Sermon Tone Analysis

March 7, 2012

By John Barnett

Read, print, and listen to this resource on our website www.DiscoverTheBook.org

Last week we began a look at how to apply the Scriptures to our current moral and political climate in American society.

I shared that the Lord has revealed His convictions very clearly in His Word.

God is Pro-Life, Pro-Marriage, Pro-Justice, and Pro-Work.

We then defined those convictions as the Bible does, that God is:

• *GOD is Pro-Life*—God is opposed to Abortion and Euthanasia.

• *GOD is Pro-Marriage*—God is opposed to Gay Unions, as well as divorce, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, pornography, and every other form of immorality.

• *GOD is Pro-Justice*—God is opposed to murder, violence, discrimination, prejudice, and abuse of the weak, poor, and unborn; He invented capital punishment, and commands societies to have a just legal system.

• *GOD is Pro-Work*—God is against indolence, sloth, unbiblical entitlements, oppression of the poor by the rich, and every form of false hope produced by gambling and lotteries.

This morning we are going to look at how a grace-energized man develops his convictions from God's Word.

Each day we all have to live and work in a world so much like the world of the First Century.

When the aged Paul sat to write his young disciple named Titus, his days like ours were full of both false teachings about God, and wrong behavior among the believers.

As Paul sat to write perhaps the clearest words on how to live a life governed by Biblical convictions in Titus 2 —it was sometime between A.D. 62–64.

Paul was serving the churches of Greece (ancient Macedonia), after his release from his first prison time in Rome; and before his final Roman imprisonment.

Paul had to live and serve under an Empire that swarmed with citizens, slaves, and commercialism.

Rome and all its blatant materialism reigned over nearly the entire known world of Paul’s day.

How were Christians to live in the world of the New Testament?

That question was especially vital to believers in the culture of Rome—rife with greed, gambling, and constant oppression of the poor.

Paul sits down to write to that very challenge the saints faced as they also had to live, work, and vote.

For times just like those in which we live Paul writes, Christ's church is to be filled with…

*Men Sound in “The” Faith*

Our look at the 4th element of a grace-energized disciple of Christ as described in Titus 2—men who are sound in faith, could never be more timely.

Titus 2:1-2 /"But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: 2 that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience;"/ NKJV

God’s discipleship program for men was laid down for Christ's church right from the earliest days.

It was focused upon guarding healthy faith—in this crooked and perverse world.

“Sound in faith” means knowing how to apply God's Word to issues of living for God in an ungodly world.

Which is just another way of saying…

*Living with Biblical Convictions—as a Citizen of Heaven still living on Earth*

Paul had already described the goal of discipleship in Colossians 1:10.

As we remind ourselves of this passage—let God speak to your heart.

Be sure that all of your life is open to His working so that every part may please Him, bear fruit for Him, and produce good works for His glory.

/"So that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please [Him] in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God."/ Colossians 1:10 (NASB)

Paul considered every area of life to be on the pathway to becoming pleasing to Christ.

Discipleship produces a mature Christian disciple, who has been deeply touched by Christ in every aspect of his life.

Mature disciples bear fruit and overflow with good works.

*Discipleship is to touch All of our Life*

Remember God is Pro-work.

Do you share His convictions?

Do you believe and practice His conviction against: indolence, sloth, unbiblical entitlements, oppression of the poor by the rich, and every form of false hope produced by gambling and lotteries?

True teachers of God's Word have always sought to share God’s revealed convictions.

On our topic this morning Saint Augustine once said, "The devil invented gambling."

John Calvin outlawed gambling in the entire city of Geneva.

Martin Luther said, "Money won by gambling is not won without self-seeking and sin."

But never has the availability to gamble been more pervasive than it is today.

America has become a nation selling hope for money.

Tragically that money in exchange for hope is taken from people who can not afford to buy it.

The hope offered by gambling and lotteries is unreal, impossible, and destructive.

“

Lotteries, like drug addiction and drunkenness, offer what only God can give freely!”

