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SA Ep104 - I Bet You Won't Listen to This... · Seeking Approval Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Smilster from the Iliad Baptist Church.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, life moves fast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And faith is not meant to be rushed.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So join me here today on Seeking Approval.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Casino Justice in Las Vegas.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's in your backyard.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, if somebody mentioned betting or any of those activities where you were, you know, putting good money against bad money, is what we might call it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh your mind would immediately think of Las Vegas, maybe the horse track or you know, maybe some of those uh uh you know uh unmentionable uh poker games that were going on in certain areas.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But today, you can go to your local gas station, buy scratch offs right there at the register.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can sit in your car, as many people do, in the parking lot, and uh see how much money you're gonna lose.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can sit on your couch and bet on a football game.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can bet on individual players, teams, outcomes, uh you can bet on the next touchdown.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can gamble from your phone while lying in bed, anywhere.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can be at work and still betting and losing your money, just about anywhere you want to be.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And because it has become so common, I think we've stopped asking ourselves, is this healthy?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is this an addiction?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want to put some numbers on this.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the the fiscal year of 2024, Americans uh bought somewhere in the worth or somewhere in the area of 104, say 105, 104.9 billion dollars worth of state lottery tickets in Tennessee.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: About$70 billion was paid back in prices.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: That leaves a net gain to the state of$34.5 billion, roughly.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: $34.5 billion was lost.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the gas station scratch-off isn't just a tiny little side hustle that the state has going on.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in 2025, Americans bought$62 billion,$63,$62.8,$63 billion in scratch-off tickets alone.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: In 2025, Americans legally wagered about$167 billion on sports.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: The legal sports books record about$17 billion in revenue.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: In simple terms, they're after paying winners, the sports books kept$17 billion.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't include any of the tribal or illegal betting that goes on.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The American Gambling Association estimates that$84 billion was wagered last year through illegal bookies and offshore accounts and all that and generate about a$5 billion operator revenue.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think the question really is, you know, well, what's wrong with a dollar scratcher?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with a$5 scratcher or even a$20 scratcher?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm going to blow that$20 on something else anyway.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the bigger question is, is what happens to a society when gambling becomes an ordinary part of everyday life?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what does the Bible say about it?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think the problem is a$1,$5 scratcher.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is the addiction that it caused.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a scientific reason for the addiction.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I have time to get into much of that today, but there is a reason for that.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same, uh it's the same endorphin rush that you get from any drug that you use, or the same endorphin rush that you get from when people like or comment on a social media post.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It all has it all it's all an addiction.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that people like to say, well, it's just a few dollars.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's probably where it starts.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not many people are going in and dropping, you know,$1,000,$2,000,$3,000, you know,$10,000 on a uh any just some type of uh gambling.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: They'll say, well, I'm not I'm not gambling my house away.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I buy a Powerball ticket, and you know, when it gets up around a billion dollars to see what happens, I'll throw$5 on this game, or I'll buy a scratch off every once in a while.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And to be fair, a$5 lottery ticket isn't going to bankrupt most people.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to cause them to get evicted from their home.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount is not the question.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 12, 15 says, Take heed and be aware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things in which he possesseth.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, he's not merely warning about losing money, he warned about the heart's desire for more.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: By trying to take what God has given you and want more in a fashion in which you will or are willing to lose what God has has given you the ability to earn.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's where the problem comes in.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the the question isn't, you know, well, it's only five dollars, you know, what's it going to hurt anyway?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The question is why are you buying it?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: What what makes the possibility of that sudden money appealing to us?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Are you feeding an appetite?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: When when does it stop?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are we chasing?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those are becomes a question.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The National Council on uh on uh problem gambling estimates about two and a half million American adult Americans have severe gambling problems.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's severe.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking about uh the ones who have mild, what they would label as mild uh addictions, which that goes up now to five to eight million.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at you know, ten million Americans have some sort of gambling addiction problem.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it it it costs, you know, we're somewhere around the around the$14 billion mark, is what it cost uh those five to eight million uh sorry, uh eight to ten million Americans.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It cost that that group alone is about fourteen billion dollars, the ones who are actually you know actively seeking help.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the ones who are seeking help.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what they have reportedly lost.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you could probably take that number and easily double it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you could probably take that$14 billion and either double it or triple it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that includes a lot of things: job losses, bankruptcy, healthcare costs, other consequences come along with it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: People are losing their lives over this because they get in with the wrong people.