In Thessalonians chapter 3, I'm going to read from verse 5 to verse 16. Please give your attention to the Word of God. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you and ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. As for you brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all. As we go through the Shorter Catechism, we came last week to Providence, and as I mentioned, our testimony at this point pauses to throw in a long paragraph on gambling. Now what should we say about gambling? You know, I think of a seen in My Fair Lady. It's an old musical. I commend it. Interesting little musical. And in the musical, the idea is that you have a linguistics professor and he has boasted that he can so powerfully shape how a person talks that he can take a lower class beggar off the street and train her up to speak like a proper aristocrat and then pass her off as a big shot. So he's been working on this young lady. And he's about ready for the big experiment. He takes the young lady, all dressed up nice, and takes her to the horse track. She, of course, being Audrey Hepburn, charms this young man. And at the horse track, he says to her, you should really bet on the race. The race will be ever so much more exciting if you bet on it. Well, no doubt that is true. It does prove to be true. I'll hold off what happens next for later in the sermon. But it'll be ever so much more exciting if you put down money on the result of the race. So what is gambling? Gambling, for one thing, is putting down money before the race as you try to predict which of those twelve horses running around that track is going to win. What gambling is, you say to your friend, I have a die here. If I roll a six, you give me a dollar. If I don't roll a six, I'll give you a quarter. That would be gambling. You can gamble with cards, all right? Whoever takes more tricks will take the pot. You can gamble on your NCAA bracket. You can gamble on who's going to win the game. And the point spread's complicated. Pennsylvania, state of Pennsylvania, would be perfectly happy to take your money if you want to pick numbers that may pop up later in the lottery. Or perhaps you can go. An old-fashioned Catholic thing to do sometimes is to go in and you sit in the hall and you play bingo. And money is what's at stake there with the bingo. The most probably prevalent form of gambling is you go to the increasingly everywhere casinos and you either sit yourself at a card table with others or you sit yourself in front of a machine and you pull a lever and you lose money that way. Gambling is when you risk something of value in a game, seeking to make more. Now, it's not the risk-taking per se that is the problem. We often must take risks. You want to start a business? Well, you probably have to spend some money up front to acquire the necessary tools, equipment or whatever it takes for the business. You're risking that money in order to try to start a business. In a conversation, you may want to take a risk. Do I begin to talk about something more touchy or more important? In love, you have to take a risk at some point and say, you know, I'm really fond of you. Would you marry me? Or however you choose to phrase it. In war, it's obviously risk. So it's not risk-taking per se that makes the problem. It's that in gambling, you risk something of value simply in a game. You don't need to be doing this. And there's no productive economic activity to be attached to it. It is just a game, and you're trying to come out with more money than the other guy at the end of it. Gambling thus is zero-sum. If you win, the other person loses. Notice how that is different from opening an ice cream parlor. As I said, there is a risk to opening an ice cream parlor. Will you ever sell enough cones to make back your rent? But it's not a zero-sum game. You get the little kid's dollar, and the little kid gets an ice cream cone, and you are both happy. That's not zero-sum, that is making everybody happy. That's business. Gambling is, one of you is going to go home a dollar richer, one of you is going to go home a dollar poorer. Now gambling is worth talking about in our society because it is vastly bigger now than it was even when I was a boy, and it was much bigger when I was a boy than it had been when my father had been a boy. This is not the first time it's gotten big in American history. It has grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk, but it has not shrunk on its own. It's shrunk because citizens as a group decided this is not a good thing. Let us pass laws, let us restrict it, let us chase it out. I learned in my reading that in, I think it was Vicksburg, at a certain point in the 1830s, the citizens got together and lynched the professional gamblers. All right, so at times, people have gotten quite forceful in trying to push gambling down. Now, is gambling a good idea? I'm going to go to the father of modern economics, Adam Smith. He writes, men have absurdly high notions of their own ability and fortune. Men have absurdly high notions of their own ability and fortune. Let me point out to you that if you see a gambling industry, the gambling industry did not create itself to lose money. The industry created itself to make money. And so the industry sets up games in which they will always end up winning. They will set up games in which the odds are a little bit or a lot tilted towards the house. And so the house will always win. That becomes a saying. The house always wins. What do you mean the house? The house is the gambling industry. It's the