 by a recent conversation I had, but just to say that we need to be able to answer questions that our kids ask. We need to be able to answer questions that our kids ask us in a detailed way. So they're going to start seeing things in the world, they're going to know they're going to apply their Bible knowledge to that, and they're going to have certain questions about things. And as they get older, those questions are going to get better and better, and as their understanding becomes more and more mature. As they grow in their Christian faith, the question that the kids have asked me questions about this subject over the years, and I've even preached a sermon on this, but I want to get very specific this morning. I'm going to answer two specific questions this morning. And another thing we have to realize, we're going to talk about the subject of gambling and specifically casinos this morning. This is something that kids see a lot of. They see a lot of this in the world. There's big billboards. If they drive by and they see a casino, they see this elaborate building. They see all these people there. They see just, it looks like a fancy, wonderful thing, especially if you see it at night. It's very bright and it looks very joyful and happy. We need to be able to answer these questions. So I'm going to answer a few specific questions this morning about gambling and about casinos. One thing we have to realize though, let me say this to the adults in the room, the parents in the room, many of you, like me, got saved later in life. So these questions might not be questions to us, but what we have to realize with our kids, as we're raising kids, you know, according to the Bible and with the Biblical worldview, we're raising kids that thank God have never got into these types of things, have never, you know, been in a casino, have never, you know, drank alcohol, have never done these things, and we need to be able to explain, we need to be able to make these things not a mystery to them. Because what you don't want is them to see this mysterious thing and have their parents say, oh, that's bad, stay away, that's bad. We need to give detailed answers of what's happening there, why it's happening, and what the Bible says that's going to happen. Okay, so the first question that I want to answer this morning is a question that Jacob asked, and he's asked this before, but he asked, why do people gamble? Why do people gamble? No, I mean, if you look down at 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse number 9, the Bible says here, but they that will be rich, that means people that want to be rich, people that have the desire to be rich will fall into temptation and a snare, and then the many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. And then verse number 10 is kind of the quintessential verse here, for the love of money is the root of all evil, which some people have coveted after and have aired from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. So, you know, that could just be the answer to that question, why do people gamble? Because they're greedy. Let's pray. We're going to get into a very specific detail this morning to answer that first question. Because you will find people, and look, it is true that people gamble because they're greedy. If people gamble because they love money. People gamble because they have a will to be rich. They have a desire to be rich. But here's the thing about money folks. I mean, you don't, you're not supposed to love it, the Bible says, but you do need it. You know, you do need money. You need it. You need to pay bills. You need to buy food. This is something that like, I mean, inflation is 3%, but food has doubled almost in two years. So, figure that one out. I mean, if you do, if you just spend money and don't watch where your money's going, you won't notice that. But if you have a monthly budget in your house, you recognize this. Look, you need money to buy things that your family needs. If you're going to go 1st Timothy 5.8 and support your own and not be an infidel, you need to make money in this world. So, money is something that is necessary. You're just not supposed to love it, the Bible says. Okay. So, it could be easy to just turn to Proverbs Chapter 28. It could be an easy answer to say, oh, they're just greedy. Yes. And look, I do believe that the things that I'm going to explain to you this morning fall under the umbrella of greed and also under this umbrella of hastening to be rich or desiring to be rich. Look at Proverbs Chapter 28 and look at Verse Number 20. Proverbs Chapter 28, look at Verse Number 20. The Bible says, A faithful man shall abound with blessings, but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. To have respect of persons is not good, for a piece of bread that man will transgress. And then look at Verse 22. It says, He that hasteneth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not the poverty that shall come upon him. So, the Bible is telling us here that he that hasten means he wants to get rich quick is going to end up what? He's going to end up poor, the person that wants to get rich quick. Greedy, hastening to be rich. Let's pray. That's how easy this