special series of studies for our teenagers with Brother Bubba Gardner from Pasadena, Texas. That Saturday, the April the 8th, he is going to be speaking on the theme of that idea that we saw thee not. We saw thee not, but we believe. That Saturday is going to be devoted to why teenagers, why Christians should be able to believe in Jesus even today, even though we’ve lived 2,000 years after he walked on the face of the earth.

And that Sunday also, Brother Gardner, will be presenting us lessons. For my part, I’m going to try to fill in the gaps in between. And we’ll hope that goes well too. I have every confidence in Brother Hayes and in Brother Gardiner. But in our time together, I want us to begin to examine some tricky issues ourselves. We’re going to begin talking about some symptoms of an addicted world. You know what an addiction is? Addiction is simply when a natural desire becomes perverted. It becomes a desire that overwhelms an individual. That controls even an individual. There are many, probably even here in this audience that have struggled with addiction over their lives. You know exactly what I’m talking about. That it’s not the desire itself is not an evil thing.

That we have the desires. We have the desire for pleasure, but we become addicted to something because it gives us pleasure. And that substance or any activity that gives us the pleasure that we desire naturally, we allow that thing to then overtake us. And really, we live in a world that’s addicted to many things. And we’re not just talking about drugs either. It’s a world addicted to many things, that these natural desires that, yes, God has given to us, and yes, they have their proper place, and they have proper avenues of exploring, and yet we have taken these things and now we serve them. We become addicted to them. Money is one such aspect, one such object that God has given to us that has its proper place.

Money has its proper place. Wealth has its proper place. And yet we live in a world where Paul’s words to Timothy, as found in 1 Timothy chapter 6 and in verse 10, where the apostle Paul writes, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. We live in a world that is fitting that very description. That we have taken money, which has its proper place. And we have perverted it. Now we serve money. We have to have money. We have to have more money. And there are a lot of ills, a lot of symptoms, even of our addiction to money. Families are being torn apart because of an addiction to money.

That whether it be the father or the mother or both, that we have to work harder and longer because we need more money to sustain the level of living which we are comfortable with, and families are torn apart. Many innocent people are hurt because of an addiction to money. You’re well familiar with what happened with such companies as Enron and other companies, when people at the top become corrupt because they want more money and they’re addicted to having more money and more power, and a lot of innocent people are hurt because of those things. But this morning I want to examine an aspect of our addiction to money that affects so many. And it’s the aspect of gambling. Gambling is a symptom of addiction. It’s a symptom of our world’s addiction to money.

That we’re just not happy with what we have. We need more.

1. Gambling Is Covetous in Nature

Gambling truly is a terrible sin. And people wonder about that because it’s never mentioned in the Bible as the terrible sin. But it really is. There’s all kinds of aspects and avenues that we could explore that we’re just not going to have time to do this morning. We can say it’s a terrible sin, a terrible sin because it’s so addictive, and it is. We can say it’s a terrible sin because it’s associated with all kinds of crime, and it is. We can say it’s a terrible sin because of what it does to families, and it’s splitting them apart, and it does. But there are three issues at the heart of the problem that I want to explore with you this morning. First of all, gambling is a terrible sin because of its very nature.

Gambling is covetous in nature. And you know what? Covetousness has always been a sin in God’s eyes. You’re familiar with the Ten Commandments? Familiar with number 10? Flip back to Exodus 20 and let’s read verse 17 of Exodus 20. Where Moses, by inspiration and giving the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel, says, You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. That word behind covet, the Hebrew word is interesting. Commod, which simply means to delight in. And it has its proper aspects. It even has a good connotation in certain areas. But when God speaking to the children of Israel, says, You shall not covet, you shall not delight in your neighbor’s wife, your neighbor’s house, whatever may belong to your neighbor, you shall not take delight in that.

