Word of Salvation – Vol.42 No.3 – January 1997

 

A Win or a Sin?

 

A Sermon by Rev S Bajema on Proverbs 16:33

Scripture Reading: 2Thessalonians 3:6-15; Proverbs 16:9, 25, 33

Also Lord’s Day 10

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in our Lord.

No one can deny that gambling is a major social problem.  One needs only to remember the inter-state television news story of those children being left in a car outside a casino while their mother was blowing the family budget inside.

And locally, consider just the proliferation of pawn-broking shops, now in every suburb, exactly able to have the trade they do partly because of peoples’ addiction to gambling.

Ask the social welfare workers and the church charities.  It wrecks families, plunders life-savings, turns men and women into the most desperate and devious liars and thieves.

And despite a plethora of these terrible results of gambling, we have governments who only make it worse.  Ten years ago there was the one weekly lotto draw per week; now it’s three or four or more!  And there’s the second chance draw!  It just goes on and on and on.  Like some insatiable monster which can’t stop eating, gambling just keeps swallowing further victims.

Now, at this point, it would be easy to blame the government.  For them this is an easy revenue raiser.  They’re the ones, if you like, who throw the lot – the lot in Proverbs 16 – but who is it exactly who allows it to fall into their laps?

Actually F Delitzsch shows how the lap here is the upper part of the old Israelite clothing in which they would put the lot, as it was being thrown out.  So, like we swirl a dice around in our hand before tossing it.  Yes, and who is it that buys the LOTTO ticket?  Even with the names ‘lot’ and ‘lotto,’ there appears to be a connection.

But, getting back to the use of the lot, we’ll find it used often in Scripture.  Already in several books of Moses – Leviticus and Numbers – we see the lot as a method used to divide up the land between the twelve tribes of Israel.  In Joshua it appears even more frequently, for there we see the settlement into the land.

And it worked.  As the LORD God had ordained it to be used, it served an admirable purpose.  Proverbs itself, two chapters on in 18:18, gives the advice, “Casting the lot settles disputes and keeps strong opponents apart.”  Much as we may draw straws to impartially resolve an issue, so the Israelites used to draw the lot, knowing from the LORD that where it was used for what it was intended, it would a blessing.

So it was not an end in itself; the lot was a means, a way, to the end.  Take the lot away from that usage and you get problems.  You see, the lot, when it was cast for decisions of faith, proved that faith.  The Israelites used it then because the Lord said so.  Right up until just before Pentecost, it’s the Lord’s way of settling matters properly referred to Him.

As well as the allotting of land, there were the different things in the temple service.  Zechariah, for example, was the priest chosen by lot to burn the incense in the temple’s holy of holies when the angel Gabriel visited him.

What’s further interesting, congregation, is that this is not the way of guidance the Lord wants for us today.  God’s last use of this method was, as Derek Kidner notes, significantly, the last event before Pentecost.  You might remember that as the choosing of Matthias, in Acts 1, to replace Judas Iscariot as an apostle.  But now no longer does the LORD guide His church as a servant who “doesn’t know his master’s business,” to quote the words of John 15:13.  As Jesus said then to the disciples, “Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

From Pentecost onward the church would have all agree in what to do; the Holy Spirit lay upon the hearts of them all.  Acts 15 shows one example of this with the judgment of the Council of Jerusalem.

Well, we say, fascinating stuff; but what’s it got to do with gambling?  All we’re hearing is how the Lord was directing things through this.  That’s it congregation!  By following the Lord’s will by faith, the lot was a real blessing.  It’s a means to His end.  But use it otherwise, and you are only serving yourself!  Then it only becomes chance.  That’s an end in itself!  Live for the chance itself, as the lot sometimes became abused as a game of chance, and you don’t serve the Lord.

That was what Haman did, in Esther 3, when the lot was cast for the best month and day upon which to totally obliterate the Jews.  Believe me, that was the end for him!

It might seem that we control things; we can even delude ourselves that we’re always winning and things are going so well for us, doesn’t every gambler believe that they’re only around the corner from the big one?  But it’s all greed!

Just as it may seem we can direct the lot because it’s in our lap, in our hand so to speak, thus we do when we gamble.  The LORD, however, says a very clear word: DON’T SNATCH!  Snatching – that’s what we do when we think we’re in control.  It’s greed.  We think we’ve got a right to something which is not ours; it never was!  We show we want to be our own gods!

James 4 tells of this same attitude, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money’.”  (vs.13).

One can reflect on why people buy a lotto ticket; I mean, they expect to win!  And they can go into quite some detail as to what they’ll do with that money!  And, yet, what have they done for it, how has it become theirs?

