Forty-three states, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, run lotteries [as of January 2014] …. According to a CNN article, "More than half of us have played the lottery in the last year, although 20 percent of customers buy the majority of the tickets." In fiscal 2012, Americans spent around $78 billion playing lotteries. Since 1964, when New Hampshire launched the first modern state lottery, ticket sales have gone up every year, even during the Great Recession, when the sale of most other items declined.

What drives the popularity of lotteries? Not the incredible odds. You're more likely to be attacked by a shark (one in 11.5 million) or die in a lightning strike (one in three million) than you are to win Powerball's grand prize (one in over 175 million). You'd have to buy 86 million tickets to reach even a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Although the chances of winning Powerball is less than having a meteor crash into your house (one in 182 trillion).

So why do we people keep playing the lottery? Maybe because it lets us live in a fantasy world. As Rebecca Paul Hargrove, president of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation, puts it, "For $2 you can spend the day dreaming about what you would do with half a billion dollars—half a billion dollars!" Psychologist Dr. Stephen Goldbart suggests the lottery appeals because "it lets you believe in magic: that you will be the one who spent a little and got a lot" and that the money "will give you a respite from the conflict, complexity, and angst of everyday life." Journalist Adam Piore writes, "[The lottery] is a game where reason and logic are rendered obsolete, and hope and dreams are on sale."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Gambling; Money. (2) Faith—Christians aren't the only ones who practice "faith." People can put their faith in many things besides God (like the lottery), but faith is always only as good as the object of our faith. (3) Hope—For the Christian hope isn't equated with "I hope I win the lottery." Hope is solid assurance that God's promises are true.