Philippians 4:19

And my God will supply your every need according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Paul mentioned God in the previous verse, saying that what they gave was a sacrifice pleasing to God.

Now he mentions God as the one who will supply their every need, and in the next verse, he will give praise to God, saying, "Glory be to Him forever and ever."

Let's compare that to an instruction that Moses gave to the children of Israel.

Be sure you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses, when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, and who brought you through the great, fearful wilderness of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from a flint rock and fed you in the wilderness with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you. Be careful not to say, “My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth.” You must remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he made by oath to your ancestors, even as he has to this day. Now if you forget the Lord your God at all and follow other gods, worshiping and prostrating yourselves before them, I testify to you today that you will surely be annihilated. Just like the nations the Lord is about to destroy from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not obey him. (Deut. 8:11-20)

There is a trap in basing faith solely on the numerous requirements and the threat of impending doom for any violation of the Old Testament.

We begin to depend on ourselves and our own works, rather than on Christ and the favor we have with God through him, apart from anything we have done or would do.

With a fixation on the works-based principles of the Old Testament, the focus verse would be seen as conditional, as in the Deuteronomy passage. And people now say that you need to find a man of God to give to before you can be blessed.

But viewed from the angle of the complete works of Christ, we see that Paul is merely reminding them of their reality. Why? Not so that they would do anything extraordinary - Paul already said he is not writing because he wants them to give - but to deepen their faith. Because faith is founded on the word of truth, the word of God, on reality as defined by God.

Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

Paul, in the focus verse, was telling them about their reality in Christ, about the unconditional riches of Christ available to them because they belong to Christ, which is something you cannot get anywhere else in this world.

In a previous verse, Paul mentioned how what they give accrues to their own account, and I have labored to show that this counts towards our reward in the afterlife.

But this verse has nothing to do with that. This verse is not talking about us and what we have done or should do; it is talking about Christ and what He has done. It is His spiritual riches, not our natural riches. And the needs we meet are more than material ones.

Back to the Deuteronomy passage, and we see some blindness here when we talk about the ability to get wealth.

There is confusion when the words Moses spoke to the people before they entered the land of promise are applied to believers, as if they were spoken directly to us.

Taken as a whole, the passage is a warning to a people who, as they would later show, have a tendency toward idolatry.

It is not a demand for giving from your wealth, nor is it talking about a so-called covenant of wealth for believers.

Moses is not saying we must use our wealth to support the gospel. He is not. And you don't have to pick up stone to stone me as if I am saying the gospel should not be financially supported. I am just expressing a commitment to scriptural fidelity against the money merchants on the pulpits.

I want to reject the confused message proclaimed in the name of Christ. It is not innocent. There is nothing innocent about falsehood, regardless of who says it.

If the aim of preaching is for us to be like Christ, which it is, then proclaiming a message of a covenant of wealth from that passage is us taking one step forward, then 1,000 backwards, in my opinion.

It is damaging to our spiritual psyche. It blinds us from seeing the glory of Christ more clearly, as the veil of reading Moses is used to cover our eyes. And we would suffer for it. Such preaching constitutes spiritual abuse. And this is a call to repent.

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness,  and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective.  But their minds were closed. For to this very day, the same veil remains when they hear the old covenant read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away.  But until this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,  but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom.  And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:12-18)

Again, the covenant mentioned in that Deuteronomy passage is the promise God made to the ancestors of Israel to give them that land; the covenant is not about taking the gospel to the world.

And you must "remember that the Lord your God" does not translate for the Christian into the threat of "if you do not give a big offering, God will not make you broke, etc." And don't let the eloquence or the bright light, or the smoothness of speech, or the confident presentation fool you.

If we would just not take verses out of context in the bid to make every verse about the money-for-blessing heresy, maybe we can begin to open our eyes to the truth.

But the so-called prosperity message, which is a damnable heresy in my opinion, is a gate of hell, where God and his word are coopted into an evil agenda. May God help us!