gambling establishment. It is the casino. So, having passed by Adam Smith's psychology, let's go on to a little mathematics. If the odds are against you, the longer you play, the more certain it is that you will lose. The longer you play, the odds, and you can work it out mathematically, and the way the odds say it's supposed to work out, it may not work out on the first throw or the fifth throw. But in the long run, the odds will come true. And so the best play is not to play. But let's leave psychology, Adam Smith, and probability, Pascal. Let's talk about theology. Interestingly, the Christian churches do not all speak with the same voice on theology. Gambling. And that is because the Bible never addresses it directly. You do have the pious seeking God's will by throwing lots, but that is to seek God's will. That's not gambling. It's saying, God, what do you want us to do? Who should be the 12th apostle to replace Judas? We've identified two equally qualified candidates. We can't decide between them. God, you cast lots, praying that God will show you. Or how are you going to divide up the land of Canaan? Which tribe gets this chunk? And so the priest casts lots to find out what God's will is. Or in the Bible, you see the wicked casting lots, and that is to divide up the spoil. You might even call it something similar, to say, well, who should get this? Who should get Jesus's garment? There's four soldiers. It's one garment. It's not going to be worth anything if you tear it up, so let's cast lots, and so on. The Bible, you have lots being cast. That's not gambling. That's just seeking God's will. Does the Bible address gambling indirectly? We observe that gambling is an effort to get something without working for it. If you want money, you should get a job. Or perhaps you should start a business. I've seen my children do this. And you have a little A card table on the corner selling brownies and cucumbers. They started a business because they wanted money. Or it snows, and they say, hooray, and they run out with a shovel. You want some money, get a job. Or, of course, if you want money, you can do what we just did as a church, and you can ask nicely for it. It's another way of getting money. You can appeal to relationship, you can appeal to kindness, or you can work at it. But gambling is trying to get money with neither labor attached to it, nor an appeal to goodness or to kindness. It is trying to get money simply in a game. Now, I love games, but let's observe that when you attach money to it, you are doing something different. Now, 2 Thessalonians, he says, do not walk in idleness, but work. And it's a very strongly worded section. I don't know if you noticed that. We command you, brothers. OK, OK. You could have just used the imperative voice, but just in case I couldn't tell what a command was. You tell me you're commanding me. And then you add, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like, whoa, you are really coming on strong here. You keep away. You shun any brother walking in idleness. That's a strong statement. And then he piles on. Because you know that when we were here, we worked. We have the right for you to support us, but we didn't take that. We worked so that you would have an example of working. Back then, we would command you, if anyone does not work, neither let him eat. So we command you, if you're not working, to work. And we command you to shun any brother who doesn't listen. It's a very strongly worded section here. And you notice. We're at heads, where our heads are supposed to be. That's why I read the verses on either side of the section. Our heads are supposed to be on the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. We're supposed to be resting in the Lord of peace. May he be with you and give you peace in every way. Now, gambling doesn't work here with this passage very well. Gambling is, well, if you spend your life gambling, you're being idle. Because those are games, and you're spending your life playing games. You are not doing the labor that is commanded here. And you will certainly not have that peace and have your head full of Jesus. If you work backward through God's Word, you come to the fourth commandment. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath. You shall rest. We talk about the rest part. That's the obvious unusual part. But notice it's the unusual part. What's the usual part? Working. And it does say six days you shall labor. That is in there. And even before the fall, we see God putting Adam in the garden to till it and to keep it. As we just sang in Psalm 104, we have the plants for us to labor on. And so work is part of our God-given commission. It is part of the creation order. It's supposed to be a major part of life. It's the means by which you eat. But gambling is an effort to get something for nothing without working for it. I conclude, gambling would appear to be a form of idleness condemned in the word. It's not the only form of idleness, but it will be one. Secondly, gambling exposes and excites greed. Now this phrase, exposes and excites, should sound familiar to you by now, but I'm redeploying it. Gambling exposes and excites greed. Why would you gamble? I came up with two reasons. And by the way, there's a lot of ways to gamble, so maybe I'm missing some here. But it seems to me that you gamble either because you want more money or because you want the excitement. It'll be ever so much more exciting if you bet on the horse. If you just want more, then you're coveting. You're not content with the money you have and