Proverbs 29, let's look at another group. Look at verse 3.
Whoso loveth wisdom rejoices his father, but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.
Hey, you want to make a bad spending decision?
Harlots. This is a bad, this is a kind of similar to the luxury category. It's a it's a fleeting thing.
It's a momentary part of pleasure, yet it's very expensive and you want to talk about people spending money.
It's spending money on company with harlots.
There's a parable about this, isn't there? There's two sons and one asked for his inheritance
before the time and then what he did, he wastes it on what?
riotous living. On
basically just being with harlots, just boozing it up, spending the money. And you want to talk about some of the biggest
industries in the world today.
Industries that are making so much money. They're all about sin.
Sin is expensive.
Sin is costing people so much money. You want to, you want to know why so many people are poor?
Sin, literally. Sin is an expensive habit.
I looked at some statistics. When it comes to fornication or men that are with prostitutes,
it's a 14.6 billion dollar industry in the United States per year.
It's estimated that 14.6 billion are spent on prostitution in America every year. Not only that,
13.33 billion on looking at stuff on the internet or
movies or all, just that genre.
We're talking about billions of dollars being spent on this industry. In fact, the amount of money spent on prostitution,
think about this, from a daily perspective, it's 40 million dollars a day. In the United States,
40 million dollars a day is spent on that sin,
specifically. That, it's bleeding people's pockets, okay? You want to lose a lot of money? That.
How about some other things that are similar? Because talking about just spending money on sin, you know, company with harlots, riotous living,
what are other activities that are similar to this where you're just wasting money? How about cigarettes?
How about smoking?
In 2017, there was
249 billion cigarettes sold in the United States.
That's a whole lot of cigarettes that were smoked. In fact,
2018,
companies that sell tobacco or cigarettes products spent, they spent
9.06 billion in advertising alone.
And if you're spending that much money in advertising, you're bringing in more than that. That's not even to make the product.
They're literally spending nine, over nine billion dollars just advertising cigarettes, tobacco,
products, and whatever.
According to statistics in America, over
300 billion dollars are spent in healthcare related costs due to smoking.
It's not only costing people the money to buy the cigarette, it's costing just our healthcare system in general,
300 billion dollars. In fact, there is an article, I can't even believe it,
but they calculated how much money, people that smoke on a regular basis,
and I don't know how they calculated what that means, but just people that smoke,
they calculated how much money it cost them for their life. It says if you smoke,
you will cost yourself
1.4 million dollars.
Now, I was just like, what in the world? They're saying on all the money you spend for the cigarettes,
they said on the amount of money you'll lose in your career because you smoke, and
all the healthcare related costs that are associated with it, they said you'll literally lose
1.4 million dollars just by being a smoker.
That's expensive habit.
And you know, I don't know how they came up with these statistics, but hey, it's probably, it's possible.
It's possible to have to spend that much money in healthcare costs.
It's possible that, you know, it may cause you to not get a promotion at work.
I mean, I've been working with people lots of times where they take a smoke break every 15 minutes,
and I'm thinking like, what in the world? And they need that, and they get mad at their employee if they're not on a smoke break
constantly. And there's certain jobs where you can't even, you can't take a 15-minute break every, every hour or something like that.
And so, maybe they're missing out on promotions.
They're missing out on other labor and activity. And look, if you're missing out on a 10, 20, 30 thousand dollar
promotion over a period of 20, 30 years, that adds up quick. And
we're talking about, not only that, talking about healthcare costs, all the money they spend on cigarettes.
And you want to talk about something that's taxed heavily, cigarettes.
Send is taxed heavily.
Not only just cigarettes, how about casinos?
Uh-oh.
They calculated how much money per American is
spent at casinos, and it says every American spends two hundred and sixty one dollars a year on gambling or casino related
expenses. Now most, I don't even gamble, okay, so I'm spending zero. It's just saying like for every person
they're spending that. Now people that live in Nevada,
it's different. So they calculated just every American is
261. For people that live in Nevada, they average spend five thousand dollars a year on casinos.
They average, okay. Now this was a really weird statistic,
but people bet on all kinds of sporting events all the time. They calculated how much money was
wagered or gambled on the NCAA tournament,
just something like the last year or one of the last years,
just on the tournament alone. So we're not talking about all sporting events.
We're talking about one event of March Madness, where they have all the basketball tournament, and they have all these college kids playing.
8.5 billion dollars were gambled on just that tournament alone.
You want to talk about people losing money. I mean this is insane.
How about alcohol?
Alcohol is a 68 billion dollar industry a year.
And they state that heavy drinkers spend on average
$800 a month on alcohol.
Talk about losing money. Talk about just wasting money on stupid, silly things.
Look, and you say, well, why are people poor? Well, because they're smoking and drinking and going to the casino,
and they're hiring prostitutes. I mean, how do you have money for anything else?
And typically they don't, do they? They get the welfare to provide for all their other needs,
because every dollar they get is going to these vices, isn't it?
How about just drugs?
Illicit drugs.
150 billion dollars a year on
illicit drugs is spent in America. Look, it's insane. People are wasting so much money on things they don't need.
Just frivolous things on sin, and sin will cost you so much money.
Being righteous will actually preserve you.
Hey, you're not spending all kinds of money on casinos and drinking and cigarettes and drugs and fornication and all these things.
You're going to have a lot of money for other stuff.
Right? So that's why we preach against, that's another benefit of preaching against sin, is it'll save you money.
Sinning less will save you money, literally.