TEXT:pro.28:8 pro.28:20 isa.10:1-2 1tim.6:9-10 Ex.20:17
INTRODUCTION: According to an article in the Citzens Times date 6\21\02, “More than half of People responding to a statewide poll recently said they would vote in favor of proposed lottery if the special election were held right now.”
I thought that I had seen it all, heard it all, and read it all, until I read this piece from USA Today…
Marvin and Emily Davidheiser stacked forty Florida Lotto tickets atop a Bible August 6, turned on the TV, and prayed. Tuesday, the Branden, Florida couple claimed $26 million–the USA’s thirteenth largest prize.
“I’d advise everybody to say your prayers,” said Marvin Davidheiser.” You don’t win it just on picking the numbers.” They sorted through the whole stack, but the winner “was the last ticket I read, next to the Bible,” he said.
Can you imagine a supposedly christian man having the audacity to try to pin the tail of his winning the lottery on God. Surely, a christian man knows better than to try to tie God into gambling, much less approve of gambling himself.
But then, I came across these facts: Pollsters tell us that eight out of ten Roman Catholics classify themselves as gamblers. Gambling participation among Jews is 77%. Presbyterians and Episcopalians tie at 74%, while 63% of Methodists admit to gambling tendencies as well as 47% of Baptist,
Whether it’s betting at the race track, bingo at the church, pulling a lever, rolling the dice, shuffling cards, or buying a lottery ticket, gambling has now become the national pastime.
Today, two-thirds of all Americans gamble, and in a recent gallup poll it was discovered that 80% of Americans approve of gambling, and 82% said that they would approve of some form of legalized gambling if it would help their state raise revenue.
The biggest single business in the United States is gambling. Gambling takes in more profit than all of the one hundred biggest corporations in our country combined.
It seems so harmless, buying a lottery ticket, playing a harmless game of poker, taking your chance down at the track. If it were left to many, America would become just one gigantic crap table. Yet George Washington, the father of our country, said, “Gambling is the child of satan, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.”
Part of the problem is misunderstanding the difference between taking a gamble and taking a risk. There are those who say, “Life is a gamble, business is a gamble.” But that is wrong. Life is a risk, not a gamble. There is a big difference between taking a risk and taking a gamble.
There is nothing wrong with taking a risk. In fact, we are told in Acts 15:26, of “men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
You see, the difference between gambling and risk-taking is this: Gambling leaves everything to chance, while risk-taking does everything to minimize chance.
Gambling is predicated on one fact. For every winner there must be a loser. But taking a risk is predicated on the fact that everybody can be a winner. When I invest in the stock market, I want business to win so I can win. The business makes money, I make money. But in gambling, for every winner there must be a loser.
In gambling nothing is produced. It is simply getting goods to change hands from the possession of one person to another person. But when I invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds or business, my money goes to build factories, create goods, pay wages, put paychecks in hands and food on tables. But in gambling nothing is produced, nothing is built. Goods simply change hands from one person to another. As someone has well said, “In gambling, you simply have one person who gets something for nothing, and another person who gets nothing for something.”
So whether it is buying a lottery ticket, playing poker, matching for cokes, or betting on a football game, let me tell you three things wrong with gambling:
I. COLLAPSED PRINCIPLES
Now I am sure that you know that there is no verse that says, “Thou shalt not gamble.”
But the Bible is not just a book of laws and rules anyway. You can find loopholes in laws. But the Bible is also a book of principles, and gambling violates several biblical principles:
A. Honesty
Two of the Ten Commandments tell us that we should neither steal something that rightfully belongs to someone else, nor even in spirit to covet what someone else has. The Bible says that anything that comes into our possession, should come in one of two ways: either someone gives it to us, or we give something in return. That is, everything we have and own should either be a gift or a wage.
