Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up the one in need and bringing grace to those who listen.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but think of yourself with sober judgment, according to the measure of faith God has given you.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.

I have written to the church about this, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not accept our instruction. So if I come, I will call attention to his malicious slander against us. And unsatisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and forbids those who want to do so, even putting them out of the church.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

But you shall not be like them. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who leads like the one who serves.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, how slow are your hearts to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?”

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

be heard by You from heaven, Your dwelling place. And may You forgive and repay each man according to all his ways, since You know his heart—for You alone know the hearts of men—

When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to possess, and He drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you. Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire. . . .

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost! Why spend money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of foods. Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant—My loving devotion promised to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the nations, a leader and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, has bestowed glory on you.” . . .

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning He went back into the temple courts. All the people came to Him, and He sat down to teach them. The scribes and Pharisees, however, brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before them and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do You say?” . . .

“You hypocrites!” the Lord replied, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it to water? Then should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be released from her bondage on the Sabbath day?”

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Even in times past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel out and brought them back. And to you the LORD said, ‘You will shepherd My people Israel, and you will be ruler over them.’”

Now then, why do you test God by placing on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?

Teach them to your children, speaking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who only feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed their flock? You eat the fat, wear the wool, and butcher the fattened sheep, but you do not feed the flock. You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strays, or searched for the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty. They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild beasts. . . .

You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strays, or searched for the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty.

You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.”

Then they understood that He was not telling them to beware of the leaven used in bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

“Watch out!” Jesus told them. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

When Jesus had finished saying these things, He left Galilee and went into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there. Then some Pharisees came and tested Him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? . . .

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

Because of this, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and others you will flog in your synagogues and persecute in town after town.

They love the places of honor at banquets, the chief seats in the synagogues, the greetings in the marketplaces, and the title of ‘Rabbi’ by which they are addressed.

For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. In this confident boasting of mine, I am not speaking as the Lord would, but as a fool. Since many are boasting according to the flesh, I too will boast. For you gladly tolerate fools, since you are so wise. In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or exalts himself or strikes you in the face. . . .

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.

For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself, for fear of those in the circumcision group.

This issue arose because some false brothers had come in under false pretenses to spy on our freedom in Christ Jesus, in order to enslave us.

Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. They only do this to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ. For the circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.

Beloved, although I made every effort to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt it necessary to write and urge you to contend earnestly for the faith entrusted once for all to the saints.

So Jesus declared, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them call themselves benefactors.

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.

So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.

Then Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married, for he had taken a Cushite wife. “Does the LORD speak only through Moses?” they said. “Does He not also speak through us?” And the LORD heard this. Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any man on the face of the earth. And suddenly the LORD said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “You three, come out to the Tent of Meeting.” So the three went out, and the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud, stood at the entrance to the Tent, and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them had stepped forward, . . .