Exodus 23, John 2, Job 41, 2 Corinthians 11

Exodus 23,

"Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.
"Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd,
and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.
"If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him.
If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.
  
  "Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.
Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.
"Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.
"Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.
"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops,
  
  but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.
"Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.
"Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.
"Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
"Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt. "No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
  
  "Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. "Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.
"Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD.
"Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast. "The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning.
"Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. "Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.
"See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.
  
  Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.
If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.
My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.
Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces.
Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you,
  
  and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.
"I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.
I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.
But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you.
Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.
  
  "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you.
Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods.
Do not let them live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you." 

John 2,

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there,
and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."
"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come."
His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
  
  Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so,
and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside
and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."
  
  This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
  
  To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"
His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me."
Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?"
  
  But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.
But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.
He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
 

Job 41,

"Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words?
Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life?
Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?
  
  Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants?
Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?
If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering.
No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me?
  
  Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
"I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and his graceful form.
Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle?
Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?
His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together;
  
  each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.
They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.
His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
  
  His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.
Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him.
The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable.
His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.
When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing.
  
  The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him.
A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance.
His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
  
  He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.
Nothing on earth is his equal-- a creature without fear.
He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud."
 

2 Corinthians 11

I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that.
I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles."
  
  I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?
I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you.
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so.
As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine.
  
  Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!
And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about.
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
  
  I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting.
In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool.
Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast.
You gladly put up with 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 pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face.
  
  To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that! What anyone else dares to boast about--I am speaking as a fool--I also dare to boast about.
Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham's descendants? So am I.
Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,
  
  I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.
I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.
Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
  
  The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying.
In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me.
But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.