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: What the what the lottery, what these things do from the from you know, the gas station corner, from the app on your phone, and uh what these things do is they sell a dream that is rarely ever come to fruition.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Satan does.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Satan sells dreams that aren't really there.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So think about the psychology of this now.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Of let's just go with the scratch off.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna be the most most popular.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: You walk in at a gas station, there's the rack, two, five, ten, twenty, thirty dollars, maybe a fifty dollar ticket here and there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the message is simple.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This next one could be the one.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: This you could be the one that changes your future.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: You walk in broke, you walk out rich.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You skip the years of of hard work, the years of savings.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can pay off your home.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about retirement planning.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: All the ordinary people be going to work, and you don't have to.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: This one ticket can change everything in your life.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 13, 11 says, wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished, but he that uh gathereth by labor shall increase.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, quick gain, not very good.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: My dad and I joke a lot of times.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: My papa had some, he was a he was a Christian, man.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was a he was a rough man in his younger days.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he came into the Lord late in life and ended up um becoming a deacon at his church and uh had a radio broadcast ministry for uh 20 years and was able to reach a lot of people that way, but he spent many years not working or serving the Lord, that's for sure.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually uh on the other side of all of it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he used to have uh these little these little sayings like, you know, uh, well, uh free money is or uh uh easy money is better than hard money.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or he'd say something like, you know, free money spends just like uh money I work for.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he had some of those little sayings like that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I and it's true.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you go to the gas station and you you win free money, hey, you know, it's gonna it's gonna pay my bill or you know, whatever it is, just like the money that I went and worked hard for, but the the there's the the the mind behind it, the heart behind it, the spirit behind it is what Proverbs is talking about.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he that uh gathereth by labor shall increase.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture repeatedly connects our provision with work, patience, stewardship, savings, and faithfulness.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the Bible talks about over in uh Matthew chapter number six, whenever uh uh uh Christ is talking about the the basic necessities of life, you know, what you drink, what you eat, what you how you clothe yourself.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about these things, because all these things will be added unto you.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So faithfulness has a lot to do with this work, patience, stewardship, saving, faithfulness.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 28 20 says, A faithful man shall abound in with blessing, but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So in this whole lottery scheme, and that's all it is, just a scheme.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's legalized, it's legalized sin and scheme.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we got a lot of legalized sin.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol, legalized sin.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: These new marijuana places legalized sin.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And just because it's legalized in the state doesn't mean it's legalized in the Bible.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But in order for you, let's say that you play the lottery, in order for you to win, that means a whole bunch of other people have to lose.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you're betting on somebody else to lose so that you could win.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: That speaks to a whole different level of Christian life.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Take anything else in life, anything else in life.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we would say that that person is not acting very Christian like if they were if they were hoping for the demise of everybody else so that they could advance.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not a very Christian mindset to have.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for somebody to win the$500 million jackpot, that means there was, you know, a hundred other million people that played and lost.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the$500 million came from.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It came from all the losing tickets.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: In 2025, Sportsbooks took$167, as we already said, about$167 in wages,$17 billion in revenues.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That means a whole lot of people lost,$17 billion, a whole lot of people lost in that for$17 billion at$100 a pop.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: $500, maybe$1,000.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of people have got to lose to do that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 20 and 21 say that inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning, but in the end thereof shall not be blessed.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think the Bible has a whole lot to say about the lottery, about gambling.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And people think that it that you know the Bible doesn't really say much about it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it does.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have the evidence that money is coming from somewhere else.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we have to start getting a little more serious about the conversation.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest recent studies shows us that uh uh financial transactions of uh of more than 183 American households.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they found that when online sports bettings became legal, household betting increased and investment savings declined.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So in in researching 185,000, 100 183,000 homes, whenever sports betting became legal, investment savings declined.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those people were chasing the fast and easy.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were playing, you know, loose and free with with money that uh that they were given the ability to earn.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: People are literally waging their mortgage payment, their child's college funds, their grocery money.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I found these statistics I thought it was very uh uh uh interesting and in fact it really kind of it kind of shook me for a minute.