Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kasti Hinn, and I want to spend the next few episodes talking about Christian liberties that deserve serious thought. These are things that the Bible does not call outright sin, but they can lead to sin if we're not using wisdom. So we're going to look at gambling, drinking, recreating, or what I would just call playing, and then buying, like how we spend our money. Is it a sin to buy a nice house? It is a sin to drive a really nice car or to buy a second home or a vacation home or a luxury vehicle or really nice clothing. These are things that Christians should think through. There's certainly things that legalistic people would put hot limits on, and where people can get a little wild and a little loose and say, hey, who are you to judge me? I think it's important for Christians to be intentional about the way they're living. And that's not really an I think because it's my opinion. It's I think that way because the Bible actually teaches these things. So let me start with something that sounds made up. There was uh recently a White House press secretary briefing. The White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, was doing this briefing, and there was a uh a bet that it would go over 65 minutes. 98% of betters predicted that it would last longer than 65 minutes. You're thinking, like, how people can bet on this stuff? Yes. So prediction markets are a total thing. She wraps up early, like 64 seconds or 64 minutes and like 33 seconds, something like that. And the people who bet that it would end in under 65 minutes or wouldn't go over, won up to 50 times. They're like 50x their money. And if you're wondering if that's a serious story, it totally is. People were gambling on the length of a White House briefing. This is kind of the new world of gambling. It's not your Vegas slot machines. It's not poker night with the boys in college. This is an entire generation now using prediction markets to bet on politics, weather, award shows, interest rates, or things that are governed by countless unpredictable factors. There was a bet that Trump would invade Venezuela in under 24 hours. Somebody made like three or four hundred thousand dollars on that one when they did. Wild stuff. It's no casino kind of gambling game. This isn't gas station scratchers, you know, with your grandma. These are just apps, the same apps where you trade and you invest, you buy some crypto, you manage your money. So the world's a really blended here. And the slot machine has married the investment portfolio, and the results are confusing a lot of Christians. So let's talk. How should Christians view gambling? First, why in the world is this a Christian liberty issue? That's an important question. When it comes to gambling, Christians usually want a single verse that says, yes, you can do it, no, you can't. But scripture doesn't always operate that way. The Bible doesn't use the modern word gambling, but it speaks very clearly about several things, including stewardship, greed, contentment, self-control, and trust in God. Stewardship, greed, contentment, self-control, trust in God. Those categories, not cultural norms, must shape our thinking. The real question isn't, is gambling a sin? Although that's an important one. That's not the real deep question. The deeper question is, what does this do to my heart? There's a passage in 1 Timothy 6, verse 10, and I want to turn there. And you may be familiar with this passage, maybe you're not. Paul is instructing a young pastor, young protege in the faith. His name is Timothy. That's why they're called 1st and 2nd Timothy, these two letters. And he's instructing Timothy on how to teach people about money, something really important in the church, because you can get pretty jaded if money is abused or mistaught and misappropriated. So before getting into later verses about what to fix your hope on and that you can enjoy things, but God gives good gifts. We just want to make sure we're generous with those in need and with the Lord's work. Paul says this for the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. And some, by longing for it, key word, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs or many pangs. Some Bible translations say that you're like, what is that? The Greek word actually kind of gives the visual of skewing yourself. You basically have pierced your life. You've you're cooked. And the reason you're cooked is because you have wandered away from the faith because you love money. This is a danger for all our hearts. Notice that because of what Paul says, it's pretty clear money's not the danger. Longing for loving it is. And gambling doesn't create greed. Greed is sin. Gambling is just the outworking. Gambling is fed by greed. You you breed that. And so it trains the heart to expect gain without faithfulness. I can get rich quick. And that's where we got to be careful. And so let's actually define gambling. So we know what we're talking about here. What is gambling, biblically speaking, at its core? Gambling is staking money on an outcome largely governed by chance with the hope of personal gain at usually another person's loss. The Bible does not condemn all risk. So I'm actually not talking about risk. Faith involves risk. Some forms of conservative investing involves risk. Obedience to God will involve risk in the sense that we don't know what the future holds. Sharing the gospel involves risk. And so we want to define things properly. Scripture consistently warns against pursuing gain detached from hard work, wisdom, and stewardship. So that's where the problem lies. Proverbs is loaded with wisdom that says wealth gathered patiently through diligence is very different from wealth pursued hastily. That's why Proverbs 15, 27 says, he who is greedy for gain troubles his own house. In other words, gambling does not just risk money. It's not done in a vacuum. It risks the peace of a household, your preparation, money, future if you're married and if you have children. It's risking their lives or their livelihood. And so it really comes down to the heart. