Transcript
Ben Fallon: Paul, today's question has come up in a variety of forms over the years: “Is it sinful to play the lottery? Can I bet on professional sports? Am I wasting my time and money going to a casino, even if it's just to have a fun night out with my spouse or friends?” So, I'll leave it at that and allow you to answer however you want.
Paul Tripp: I would like to answer this question in a couple words, but I can't. It's a very good question, and this question has fingers in a lot of different directions. And so, I want to give an answer that does justice to the extent of this question. I want to say first, it's very important to say that there's nowhere in Scripture that specifically and clearly prohibits the lottery or gambling. That doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't have anything to say about gambling. And let me talk about the nature of Scripture. The Bible doesn't speak to everything directly. If the Bible spoke to everything in your life directly, you wouldn't carry your Bible to church. You would drive it to church in 15-18-wheelers (semi-trucks) because that's how exhaustive the Word of God could be. So, the Bible is comprehensive without being exhaustive. In other words, by wisdom principles, by the nature of the narrative, the Bible speaks to everything in your life without addressing specifically everything in your life. And such is the case with lottery.
So, let me say that what may be operating with people who want to play the lottery. Perhaps buying a lottery ticket could reveal a lack of trust in God's willingness to provide. God has made a flat-footed promise that He will provide whatever we need. And so, there are people who will say, “If you don't have it right now, it's because God knows you don't actually need it.” That's a hard truth. Jesus says, “Why do you worry about what you're going to wear or what you're going to put on or what you're going to eat or what you're going to drink? That's what the Gentiles do. You have a loving Heavenly Father who has promised to provide for you. Quit worrying, just seek His kingdom, and He'll give you what you need” (Summary paraphrase). So it may be that your desire to play the lottery is exposing something in your heart that is not good. It's a lack of rest in the promise of your Father to provide.
It could be that you still are trusting in luck. I don't, this will drive people crazy, but I don't believe there's such a thing as luck. I believe that everything in my life, in my world, in the physical universe is under the direct rule of my Lord. That's why in Jonah, Jesus commands a worm to eat a plant. Imagine, he's in such total control of His universe, he can actually command a worm. How many worms are there to do his will? So, Proverbs 16:33 goes after luck. It says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from God.” You can’t think of anything that seems more random than flipping a coin up in the air, and Proverbs says, “But where it lands is under the rule of the Lord.” Wow! I love that; that's such a better way of living. Rather than trusting in luck and chance and faith, I trust in my Lord who is the ultimate definition of what is holy and good and faithful and kind and loving and patient. It's a beautiful thing; I wake up in the best hands ever. My life is in good hands. I don't have to hope that somehow luck will bring good things into my life because good has been brought into my life because I live in the hands of God.
The fourth thing, our experience, as a husband and wife, is that financial hardship is often a tool of God's transforming grace. We were talking this morning that we look back on moments of hardship, and we just experienced just the presence of God, his faithfulness, his provision. We realized in those moments, God was deepening our trust in him and deepening our gratitude for what we have been given. We look back in those times as good times. Were they hard? Yes! Were they comfortable? No! But they were good times because hardship is a workroom for God's grace. And that's true of financial hardship as well.
Now, what's the biblical model of money, finances? Well, here it is. The biblical model is to work diligently with your hands and trust God to provide. Listen to these Proverbs; this is Proverbs 21:5, “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” Wow! If you're sitting around, and you're hoping that good things will happen, that's a recipe for poverty. The Proverbs say, “Get up and work hard.” Now, the whole background of that is the existence of a God who is faithful to provide. Proverbs 13:4 says, “…the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.” And so, not only does God supply me physically, but He makes my heart full and thankful. And so, I'm not looking around wishing I could be richer and envying those who are rich. And that brings me to the next point.
Maybe playing the lottery is the sin of covetousness. Maybe what I'm doing is envying what I don't have. And when you envy what you don't have, you are judging God's faithfulness to provide adequately for you. So, I look around, I see wealthy people; it drives me crazy that I'm not one of them. And so, I want to get rich quick, and so I play the lottery. Is lottery playing always covetousness? Maybe not, but it surely could be.
I think there are many people who gamble, particularly on sports, and now, I mean, sports betting is in your pocket because you're carrying around a phone. And I get it, it's fun. There are a lot of people who do that. They're not doing it to get rich. They're not doing it because they covet people who are rich. They're doing it for the fun of, you know, just the thrill of seeing if your team wins.
But here's the thing that I would say. Again, all the studies about gambling talk about the deeply addictive nature of gambling. And you need to be very careful. I think of 1 Corinthians 6, that's talking about being mastered by sex, but it says, “All things are lawful…but I will not be dominated by anything.” I think the principle of mastery is very important. I need to be careful that I do not allow myself to fall under the control over my heart of anything but King Jesus. And that's anything.
I think maybe the number one addiction in the church is food. Look around at your church. You can see the empirical evidence of that by the amount of people who are carrying more weight than they should carry. So, we want to be careful. If you're messing with something that's addictive, you need to be careful. Alcohol is addictive; you need to be careful. Gambling is addictive; you need to be careful. And you need to look for signs in your life of that addiction. I would say also, go back to all the principles that I gave, even small bets, those principles apply.
And then I think there is something that is never talked about in the secular world or in the Christian world, “When I win the lottery, where is my money coming from? Whose money am I then taking? Whose money am I buying the mansion with and the sports car?” I know the answer to that and it's deeply convicting. I'm taking the money of millions of poor people. Fortune Magazine says that gambling for a win, that the lottery they're specifically talking about, let me say this this way, “The poorest households in America play the lottery thirty-three times more than households that are not poor.” That is deeply convicting. So, when I win the lottery, I am actually taking out of the pockets millions of dollars from people who have nothing and are hoping somehow, they'll get rich quick.
The Bible has a lot to say about stealing from the poor. And most people don't think about the lottery this way, but that's really what you're doing. You have to ask yourself the question, “If I win the lottery, where will this money be coming from?” Would you walk around your city and take whatever coins homeless people have from them until you had enough to buy a big car? You would never do that! But the lottery makes that kind of stealing from people who have no money. It makes it cosmetic and acceptable because you don't see those people, you don't know who they are, you're not face to face. But that money is largely coming from, all the statistics say that, people who have nothing. So, I want to just give a conclusion here. Wow! It is just way better to trust the promises and sovereignty of God and be thankful that he loves you, that he rules your world, and he's promised to provide.
BF: Thanks, Paul. I want to recommend Paul's book, Redeeming Money: How God Reveals and Reorients Our Hearts. It's not about budgeting or financial advice, but rather all about the motives of the heart and the temptations and dangers of sin as we think about and interact with money. It's available at paultripp.com/money.
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