eat no food that has been offered to idols; eat no blood; eat no animal that has been strangled; and keep yourselves from sexual immorality. You will do well if you take care not to do these things. With our best wishes."

So Jacob said to his family and to all who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods that you have; purify yourselves and put on clean clothes.

"Worship no god but me.

Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation.

Do not make any treaties with the people of the country, because when they worship their pagan gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you to join them, and you will be tempted to eat the food they offer to their gods.

Your sons might marry those foreign women, who would lead them to be unfaithful to me and to worship their pagan gods.

These women invited them to sacrificial feasts, where the god of Moab was worshiped. The Israelites ate the food and worshiped the god

They offered their own sons and daughters as sacrifices to the idols of Canaan.

They made themselves impure by their actions and were unfaithful to God.

Now tell the Israelites what I am saying: Why must you commit the same sins your ancestors did and go running after their idols?

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.

Now, concerning what you wrote about food offered to idols. It is true, of course, that "all of us have knowledge," as they say. Such knowledge, however, puffs a person up with pride; but love builds up.

So then, about eating the food offered to idols: we know that an idol stands for something that does not really exist; we know that there is only the one God.

yet there is for us only one God, the Father, who is the Creator of all things and for whom we live; and there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created and through whom we live.

Food, however, will not improve our relation with God; we shall not lose anything if we do not eat, nor shall we gain anything if we do eat.

Suppose a person whose conscience is weak in this matter sees you, who have so-called "knowledge," eating in the temple of an idol; will not this encourage him to eat food offered to idols?

And in this way you will be sinning against Christ by sinning against other Christians and wounding their weak conscience.

No! What I am saying is that what is sacrificed on pagan altars is offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be partners with demons.

Or do we want to make the Lord jealous? Do we think that we are stronger than he?

But there are a few things I have against you: there are some among you who follow the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak how to lead the people of Israel into sin by persuading them to eat food that had been offered to idols and to practice sexual immorality.

But this is what I have against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a messenger of God. By her teaching she misleads my servants into practicing sexual immorality and eating food that has been offered to idols.

The rest of the human race, all those who had not been killed by these plagues, did not turn away from what they themselves had made. They did not stop worshiping demons, nor the idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see, hear, or walk.

He had a small scroll open in his hand. He put his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,

Then the voice that I had heard speaking from heaven spoke to me again, saying, "Go and take the open scroll which is in the hand of the angel standing on the sea and on the land."

What I meant was that you should not associate with a person who calls himself a believer but is immoral or greedy or worships idols or is a slanderer or a drunkard or a thief. Don't even sit down to eat with such a person.

Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts

Someone else will say, "Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food." Yes; but God will put an end to both. The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body.

Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body.

But because there is so much immorality, every man should have his own wife, and every woman should have her own husband.

I am afraid that the next time I come my God will humiliate me in your presence, and I shall weep over many who sinned in the past and have not repented of the immoral things they have done---their lust and their sexual sins.

What human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral, filthy, and indecent actions;

Since you are God's people, it is not right that any matters of sexual immorality or indecency or greed should even be mentioned among you.

You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed (for greed is a form of idolatry).

God wants you to be holy and completely free from sexual immorality.

Let no one become immoral or unspiritual like Esau, who for a single meal sold his rights as the older son.

Marriage is to be honored by all, and husbands and wives must be faithful to each other. God will judge those who are immoral and those who commit adultery.

You have spent enough time in the past doing what the heathen like to do. Your lives were spent in indecency, lust, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and the disgusting worship of idols.

But as for the Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent them a letter telling them we decided that they must not eat any food that has been offered to idols, or any blood, or any animal that has been strangled, and that they must keep themselves from sexual immorality."

The one thing you must not eat is meat with blood still in it; I forbid this because the life is in the blood.

No Israelite may eat any fat or any blood; this is a rule to be kept forever by all Israelites wherever they live.

for the people of Israel. No fat of cattle, sheep, or goats shall be eaten.

Anyone who eats the fat of an animal that may be offered as a food offering to the LORD will no longer be considered one of God's people.

Anyone who breaks this law will no longer be considered one of God's people.

If any Israelites or any foreigners living in the community eat meat with blood still in it, the LORD will turn against them and no longer consider them his people.

That is why the LORD has told the people of Israel that neither they nor any foreigner living among them shall eat any meat with blood still in it.

The life of every living thing is in the blood, and that is why the LORD has told the people of Israel that they shall not eat any meat with blood still in it and that anyone who does so will no longer be considered one of his people.

But you must not eat their blood; you must pour it out on the ground like water.

Only do not eat meat with blood still in it, for the life is in the blood, and you must not eat the life with the meat.

If you obey this command, the LORD will be pleased, and all will go well for you and your descendants.

"Do not eat any animal that dies a natural death. You may let the foreigners who live among you eat it, or you may sell it to other foreigners. But you belong to the LORD your God; you are his people. "Do not cook a young sheep or goat in its mother's milk.

But do not use their blood for food; instead, you must pour it out on the ground like water.

and so they rushed over to what they had captured from the enemy, took sheep and cattle, slaughtered them on the spot, and ate the meat with the blood still in it.

But I replied, "No, Sovereign LORD! I have never defiled myself. From childhood on I have never eaten meat from any animal that died a natural death or was killed by wild animals. I have never eaten any food considered unclean."

"Tell them what I, the Sovereign LORD, am saying: You eat meat with the blood still in it. You worship idols. You commit murder. What makes you think that the land belongs to you?

Everything that God has created is good; nothing is to be rejected, but everything is to be received with a prayer of thanks,

because the word of God and the prayer make it acceptable to God.