When two men gamble, they are simply stealing by mutual consent. They are both agreeing to become thieves. One will become a successful thief, getting what belongs to the other person without giving anything in return. The other will simply become an unsuccessful thief. He will lose without getting anything in return.
Someone has said, “He who gambles and wins is a thief. While he who gambles and loses is a fool.” Gambling violates the commandments “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Thou shalt not covet.” If you get something from someone else without it being an honest gift, or an honest gain, you have stolen from that person.
B. Love
Gambling violates the golden rule that you “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It does to a man exactly what you would not want done to yourself. Here are two men who have just gambled everything they own on a certain wager. If either one of them lose the bet, everything they have is going to go down the tubes.
Now would you want to lose everything? Absolutely not! But you will turn right around if you win and do to the other man exactly what you would not want done to yourself.
Do you understand that you can only win at gambling if somebody else loses. Gambling is predicated on the fact that your pleasure and profit must come at the expense of my suffering and pain. Somebody has to suffer in gambling. In order for one man to wind up with something, someone else must wind up with nothing.
C. Work
1. The Word of God makes it plain that unless we receive something as a gift, we are to work for what we own.
II Thess. 3:10 “For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” Again Paul said in Eph. 4:28, “Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.”
This principle says you do not steal from someone who has need. You work so that you can have an abundance of things that you may share with those who do have a need. Gambling is the direct opposite of that. You take from others whether they have a need or not, in order to increase your own prosperity.
When the government promotes gambling, it is giving approval to the principle of pursuing wealth without work.
For two hundred years the American idea has been that citizens are distinguished more by the moral worth of the way they make money, than by how much money they make. To put it another way, what’s more important to God: how much money you make, or how you make your money?
To put it another way, gambling tears down one of the great principles of free enterprise in the American system, that to make money the old- fashioned way “you earn it.” The more people are led to believe in the importance of luck, chance, and fate, the less they will believe in the virtues of work, industriousness, thrift, diligence, and saving. It is not coincidental that at the same time that lotteries, that is gambling, is booming at a time when the nation’s productivity, competitiveness, savings rate, and academic performance are going down the tubes.
I. COLLAPSED PRINCIPLES
II. CREATED PROBLEMS
We all hear the positive side of gambling, but we are rarely told the negative side.
A. Morally Destructive Gambling is simply another cancer that is eating away at the moral foundation of this nation.
First of all, it rots the community. Paul Oakes, an outspoken critic of lotteries, said, “The chief source of funds in organized crime has always been gambling. Drugs aren’t even close to gambling. Gambling is more important to the NFL than television.”
According to a United States commission on law enforcement, “law officials agree unanimously that gambling is the greatest source of revenue for organized crime.” The fact is, that no vice, no crime, no sin, contributes more to the growth of other vice and other crime than gambling.
Charles Morton, a Washington attorney and former Chairman of the Commission on the review of the national policy toward gambling, said, “Gambling contributes more than any other single enterprise to police corruption and organized crime.”
Nevada, considered the gambling capital of the nation, has a per capita crime rate double, and a suicide rate triple the national average. According to the FBI the per capita crime rate is twice as high in states that have legalized gambling, as those states who do not have it.
Then someone argues, “But if you do not have legalized gambling, you’re going to have all kinds of illegal gambling, so you may as well legalize gambling, tax it, and eliminate illegal gambling.” Well, the organized crime section of the Department of Justice, has found that “the rate of illegal gambling in those states which have some legalized form of gambling, was three times as high as those states where there was not a legalized form of gambling.”
You remember the TV commentator, Jimmy the Greek. He said, “I am not a gambler. I use to be, but I gave it up years ago. I’m not a bookmaker either. I don’t make bets, and I don’t take them. Wherever I go, I speak against gambling. Wherever you initiate gambling in a community, it inevitably ruins it.”
Gambling also robs the poor. 53% of the people who play the lottery, are at or below poverty level. The leading lottery states are also leading welfare states. Washington, D. C. is the leading lottery and welfare district.
