Doing good and communicating or sharing cost you something, just like a sacrifice that was burned up. The prosperity gospel people say, ‘If you give to the work of the Lord then the Lord will give back much more to you in return’, but that is heresy. The Bible says that our giving is a sacrifice and sacrifice meant that something was consumed; it was burned up; it was gone. You gave it: you made your pledge, your homage, your payment to God. Now in the New Testament it is a sacrifice of Christian service; I gave that money; I gave that time. If I give so many hours each week to the service of God, he is not going to add those hours onto my life in the way that the prosperity gospel people imagine. If I give support to Christian work, to the relief of people, God is not going to give me that support multiplied back again: it is a sacrifice. Yes, he may bless me, but not in equivalent terms. I cannot turn my giving, which is in part a remedy for covetousness, into the means of further enriching myself which feeds covetousness.