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God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Does the Bible explicitly condemn or forbid gambling? No. However, I do believe there are certain principles that militate against it. 1. Gambling is poor stewardship. The believer’s responsibility is to use wealth to promote the kingdom of God. The emphasis in Scripture is never on the use of money with a view to increasing one’s personal fortune but on putting our money to use in the service of those who are in need. It simply is not wise and responsible behavior to take what God has graciously bestowed and entrust it to circumstances over which we have no control (Pr. 12:11). 2. The biblical command is that the believer should obtain money by faithful and diligent exercise of God-given talents in work. Gambling is an attempt to obtain money that promotes sloth and is often an excuse for not working. 3. Gambling promotes covetousness and greed, whereas the Word of God encourages contentment (Phil. 4:11-12; Heb. 13:5). If one is seven times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win a million dollars in a state lottery, why do people continue to buy tickets? Greed! 4. Gambling appears to create a condition in which one person's gain is necessarily another person's loss. In other words, in gambling, someone always loses. If so, it would seem to violate brotherly love and justice. 5. There is a fundamental flaw in the character of any government that seeks to capitalize financially on the moral weakness of its members. 6. Gambling appears to violate our belief in the sovereignty of God. 7. Gambling has such a powerful potential for enslaving those who participate that it may well violate the admonition of Scripture that we not be mastered by anything or anyone other than the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:12).
Sam Storms

How do you recognize abusive leadership? Abusive churches and Christian leaders characteristically: Make dogmatic prescriptions in places where Scripture is silent. Rely on intelligence, humor, charm, guilt, emotions, or threats rather than on God’s Word and prayer (see Acts 6:4). Play favorites. Punish those who disagree. Employ extreme forms of communication (tempers, silent treatment). Recommend courses of action which always, somehow, improves the leader’s own situation, even at the expense of others. Seldom do good deeds in secret. Seldom encourage. Seldom give the benefit of the doubt. Emphasize outward conformity, rather than repentance of heart. Preach, counsel, disciple, and oversee the church with lips that fail to ground everything in what Christ has done in the gospel and to give glory to God.
Jonathan Leeman

    • Man By The Road

    Posted on

    Man By The Road

    Man by the Road

    If I were the man by the side of the road Who watches the world go by,
    I’d stop every man with a frown on his face And ask him the reason why.

    I’d stop everyone with sad, weary eyes
    And find out what made him so;
    I’d point out to each the Christ on the cross And help him His love to know.

    I do not live by the side of the road
    Where the race of man passes on;
    But I meet them each day on the path of life Those wanderers far from home.

    You don’t have to live in a house by the road To scatter the sunshine of love;
    But wherever you live, if a man asks the way, Just point him to heaven above.

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