Don't Bet On It
Making the Right Choice Part 5
“Don’t Bet On It” 1 Tim. 6:6-11
A. The year was 1908. Carlyle Institute and Harvard University were football rivals. They were
going to have the big game. The coach at Harvard University was a football purist - he
believed in the fundamentals of football. He believed in playing football the hard-nose way,
but the coach at Carlyle, he wasn't what we would call a purist, he depended upon what we
call today razzle dazzle. He would sit up all night with the rule books, studying the rules,
studying the rules to see if there is some way that he could bend the rules to win a game.
The week before Carlyle had played Syracuse, Coach Warner thought of a scheme. It was an
ingenious scheme. When the Carlyle team came on the field, Coach Warner had taken every
jersey of his team and had sewed on every jersey a football made of cloth. It was about the
size of a football, it was the color of a football, it looked like a football and it was just sewed
on there in cloth. So when they came out of the huddle and broke, it looked like every man
had a football. When Syracuse looked at them they couldn't tell who had the ball. They were
always tackling the wrong man
Before the big game the coach at Harvard, said to the coach at Carlyle, “Are you going to use
those trick jerseys?” He said, "There's nothing in the rule book against it.” The coach at
Harvard said “Alright.” So the next day they came out on the football field and Coach
Warner had all the boys at Carlyle and there they were with their fake footballs sewed on
their jersey. Harvard came out wearing red, crimson red jerseys that they normally wear for
home games. The home team which was Harvard supplied the footballs. When they reached
in the bag and pulled out the first football it was crimson red and Harvard won the game.
1. People look for ways to manipulate the rules—they deflate footballs or years ago it was
Lester Hayes and his stick ‘em on his hands which was outlawed.
2. The Bible is not a book of minute laws that address every subject. It was written 1900-
3400 years ago. It is a book of divine principles. You won’t find the following statements
in the New Testament: “Don’t smoke cigarettes”, “Don’t look at pornography,” “Don’t
drink whiskey,” “Don’t snort cocaine,” “Don’t use heroin”, “Don’t smoke pot,” “Don’t eat
deep fried Twinkies, Oreos and Wendy’s Triples!” The NT doesn’t say, “Don’t play the
lottery,” “Don’t go to Casino or the horse track”, “Don’t gamble online.”
3. A lady was waiting for a train when she saw a man take out cash and give it to another
man who looked rather shabby and walk off. She was touched and she reached into her
purse and got $20 and walked up to the man and, “Never despair, never despair.” The next
day she was waiting for the train when the man came up and handed her a $100. She said,
“What’s this for, I gave you that $20 as a gift.” He said, “Lady, Never Despair won the 5th
race.”
4. The Bible gives principles that have application to any subject including the subject of
gambling.
B. Before we proceed, we have to point out that gambling is not just taking a risk.
1. When you walk out your front door, you take a risk, when you start a business you take a
risk, serving Jesus can be a risk (Rusty Swafford in India last week—people tried to turn
over their van).
2. Someone will come along and say “The stock market is gambling with money and
therefore if gambling is wrong then investing in stocks and bonds is gambling.” That is
not gambling. There is a difference between betting on a horse race and investing money
in stocks or taking a risk by planting a garden. When you gamble in the classic sense of
the word, for every winner in gambling there must be a loser. Gambling is built upon
one person taking what another person lost.
3. The only thing that investing and gambling have in common is there is a risk involved, but
they are not the same thing. Jesus encouraged investing—the parable of the talents.
Buying stock in Microsoft and getting dividends from a good product is productive.
In gambling, nothing is created: it is one person attempting to get into his hands that which
belongs to someone else.
4. Let’s take a look at Gambling from two perspectives.
I. GAMBLING INFRINGES UPON DIVINE PRINCIPLES.
A. God created people to live in a certain way and gambling cuts against the grain of God’s
principles for people (2 examples)
B. It disregards the 8th and 10th commandment.
1. Ex. 20:15 “You shall not steal.”
2. Ex. 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your
neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs
to your neighbor.”