Again, we’re dealing with a natural aspect of our lives. We delight in things. We have pleasure in things. But what God is warning against is you shall not pervert that desire that I have given you, and you shall not take this desire and turn it into something where I have to now have what belongs to another. And that’s exactly what gambling is. Covetousness, also forbidden by our Lord and Savior in Luke 12 and verse 15. Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Christians at Ephesus, says in Ephesians 5 and in verse 5, for this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolator, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

This is completely alien to God’s will for man. That we turn natural desire, natural delight, and we turn it all around. And now our delight and our desire is not for what God has blessed us with, but is now for what belongs to another. And gambling is simply obtaining what belongs to another. That’s the sole objective in gambling. I am terrible at golf. I really am. I enjoy going to play, though. I’ll go out and play with Brother Gary, and I’ll go out for Brother Harkrider and other people, and I have a good time. I don’t understand, though, why for some to have a good time in golfing, there has to be a little money on the side. I get beaten all the time in golf, and I think that’s their objective is to beat Josh and to beat him bad.

They don’t have to take my money at the same time, do they? You see, we play games and we should just be able to enjoy. We should be able to enjoy nature. We should be able to enjoy what we’re doing. Gambling, even though it is referred to as a game, and that’s how society has sold it to us. You notice that states do not have gambling commissions, they have gaming commissions. It’s all a game. And that’s how a soul is simply a game. But it’s a game where the objective and where your fun is tied to what can I possess that belongs to another? And that by its nature is sinful in the eyes of God. You notice how poker has taken off. Absolutely skyrocketing in popularity in recent years.

You can watch the World series of poker on TV. You can go into the bookstore, you can go into Barnes and Noble, and there will be a whole section of books on how to play poker, how to win at poker. And you can buy the cards and the chips and everything that goes along with it right there in your bookstore. You go online and there are all these online gaming rooms, online poker rooms where you can play. And it’s all sold to us as simply a game. Let me ask you this. Let’s say I went to Brother Rick Browning. Actually, I knew Brother Rick was gone. And I go to his house. And I break in one night and I steal all his money. Would he want me to do that?

Probably not. Let’s say then I went to Brother Chuck. In fact, no, tonight, after services, when it kind of gets dark, I’m going to get out real quick. I’m going to hide behind Brother Hale’s vehicle, and I’m going to go along and beat him up, and I’m going to steal his money from him. Would you like for me to do that? Or maybe I want to cheat Brother Jim Duke out of some money. I tell him I’ve got some great oceanfront property in Arizona that I just really need some investors. And I would like for him to invest a few thousand dollars in it. And I can promise some great returns. Would you? Would you let me cheat you out of your money? Would you let me do any of these things?

Would you let me steal your money? Would you let me beat you up for your money? Would you let me cheat you out of your money? No. Then why is it any different? Why would you allow me to quote unquote win your money? Why is it different? Is the desire, is the motivation behind all four of those things not the same? If I were to steal your money, is the desire not that I want your money? If I was to beat you up for your money, is the desire not that I want your money? If I’m to cheat you out of your money, is the desire not that I want your money? And so if I were to sit with these four men at a poker table, so I could win their money.

Why is the desire any different? Why is that a game? It’s not. It’s not just a game. I want you to, I’m gonna read a quote to you, and I want you to ask yourself if this sounds like a game. About a year ago, Sports Illustrated did a rather in-depth series on how poker particularly has taken off in college campuses, and how poker clubs have gained in popularity on these campuses, and they’ll come together, and they estimate that many of these kids are playing 30 hours a week in these poker clubs and then playing online internet poker. Some of them, many of them actually are winning a lot of money. They win their tuition money doing that, but there’s a lot that lose.

On a typical night online, I’ll start out with 100. I’ll play until I lose. I’ll look at the screen, tears in my eyes, and think of all the things that I need money for. So I play again, put in another 100. How is that a game? How is that fun? When the sole objective in me playing poker would be, let me have what belongs to you is covetousness. And brethren, that desire needs to be put to death, as the apostle Paul says in Colossians 3 and in verse 5. Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. This desire, this perverted desire to have what belongs to another, the apostle says, we need to put that to death.

2. Gambling Lacks Love

That is against, through and through, it is against the will of God. So gambling’s a terrible sin. Never mentioned as such in the Bible, but it’s a terrible sin because it’s covetous in nature. But it’s also a terrible sin because it lacks love.