sermon could go. But there are deeper forms of why people gamble. And that's what I want to explain to you this morning. And it's funny because the Bible doesn't say, Thou shalt not gamble. The Bible never says, Thou shalt never go to a casino. The Bible never mentions those two specific things, but we can apply biblical philosophies to this. This is why we need to apply biblical philosophies. You need to understand the philosophies in the Bible, and then you will just save yourself from much harm. The Bible does cover this subject completely. Now, what am I saying by that there's deeper forms of why people gamble? I'm talking specifically this morning, why people go to the casino? You know, the big billboards that show, you ever see a sad person on a billboard? And that's going to be the second question that I answer for Jacob this morning. You ever see somebody up on a billboard with their pockets pulled out and just being like, you never see that? The billboards are always, and look, kids notice this stuff. The reason they put the billboards there is because that affects people's actions. They're like, hey, I'm kind of sad and that guy seems really happy. Maybe I should go there. I'll be happy too. I mean, that's the simpleton response, but they put the billboard there because it works, folks, because it gets people to go there. Now, we talked about greed and we talked about hastening to be rich. Now, I bet you if you pulled, I've never done this, but I bet you if you stood outside the doors of the casino and you pulled every single person that walked into the doors of the casino and you said, do you expect to come out a millionaire? I bet you most of those people would say no. So a lot of people could say, oh, hasten to be rich. I don't think I'm going to get rich at the casino. They could probably dismiss that particular, you know, biblical example. I bet you if you told some of those people, if you pulled some of those people walking into the casino, I may not believe their answer, but if you just pulled them, hey, do you love money? As 1 Timothy 6 says, I bet you a lot of them might say no. Maybe they're being honest, maybe they're not, but I bet you a lot of them would say no, they don't love money. You know what? I bet you there's people that go into a casino that if they did win a bunch of money, I bet you there's some people that went to that casino, if they did win a bunch of money, they'd probably give it to the people they love. Maybe they would help pay off stuff that, you know, they know that their relatives or their loved ones or whatever or their kids owe money. I bet you there's people that might be generous with those winnings. So the question is, why do people gamble? What? It is covered in greed and it is covered in making haste to be rich, but here's the first point. I'm going to give you three, you know, four different reasons, detailed reasons why people actually gamble. The first one is this. They may not be hastening to be rich, but they're hastening to make money. They're hastening to what? Support their own. I've met many people that literally go to a casino because they think they're going to be able to pay their bills if they do so. They go to a casino to literally make extra money to pay for things that they already owe or just pay for regular necessity things that they need in their lives. It's very foolish, but people do it for this reason. This is one of the reasons people go to a casino. It's sad, but people go to a casino for this. It's really sad because this means that this particular type of person does not have this money to lose as they go into this casino. Look, it's hard work to go to work for weeks for a couple of thousand bucks or whatever. It's hard work to make thousands of dollars that a person needs to support a family. That's hard work. Man, if I could just go in and I could just put money on this thing and I could just make that money, if I could just put money on red and just make that money right now, it's easier. It's easier for me. It's an easy solution to a problem that I have. This is one of the reasons that people gamble, which leads to the second question that Jacob asked me, which was a really good question. And then he asked me this like a week ago. We were driving and we drove by one of these billboards, and I've told him why, you know, that casinos are for foolish people and people lose all their money there and I've told him this a hundred times. But you see the billboards over and over and the advertisements again and again and again, and he asked me a second question. And he asked me this question. He said, does everyone lose? Meaning, does everyone that go into the casino lose? And that brought up this detailed answer that I'm going to give you this morning. The short answer is, let me answer it first. Does everyone that goes to a casino lose? The short answer is, yes. Everyone that goes to the casino loses. You say, how is that? Well, I'm going to demonstrate it for you this morning. There was a story that I had, actually, one of my favorite mathematical subjects and mathematical areas of study is statistics and probability. I really enjoy, I really have always enjoyed, I enjoyed the classes