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? And if the central issue is the heart, then we've got to think through this. Not necessarily just the outward actions, but the inward desires. Paul warns that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. You got to ask the question: do you love money? You can like to earn money. You can like the work you do. You can like provision. You can like the fact that you excel at provision. You can enjoy the pursuit of being better at your job and the reward of that. But to love money, that's a danger. And to say, man, I just love it. I love being rich. I love having more. I'll do whatever it takes to get more. That breeds trouble. There are some things that gambling commonly feeds. They are number one, desire for quick wealth. There's this desire to just have it and get it, enjoy it, and blow it and then do it more. Two, discontentment with God's provision. God has given me this much and I want to go gamble and try to get more. And then third, trust in chance rather than trust in providence. God's divine providence is that He's ordering all things in your life and in mine. And when we're gambling and we're trying to get rich from it, or we love money, and so we're doing shady things to get more. Well, now we're in dicey waters. We're not trusting God. We're going to say, I'm going to go get it myself and I'm going to do it my way. The Bible consistently contrasts patience and diligence and hard work with hasty gain and a lack of character. Anything that trains the heart to crave money apart from faithfulness is spiritually dangerous, even if someone occasionally wins. And I think that's the question. I often get asked by guys, you know, hey, if I'm sports betting, you know, I'm baseball, or if I'm smart and I think I can do this and this and I make some money, you know, what's the big deal? If I'm winning, well, I'm winning, I'm winning, great. The issue isn't whether you can win, it's what winning is training you to love. So once we've thought through the heart and what we love, well, now we can talk about the actions because your actions really just flow from your heart. And two truths emerge that should guide our actions. Truth number one, stewardship is not optional. Stewardship is not optional. That's the first truth. Biblically, money's not a toy, it's a trust. In the Bible, when it comes to money, Christians are commanded to do some pretty specific things. Number one, provide for their families. That's 1 Timothy 5.8. Number two, give generously. In 2 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 6 to 8, we're told we're to give generously. It's grace-driven. We think about what God would have us do, and our money is not ours, it's his. We're just the managers. Third, plan wisely. Investing is a good thing. Preparing for the future, very wise, very prudent. Proverbs 21, 5 says the plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who's hasty comes surely to poverty. So we're thinking about the future. We're getting after it and investing and saving and doing wise things with money. Money is not really putting us to work. We're putting the money to work. Gambling, by definition, risks your resources without producing goods, without producing services, without providing any lasting value. When money meant for provision, generosity, your stewardship is wagered on chance, even in small amounts, your stewardship is being compromised. And so we are called to be faithful stewards as Christians. And truth number two, we are called to self-control. Self-control is not suggested in the Bible for Christians, it's commanded. It's by the way, one of the fruit of the Spirit. So if the Holy Spirit is in you, you will be self-controlled. Doesn't mean you're going to be perfect, but you're going to have a measure of self-control, the ability from the Spirit of God under his power to stop yourself, to stop mastery. And Christian liberty has that as a hard stop, mastery. 1 Corinthians 6.12 says, All things are lawful for me. Paul's saying, hey, I can do a lot of things, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. He's saying addiction is not going to be my thing. It can't be. Even if I'm allowed to do this, I'm not going to be mastered by it. Gambling addiction is real. Gambling addiction is devastating. But even before addiction forms, Scripture asks whether something is strengthening your self-control or eroding it. Proverbs 25, 28 warns us like a city that's broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit. It's just like an open season on your heart, like on a city with no walls, no protection, if you can't control your spirit, your spirit being your urges and your flesh and your impulses that that drive. He's got a fiery spirit. That's the idea in Proverbs 25, 28. Christian freedom is never freedom to surrender your control. And so the big question is gambling always sin. I think we need to think about Romans 14. It's a chapter you should read if you want to look at Christian liberty and what it means to live out your liberty or your convictions without causing people to stumble and to think about others. 