THE GAMBLER
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR
1. J.E. Bedenbaugh said, “My grandmother, a staunch Southern Baptist, had marched me off to Sunday school and church regularly.
2. So when I switched to the Episcopal church after marriage, she challenged me: "What’s wrong with the Baptist Church, son?"
3. "Well," I explained, "Carole and I flipped a coin to see if we would go to her church or mine, and I lost."
4. "Serves you right," said my grandmother. "Good Baptists don’t gamble."
5. I would say that everybody gambles in some form or another, even good Assembly of God people.
B. THE POWERBALL
1. The Powerball Lottery has been making big news lately with the supposed payout topping $1.5 Billion. There is set to be another drawing tonight.
2. The New York Times wrote an article yesterday entitled, “You Will Not Win the Powerball Jackpot.”
3. “The odds of hitting the jackpot are one in 292.2 million. If you printed out the name of every United States resident on individual pieces of paper, put them in a giant bowl and selected one at random, the odds of picking President Obama are not far from the odds of winning the Powerball.”
4. “The odds of being struck by lightning this year are one in 1.19 million, making it about 246 times as likely as winning the Powerball jackpot.”
5. “With an estimated one in 12,500 chance, an amateur golfer is about 23,376 times as likely to make a hole in one.”
C. THESIS
1. GAMBLE (def.) – “to play a game for money or property; to bet on an uncertain outcome; to stake something on a contingency; to take a chance”.
2. So I want us to notice two types of gambling in the Bible & the world; people who gamble their souls that they can ignore God, and those who gamble that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.
I. SOME WHO GAMBLED TO IGNORE GOD
A. GAMBLING BY PROCRASTINATION
1. FELIX. “Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.” Acts 24:24,25.
2. How He Gambled:
a. Felix was a Roman ruler who wanted a little entertainment and possibly a bribe. He got more.
b. Paul began to talk about the holiness of God, the fall of man, our sin and transgressions, God’s judgment, heaven & hell…
c. Paul was under the anointing of the H.S.; spiritual things became real to Felix and he understood his danger (he “trembled”) before God.
d. He must make a decision! Shall he now accept Christ’s salvation? Satan whispered – “Later! Don’t do it today; maybe some other time”.
e. He gambled and lost. Within two years he was recalled to Rome to stand trial before Caesar.
B. GAMBLING BY DISOBEDIENCE
1. SAMSON. “After putting him to sleep on her lap, [Delilah] called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. 20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison” Judges 16:19-21.
2. SAMSON HUMOR
a. Q Why did Samson try to avoid arguing with Delilah? Because he didn’t want to split hairs!
b. Who was the most popular actor in the Bible? Samson – he brought the house down!
3. SAMSON GAMBLED…
a. First, by playing with sin. The Bible says, “Be sure – Your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23).
b. God had a sacred calling on Samson (Nazarite). He was raised in a Christian family. But Samson chose to take chances with the lost people around him.
c. The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death”. Samson paid a terrible price for his sin. Do we have any Samsons here this evening? It’s not too late to change!
d. GOOD ENDING: Samson came to his senses, returned to God, and did at least one great exploit before he died. You can too! There’s hope!
C. GAMBLING BY SELLING OUT
1. ESAU. “See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done” Hebrews 12:16-17.
2. Esau was the oldest grandson of Abraham and stood to inherit all the promises of God to the Patriarch.
3. He had no appreciation for spiritual things. In Gen. 25:34, he valued a bowl of chili of more value than his spiritual inheritance. But he pawned it all! And lost it all!
4. Will we pawn away our spiritual treasures from Christ for earthly trinkets? (Like the Indians that traded Manhattan for a box of glass beads).
D. SUMMARY
1. When you play in the Gambling Casinos of the enemy, remember that the house always wins. The most likely outcome is that you will lose.
2. All three of the aforementioned persons gambled with eternity. Two lost it all and one only escaped with his soul. It’s not worth it!
3. Next we’re going to look at 5 people who gambled in a different way; they gambled their lives FOR Christ and won. Let’s take a look.
II. GAMBLERS FOR CHRIST Text: Phil. 2:19-30
1. Hudson Taylor, the great man of faith who founded the China Inland Mission, integrated faith and risk. He said, "Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith." [Paul Borthwick, Leading the Way, Navpress, 1989, p. 153.]
2. My favorite choices of those who gambled for God would be those who lived in cultures hostile to their belief in God and yet chose to side with God though it put their lives in jeopardy or cost them all they held dear.
3. Often they had to lose to the “House”; to forfeit their possessions, their reputations, their families, or their lives.
4. Paul stated it clearly when in Phil. 3:7-8, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ…for who’s sake I have lost all things”.