that I took on it when I was at college. I always enjoyed the subject in general. It's really fascinating. And the answer, does everyone lose in the casino? Is yes. And I'm going to demonstrate this through a little experiment that we're going to do this morning. But there's a story. Engineers are always, there are a bunch of nerds, typically. And about 15 years ago, a bunch of engineers and I were at work and one of the engineers was one of the young, we were kind of all younger at that point, but one of the younger guys was like, hey, I think that you could beat a roulette game at a casino. And he brought this up. And of course, all the engineers are like, their ears go up and they're like, this guy's wrong. And he says, because what you could do is, if you have a roulette wheel, basically it's this wheel and this ball goes around and it drops on these squares. And there's 18, there's 18 black squares and there's 18 red squares. So it's pretty much 50-50. The only problem is there's two green squares. So there's actually 38 squares for the ball to fall on. So it's not really 50-50. So they pay, if you bet on black, you bet a dollar on black and you get black, they give you a dollar back. So it's one to one, it's basically they treat it as a 50-50 odd situation like a coin flip, but it's not really 50-50 odds because of the two green squares, the house has a built-in 5% advantage. And so this engineer said, yeah, but even that, even that, all I need to do, all I need to do is go and I bet a dollar and if I lose, I bet $2. And if I lose, I bet $4. And if I lose, I bet $8. If I lose, I bet $16 because the odds, and I'm going to show you that this morning, I'm going to have Jacob come up here in just a minute. We're going to do a little experiment. The odds of hitting black of the ball falling randomly on black 10 times in a row is about one in a thousand. He's like, all you have to do is just keep doubling your bet until eventually it falls on red. And even if it hits a green one, whatever, you just keep doubling your bet and doubling your bet. So we wrote a program. We wrote a program that literally did millions of simulations on this theory. And I'm going to demonstrate. I'm going to have Jacob come up here, but I'm going to just show you the odds and how odds work and how the probability of a 50-50 situation works. We'll even forget about the green squares for now, but let me just show you the error. Come on up, Jacob. Jacob is thinking that if you just keep doubling your bet and doubling your bet and doubling your bet and doubling your bet, it doesn't work. So first of all, what I'm going to do is I'm going to flip this coin. I've got a regular quarter here. Jacob, is this a real quarter? Heads? Tails? All right, stand up right here for me if you would. I'm going to have Jacob just report the results. What I'm going to do is I'm going to flip this coin 10 times, and what you're going to see is that the odds, look, the odds of me flipping heads 10 times here is one in a thousand. Watch it happen. But that's the interesting point of this simulation that I'm going to demonstrate for you. But I'm going to flip this coin and generally it is going to be 50-50. It's probably going to work out pretty close to 50-50 when I flip this. What I'm going to do is I'm going to flip it 10 times. I'm going to write down here. I'm going to write heads and I'm going to write tails. I'm just going to track the results here. We're going to flip it 10 times. Let's go ahead and see and then we'll talk about the results. Here's one. Heads. Here's two. Imagine that. Here's three. Heads. It's like magic, isn't it? Heads. Heads is winning. Three to two. We're halfway through. Heads. Heads is up. Four to two. Heads. That's three heads in a row. If someone please remember that. Now it's seven to two. Tails. Two more. Tails. Last one. We got heads five and tails four. What's it going to be? Tids. Heads is five and tails is four. Anybody have any guesses? What's it going to be? Tails. All right. Oops, sorry. I'm going to flip it better where it flips in here. Heads. You lost all your money. Okay, so here's how this works. Thank you, Jacob. So what we ended up having here, it wasn't 50-50. It was six heads to four tails. And we actually had a very strange thing happen. We had three heads in a row happen. And the odds of that happening are 0.5 times 0.5 times 0.5. You divide that into one and you get the odds of that happening. All right. So it's very rare that we would have flipped, you know, four heads in a row. So just by flipping ten times, we did have a streak of three heads in a row. All right. So this engineer, his idea was, I'm just going to keep betting, doubling my bet, doubling my bet, doubling my bet. But what actually happens, what actually happens here is if we would flip this coin a hundred times. So we were basically 60% heads and 40% tails. The more we flip the coin, the more that will converge onto 50% exactly. Okay. So we just keep flipping that. If we flip the coin 20 times, the graph will look like, if there's a 50% line, the graph will look like this and it'll get closer and closer and closer to 50%. The more we flip the coin. Okay. Now the problem with this