Example: Bad, Admonitions Against

“Speak to the Israelites and tell them: I am the LORD your God.

You must not follow the statutes of the nations I am driving out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.

When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.

Do not be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the LORD, the God of their fathers, so that He made them an object of horror, as you can see.

Do not make friends with an angry man, and do not associate with a hot-tempered man,

…or you may learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

For this is what the LORD has spoken to me with a strong hand, instructing me not to walk in the way of this people:

And you have done more evil than your fathers. See how each of you follows the stubbornness of his evil heart instead of obeying Me.

“The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.

Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles by the green trees and on the high hills.

In the wilderness I said to their children: ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers or keep their ordinances or defile yourselves with their idols.

And it shall be like people, like priest. I will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

Though you prostitute yourself, O Israel, may Judah avoid such guilt! Do not journey to Gilgal, do not go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear on oath, ‘As surely as the LORD lives!’

Israel’s arrogance testifies against them; Israel and Ephraim stumble in their iniquity; even Judah stumbles with them.

Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Turn now from your evil ways and deeds.’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me, declares the LORD.

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: …

Be careful, however, that your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. …

These things took place as examples to keep us from craving evil things as they did.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.