This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The apostle Paul would go on to describe love in 1 Corinthians 13. And in verse 5 of that chapter, he describes love as being that which does not seek its own. That you’re not always consumed with what you can have. That you are now thinking of others. You’re putting the best interest of others ahead of yours. Gambling’s alien to that. Think of a lottery. You may make fun of me all you want to, that I’m from Alabama and I talk funny, but we don’t have a lottery. We voted it down. I know you vote, tried to vote it down too, and I wish that could have happened.

But think of the lottery. Did you know before 1964, no states? There was not a single state that had a lottery. And now at least 37 states have lotteries.

Research in 1998 showed that of the states that had lotteries, they were spending $35.8 billion. That’s $135 for every man, woman, and child in the nation. And these are actively promoted by state governments as revenue. And those of us who are middle class or have some wealth, we think of a lottery and we don’t think of it as a terrible sin. I’m only using discretionary income. I’m using excess of what I have, so it’s not going to hurt if I spend a dollar or two and I go and play the lottery. Think of what I might win. And I want you to think what if you win? Where does the money come from? What if you win? Where do you get the money? First of all, you get the money from the poor.

Research shows time and time again. It’s not the rich who are out there spending their hard-earned money on the lottery. It is the poor. 1993 research was done in Massachusetts. In the poorest cities, between $350 and $450 was being spent by each individual, or at least on average of each individual, on lottery tickets. In the wealthy cities, it was an average of $30 to $40. A tenfold increase from the poor cities to the rich cities. 1998, Georgia State University, university, rather, found that families earning $25,000 or less per year, so families that are not wealthy by any means, earning $25,000 or less per year are spending two to three times more as a percentage of their income on lottery tickets than do families who are earning $50,000 or more.

That would be to say that if I say I was earning $50,000 a year and I spent 1% of my income, you know, just discretionary money on lottery tickets, that is meaning that someone who is much poorer than I am that has half of the money that I have per year is spending three to four percent of their income on the lottery. It affects the poor. Delaware did research, and this is in 1997, I believe. They discovered that in their state, that in the counties which were affluent, which were very wealthy, there were no lotto machines. You went to the upper middle class areas and they had one lotto machine per roughly 18,000 persons. You go to the working class neighborhoods, and there was one lottery machine for every 5,000 persons.

You go to the poor, and there was one lottery machine for every 2,000 people. Where’s the money coming from? So I ask you the question what if you win? It may just be discretionary income on your part, but what if you win? This is the reason I’ll never play the lottery. I have never been poor in my life. My family was not wealthy, but we were never in want. We had everything we needed. We always had food, we always had clothing, we were provided for.

She was poor. Her family eating meat on many occasions was a luxury. Dry beans, cornbread. That was a meal. Shoes were Christmas presents. I’ve seen how poor people live, and I cannot imagine if I were to win, that I’d just be thinking, here’s the people that I’m winning the money from. Who’d you win? Who would you win it from? You’d win it from the poor. You’d win it from the young. Research is showing that in our young people, that they are the ones who are quickly turning to the lottery. In fact, because it is such an addictive behavior, because there’s always this chance that you may be able to turn one dollar into so much more. The state of Massachusetts, again in 1997, found that lottery activity among the state students is second only to alcohol in prevalence among illegal teen activity.

Second only to alcohol.

So you’d be taking the money from the young, and you’d be taking money from the old. The old who are on fixed incomes, social security checks. Those who do not have a lot of discretionary income, they begin to wonder, they begin to worry how am I going to be provided for? What’s going to happen to my family after I leave? So they turn to the lottery. Many of them. That’s who you’d be winning it from. But of course, it’s not marketed to us that way, is it? It’s always about it’s good for education. I’ve heard, and my understanding is that that was some of the advertisement used in Florida some 10 years ago as this issue was before you, and that after the lottery passed, that the state budget for education was then decreased by the amount for which the lottery revenue generated.

So it didn’t quite work out for Florida. But the beacon is always Georgia. A few years ago, when the lottery was being proposed in Alabama, it was always Georgia. Look at what Georgia’s doing with the lottery and how they’re paying for kids’ educations. It’s good for education. Is it good that the poor pay for the education of the rich? If you’re poor, and of course, these scholarships always have to. And so if you’re poor and if you were able to meet the academic criteria, you are first taken to the federal budget. Pell grants, federal scholarships, and any of that money you are eligible for, you receive, and you do not receive gambling money, lottery money for education. In fact, the statistics in Georgia show that the average income for scholarship families was $45,000, which was some $13,000 above the average state income.