A. RAHAB
1. Rahab lived in a city that had never been conquered; a city that was allied with all the other peoples of Canaan, who would come to her aid before a siege could bring her to surrender.
2. The invaders were a strange, frightening people who might kill her as well as spare her. But she gambled her life and the lives of her family.
3. She gambled that their God, who had defeated Egypt, the Ammonites, and the Moabites, would also defeat all the peoples of trans-Palestine.
4. She counted the cost and saw that the other army was bigger than hers and sued for peace before the other army arrived(as Christ later suggested). She pledged allegiance to the God who made the land and the sea, and she won.
B. NOAH
1. Noah was another who gambled. His gambling was against the greatest of odds. Not only did he gamble against the greatest collective minds of his day, he stood alone in his opinion about God and His demand for a holy life.
2. Undoubtedly people of Noah’s day believed in God, but the God they believed in didn’t care how you lived, just as long as you worshipped Him.
3. Everyone agreed that God didn’t care about sin; in fact, God’s opinion of things was pretty much what society’s opinion was.
4. Noah was a fruitcake; a relic of the Victorian era; an old fogie who had outlived his time, or was obsessed with perfectionism.
5. Not only that, but Noah also believed the most incredible notion; that tiny droplets of water(which had never fallen from the sky) would someday fall from the sky in such proportions that all the tallest mountain peaks in the world would be completely covered over.
6. What could be more fantastic and improbable? And to top that, Noah believed he must build the largest manmade structure ever built to that time – a giant ship – to single-handedly save all the species of the world from extinction from the falling tiny droplets.
7. “What a crank that Noah is!” No – what a man of incredible faith! Noah believed God, gambled on His truthfulness and won.
C. DANIEL’S 3 HEBREW FRIENDS
1. The Hebrew boys were taken as captives to Babylon, the great military, economic, and intellectual capital of the world.
2. There were only a few of them, along with hundreds of other foreign captives from other countries, also brought to be trained to help the empire manage its multicultural polyglot.
3. Everyone was told to give up their former cultures and become as Babylonians; after all, why not imitate the best?
4. Besides, if you didn’t live up to the king’s expectations, you would be shoveling coal in a deep mine somewhere, never to see the light of day again. Nobody said “No” to the King & lived to tell about it.
5. The Hebrew boys thought about it and decided to gamble for God. They refused to eat the food provided for them by the king; they would keep the faith, and refused to bow to the idols of the king.
6. What a foolish choice! They would probably lose it all. It was close! But when the dust settled, the dice of chance rolled all their way.
7. Their million-to-one shot came through, proving once again that, “With God all things are possible”.
D. SUMMARY
1. So the lesson is: if you’re going to gamble, gamble for Christ! When you side with God you’re choosing a sure bet; you can’t lose.
2. “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” Matt. 19:29.
3. Believers in the early days were so clear on this that they “joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property” Heb. 10:34.
4. “For bodily exercise profits [a] little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” 1 Tim. 4:8.
5. Choose life! Get on God’s side! Choose this day whom you’re going to serve. If you’re going to gamble, gamble to win!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: Opportunities Missed
1. There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or played;
He never risked, he never tried,
He never sang or prayed.
And when he one day passed away
His insurance was denied;
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never died! Source Unknown.
2. Winners see risk as opportunity. They see the rewards of success in advance. They do not fear the penalties of failure. Winners know that so-called luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
3. Opportunities are always around, but only those who are prepared utilize them effectively. Winners seem to be lucky because their positive self-expectancy enables them to better prepared for their opportunities.
4. When a reporter asked Shane Gould how she thought she would do in one of her early swimming meets, the 14-year-old Australian replied, "I have a feeling there will be a world record today." She went on to set two!
5. When asked how she thought she would fare in the four-hundred-meter event the next day, Shane replied with a smile, "I get stronger every race, and besides ... my parents said they'd take me to Disneyland if I win, and we're leaving tomorrow!" She went to Disneyland with three world records! [Denis Waitley in The Winner's Edge (Berkley Books) quoted in Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 13-15.]
B. ALTAR CALL
1. IF I’M BETTING, I’M BETTING ON GOD!
2. NOBODY BIGGER(ILLUS.)
a. An old country preacher was challenged by a highly educated agnostic. The skeptic asked, “Why do you Christians constantly claim assurance of victory in the battle of eternity?”
b. The old preacher replied: “Well, Son, it says in the beginning of my Bible that God was in charge when time started up.
c. Then I flips over to the end of my Bible and reads that God will be in charge when time runs down.
d. So I figure that twixt the beginning and twixt the end, weren’t nobody else big enough to whoop ‘em.”
3. Let’s place our bets with the Lord. You can’t lose when you choose Him! Stand & let’s pray.