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: The uh National Betting Service in 2026 um had a study that it did called it the the name of the study was Wagering the Bread Money.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um researchers in this study they um they looked at the legalized sports gambling and whether the households that were betting if they had enough food to eat.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And among what they found among working age adults without college degrees sports betting legalization was associated with a 2.1 percent decline in household food sufficiency.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And among active betters, the decline was ten and a half percent.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's that they concluded that about two hundred and eighty-four thousand homes had a decline in in food sufficiency for their household.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is more about the, you know, well, this preacher, he's just he's the old man screaming, you know, get off the grass, you know, you kids.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm I'm not out, you know, you know, screaming at, you know, you know, things I can't see in the sky.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just because I don't like gambling.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: The numbers show what it does.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody who says, well, I just do a little bit, it's just it's just one every once in a while, or I just do it to have a little bit of fun.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, other people go play golf with their money.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't when I realized that golf was a waste of my money, that I was going out and and paying, you know,$50 to go and do absolutely nothing, have nothing to show for it, have nothing to gain for it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was shortly after my daughter was born, I went and played a round of golf and got back home, you know, that it was that night or the next day, and we're trying to figure out how we're gonna uh buy her diapers and her formula because she had to be on the expensive formula because she was allergic to everything that, you know, any type of milk or anything when she was little.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we're trying to figure out how in the world that we're gonna buy her diapers and her formula.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I and it hit me one day, and I was like, I'm like, I just paid$50 to go out and do absolutely nothing and be bad at what I was doing.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even I was good at it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I wasn't even I wasn't, I'm not a good golfer.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that day golf stopped, and I've not played since.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me change that.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think I played about three times, but every time I played, somebody else was paying for it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: They asked me to go, and I said no, and uh I I even had to borrow golf clubs to go play.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that was when we were on vacation a couple times.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I've not played since.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the question is not, well, it's just once or twice, it's what are you sacrificing in those, you know, one or two times a month, or just those that moment where you just want to have a little bit of fun and release?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's not something else you can do without wasting money chasing the the quick uh uh emotional high from it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is there not something better to do with that money?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is there not a way that you could take that money if you're just gonna throw it into the into the pool of the billions of dollars that are wasted, why not take it down to the homeless shelter?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why not take it to the church and let the church use it to spread the gospel more?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think gambling, and that's all it is, is gambling.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think gambling has become one of the strongest addictions in not I mean in the world really, but in our country, gambling has become the strongest addiction that is costing people more than we realize.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: In 26 alone, in 2026 alone, there was a 12% increase in credit card debt strictly from at-home betting.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Federal Reserve, I've got so many statistics, the Federal Reserve found that there was a measurable increase in delinquency of uh minimum payments and a decline in credit scores that was marked by the legalization of sports betting.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, none of that I mean you can't you can't deny these things.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the harm that comes in this is not just the betting.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the$5, the$20 on the scratcher, the$100 you put on the the UT game when they're playing Texas.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the harm in it.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: The harm in it is what it leads to.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: The harm in it is the same person who said, you know, well, it's just marijuana.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a it's just a cigarette, it's just one drink, it's just social drinking.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: What they don't see is the the five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road and where it leads to.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And are there some who, you know, eh, just did it once and got away from it?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: There there are.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But again, you're betting on something that's not a winner.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're betting on man's desire for sin and evil.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not very often that man wins the bet against sin.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And every time that it's, you know, well, it's just one time, it's just one thing, it's just this one.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't care if it's gambling, drugs, or uh, you know, whatever else it may be, anytime that you bet on yourself to avoid sin, the odds are stacked against you.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And sports betting and scratchers are no different.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're betting on yourself that you can do it just once and not waste, do it just once and not cost your family anything, you're betting you're you're you're betting in a losing bet.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in gambling, sports betting, scratchers, local lotteries, whatever else it might be, the house always wins.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: They are willing to give you the$160 billion and they're going to keep the$40 billion because they got forty billion dollars of somebody else's money.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the$160 that they paid out wasn't theirs anyway.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was somebody else's money.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the house always wins.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be somebody that gives them$5.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be somebody that gives them$20.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be somebody that possibly could end up losing your future, losing your home because you wanted a moment of gratification.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And join me, Dr.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Spocer, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Until this grace and peace to you from seeking approval at Healing Baptist Church.