you're not addressing it in the God-given way of getting a job. If you want the excitement, why is it more exciting once you put money down on the horse. Why does that make it more exciting? Because it's scary to lose your money. And it's exciting to win money. So I think the excitement reason reduces to the same as the first reason. It comes down to money as well. You know that it's scary to lose money. You're not being a good steward of it. You won't have it anymore. You haven't been responsible with what God gave you. So not only does gambling infringe on the fourth commandment, six days you shall labor, it breaks the tenth commandment. You're coveting that money. And as soon as you talk about coveting, there's other commandments that loom. Colossians 3.5 says, covetousness which is idolatry. That's wrapping around Tenth Commandment back to the second. Covetousness, which is idolatry. Why is covening idolatry? Because when you say that object, that you really must have that car through there, you must have that car. You are lusting for the car that God gave to someone else. You are setting your affection on that car above your affection, you could say, on God, who has distributed these things. You're making an idol out of the thing and preferring it to God. And so Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and money. Gambling's all about the money. You're serving it, you're not seeking the kingdom of God, you're breaking the second and the first commandments. Now our testimony calls gambling satanic. That's about the strongest word in our vocabulary. Why does it call gambling satanic? It says, its satanic nature is shown by how it obsesses and controls individuals. There are people who start gambling and don't stop. They lose all the money in their pocket, and they go to the ATM to pull out more. They gamble away all they have, and they use the credit card to borrow more. They max out all they can borrow, and they begin to steal so that they can gamble more, because they're going to make it back the next time. And if this goes on too long, I read last fall that of all the addictions out there, gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide. I didn't expect to read that. I thought it would be a drug addiction or something. But it said, gambling addiction has the highest rate of suicide. Even the gambling industry, which wants to make it seem like it's all going to be okay, We'll admit that 1.1 to 1.6% of people in the general population have a predisposition to gambling addiction. Needless to say, other people's studies come up with higher figures than the gambling industry. But even on the gambling industry's figures, that'll be millions of people in the United States. And casinos aim at addiction. I learned something in the old slot machine, it wasn't a computer, there was actually something physical inside that was going around and you're trying to pull down the lever and make the things line up. Well, we're in a computer era now and they do virtual real mapping. That is, you don't have a physical thing spinning, you just have a computer program and it stops and when you pull it stops and the computer program decides and they program it to show that you just missed. But it's not a real just miss. They programmed it to show you. There's nothing physically spinning in there, nor do you know how many there are on each one. They're not the same number. All right? It's all a program designed to show you near misses so that you'll keep doing it because you're so close. You almost had it. Just a little bit sooner. And it's a lie. The casinos aim to get you and keep you addicted. They want you to keep gambling. They'll have people to bring you drinks. They'll have people to keep you in the zone. What's in the zone? It's when you're just gambling and you forget the consequences. They don't want you to stop and think about it. And in my reading last fall, you hear about 1-800-GAMBLER, and when an industry has to have a 1-800-GAMBLER thing at the beginning of its expansion, you know the expansion's a bad idea. Do the casinos actually keep you out, if you ask to be put on that list? According to some people's testimony, yeah, they'll kick you out should you actually get on a hot streak and actually start to make money. As long as you're losing, they don't seem to notice that you're not supposed to be there. Any time an industry gets into gambling, it's not because they want to lose money. It's because they want to make sure that you're going to lose the money. They set the rules, and the rules are designed to end up with the house winning. But I've left a hermeneutical question hanging. If the Bible does not explicitly condemn gambling, May the Church. Some years ago, a public intellectual known for teaching virtue, Mr. Bennett, wrote a book on the Book of Virtues. It was publicized some years back that he had lost a lot of money gambling. Some people wanted to call him a hypocrite. He said, hang on, I never said gambling was a sin. And it's true, he hadn't. The Roman Catholic Church says, keep it moderate, and it's OK. The Lutheran Missouri Synod had a committee study gambling, lay out the bad results of gambling, and then say, but we can't call it sinful if God does not. The Methodists were very clear. It's sinful. Don't do it. And you can already tell, if our testimony calls it satanic, that we're siding with the Methodists. I have not successfully given you any attention about that question. So why do we side with the Methodists? The Methodists reason not only on Scripture, but also they talk