1 Corinthians 10 is the other passage or chapter that you should read. Because scripture does not explicitly label every wager as sin. And that matters. Romans 14 teaches us not to bind consciences where scripture does not. You'll see in the Bible at times they cast lots or different things and they roll the dice or whatever, and you think, wow, that's gambling, or that is all gambling. It's just always sin to wager on anything, to play some cards with a friend, or to do this, that, or the other. This is why we talk about it under the category of Christian liberty. Because if you start saying, absolutely, that is sin, that's missing the mark, it's treason against God, you better be certain that what that is is wickedness and unrighteousness. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 23 says, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. Not all things edify. Well, why does he say repeated statements about edification and lawfulness and what's profitable and not being mastered by anything? You have 1 Corinthians chapter 9 and 10, and you look at these and you see Romans 14, and you're looking at this discourse on Christian liberty. Well, it's because we have to think seriously about these things. We can say that Christian liberty is never permission to cultivate greed. So all things are lawful, not all things edify. This could cultivate greed in my heart. Am I testing God? Am I normalizing sin? Have I pushed the limits far beyond what is reasonable? Do I have an addictive personality? Should I really be messing around with risk and big dopamine hits and that rush of I might win a lot of money? The question is really not, can I do this? The question is, does this build Christ-likeness? Is it fueling godliness in me or something else entirely? Now, I want to address something that many of you asked about, and it's gambling versus investing, gambling versus investing. Many Christians ask whether investing is just gambling, but with better PR. Biblically, I want to make the argument they're not the same. Scripture actually commends prudent planning and diversification. Ecclesiastes 11 2 says, divide your portion to seven or even eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth. Diversification is a biblical idea. So a diversified portfolio. Investing, smart, wise, uh, broadly, very biblical. And again, back to Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage. Investing requires prudence and diligence if you're going to do it right. It involves ownership in productive enterprise over time. Companies, reliable ones that are producing revenue and have good projections, that have reports about them that you can read and research. Gambling relies primarily on chance. Now you say, well, I'm researching teams, Costi, and I'm researching the odds. And I understand this game and that sport and this and that. Again, it's not a matter of if you can win. It's a matter of operating on chance that produces no lasting goods and can be abused and opens the portal to a number of other things, whereas saving and investing is very different. Now, can both be abused? Of course. Can investing be abused? Yeah. What about day traders, high-risk investors who are trying to get rich quick and they're in and out of things? And yeah, they should definitely be asking big questions. But when it comes to general investing versus gambling, that's what I'm getting at here. That's what most people asked, they are fundamentally different. And we know that historically. No one has ever said, hey, as a general rule of thumb, over the last 30 years, not only has the SP 500 performed at, you know, 8%, 9%, 10, 11%. Oh, but but sports gambling has proven to be an excellent way to invest and operate for 30 years and then pay off your home or retire. No one has ever said that. No one has ever said, you know what? One of the best strategies that I ever employed was not just putting away in my 401k and picking a really good index fund that performed well over time in the top 500 companies in the world. No, no. Also, poker nights, that really got my kids through college. You know, betting on the NFL Super Bowl, uh, deciding whether I think the White House briefing is going to go past 65 minutes or end early. These are the things that really did it for us. Hey, you know that vacation home uh in Santa Barbara? Oh, you know our ski resort, our ski retreat in Vale. I am so thankful that I bet and had this little parlay action going and had you know my UFC Fight Knight account and my DraftKings and my like nobody's saying that. Nobody said that. Why? Because it's general wisdom. Wise people continue to say this investment track, doing it properly, doing it with wise research over the course of 30 years, way better. I think y'all get it, but there's always that person out there that's like, well, Costi, I did win. You know what? Then you are the exception, not the norm. And the rest of us don't need DraftKings accounts in order to play your game. Overall, we got to be asking ourselves four questions. Number one, does this cultivate contentment or discontentment? Is this breeding something in me? Number two, does this increase trust in God or trust in luck? Number three, does this help or hinder generosity? And four, could this cause another believer to stumble? If you are sports betting, if you are online gambling, if you're using prediction markets, it is more likely to hinder your generosity and stewardship than help it. Now, let me give you a little gambling FAQ. These are all just rapid fire based on what you guys have sent into me. Number one, is gambling explicitly forbidden in the Bible? No