God’s Word for You

Philippians 4:19-20 God will supply every need

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, April 28, 2026

19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. 20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Another application of Gerhard’s “pious dexterity” is to consider examples throughout the Scriptures, and especially in the life of Paul, when God supplied every need for his saints according to his glorious riches.

Adam and Eve were given everything in Eden so that they had virtually no work at all to do. The clear river of Eden that divided into four headwaters (Genesis 2:10) was their source of living, running water, delicious and cold, whenever they wanted and as much as they could ever desire. It was “a spring of living water” and would be used as a comparison by God to the prophets that forsaking him is like digging miserable holes for muddy water when you are next to the clear running stream of God (Jeremiah 2:13; Zechariah 14:8).

What did Noah need to build the ark that the Lord commanded? The Lord gave Noah everything, even providing sons for him, sons who were not yet born when the Lord gave him his first command to build. God commanded an ark of enormous proportions, and yet when God gives commands, he also gives the ability and the resources to keep those commands, so that Noah “did all that the Lord commanded him” (Genesis 7:5). And God protected Noah during his lifetime, as Peter says (2 Peter 2:5).

God supplied Abraham with everything he needed when he called him out of Ur and moved him to Canaan. The Lord promised him that he and his descendants would inherit the world, and this was on account of nothing that Abraham did, but on account of his faith (Romans 4:13). Servants, flocks, herds, friendships that turned into trusted military alliances (Genesis 14:16, 14:24)—all of these things were given to him as gifts from God.

When Hagar was turned out from Abraham and Sarah’s tent on account of Sarah’s jealousy and anger, the Lord did not abandon her. He came to her himself as the Angel of the Lord—she was the first person ever to see him this way—and he blessed her. He showed her a well of water to save her life and the life of her son. He also blessed her with a gospel promise that he would make her son into a great nation. But the promise came first (Genesis 21:18-19), so that the physical blessing was proof of the spiritual one, as he so often does with us.

After Isaac’s mother died, the Lord blessed the search that Abraham assigned to a servant to find an ideal wife for the young man. And although Abraham left an inheritance for Ishmael, Hagar’s son, and for the many sons Abraham had with his second wife Keturah after Sarah died (Genesis 25:6), he left everything else he had, the vast majority of his wealth in cattle, flocks, herds, silver, gold, and other things, all to his son Isaac, so that Isaac was well-supplied late in life and so that he could teach his sons Jacob and Esau how to care for vast numbers of animals and servants with success and to the glory of God, Esau as a hunter, but Jacob with the flocks and herds “among the tents” (Genesis 25:27-28).

The Lord blessed Jacob and supplied him with everything he needed, including the experience of handling a rough father-in-law who was a crooked swindler and who would have duped Jacob out of everything he worked for had the son of Isaac not had wisdom and a craftiness that came from a long and hard lesson, working as he did for fourteen years to marry the girl he loved (Genesis 29:20, 29:30). And Jacob lived long enough to see all twelve of his sons, and their children, safe and sound in Egypt during the famine under the care of his dearest child after many hard adventures. And when Jacob died, Joseph’s hand closed his father’s eyes (Genesis 46:4). God blessed Jacob and made him the father of all of the tribes of Israel, and they were named after him forever; and all true Israelites who trust in the Deliverer, Jesus Christ, will be saved (Romans 11:26).

And who does not know about the Lord’s grace and great generosity to Joseph? For Joseph was given visions of God’s own plans as a young man, and when his family, even his father and his mother’s sister, became jealous of his words, they mistrusted him and abused him with their words. But he remained faithful to the Lord. The Lord preserved his life when his own brothers sold him as a slave to the Midianites (Genesis 37:38). And the Lord prospered him when the Midianites sold him as a slave to Potiphar the Egyptian (Genesis 37:36). God preserved Joseph when Potiphar’s wife made her advances to him and then lied about it to her husband, so that Joseph was sent to prison (Genesis 39:12, 39:20). But the Lord made Joseph prosper in prison, giving him the ability to interpret dreams while he was there (Genesis 40:8), so that when Pharaoh had dreams that needed to be interpreted, someone remembered Joseph and he was brought out to advise the king of Egypt, who then promoted him to be second only to him (Genesis 41:14, 41:44). And in this way God not only blessed Joseph, but all Israel, by bringing them out of Canaan during the famine and prospering them in Egypt until that dynasty of the Pharaohs came to an end (Exodus 1:6-7). And later he raised up Moses to bring them all out of Egypt and bless them all over again (Psalm 105:26; Isaiah 63:11-14).

All of these accounts seem to show God doing great things for great men and women, but each one seemed small at the time, little steps along life’s long and winding path, little blessings that turned out to be life-changing gifts to the people of God. How has God blessed you? How has he blessed me? I am a man who had known some hardships, and griefs, and challenges of many kinds. But surely the Lord has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4). The Lord has been there to help and to protect us whenever he pleases, and his holy angels have watched over me when I myself was too foolish to pay attention. If I had a pen like the pen of Moses, my life’s story might sound like the ones written there in Genesis with the accounts and Toledoth of the Patriarchs of old. But the Lord also works hard at sparing me from the sin of pride and other temptations, all the while giving his gifts without ever holding them back. The riches of Christ Jesus, which begin with the forgiveness of sin, life, salvation, freedom from guilt and the grave and so many other good things, all come to us through faith, faith that is itself a gift. This is why we give glory to God forever, because of how great is his love toward us, and his faithfulness continues forever (Psalm 117:2). Bless his holy name!

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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