¹⁹ Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, ^(A)I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.

Punishment of Apostates

13 “If there arises among you a prophet or a ^(A)dreamer of dreams, ^(B)and he gives you a sign or a wonder, ² and ^(C)the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ ³ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God ^(D)is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴ You shall ^(E)walk^[a] after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and ^(F)hold fast to Him. ⁵ But ^(G)that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. ^(H)So you shall ^[b]put away the evil from your midst.

^6 (I)“If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, ^(J)the wife ^[c]of your bosom, or your friend ^(K)who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, ⁷ of the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, ⁸ you shall ^(L)not ^[d]consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him;

^14 (A)“Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in ^(B)sincerity and in truth, and ^(C)put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of ^[a]the River and ^(D)in Egypt. Serve the Lord! ¹⁵ And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, ^(E)choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether ^(F)the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of ^[b]the River, or ^(G)the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. ^(H)But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

You Cannot Serve God and Riches

^24 (A)“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. ^(B)You cannot serve God and ^[a]mammon.

Addressing the Areopagus

²² Then Paul stood in the midst of the ^[a]Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; ²³ for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ^24 (A)God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is ^(B)Lord of heaven and earth, ^(C)does not dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵ Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He ^(D)gives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶ And He has made from one ^[b]blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and ^(E)the boundaries of their dwellings, ^27 (F)so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, ^(G)though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸ for ^(H)in Him we live and move and have our being, ^(I)as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ ²⁹ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, ^(J)we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. ³⁰ Truly, ^(K)these times of ignorance God overlooked, but ^(L)now commands all men everywhere to repent, ³¹ because He has appointed a day on which ^(M)He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by ^(N)raising Him from the dead.”