56 Sermon Illustrations on Gambling

In April 2017 something unusual happened at a professional poker tournament. Famous poker pro Gus Hansen began the game by going all in - he shoved all his chips into the middle of the table. What is amazing is that he did this blind - he was betting $300,000 and he hadn’t even looked at his cards. He had horrible cards, but he won the hand.

With each hand after that, he continued going all in. In one of his early hands, he pushed the chips in, peeked at his cards, and saw two 2s. His opponent had an Ace and a Jack of the same suit. $600,000 was in the pot. The dealer dealt out another 2, and Hansen’s winning streak continued. It wasn’t until 16 minutes had gone by that he finally lost a hand. [1]

Gus Hansen's strategy was very thrilling, but also very stupid. It would be only a matter of time before he lost everything.

Christian faith has parallels with aggressive poker. Jesus says you have to go all-in if you want to follow him. He says you have to love him more than anything else. He says you have to be prepared to give up your life itself. The only difference is that Christians can't lose.

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1. "Insane (or brilliant?) poker player goes all-in on every hand and completely dominates," by Charles Curtis, April 11, 2017; .

[David Holwick: I remember seeing this when I was 5 years old, and the image of a possessed slot machine gave me nightmares for weeks. It is a good illustration of temptation, obsession and gambling.]

An episode of classic television show, "The Twilight Zone": Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs win a trip to Las Vegas after Mrs. Gibbs enters a jingle-writing contest. She has a “Let's have a little fun gambling” attitude, but her husband wants no part of it - he won't even let her plunk a few small coins into a slot machine.

As events unfold, a drunk staggers by and gives Mr. Gibbs a silver dollar and ultimately forces him to play it in a machine over Gibbs' protests. Gibbs pulls the handle and wins twenty more silver dollars. As he's taking them back to his room, he thinks he hears someone calling him (saying his name “Franklin!” in a raspy voice) but he dismisses this.

Back in the room, he tells his wife that no good can come of money won in this evil game, so he tells her he's going to take it back downstairs and play it until he loses it all. What an understatement. Every time he thinks about stopping, he finds it's the slot machine calling his name - and it keeps taunting him to play. His wife discovers him downstairs, after having cashed many personal checks with nothing to show for it. He inserts his last silver dollar, hoping that the “long overdue” payoff will drop when he pulls the handle. Instead, the machine jams, refusing to play anymore.

Gibbs goes ballistic, finally knocking the machine over. Defeated, he returns to his room where he begins hallucinating that the slot machine is after him. He hears it repeatedly calling “Franklin! FRANKLIN!!!” He opens the door and sees it standing there. His wife sees nothing.

Franklin winds up jumping out the window to his death, driven mad by the machine. As the episode closes, a single silver dollar rolls up beside him and spins to a stop - the machine is now outside apparently satisfied enough to return Franklin's last dollar.

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Did you see the YouTube video of a Maryland man discovering that he won over a quarter of a billion dollars in the recent Powerball lottery? That man, wearing a yellow work coat, excitedly checks his numbers at a convenience store and then basically goes berserk. The title of the video clip is, “Video reveals life-changing Powerball moment.”

Now I don’t want to throw cold water on his celebration. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a quarter of a billion dollars richer? But I question how life-changing winning a gigantic jackpot really is. More money — even a lot more money — doesn’t make us happier deep down inside. Rather, it reveals the trajectory our lives are already on with respect to material things.

I learned this during the year I spent in Jamaica right out of college. Jamaica is an incredibly poor country dependent heavily on tourism, and I saw there two approaches to money. Many tourists, especially the annual spring-breakers, saw debauchery and excess as a way of really living it up.

Many Jamaicans, on the other hand, viewed these tourists, even as they served them, with anger and resentment. Why? Because they could never have the so-called “good life” they believed was only available to those with lots of cash. In both cases, however, money was viewed as the ticket to happiness.

This is exactly what our consumer culture, especially at this time of year, tries to tell us: that we have this “Lexus-shaped hole” in our heart that only a new IS 250 can fill. This is more than materialism -- the worldview that says only material things matter. It’s consumerism -- a view of life that says everything is to be evaluated on whether it satisfies my desires and makes me whole.

As Skye Jethani, author of The Divine Commodity: Discerning a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity notes, consumerism is not really a worship of stuff. At root, it’s a worship of self at any cost. Skye says that consumerism encompasses far more than our shopping and spending habits. The consumerist belief that the essence of existence is the fulfillment of our desires touches everything, from our relationships to our choice of churches. If our husband or wife doesn’t “meet our needs,” we get a divorce. If we don’t “get anything” from our local congregation’s music, ministry, or preaching, we go “church shopping.”

It becomes very tempting to approach all of life as a consumer, where Christ becomes just one option among many, rather than the One who redeems and transforms the broken self and the broken world.

In The Divine Commodity, Skye tells of the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh’s love-hate relationship with the church. Actually, we have good evidence that Van Gogh was deeply committed to Christ but couldn’t stand the church, which he saw as captive to the culture of the day — as many of our own churches today are.

In Van Gogh’s amazing painting, Starry Night, all the world under the pulsating night sky reflects the brilliance and glory of the Creator — all, that is, except for one little church, which remains dark and without the divine presence. It is a damning indictment, and a warning worth heeding today.

Skye admits that it is impossible for us Christians to separate ourselves from the consumer culture, which is, after all, the very air we breathe as 21st century Westerners. But the good news is we don’t have to retreat from the world, but we need to find new ways of seeing it so that we can begin to live differently.

While money might change our lives and buy us a little bit of worldly happiness, especially if we beat the odds and win the lottery, it comes at a cost that none of us would ever want to pay.

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Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.