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2 Chronicles 15 2
and he went out to meet King Asa as he was returning from the battle.“ Listen to me, Asa!” he shouted.“ Listen, all you people of Judah and Benjamin! The Lord will stay with you as long as you stay with him! Whenever you seek him, you will find him. But if you abandon him, he will abandon you.
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Deuteronomy 28:15-68
“ But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:Your towns and your fields will be cursed.Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed.Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed.Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.“ The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me.The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy.The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron.The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.“ The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.“ The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic.You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.“ You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit.Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you.You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment.You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you.The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.“ The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone!You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.“ You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops.You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines.You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens.You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.“ The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!“ If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed.These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever.If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received,you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.“ The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand,a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young.Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death.They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land— the walls you trusted to protect you— are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.“ The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you.The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children.He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring— the flesh of one of his own children— because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.The most tender and delicate woman among you— so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot— will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter.She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.“ If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God,then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick.He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief.The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed.Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.“ Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy.For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair.Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.In the morning you will say,‘ If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say,‘ If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you.Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”
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Romans 14:15
And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died.
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Deuteronomy 30:17-19
“ But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods,then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.“ Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!
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2 Chronicles 7 19-2 Chronicles 7 22
“ But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the decrees and commands I have given you, and if you serve and worship other gods,then I will uproot the people from this land that I have given them. I will reject this Temple that I have made holy to honor my name. I will make it an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations.And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by will be appalled. They will ask,‘ Why did the Lord do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’“ And the answer will be,‘ Because his people abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why he has brought all these disasters on them.’”
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Jeremiah 38:23
All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you will not escape. You will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned down.”
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Leviticus 26:14-18
“ However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands,and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands,I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you— wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them.I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!“ And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins.
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Romans 14:20-21
Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble.It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.
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Joshua 22:16-18
“ The whole community of the Lord demands to know why you are betraying the God of Israel. How could you turn away from the Lord and build an altar for yourselves in rebellion against him?Was our sin at Peor not enough? To this day we are not fully cleansed of it, even after the plague that struck the entire community of the Lord.And yet today you are turning away from following the Lord. If you rebel against the Lord today, he will be angry with all of us tomorrow.
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Numbers 14:30-35
You will not enter and occupy the land I swore to give you. The only exceptions will be Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.“‘ You said your children would be carried off as plunder. Well, I will bring them safely into the land, and they will enjoy what you have despised.But as for you, you will drop dead in this wilderness.And your children will be like shepherds, wandering in the wilderness for forty years. In this way, they will pay for your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the wilderness.“‘ Because your men explored the land for forty days, you must wander in the wilderness for forty years— a year for each day, suffering the consequences of your sins. Then you will discover what it is like to have me for an enemy.’I, the Lord, have spoken! I will certainly do these things to every member of the community who has conspired against me. They will be destroyed here in this wilderness, and here they will die!”
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1 Corinthians 8 11-1 Corinthians 8 12
So because of your superior knowledge, a weak believer for whom Christ died will be destroyed.And when you sin against other believers by encouraging them to do something they believe is wrong, you are sinning against Christ.
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Matthew 18:7
“ What sorrow awaits the world, because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.