Matthew 20:12

⁵Even so too at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. ⁶And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.

¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

²³Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself.) I am more so: in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, and in deaths often. ²⁴Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews. ²⁵Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I suffered shipwreck. I have been a night and a day in the deep. ²⁶I have been in travels often, perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils from my countrymen, perils from the Gentiles, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brothers; ²⁷in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness.

²⁸Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies.

⁵⁵When a south wind blows, you say, ‘There will be a scorching heat,’ and it happens.

³and to speak to the priests of the house of the LORD of Armies and to the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?”

⁴Then the word of the LORD of Armies came to me, saying, ⁵“Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?

¹¹Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place.

¹⁴You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God,’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of Armies?

¹Brothers, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God is for Israel, that they may be saved. ²For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. ³For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they didn’t subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

⁸When the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he was faint and requested for himself that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

¹¹For the sun arises with the scorching wind and withers the grass; and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So the rich man will also fade away in his pursuits.