verse uses the word, but scripture repeatedly condemns greed, hasty gain, and poor stewardship. And so it's pretty clear it's not gonna be the wisest Christian practice. Number two is buying a lottery ticket of sin. It's possibly a liberty issue. It often reflects misplaced hope or hasty gain, though. So you gotta like, why are you doing it? Just for fun, okay? Two bucks, three bucks, eight bucks to do it. That's gonna be between you and the Lord. But if you're literally thinking you're gonna win, you've got misplaced hope, and you got a problem. Uh, number three, fantasy sports or brackets. What do we do with those? Examine the heart and the conscience. Why are you doing it? You know, what are you getting at? Could be fun, could be just a little banter between buddies, or you could have a serious problem. Number four, poker with friends. I think you need to apply self-control and stewardship principles from 1 Corinthians 6.12 and know when to stop, know when to quit. No, you don't need to buy back in. No, you don't need to go that far. No, you don't need to take it from a certain account or you know, hide cash from your wife, or if you're single, just keep blowing it because you're like, who cares? You need to think about the future. You need to think about your life. You got to know when to stop. So self-control and stewardship. Is it a sin to play a card game with your friends and have a little fun? No. Is it a sin to have a problem with self-control and stewardship? Absolutely. So stay away from it because, like Paul, all things are lawful, not all things are profitable. And if you're losing all the time because you stink at poker, well, none of it's profitable. So quit playing and losing money. Go do something else for fun. Is day trading gambling? Uh, when it's driven by emotion rather than diligence, it would mirror the hasty gain that is in Proverbs 21.5. It's not the plans of the diligent. It won't surely lead to advantage. So, yeah, day trading can be a problem if it's constantly rooted in haste and luck and greed. Uh, number six, why is investing different? I love that people continue to ask this. Scripture actually affirms long-term diligence and productive ownership. That's what investing really is. And sports betting is not on par. And you don't need Dave Ramsey to tell you that. Although, if you like Dave, I love his stuff. Dave will tell it to you. So will some of the best investors in the world. And Warren Buffett is not telling you to go download DraftKings. He's telling you invest wisely over time. Proven winners have proven to win. Number seven, what if I can afford to lose it? Once again, another great question that it's you and the Lord, like, well, I got tons of money. Great. If you got tons of money, then orphans should be fed. Churches should have initiatives that never, ever, ever need fundraising because you're throwing down. And also, affordability does not equal wisdom. Just because you can doesn't mean you do. I've got friends that could probably buy a Bentley every month. You maybe have some friends who could buy, you know, new golf clubs every month. Just because you can buy a new set of titleist irons doesn't mean you do it every month. No, we want to use our money in a way that honors God because it's ultimately God's money. So affordability doesn't equal wisdom. Just because I can doesn't mean I do. So even if you can afford to lose it, gambling is not wise. Number eight, should Christians avoid casinos? Scripture calls believers to flee temptation and not flirt with it. So what is in a casino that is going to help you bring glory to God? Well, cost yeah, I'm evangelizing all the gamblers. Great. I don't think you need to play roulette to do that. And honestly, if we think about why you go to a casino, if it's for the food, you need better taste in restaurants because that lobster has probably been sitting there for three weeks. All right. I want to close by letting scripture have the final word. Jesus was teaching about money and the heart when he said this. For where your treasure is, your heart will be dead also. Matthew 6, 21, it's pretty simple. Where's your treasure going? Watch the money trail. Your heart is already up ahead. Because where the heart is passionate and driven and attached, the money will follow. Christian liberty is real. Not everything that you are allowed to do or could do is sin, and not everything you're allowed to do or could do is wise. But wisdom from God's word governing these actions is going to help you. And it'll help me. And it has in more ways than you can imagine. Next time, let's talk about drinking alcohol, a very helpful, uh, sometimes controversial, but important subject because the Bible has some really good, helpful things to say about that particular Christian liberty. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thanks for your support and your prayers. It is such a joy to get to create these resources and to know how many of you are behind what we're doing. Your giving and your support and your prayers are wind and our sails. So thank you as always for your partnership. And we love to work and labor for your benefit and ultimately for the glory of God. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for free resources. We're dropping videos every single week, and then we have ones on Instagram and all the social media platforms that you can share and be sharpened by in the midst of a very polluted world and social media invasions of everything under the sun. We want to invade your feed with the truth and with encouragement. 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