Drinks were served in gold cups, no two of them alike, and the king was generous with the royal wine.

"But all his relatives and dependents will become a burden to him. They will hang on him like pots and bowls hanging from a peg!

Satan replied, "A person will give up everything in order to stay alive.

When that day comes, they will throw away the gold and silver idols they have made, and abandon them to the moles and the bats.

What will you do when God punishes you? What will you do when he brings disaster on you from a distant country? Where will you run to find help? Where will you hide your wealth?

A time is coming when all of you will throw away the sinful idols you made out of silver and gold.

Give up all the evil you have been doing, and get yourselves new minds and hearts. Why do you Israelites want to die?

Will you gain anything if you win the whole world but lose your life? Of course not! There is nothing you can give to regain your life.

"Then those who are in Judea must run away to the hills.

Someone who is in the field must not go back to get a cloak.

But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake.

Not only those things; I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ

As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses around us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us.