engineer's theory is that, you know, yes, he's right that, you know, if he just kept betting and betting and betting and doubling his bet and doubling his bet and doubling his bet, well, what the computer simulation showed is that that 5% house odds became much more prominent and much more guaranteed the more a person played. So what actually happened in the case of this Martin Gale bet, there's actually a name for it, he wasn't the first to think of it, imagine that, is that maybe one out of every, so he may make his dollar or double his bet 10 times, but every, you know, the 11th time, he's going to lose $1,000. He's going to lose a large amount of money. There was actually a story, I don't know if it's true or not, but there was a story of a casino in 1913, imagine this. 1913, it's a known story in the statistical world that a Monte Carlo casino in 1913 had a roulette wheel that landed on black 26 times in a row. The odds of that are 1 in 66 million of that actually happening and the roulette game, they let you look at the past on the board. They have how many times and the numbers and the colors that it came up. So all the people that were looking for these long streaks and doubling their bet, people lost millions of dollars. Millions and millions of dollars because they're like, there's no way that it's going to land on black a 27th time. But what you have to understand is this, and this is kind of a paradox in statistics and probabilities, is that as I flip that coin and we thought that, oh, it's definitely going to be tails the next time because it was heads three times in a row, the actual odds that it would come up heads or tails every single time was 50-50. So while it is true that flipping heads, if I flip heads 10 times in a row, the odds of that happening are 1 in 1,000 and the odds of having an 11 coin, it's a little bit of a mind bender, but it's true statistically that if I would have an 11 coin flip that was heads every time, it's like 1 in 2,000. However, the odds of the 11th flip being heads or tails was 50-50. So the past has no, it's a perceived advantage. There is no advantage. The advantage is the two green squares that the house always has and the more you play, the more guaranteed you are to lose. So back to answer Jacob's question. Does everyone that goes to a casino lose? And the answer is yes. The only way to beat the casino is this. You're like, here it comes. There is one way to beat a casino. You go there and you play one time and you hope that you hit that 47% and then you never play again. That's how you beat the casino. You go make that dollar or lose that dollar one time and you never play again. You know what? How many people on planet earth have ever done that? No one. So does everyone in a casino lose? The answer is yes. The reason that the buildings are so nice proves my point. The casino is winning. It is designed that way. So that's the answer. You're not going to, the answer biblically is you're not going to support your, the answer mathematically is you are not going to support your own through the casino. And the more you try to do it, the more you are guaranteed to lose. It's just, it's a mathematical certainty. Turn to Isaiah chapter 65. So people could say I'm not greedy, I'm not hastening to be rich, I'm just trying to support my own. The answer is you're not going to support your own from the casino. It's not designed for you to win. It's guaranteed that you will lose. Isaiah chapter 65, look at verse number 21. The second reason that people gamble, the second detailed reason that people gamble is it's simple. People want something for nothing. It's a human, it's a human sinful nature problem. People simply want something for nothing. Look at Isaiah chapter 65 verse number 21. We're talking about the millennial reign. We just looked at these verses, but look at what is going to happen in the perfect society here. The Bible says in verse 21, they shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build in another inhabit. They shall not plant in another eat, for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, in mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. The second reason that people gamble is people want to inhabit without building. People simply want something for nothing. And that is a sinful desire of the flesh. The Bible will call that covetousness. Stealing is a perfect, extreme example of this. And somebody that goes into a store and they don't have money of their own that they work for or they don't want to use the money of their own that they work for, they just want to take something for nothing. It's a major problem in our society today. It causes violence, it causes all kinds of chaos in society, but it is simply this sinful desire of man to want something for nothing. And this is not something that any Christian should be near. The gambler though, the gambler, the person that goes to the casino, they want the casino's money though. They say, oh, I want the casino's money. The irony of the casino is this. The person going to the casino hates the casino and the casino hates them right back. You see this seemingly happy environment where these two organizations literally hate each