about a quadrangle, meaning four different things, tradition, and reason, and so on. We don't reason that way. So why do we end up with the Methodists? Well, our Confession says everything necessary for life and salvation is either laid out in Scripture explicitly or can be deduced by good and necessary consequence. That is, from Scripture, you need to do a little reasoning sometimes. And that's what we're doing tonight. An activity that tries to get something for nothing, contrary to the passage we read, that encourages idleness and not work, is not good. An activity that promotes greed and love of money is sinful. An activity that addicts and obsesses people, leads to their ruin and perhaps their suicide, is sinful. By good and necessary consequence, gambling is sinful. And so our testimony says the state should not rely on gambling revenues. That's what the Pennsylvania lottery is. It tells you, benefits older Pennsylvanians. Yes, except for all the older Pennsylvanians there throwing their money away on the tickets. Yes, due to the interplay between Republicans and Democrats, Gambling has come in to fill the void. The Democrats want to raise taxes so they can do more wonderful things for you with government. The Republicans got increasingly strong in saying, no new taxes. The Democrats said, yes, but there's so many good things we could do for people. And so gambling became the way forward. And the church has been fairly distracted with many other sins in society. But who buys lottery tickets? Let's go back to My Fair Lady. She's watching the race. She gets excited. Being excited, she shouts to the horse, and she forgets to use her carefully honed new accent and vocabulary. And she exposes herself for the lower class woman that she is, ruining the experiment. Back to the drawing board. We can't introduce you into society here anymore. I'm bringing out the class element that comes through in My Fair Lady at that point, during the horse race, to say, yeah, and that's who loses money with casinos and lotteries. It's the people who cannot afford to lose it. It's not the richer half that are regularly lottery ticket buyers. It's the poorer half. So in general, these things work to make the poor poorer. A good state would build up the citizenry to be strong and independent. But you have to wonder if some politicians prefer citizens to be dependent on welfare and so on. So do not gamble. Don't gamble online. Don't gamble in person. Don't gamble at the casino. Don't gamble in your basement. Don't gamble on sports. Don't gamble on bingo. And our testimony goes on to condemn even the softer forms of gambling, such as raffle tickets and so on. It's not that any game that is sometimes associated with gambling is wrong. Nothing wrong with playing cards, but you start to put the money on it. Now you're in a different realm. Nothing wrong with filling out the bracket, seeing who can pick the winner. Once you put the money on it, you're in a different realm. So far from expanding gambling, our government should begin to demand the data that the casinos have. The casinos know exactly who their customers are. They know who's in there for the first time. They may put their thumb on the scale to make sure that the first timer wins. Don't be surprised if you don't do what I tell you tonight and if you go to a casino and gamble. Don't be surprised if you win the first time. They want to hook you. What's the best way to hook a fish? Put something attractive in front of it. So far from expanding gambling, the government ought to begin to get a hold of the casino's data. We ought to begin to know who is gambling, how much are they gambling, how many people are gambling away all of their paychecks. Now, why are we covering this tonight? Because we've been talking about providence. When you gamble, you're tempted to think, I am lucky. I made the money. But there is no luck. God is in control of all things. You despise God and his power when you speak of luck. But if you say, no, no, no, no, I gamble with a different heart. I know God is in control, and that's why I gamble. I want to see if God wills to give me money tonight. Yes, well, you use God's providence to impoverish your neighbor. Do you love God by hating your neighbor? Yes. This doesn't work. If you deny God is in control, you're not loving God. If you admit God is in control, you're still not loving your neighbor. The clearest way, perhaps, to see the sinfulness of gambling is by comparing it to the two great commandments. As we said last week, one reason to know about providence, that is to know that God is in control, is so that we would rest in God and be content. Because the other passage we might have read, connected with gambling, comes at the end of the very next book of Scripture. We could have read this. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." Yes, avoid gambling, beloved congregation. It is increasingly easy to do, and all around you it is one of many pathways, pathways away from God. So avoid it at all costs. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would guard us. Help us to guard our hearts. Guard us against the love of money. Heavenly Father, we know that we need some money to live in this world. So Lord, help us. Help us to accept how you call us to make it. Make it through labor. Make it through working. Lord, help us to be content. And help us to look at our neighbor with charity. And not to look at our neighbor as a potential mark. someone that we might take advantage of. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.