The average gambler’s income is $11,000 a year. Listen to this statistic: The poorest citizens–those with household incomes less than $10,000–were seven times more likely than middle class people to spend a significant fraction (at least 5%) of their income on lottery tickets. Of the members of the poorest families who did gamble, a third spent more than 20% of their incomes on the Lottery.
You see, gambling, especially in the form of the lottery, is a modern-day Robinhood in reverse. It robs the poor to give to the rich. The fact is, the people who can afford to gamble, don’t need the money, and the people who need the money can’t afford to gamble.”
It ruins the family. There is an organization for compulsive gamblers, called “Gamblers Anonymous.” Did you know that one out of every twenty people who gamble, and one out of ten who play the lottery, will become compulsive gamblers? In our country, there are ten million compulsive gamblers, people who are uncontrollably hooked on gambling.
I hope the gambler’s in this state can go to sleep at night knowing that there are little children who will not be able to go to sleep at night because they pushed and advocated the lottery. The reason why they will be hungry is because their daddy will bet their food money on the Lottery. When I just think about one little child going hungry because of some fool chasing a dream that will never come true.
A. Morally Destructive
B. Monetarily Deceptive One of the big arguments for the Lottery is all of the revenue that it will bring in for education and hospitals and other things that are greatly needed.
Well, H. Roy Kaplin of the Florida Institute of Technology, spent sixteen years studying the lotteries, and he said, “A lottery is an inefficient and ineffective source of revenue. It raises up to 3% of a state’s source of revenue, but we spend 5% to keep it going.
How do we put this in laymen’s terms? But even with the revenue, don’t forget the cost of gambling. Herbert Jenkins, former president of the International Association of Police Chiefs, said, “For every dollar received in gambling taxes, government spends ten dollars fighting problems directly related to legalized gambling–prostitution, embezzlement, bad checks, and police corruption. Racketeers and mobsters swarm to gambling communities and bring with them other sordid businesses.”
But more specifically, looking at the Lottery, the government on average spends five cents to collect a tax dollar, but it has to spend sixty cents to secure a lottery dollar. Lotteries are not only ineffective, they are inefficient.
But then there’s always the one who says, “At least give me the chance to win all that money.”
Well just what are those chances?
The chances of seeing a no-hitter are-one in 1,347
Finding a pearl in an oyster–one in 10,000
Being dealt a royal flush in five card stud - one in 649,739
Having quadruplets–one in 705,000
Being struck by lightning–one in 1,900,000
The Math Department at Berry College has said, that the odds against winning the Lottery with any one lottery ticket are 7.25 billion to one.
To be blunt, gambling is not only deceptive, it is just plain stupid.
Now there are always those who say that gambling helps education. In one sense, I believe it does. One man said, “I’m beginning to understand exactly how the State Lottery helps education. Every time I buy a losing ticket I get a little smarter.”
I. COLLAPSED PRINCIPLES
II. CREATED PROBLEMS
III. CORRUPTED PROVIDENCE
The Bible clearly teaches that we are to trust the Lord and not luck for our prosperity and our needs. Phil. 4:19 says, “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” God never intended for man’s finances to be based on luck. He intended for his finances to be controlled by the Lord. God’s rule is simple: a good day’s wage for a good day’s work, and a good day’s work for a good day’s wage.
Everything we have comes from God. When we gamble what he has given to us in search of what we think we need, we are denying Him the opportunity of providing what we need for us, and robbing ourselves of the peace and joy of knowing that we received it from His hand.
You see, at bottom, gambling is idolatry. It substitutes lady luck for a loving Lord, and dame fortune for a Sovereign Father. The gambler is guilty of having a wrong god and a wrong faith. His god is gold, his creed is greed, his code is covetousness. But gambling ultimately violates the whole principle of stewardship. You see, a person cannot gamble with what he does not own. The Bible says we own nothing, we are stewards of everything. Friend, God not only owns you, God owns what you own. Therefore, gambling is not only an attempt to steal something from others, it is stealing from God.