This is where the reading from 2 Thessalonians is most incisive.  You see, those Thessalonians were waiting for the ‘big one.’  It sounds a bit like the major draw, but it was the second return of Jesus they had become completely fixated on.  So thoroughly involved were they in this anticipation that they just weren’t getting on with their everyday work.

And that wasn’t good; not at all.  In fact, it was leading to the body of the church breaking up.  Paul is very sharp when he writes, “We hear that some among you are idle.  They are not busy, they are busybodies.”  It’s not good to be bored, to have no work.  We were made to use our gifts and talents and energy to settle down and earn the bread we eat.  Paul himself went out of his way not to become a financial burden on anyone.

DON’T SNATCH!

Congregation, snatching is what you do if you’re not ‘giving’.  It’s just taking.  We become so full of ourselves and the things we can do, we don’t see that it was never ours to take in the first place.

To quote further from James 4, “Why, you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil.”  (vss.14-16)

Throwing the lot was an action of chance.  But the foreknowledge of the LORD made it the most appropriate manner for the people to know that in this irrational and totally illogical way, because by any criteria of honest judgment that’s all which drawing the lot is; it could only be the LORD working things out this way.  If the chances of winning lotto are so many million to one, then that the Lord got it right for His people every time by this way shows how different the lot used for Him is no gamble!

We only need to think here of the example of Achan.  Achan who was identified from among the millions of Israel, in Joshua 7, as the one who took treasure from Jericho.

So, dear believer, what are you meant to do if faced with this awesome, splendorous and most powerful being?  You’re certainly not going to get greedy in his presence!  Why, you say, PLEASE!  The old saying is so true, “Man Proposes, God Disposes.”  And it’s not until the truth of this gets into us that we will begin to understand and live the true Christian Life.

You see, that’s the way of thankfulness.  And how can we be thankful unless we’ve first been given; and how can we be given if we haven’t asked?  Our Lord said as much, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  (Mt.7:7-8)

Friend, it can be nothing other than the position of faith.  If you don’t believe that God has given you the greatest gift of all time and of all places in His Son, your Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, then you won’t ever plead from your soul itself!  Then you haven’t got to the heart of the matter!  Then you’re still only just snatching.  You know, it’s amazing what you’ll get if you but simply ask for it.

You can go to the most brilliant and popular person, and though you tremble in your boots, thinking all the while that there’s no way he wants to even know about you, by just a simple request you could have him doing all kinds of things for you!

How come?  It’s because you have humbled yourself; you’ve put yourself in the lesser place.  It’s also the hardest place for us to put ourselves.  To put number one at number two really hits our natural nature.  It hurts; I’d rather snatch and that way I did it!

An example of this in relation to gambling is the anguish someone has when they thought they had won, only to be told there had been a mistake in the computer.  Perhaps you’ve seen their faces on television; angry, desperate people who have a right to their money.  That couldn’t be a more different attitude from 2Thessalonians, where we simply settle down and earn the bread we eat.

No, you believe God has called you to be a millionaire?  Well, if that’s a silly thing to say, because you know you to do the best you can where you are, why do Christians enter the lucky prize draws on cereal packets and eagerly scratch out the cards given by all kinds of shops and businesses these clays?  Yes, it has been said that you don’t pay anything to go in these things, but you have.  The very product you buy would be cheaper if that company didn’t have that huge promotional budget.  So anyone winning those prizes does so at the expense of everyone else who buys the product.

But that’s not the point either, is it?  I mean, when we enter or accept these things, is it because we…SAY PLEASE…  to the LORD God; or because we snatch in our greed?  Those hyped up commercials on television cry out, “Oh, for the LOTTO life!”  But; congregation, do our hearts and lives shout out in every way, “Oh, for the Christ-centred life!”?

Knowing the ultimate purpose of all things, do we live providentially?  That means, in the clear words of Answer 27 in our Catechism, “…not by chance…!”  Are we the Father’s children, or servants that are playing fast and hard with the property?

But perhaps the point…SAY PLEASE…  can best summed up in answer to the question as to how knowing about God’s creation and providence helps us.  After all, now, we of all people, can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate US from His love.

In fact, we know that, all creatures are so completely in his hand that, without His will they can neither move, nor be moved.

That’s faith the living God.  That’s believing in JESUS, His Son and our Saviour.  That’s no gamble!

Amen.

PRAYER:

Let’s pray…

Dearest Lord Jesus, how we bow in thanks before You now.  For by faith, Lord, You opened our eyes; You made us see the great divine drama played out on planet earth.  Now we know that every decision is from You and for You and through You.  Because it is You, Lord, whom God placed all things under.  You who was appointed to be Head over everything for the church, Your Body.  Thank You Lord that we’re joined to you by Your own sacrifice, because without that we don’t have a chance.  That’s why we pray through You now, you are the way, the truth and the life.

Amen.