No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.

Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.

When He came to the place, He told them, “Pray that you will not enter into temptation.”

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took Him to the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple. . . .

Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

and do not give the devil a foothold.

Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed, and with your feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. Do not present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and present the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He was hungry. The devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” Then the devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. . . .

For when we lived according to the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, bearing fruit for death.

Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes of the Dispersion: Greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. . . .

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him. When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

So the prophet said to the man of God, “Come home with me and eat some bread.” But the man replied, “I cannot return with you or eat bread or drink water with you in this place. For I have been told by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.’” Then the prophet replied, “I too am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, so that he may eat bread and drink water.’” The old prophet was lying to him, but the man of God went back with him, ate bread in his house, and drank water.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of all the earth. So keep watch at all times, and pray that you may have the strength to escape all that is about to happen and to stand before the Son of Man.”

The seeds that fell among the thorns are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the worries, riches, and pleasures of this life, and their fruit does not mature.

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. For this reason, you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect.

Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of His praise be heard. He preserves our lives and keeps our feet from slipping. For You, O God, have tested us; You have refined us like silver. You led us into the net; You laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but You brought us into abundance.

Remember, then, what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know the hour when I will come upon you.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud, and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness. . . .

“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will destroy them both. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you, as though something strange were happening to you.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

And so when ambassadors of the rulers of Babylon were sent to him to inquire about the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone to test him, that He might know all that was in Hezekiah’s heart.

One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman. So David sent and inquired about the woman, and he was told, “This is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. (Now she had just purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned home. And the woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

“Therefore, that is what I will do to you, O Israel, and since I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!

While I was contemplating the horns, suddenly another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like those of a man and a mouth that spoke words of arrogance.

Be careful not to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst. Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles. For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.

For the flesh craves what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world for the causes of sin. These stumbling blocks must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands and two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

It will rescue you from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with seductive words

She does not consider the path of life; she does not know that her ways are unstable. So now, my sons, listen to me, and do not turn aside from the words of my mouth. Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house, lest you concede your vigor to others, and your years to one who is cruel; lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner. . . .

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But if someone tells you, “This food was offered to idols,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience— the other one’s conscience, I mean, not your own. For why should my freedom be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Do not become a stumbling block, whether to Jews or Greeks or the church of God—

Be careful, however, that your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you who are well informed eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged to eat food sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. By sinning against your brothers in this way and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to stumble.

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.

I have written these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in various trials

But they will have to give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear-minded and sober, so that you can pray.

For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter had somehow tempted you and caused our labor to be in vain.

If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.

It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their actions.

I am afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your simple and pure devotion to Christ.

or because of these surpassingly great revelations. So to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

in order that Satan should not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness.

With lofty but empty words, they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh and entice those who are just escaping from others who live in error.

if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

Therefore, beloved, since you already know these things, be on your guard so that you will not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure standing.

while evil men and imposters go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

“But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

Many will be purified, made spotless, and refined, but the wicked will continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac on the altar. He who had received the promises was ready to offer his one and only son,

Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

The princes are inflamed with wine on the day of our king; so he joins hands with those who mock him.

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds,

If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

“I have told you these things so that you will not fall away.

Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning. Then you will be like servants waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can open the door for him at once. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds on watch when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve and will have them recline at the table, and he himself will come and wait on them. Even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night and finds them alert, those servants will be blessed.

Then Satan entered Judas Iscariot, who was one of the Twelve.

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat.

But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

“Why are you sleeping?” He asked. “Get up and pray so that you will not enter into temptation.”

When those present had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. A servant girl saw him seated in the firelight and looked intently at him. “This man also was with Him,” she said. But Peter denied it. “Woman, I do not know Him,” he said. A short time later, someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” About an hour later, another man insisted, “Certainly this man was with Him, for he too is a Galilean.” . . .

The seeds on rocky ground are those who hear the word and receive it with joy, but they have no root. They believe for a season, but in the time of testing, they fall away.

Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, “There is one thing you lack: Go, sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” But the man was saddened by these words and went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There He is!’ do not believe it.

For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders that would deceive even the elect, if that were possible.

Be on your guard and stay alert! For you do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man going on a journey who left his house, put each servant in charge of his own task, and instructed the doorkeeper to keep watch. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know when the master of the house will return—whether in the evening, at midnight, when the rooster crows, or in the morning. Otherwise, he may arrive without notice and find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to everyone: Keep watch!”

Then Jesus returned and found them sleeping. “Simon, are you asleep?” He asked. “Were you not able to keep watch for one hour?

and saw him warming himself there. She looked at Peter and said, “You also were with Jesus the Nazarene.” But he denied it. “I do not know or even understand what you are talking about,” he said. Then he went out to the gateway, and the rooster crowed. There the servant girl saw him and again said to those standing nearby, “This man is one of them.” But he denied it again. After a little while, those standing nearby said once more to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you too are a Galilean.” But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak!”

Some are like the seeds along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.

But they themselves have no root, and they remain for only a season. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there; and the final plight of that man is worse than the first. So will it be with this wicked generation.”

The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Then He said to them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me.” Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” Then Jesus returned to the disciples and found them sleeping. “Were you not able to keep watch with Me for one hour?” He asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” A second time He went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, may Your will be done.”

“Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

Meanwhile, Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came up to him. “You also were with Jesus the Galilean,” she said. But he denied it before them all: “I do not know what you are talking about.” When Peter had gone out to the gateway, another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And again he denied it with an oath: “I do not know the man!” After a little while, those standing nearby came up to Peter. “Surely you are one of them,” they said, “for your accent gives you away.” . . .

So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down—he who accuses them day and night before our God.

They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.

And the dragon was enraged at the woman, and went to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea.

Wake up and strengthen what remains, which was about to die; for I have found your deeds incomplete in the sight of My God.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Therefore let us stop judging one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.

If your brother is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother, for whom Christ died.

It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything to cause your brother to stumble.

This third I will bring through the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are My people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’”