Whether you buy with it, burn it, bury it, or bet with it, your money is not your own. It belongs to God. There are two times in a Christian’s life when he should not gamble: When he can’t afford to and when he can. Jeremiah 22:13 Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;
I. Gambling violates God’s instructions on how to accumulate wealth
A. By Work. I Thessalonians 4:1-12
B. By Gathering (Spending less than you make). Proverbs 13:1
II. Gambling violates God’s commands on loving your neighbor. Philippians 2:3,
Matthew 5:43, Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9-10, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8
III. Gambling preys on our children. Luke 17:1-2
Studies show that about two-thirds of teens have gambled in the past year. In Massachusetts, 47 percent of seventh graders, and three quarters of high school seniors, have played the lottery. In a survey of 12,000 Louisiana adolescents, one-quarter reported playing video poker, 17 percent had gambled in slot machines and one in 10 had bet on horse or dog racing.
The same survey of Massachusetts high school students found that one in 20 had already been arrested for gambling-related offense; 10 % experienced family problems due to gambling, and 8 % had gotten in trouble at work or school because of gambling. Louisiana youngsters in juvenile detention are roughly four times as likely to have a serious gambling problem as their peers. 2/3 of the hard core gamblers in detention admitted stealing specifically to finance their gambling.
Studies indicate as many as 8% of teens are already hooked on gambling. Casinos in Louisiana have donated computer equipment and library books - along with cards, dice and T-shirts emblazoned with casino logos - to schoolchildren there. (And why a greatful superintendent repaid their generosity by making a television commercial for a casino!
That is why games in children’s arcades inside casinos are virtual copies of adult casino games. That is why casino complexes now appeal to children with amusement rides, theme parks and movie theaters - often forcing kids to walk through the casino floor to get to these attractions!
In South Carolina, children stumble across video poker machines (called the “crack cocaine of gambling”) in convenience stores, pizza parlors and bowling alleys. With more than 30,000 video poker devices scattered across that state, elementary school children can stop by on their way to and from school to pump money into these machines - legally!
Last fall, McDonald’s restaurants in Colorado even joined in the fray, running a “McLotto Meals” promotion promising a free lottery ticket with the purchase of certain meals.
IV. Gambling preys on the poor. Proverbs 14:31, 22:16 The Boston Globe documented how the lottery saturates poor Massachusetts neighborhoods with outlets. For example, Chelsea, and economically struggling community, has one lottery retailer for every 363 residents. By comparison, the affluent suburb of Milton has one for every 3,657 residents. Chelsea residents, many of whom are on welfare, spend nearly 8% of their incomes on lottery tickets. That amounts to more than $900 per person, annually. Before leaving a store, the store owned told us, “The lottery is not good. It robs from the poor. It robs from my neighbors. People lose a lot of money. The government has no business being involved.” Then we learned that when the social security and welfare checks arrive, local residents line up outside the store and down the sidewalk hoping to parlay their meager subsistence into instant wealth.
It’s the same story everywhere. Texas, the poorest citizens, who together earn only 2% of the state’s total income, buy 10 % of lottery tickets. In Colorado, the 32 counties with the highest per-capita lottery sales each have incomes below the state average.
An advertising plan for the Ohio lottery recommended that “promotional pushes” take place at the beginning of the month. Why? Because government benefits, payroll and Social Security payments are released on the first Tuesday of each calendar month. An infamous Illinois Lottery billboard campaign in a Chicago ghetto showed a picture of a lottery ticket with the caption: “This could by your ticket out.” Fat chance!