other because you have some person that's there trying to take all the money from the casino. And then you have the casino that's there to take all the money from that person. Look, the casino literally hates the people there. You say, oh, what, they're nice to them. They give them free things. Yeah, they give them free alcohol. They hate them. Somebody could work 40 years and say $500,000 and go and put it on red one time and lose 40 years worth of labor in one second at a casino. And then they could go and they say, oh, but, you know, I worked 40 years for that and no one will care. They will throw them out on their tail. That is a person that hates you to the core of who you are. They'll take it all. They'll take it all in one hand of cards. They'll take it all in one game or one roll of some wheel or one spin of something. They'll take it all and they're designed, look, it's designed to where that is guaranteed to happen. But the people also want to stick it to the casino. The people also, everybody loves a good story of somebody who took a casino for a bunch of money because everybody hates the casino. Everybody loves the good heist story, you know, of not, you know, they don't want the heist story of someone robbing an old folks home or something like that. They want the heist story of somebody who goes and gets one over on the casino. There was a book written years ago about an MIT team that went and they figured out how to win at Blackjack and it was just a really popular book because everybody likes to see the casino lose. Everybody hates the casino. Why? The casino hates them right back. It's this ironic relationship. But look, even in that case where these MIT people, the casino still hunted them down. They hunted them all over the world. The casino's not going to lose. They're not going to allow themselves to lose. I'm going to give you the Bible answer on this one along with the Bible answer on the second one. So the first one is, the second reason is that people want something for nothing, all right? It's wrong and I'm going to prove it to you from the Bible in just a few minutes. But the third reason is this, pride. Pride. You say, what do you mean? I can beat the game. Yeah, it's that young engineer. It's like I got an idea. I can beat the casino. It's this, it's vanity basically. Turn to Proverbs chapter 13. Turn to Proverbs chapter 13. Go to Proverbs chapter 13. Look at verse number 11. Proverbs chapter 13 verse number 11. The Bible says, wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished. Vanity is just like your own personal desires and pride. But he that gathereth by labor shall increase. These are the people of pride. I can beat the game. For me it's not gambling. This is the poker player. This is the poker player that, you know, as if, as if two guys, you know, this is where libertarian philosophy departs from biblical philosophy right here. You know, as libertarian philosophy would say, hey, if two guys could sit down and play a game for each other's money and one guy wins and they were both free will, you know, offering money. Look, the casino still wins. They take a rake of everything. They take a cut of every single thing that everybody bets, even at a poker game. The casino always wins. But let's just say the casino wasn't even in there. You just had guy number one and guy number two and they just wanted to play each other for their money that they worked for that week. Libertarian philosophy would say that's totally fine. You have one voluntary party, another voluntary party. They want to do something. Biblical philosophy departs from this. And I'm going to prove that to you. You see, the problem is with this idea that, you know, I can just, I can beat the game or I can beat the casino or I can play blackjack in a way that, you know, I have the odds and I can beat the casino. The problem is this, the casino doesn't have any money. You say, what do you mean? What are you talking about, pastor? Casinos are like the government. The government doesn't have any money. You say, well, I get stuff from the government all the time. What do you mean? Well, you get stuff from the government. The government only gets that money. The government produces nothing. The government doesn't make any money. The government only has money that they take from other people at the point of a gun. So, casinos are the same way. Casinos only have the money that they swindled from somebody else. They don't produce anything. Just like the government. The government doesn't produce anything to make money. They only have money that they have taken from other people's labor. I mean, so if you get money from the government or casinos, you're getting money from places those money those people took from other people. The casino doesn't offer any service with other people's money that's not just directed at getting more people's money. They only have money that they have taken or swindled from other people. Turn to Proverbs chapter 28. But yeah, those people, they knew the risks. They knew the risks. Yeah, well, like you, they were simply unluckier than you in the casino. So you get their money. But look at what the Bible says. Proverbs chapter 28, look