3. Gambling is legalized thievery—it is taking what belongs to someone else even though
they agree to it. It took me a while to understand that point, but it’s true.
a. Someone says, “But both people agree to it, that makes it different.” That doesn't
make any difference. Suppose two men got into a duel, they each took a pistol and
stood back to back, took 20 paces and fired. Because they both agreed to it does that
make murder okay? Because we have mutual consent that I'm going to try to take
what belongs to you and you're going to try to get what belongs to me without either of
us giving anything means we are trying to take each other’s money. (When you hit the
slot machine—whose money did you get? The Casino—the people that lost.)
b. Suppose two men meet in an alley, one of them went into the alley with a gun and he
took what belonged to the other man. He is a thief. Now, suppose two men go into an
alley and rather than one of them having a gun they have some dice and one of them
comes out with what belonged to the other man. What's the difference? In the first
example there was one thief. In the second example there were two. Both of them
were trying to get what belonged to the other man. That there is mutual consent makes
no difference. That's the reason it has been said he who gambles and wins is a thief
and he who gambles and loses is a fool.
4. The tenth commandment warns against coveting—gambling is coveting someone else’s
money.
a. Eph. 5:5 “For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or
covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
God.”
b. Luke 12:15 “Then he said to them, beware, and be on guard against every form of
greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of possessions.”
C. It dismisses the concept of work.
1. How many people have you heard say, “If I hit that lottery I am going to quit my job?”
God didn’t make us to be idle, he made us to work and we are the healthiest physically,
emotionally, and spiritually when we are busy working.
a. 2 Thess. 3:10b “If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.”
(Gambling promotes the opposite of that.)
II. GAMBLING DESTROYS THE LIVES OF THOSE IT SNARES.
A. Paul said, “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil” that has captured some Christians,
led them away from the faith and pierced them with many griefs.
1. Thomas Dewey wrote “The entire history of legalized gambling shows that it has brought
nothing but poverty, crime and corruption, demoralization of moral and ethical standards
and misery for all who persist in it.”
B. Gambling and the love of money It creates evil in the human heart.
1. Matt. 26:14-15 “Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests
and said, ‘What are you willing to give me to betray Him to you. And they weighed out
thirty pieces of silver.” (There wasn’t a more evil act ever committed than this one.)
2. I heard on the radio yesterday that a man won some money at MD Live, he cashed it out.
Some men followed him home and robbed him.
3. “Nevada ranks first in suicide in America, first in divorce, first in high school dropouts,
first in homicide against women, first in gambling addictions, third in bankruptcies, third
in abortion, fourth in rape, fourth in alcohol related death, fifth in crime, 1/10 of all
Nevadans are alcoholics, the yellow pages list 136 advertisements for prostitution by
various names.” One out of every 25 people who die in “Lost Wages” Nevada die at
their own hand. (Dobson’s commission on gambling)
4. Dina Abdelhaq of Chicago, IL bent on feeding her gambling addiction suffocated her
seven week old daughter Tara to collect on a $200,000 life insurance policy. The infant
was killed in a way designed intentionally to create the false appearance that she had died
of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Her other daughter Lena died under similar
circumstances about a year before Tara was born. (Assoc. Press)
5. George Washington said, “Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the
father of mischief.”
C. It enslaves people to the wrong god.
1. Matt. 7:24 “No one cans serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the
other…You cannot serve God and wealth.”
2. Dobson told about people who max out their ATM withdrawals for one day. To get more
money, they went down the street and charged a new television, took it to a pawn shop and
pawned it for 1/3 the price they paid for it and then took the pawn money to gamble.
3. “The lottery is my shepherd, I shall not want. It makes me lie down in green backs, it
restores my pockets. Yea though I walk through the valley of poverty, I will fear no evil,
for the pick six is with me.”