Now I’m not saying that, okay, $45,000, that’s wealthy, and that’s easy to send kids to college. I was under the if you can pay for it, you can go to college scholarship plan. That was my parents’ plan for college. You get in, you get a scholarship, or you pay for it, and that was how I was going to go. But we’re being told that, oh, everyone can go to college now. Well, who is it that’s buying the tickets? Again, same research in Georgia was showing that the zip codes that averaged incomes below $20,000, that those people, people in those incomes level were spending an average of $250 on lottery tickets, whereas people making over $40,000 were only spending an average of $97. So the question is: should the poor pay for the education of the rich?

Is that a good justification? Absolutely not. And so we go back to the scriptures, and we understand that if I am motivated by love, if I am truly seeking after the best interest of those around me, the welfare of society, I can’t be engaged in such activity. Paul writes to the congregation at Rome in Romans 13, Romans 13, verses 9 and 10. When speaking of love and speaking of love will not act in such a manner, the apostle Paul simply says, For the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. And if there is any commandment, and if there’s any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

3. Completely Foreign to God’s Intent for Man

Love does not harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. One final reason. Look, gambling is a terrible sin because it is completely foreign to God’s intent for man. You go back even to the beginning, before sin entered into the world. And we sometimes think of work as being man’s punishment. No, working and sweating and suffering in work was man’s punishment. Work was not man’s punishment. Because even as God placed man in the garden, do you remember why he placed him there? Genesis 2 and in verse 15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. Work. It has always been God’s intent that man work for what he has. But he works for a reason.

First, he works for his family. 1 Timothy 5 and verse 8. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. So we have obligation. We work so we can provide for our family. But not just our family either. We work. We receive money to do good, even to others. Ephesians 4 and verse 28. Let him who stole steal no longer. Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. So we work. Not just to provide for our own families, but so that we in turn can be merciful and gracious and generous to those around us and to aid them.

But we must also consider that we work for God.

So your barns may be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine. What we do with our money, how we provide for our families, how we help those who are in need. We need to have the same attitude as the congregations of Macedonia, who Paul commended in 2 Corinthians the 8th chapter. That they gave first unto the Lord, so that they may provide for those who are in need. Our possessions are to honor God. What we have is to honor God. And so we need this mind within us. Hebrews 13 and in verse 5. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. The covetous mind is always after what can it have?

Conclusion

What does it need? It needs more. The world is addicted to money. We see what is out there, and we want it. That cannot be the mind of a Christian. Why is gambling such a terrible sin? It’s a symptom of an addiction. It’s a symptom of our thirst and hunger and desire for what does not belong to us. Rather, we should do, even as the Hebrew writer says. Should we not be consumed with covetousness, but we should always remember the promise of God. I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. This evening, Lord willing, we’re going to talk about stewardship. We’re going to talk about what God has entrusted to us and how we should use it. This lesson has not been one that would teach someone what they need to do to be a Christian, to become a Christian, to become a child of God.

But the reason for lessons such as this is that we must take seriously our lives here on earth. We must take seriously what God has given to us. We must take seriously even the natural desires that we have. We must not let sin reign in our bodies. All of us at one time were allowing sin to reign in our bodies. We were allowing the devil to have his way with us when we were going out and doing whatever seemed right to us. We can’t live that way anymore. And a Christian is one who has said, I’m tired of living that way. I want a better life. I want a life in God and in Christ. And that is only offered through the blood of Christ. You can have that kind of life.

Have joy and peace and contentment here in this life and the promise of even better to come through the blood of Christ. If you’ll believe in Jesus as a Son of God, repenting of your sins, being baptized for the remission of those sins, that’s the kind of life you’ll have. But you must always be wary of the temptations that Satan hurls our way. So when we find ourselves slipping away from God, the solution is to go back. Go back to Him, pray for forgiveness, and we know that He will hear us. If we can aid you in any way, even this morning, whether it be baptizing you into Christ or praying for you, that God would help you and forgive you of any sin in your life, we would invite you to come as we stand and as we sing.