The Lord commanded a man of God [160] from Judah to go to the city of Bethel. King Jeroboam was standing at the altar offering incense when the man of God arrived.
But the man of God [164] said to the king, “I will not go home with you, even if you give me half of your kingdom! I will not eat or drink anything in this place.
Don’t let me want to do bad things.\par Stop me from joining bad people\par when they do wrong.\par Don’t let me share the things\par those bad people enjoy doing.\par
Moses warned the people, “Move away from the tents of these evil men. Don’t touch anything that belongs to them! If you do, then you will be destroyed because of their sins.”
Brothers and sisters, I ask you to be very careful of those people that cause people to be against each other. Be very careful of those people that upset other people’s faith. Those people are against the true teaching you learned. Stay away from those people.
I am writing to tell you that the person you must not associate with is this: any person that calls himself a brother in Christ but sins sexually, or is greedy, or worships idols, or talks bad to people, or gets drunk, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with a person like that.
Don’t do the things that people in darkness do. Doing those things brings nothing good. But \{do the good things to\} show that those things in darkness are wrong.
But Samuel answered, “Which pleases the Lord more: burnt offerings and sacrifices [138] or obeying the Lord’s command? It is better to obey God than to offer sacrifices to him. It is better to listen to God than to offer the fat from rams.