Young people, enjoy your youth. Be happy while you are still young. Do what you want to do, and follow your heart's desire. But remember that God is going to judge you for whatever you do.

"Who can understand the human heart? There is nothing else so deceitful; it is too sick to be healed.

For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill,

all these evil things come from inside you and make you unclean."

My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God.

Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word "Today" in the scripture applies to us.

My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with them."

But we are tempted when we are drawn away and trapped by our own evil desires.

Then our evil desires conceive and give birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

These are the people who cause divisions, who are controlled by their natural desires, who do not have the Spirit.

When they return, they are to get rid of all the filthy, disgusting idols they find.

I will punish my people because they have sinned; they have abandoned me, have offered sacrifices to other gods, and have made idols and worshiped them.

The Sovereign LORD says, "Israel, long ago you rejected my authority; you refused to obey me and worship me. On every high hill and under every green tree you worshiped fertility gods.

But I will not have pity on them; I will do to them what they have done to others."

Even today you offer the same gifts and defile yourselves with the same idols by sacrificing your children to them in the fire. And then you Israelites still come to ask what my will is! As surely as I, the Sovereign LORD, am the living God, I will not let you ask me anything.

I will take away from among you those who are rebellious and sinful. I will take them out of the lands where they are living now, but I will not let them return to the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD."

So I will turn my anger loose on them, and like a fire I will destroy them for what they have done." The Sovereign LORD has spoken.

Listen to what the LORD says about the king who rules the kingdom that David ruled and about the people of this city, that is, your relatives who were not taken away as prisoners with you.

I will pursue them with war, starvation, and disease, and all the nations of the world will be horrified at what they see. Everywhere I scatter them, people will be shocked and terrified at what has happened to them. People will make fun of them and use their name as a curse.