4. Newspaper article “I am 26 and a compulsive gambler, looking at a six-year prison term
because of gambling, drinking and stealing. For me, they are all one vicious cycle of self
destruction. I write this letter in hope of helping young people stay away from these very
things. My first real experience with gambling came in the form of friends and family,
gambling on basketball and football and trips to the horse track with my father at a young
age. It was fun to go with him to on weekends in the summer to see the horses. Then,
when I turned 21, my brother, father and I and a few friends went to Las Vegas. That was
the first time I ever gambled in a casino, and I was hooked. Blackjack has been the game
that has caused me the most heartache. I consider gambling to be a destructive behavior
like alcoholism or drug addiction. Its cost me a lot in my life. We are raising a generation
of gamblers. The big losers are the family of the addictive person. The money sure could
have been spent in better ways. It’s just not worth the risk and can be very destructive.”
Kristopher McClain” (Johnson County Jail).
5. Pete Rose went from the Hall of Fame to the hall of shame because he was betting on his
own baseball team. He was earning over $600,000 a year at that time and gambling over
$300,000 of it. (Pete Rose lives in Las Vegas today.)
D. Church, Paul said the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil and some by longing for it
have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a grief.
1. If we have to gamble to make a living we are in essence saying, “I don’t trust God to take
care of me so I have to resort to extreme means to try to survive.
2. I know of a church where the bank called the preacher to say said you have no money in
the bank and you have 16 overdrafts. It was discovered the church treasurer was taking
money from the offering to support her husband’s gambling addiction.
3. Let me ask you a question, how much of “our” money belongs to God. All of it. It’s not
just 10% of our money that God owns; He owns it all. We have to ask ourselves, WWJD
“Would Jesus play lottery? “Would Jesus play the slots?” (Jesus prayed, “Give us this day
our daily bread.”)
a. Ps. 37:25 “I have been young and now am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous
forsaken or his descendants begging bread.”
b. Phil. 4:19a “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches.”
4. The gambler develops their dependence upon the goddess of luck rather than the
providence of God. Gambling creates nothing, contributes nothing to the common
good. It undermines values, it mocks work, it finances crime, it robs children, it
enslaves people and it poisons whatever it touches.
Today, our Making the Right Choice series turns its focus to the subject of gambling. A Barna survey of public opinion found that 61 percent of Americans believe that gambling is “morally acceptable,” and a more recent Barna survey found that about 20 percent – or one in five – adults have gambled in the past week (George Barna, “Morality Continues to Decay,” Barna Research Press Release online, press release, 3 November 2003).
When the Horseshoe Casino opened in Baltimore, it had almost as many attendees as did the Orioles game up the street—about 17,000 participants. Obviously, gambling is wildly popular, but what is gambling? “Gambling is the art and science of intentional deception that feeds on the exploitation of human weakness for the sole purpose of monetary gain. Basically, gambling deceives people in order to exploit them and take their money” (Focus On The Family website).
Someone will say, “Gambling is just taking a risk like other things in life.” That is untrue. Yes, there is risk involved in stocks and bonds, mutual funds, farming, etc. There is risk in walking out your front door. There is risk in being a Christian. Luke said that Paul and Barnabas were, “men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 15:26). Investing in stocks, mutual funds, insurance policies, etc. is not gambling. When you gamble in the classic sense of the word, for every winner there must be a loser(s). Gambling is built on one person getting what another person(s) has. When you invest in stocks, bonds or farming, something different occurs. The money you invest goes to build factories, to pay wages, to create goods and services which in turn produces more wealth to reward the investor. In gambling, nothing is created: it is one person attempting to get into his hands that which belongs to someone else.
Suppose two men meet in an alley, one of them went into the alley with a gun and he took what
belonged to the other man. He is a thief. Now, suppose two men go into an alley and rather than one of them having a gun they have some dice and one of them comes out with what belonged to the other man. What's the difference? In the first example there was one thief. In the second example there were two. Both of them were trying to get what belonged to the other man, only this time they believed in the god of fortune and chance. That there is mutual consent makes no difference. That's the reason somebody said he who gambles and wins is a thief and he who gambles and loses is a fool. George Washington said, “Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.”
1. Gambling infringes upon divine principles.
It disregards the 8th and 10th commandments.
It dismisses the concept of work.
2. Gambling destroys the lives of those it snares.
It creates evil in the human heart.
It enslaves people to the wrong god.