at verse number 8. The Bible introduces us to this term here about the kind of money that we make. You say, what do you mean? Isn't money that I make just money that I make? No, the Bible specifies certain types of money. Look at Proverbs chapter 28, look at verse number 8. It says, he that by usury and unjust gain increaseeth his substance, he shall gather it for him that pity the poor. So the Bible here is calling out somebody that makes money by what it calls unjust gain. So the Bible, this is where the libertarian and the Christian depart right here, one of the many places. But the Bible here is saying that, yes, God wants you to get it done. God wants you to support your own or you are worse than an infidel, verse Timothy 5.8. But he cares how you do it. It matters how the money is made. Turn to Ecclesiastes. The answer to unjust gain and what it is and what it isn't is in Ecclesiastes. Look, many people, look, if you find somebody, many people that I have known, I don't want to make a blanket statement on this, but I'm almost prepared to do it. Many people that I have known that make their living just through unjust gain totally have been very bad people. Just, like, how do you make your money? Just unjust gain. If it falls into that category, a lot of those people have been very, very bad people. God wants you to have good. Did you know that? God wants you to have blessings. God wants you to be able to make money. God wants you to be able to support your family. God even wants you to have, you know, nice things if you work hard. God wants you to have, you know, blessings and profit in your life. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 2. Ecclesiastes chapter 2, look at verse number 24. But you say, what is the difference? How do I know if it's unjust gain or not? The Bible says this. It says, there is nothing better for a man that he should eat and drink, that he should make his soul and joy good in his labor. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God. Here we see that people have, you know, they have good food, they have good things to drink, that they have much good. What? There's a couple words there in his labor. Look at verse 13 of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, just one chapter over. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 in verse 13, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good. The good means just the things, the comforts that you would have. You know, where you live, the blessings that come from what? Of all his labor. It is the gift of God. There's a lot right there. I mean, first of all, don't ever get this idea that because you're doing well in your life that like it's because you're so great. No, well I work for all that. Yeah, but your labor is a gift of God. The blessings that come from your labor is a gift of God. So don't say, you know what, I put food on my table because I work hard. No, the Lord has blessed you with that. But the Lord demands that you provide for your family that you get this good, that you get this profit, this increase through what? What's the common denominator we're seeing here from your labor? Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 5 in verse 18. Ecclesiastes chapter 5 in verse 18. The Bible says, behold, that which I have seen, it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and again, enjoy the good of all his labor. Notice how it says, it's talking about your personal labor. Your personal blessings come from your personal labor. Not from somebody else's labor. That's Isaiah 65. Isaiah 65 is just simply saying that in the perfect society, your labor would go to, you know, God blessing you. Your labor is not going to be taken from you and given to another. You know, and things that come from that are what? The good, the houses, the vineyards, all the blessings, the eat, the drink, the clothing, all these things. All his labor that he taken under the sun all the days of his life would God give it to him for it is his portion. So, when I go to work and I get a paycheck and I'm able to pay my bills and support my family, with that, look, I am thankful that God allowed me to get up in the morning and go. I'm thankful that God gave me another heartbeat, another breath, you know, the health to go and to work with my labor that allows God to bless me. But that is just gain. God wants to bless you through your labor. Let him do so. Just gain means, I mean, to just define just gain, it means laboring at a good, or to make a product or to provide a service that somebody needs in the society that you live in. So, just gambling and trying to take other people's labor is not just gain. Even though it may be a libertarian philosophy, it's not a biblical one. So, why do people gamble? I mean, it's an easy answer, you know, to just give that umbrella answer to your kids when they're young is like people are greedy, people want to get rich quick, people don't want to work for their money. Those are all valid. And when your kids are young, when your kids are young, you know, there are good answers to give, but as your kids get older and they ask more detailed questions, you need to start giving them these detailed types of answers