¹⁸ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’

⁹ Those who want to get rich^(A) fall into temptation and a trap^(B) and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money^(C) is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith^(D) and pierced themselves with many griefs.^(E)

²⁴ Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!^(A)

On Not Loving the World

¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world.^(A) If anyone loves the world, love for the Father^[a] is not in them.^{(B) 16} For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh,^(C) the lust of the eyes,^(D) and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

⁴ They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.^(A)

⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me^(A) to have life.

¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.^(A)

²⁶ “Just as it was in the days of Noah,^(A) so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. ²⁷ People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

²⁸ “It was the same in the days of Lot.^(B) People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. ²⁹ But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

³⁰ “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.^{(C) 31} On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.^(D)

¹⁴ The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches^(A) and pleasures, and they do not mature.