V. Gambling corrupts ruling ability of government. Proverbs 17:23 The gambling industry also pours vast sums into campaign coffers of gambling-friendly politicians. It is time for the public to scrutinize those who are regularly jetted off to Las Vegas and other gambling centers to pick up these enormous contributions. We must ask, what service is being provided in return for this generosity? Republicans have been give $6.1 million and Democrats $7.6 million in recent years. During the last election in California, nearly $100 million was spent by casino interests to influence the outcome of various races and measures. [Note: House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo) went to Vegas to pick up a $250,000 check and President Bill Clinton raised $400,000 for the Democratic National committee in May! In addition, Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), Mitch Mcconnell (R-Ky), Slade Gorton (R-Wa) and John McCain (R-Ariz) all made fundraising trips to Vegas the week of our last commission meeting. DNC Chairman Joe Andrew proudly proclaimed that Democrats in Washington want to "be the party of the gaming industry."
VI.Gambling lies about being a help to education. Lottery advocates are incredibly crafty and manipulative of the public. They link state-sponsored gambling programs to funding for education, which dupes people into believing that buying a ticket will somehow benefit children. It is a lie. School support never increases after lotteries are sanctioned because state support is then withdrawn.
A favorite ploy of lottery sponsors is to promise huge amounts of money for education. In reality, schools do not profit from the new source of revenue. Since this money comes in the way it does states simply reduce the educational budget by the amount generated form the lottery or other forms of gambling. The net effect is that the new funds wind up in the hands of state legislators to support their pet projects.
VII.Gambling provides bad fruit. Matthew 7:20 A national study by the University of Michigan earlier this year found that 45% of male college football and basketball players admit to gambling on sports, despite rules explicitly prohibiting such activities. More than 5% admit shaving points, leaking inside information for gambling purposes or betting on their own games. According to Forbes magazine, "Except for a few hundred people, many of whom boast only a trace of Indian blood, most American Indians haven't gained a penny [from Casinos].” The Minneapolis Stat Tribune reported that unemployment among Indians in the state remains above 50 %, about the same as before the state’s 17 Indian-owned casinos arrived. Among some tribes in South Dakota, unemployment has actually increased since the opening of casinos! A few Indian casinos are enormously lucrative, like the billion-dollar-a-year Foxwoods run by the tiny Mashantucket Pequot tribe in Connecticut. With only 550 member, that’s nearly $2 million in annual revenues for each Pequot! The profitability of such casinos has sent thousands of Americans scurrying through their ancestral records looking for any trace of Indian blood. The Associated Press reports that “being Indian has never been so popular,” noting that the number of people identifying themselves as Indians has tripled since 1970. The Mashantucket tribe receives 50 calls per month from “wanna-be” Pequots; some can’t even pronounce the tribe’s name. None of the current Pequot tribal members reportedly have more than 1/8 Pequot blood.
In many cases, Indian tribes are nothing but a front for Las Vegas gambling interests looking to enter new markets, knowing they can pocket up to 40% of Indian casino profits via “management contracts.” One city in Illinois tried a unique approach. It hired a Nevada company to recruit an entire Indian tribe in order to open a land-based casino.
The rationale behind Indian casinos is that they enable tribes to gain economic self-sufficiency. Yet, even tribes that have struck it rich with casinos continue to receive hefty federal subsidies. How’s this for outrageous exploitation of the taxpayer? The Pequots, sitting on a billion dollars in revenues per year, were granted $1.5 million in low-income housing assistance in 1996. The Tulalip Indians in Washington State (estimated annual casino revenues of $30 million) used federal low-income housing grants to build themselves $300,000 luxury homes. A tribe in Minnesota refused to dip into its casino-generated $30-million bank account to fix a school with a leaky roof and insulation bulging out of gashes in the wall, preferring to wait several years until the federal government could make the repairs.
A mountain of evidence presented to our Commission demonstrated a direct link between problem and pathological gambling and divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, bankruptcy, crime and suicide. The most egregious example of this political exploitation occurred when Colorado spent $25,000 on a study to find the best way to get its residents to play the lottery more.
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