that you know what, kids, God wants you to work for your money. That not only do you have to, not only, I mean, just think, like, man, all this money, this quarter that I have in my pocket, all these constraints on it, number one, I can't fall in love with it. Number two, I gotta have it. Number three, I gotta get it in a way that the Bible says is just. But there's a fourth one. There's a fourth one on why people gamble. Why people gamble? So what have we seen so far? To answer your question, Jacob, who wins? Nobody wins. They all lose. They all lose. You know, it's interesting, though, because I'm sure if you watch the commercials and you see the billboards and all these different things that, you know, they're gonna find that person that won time, even though they've lost 99 other times out of 100, they're gonna find the person that wins that one time out of 100, that person that has lost tens of thousands of dollars at the casino, and they're gonna just put them on a pedestal in a spotlight when they win 100 bucks or they win $1,000 or whatever it is to make it look like everybody wins. When the reality is the opposite, nobody wins. The fourth one is this, though. Winning gives people joy. It's just another one of Satan's synthetic versions of joy. It's exactly the same. You go up and look up scientific explanations of it and they'll say, oh, when you win something, you get a dopamine hit and it makes you feel good. Just the fact that you won something, you could win $5 and it makes you feel good. You know, I mean, you go and somebody's like, hey, you won this prize or whatever. I mean, I would never believe him anyway because everything's a scam now. But I mean, if somebody says that you win something or you actually do win something, it gives you a joyful, temporary feeling and people are chasing that. It's just like all these other false highs in the world today. It's just like alcohol. It's just like drugs. I mean, the casinos in gambling probably is maybe even worse because it can leave you with long-term damage. Leave you with long-term damage that, you know, I mean, just think about alcohol and drugs. It's literally exactly the same thing. What do they do? They give you that pleasure of sin for a season for an hour or whatever it is and then what do they leave you? They leave you feeling worse. They leave you feeling worse. It's literally over long-term alcohol and that people say makes them happy literally is a depressant. It literally is a drug that makes you depressed. Imagine that. I mean, gambling, winning something at a casino may make you feel good at that moment but over the long-term when they take everything that you've ever earned, they're going to leave you extremely depressed. People kill themselves over stuff like this. I mean, I know personal stories about people that are damaged for life from things. I know many, many stories of people that have gone and they take their paycheck after two weeks and look, if you go and you're in the workplace you will just meet people that do this on a regular basis. They get paid, they go to the casino, they come Monday morning and they tell everybody that they lost their whole paycheck. Can you imagine? Two weeks of labor, gone. Just like that. I mean, it kind of gives you like a you just kind of get like a, uh, in your stomach. But let me tell you something. I know people that have lost millions of dollars. Gambling. In casino-type things. Millions of dollars that many times they didn't have. You can end up in situations when you're playing in some of these casinos out in our world these markets and you're trying to trade things day in and day out and you can leverage massive amounts of money and you can lose money you don't have. I remember one case where I looked up like I heard about this happening to this person that I knew and I was, I just thought to myself how in the world could you lose that kind of money when you don't have that kind of money? And I went and I researched it and I looked and it was like you could have $10,000 and you could lose $400,000. And I was like, I just got this sinking feeling in my stomach just being like, could you imagine going home to your wife and saying to your wife, we no longer have a home. We no longer will ever have a home. We no longer can, you can just, I mean, I think it's worse than drugs and alcohol because at least with drugs and alcohol you could stop and you could pick up the pieces. In cases like this these can, these places, these casinos that are so happy and are so joyful and put up this face, they will do this to people and they won't think twice about it. But casino, I can, I can, I have to move out of my house and I'll never be able to provide for my family. They don't care. They don't care. It's scary. It's scary. But here's the thing. Everybody loses that goes into this road. So it's literally too simple to say that it's just greed. It's too simple to say to a thinking person that, you know what, that's never gone into these places and never wants anything to, you know, never has experienced this or knows really what it's about. It's really too simple to say they just want to be rich and they're just greedy. There's many detailed