(John Piper)

America, it's fair to say, is wild about gambling.

In 1962, American place about $2 billion in bets.

By the year 2000, that number had grown to $866 billion.

And now, the country is headed for a staggering trillion dollars a year in wagers.

These bets take place in over fifteen hundred casinos and other gambling places nationally; and in vast lotteries embraced by state governments as revenue godsends; and at horse tracks and dog tracks and sporting events; and on 35,000 internet sites devoted to gambling.

Imagine it.

Americans spend $22 billion a year on all movies, plays, concerts, live performances, and on all sports events; but nearly a trillion dollars on gambling.”

*A History of Gambling in America*

How did we get so captivated by gambling?

The history of gambling in America is startling if you have never studied it.

America was colonized with a lottery.

In 1612 the British government ran a lottery to assist the new settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.

The father of our country, George Washington, wisely declared, "Gambling is the child of avarice (or greed), the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief."

We certainly agree with George; however, he himself kept a full diary of his own winnings and losses!

America was founded as a nation upon a lottery.

In 1776, the First Continental Congress of the United States sold lottery tickets to finance the American Revolution.

President Washington himself bought the first lottery ticket to build the new capital called, "Federal City," now known as Washington D. C..

Our nation was filled with gambling for over 100 years, until 1894.

From 1790 to 1894, 24 of the 36 states sponsored government run lotteries.

Many schools, universities, colleges, and hundreds of churches conducted their own lotteries to raise funds for their own buildings.

So, our nation was colonized by a lottery, our War for Independence was financed by a lottery, our capital city was financed by a lottery, and our first hundred-plus years as a nation was filled with lotteries and gambling..

The Church struggled a little bit in dealing with gambling because they couldn't point to a verse that said, "Thus saith the Lord, 'Thy shalt not gamble.'"

But they did denounce it as socially harmful and inconsistent with the biblical view of God and with a Christian's understanding of good stewardship.

Methodists and Baptists, Puritans and Quakers began some evangelical activism and began to attack this government sponsored gambling.

Under this attack, and because of the increasing corruption of the gambling, by 1894 there was no more government sponsored gambling--it ended in corruption and in a financial fiasco.

Public gambling at any level was stopped cold at that time because John Wanamaker, the Postmaster General of the United States and an evangelical, barred "all letters, parcels, postcards, circulars, lists of drawings, tickets and other materials referring to lotteries, from the mail”.

So, government sponsored gambling came to a halt for the next 70 years.

In 1964 it was reintroduced by the state of New Hampshire, which became the first state to offer a lottery, and now there are only 8 states that do not have government sponsored lotteries, and only three states that do not offer casinos.

There are over 1,500 casinos and other gambling places across the nation, mostly on Indian reservation land, where the government allows them to just about do anything they want to do, tax-free.

In 1974, ten years after the first lottery in NH, a Gallup poll indicated 61% of Americans gambled, wagering 47.4 billion dollars annually.

In 1989, 71% were wagering $246 billion.

In 1992, $330 billion was being wagered.

By 2007, studies indicate 95% of Americans gambled, 82% play the lottery, 75% play slot machines, 74% frequented casinos, 50% bet on dogs and horses, 44% on cards, 34% on bingo, 26% on sporting events; and 89% approved of gambling--that means there was 6% who didn't approve, but gambled anyway.

*God is Pro-Work*

But God is Pro-Work and thus opposed to gambling.

Why is God against Gambling?

I believe there are three simple reasons anyone can find who looks in God's Word.

1. *God is opposed to Gambling because it is built on the sin of materialism.*

Materialism is measuring life by possessions.

The whole appeal of gambling is that you can get rich, because you need more material things.

1Timothy 6:10, [says,] "The love of money is the root of . .

." what?

Loving money leads to all kinds of evil.

"The love of money," is just another phrase for materialism, and gambling is built on the "love of money."

"Win money.

Win money.

Win money."

That s the essence of the appeal of gambling to our sinful materialistic lust.

2. *God is opposed to Gambling because it is built on the sin of greed.