reasons, but they will all end up the same. So Jacob, that's why people gamble and everyone that plays loses. Turn to Acts chapter 20. You know, as far as this winning and this false idea of joy, you know, turn to Acts chapter 20. I mean, should we just never have joy in our life? No, the Bible says there's real joy. There's real joy. There's a long-lasting joy that you can have. It's like actually the word joy according to the Bible is real. It's long-lasting happiness. Look at Acts chapter 20. I mean, we studied through this. If you remember, Paul's on his way to Jerusalem here and people are saying, don't go. People are saying to him, even the Holy Ghost warned him twice. It's like, don't go. They're going to arrest you. They're going to beat you. And Paul just like, he came out and he's just like, look, I just don't care. I just don't care about what they can do to me physically. I just don't care about being put in prison. I just don't care about that. I mean, he wasn't arguing with the people and he wasn't even arguing with the Holy Ghost. He was just explaining like, you misunderstand me. He's saying, you misunderstand the things that I care about. I don't care about my life. Like literally. He wasn't trying to be tough or anything like that. He's literally saying, I just, I don't care about these things. Look at verse 22 of Acts chapter 20. And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there. Save the, that the Holy Ghost witnesses in every city saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. He's saying, even the Holy Spirit has told me that I'm just going to be put in prison and I'm going to be afflicted. Look at verse 24. But none of these things move me. Neither count my life, my life, dear unto itself. Why? Why doesn't he care about his life? Why? So that I might finish my course with what? With joy. And the ministry. Which I have received with the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. Paul is saying, none of these physical things matter at all to me. What gives me, I mean, what a great place for a Christian to be in. Yeah, that any of us could say this. That he says literally, no physical thing. No physical thing, not my cars, not my money, not my job, not my physical safety, not my afflictions physically, not my physical pain that I may or may not go through. None of that matters. He's like, I'm a joyful person. What? As long as I'm in the church, I'm a joyful person, what? As long as I'm in the ministry, as long as I'm preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what gives me joy in my life. I mean, he's talking about running the Christian race. He's talking about finishing his race. And look, he finished his race with what? With joy. Because he never stopped in a ministry. That's true joy. But what Satan is trying to do is he's trying to get us to chase all these synthetic versions of joy. Money's just one of them. He's trying to get us to chase the joy of money and what money can buy you. He's trying to get us to chase the drugs and the feelings and all this garbage that Satan has to offer. It's synthetic joy. That's why it leads to misery, though. It's a trick. It's a trick from Satan. That's why people go to casinos. Because they're falling for that trick. It's just another version of the same thing from Satan. One thing about Satan is he's not original. Joy in our Christian life is walking the Christian walk. It's following what the Bible says. And you know what? That will produce joy in you. It may produce physical pain. You may even lose money because of it. There may even be a time where you get fired from a job because of what you believe. Or you have less money because you're a Christian. But you don't think God can bless you if you continue to labor in the Lord and continue to just keep working for your actual money through just gain. There may be some job that's put in front of you that is double what you make. But it's not a just thing. It's a hey, you know, I got this thing where we can go and we can get these people into this scheme or whatever. And you're guaranteed to make double what you make right now. And we have to run away from stuff like that. Because as a Christian, as a Bible-believing saved believer, you will never get away with it. Don't buy a lottery ticket. You'll never win. Even though it's one in 200 million or something like that. I mean, your odds are better getting struck by lightning while riding a long-haired, long-steered, horned Texas steer than they are winning the lottery. And all these things really, by the way, are taxes on... If you look at who actually spends their money on this type of stuff, it's the poorest people in society. So all these liberals that claim that they care about poor people, they hate the poor people. As they want lottery taxes to go to the state and all this kind of garbage, it's just robbing people. You see somebody buying 100 lottery tickets at a gas station? They can't afford to buy five gallons of gas. They're spending all their money on lottery tickets. It's pitiful. It's foolish. But it's sad. It's a trick, folks. Stick to the real joy that comes from living the Christian life. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.