Thematic Bible: Ambition, worldly, examples of


Thematic Bible




Do you not know that in a race all the runners run [their very best to win], but only one receives the prize? Run [your race] in such a way that you may seize the prize and make it yours!

But earnestly desire and strive for the greater gifts [if acquiring them is going to be your goal].And yet I will show you a still more excellent way [one of the choicest graces and the highest of them all: unselfish love].

Pursue [this] love [with eagerness, make it your goal], yet earnestly desire and cultivate the spiritual gifts [to be used by believers for the benefit of the church], but especially that you may prophesy [to foretell the future, to speak a new message from God to the people].


I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.



Then Adonijah the son of [David’s wife] Haggith exalted himself, saying, “I [the eldest living son] will be king.” So [following Absalom’s example] he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him.

You have indeed defeated Edom, and your heart has lifted you up [in pride]. Enjoy your glory but stay at home; for why should you plunge into misery so that you, even you, would fall [at my hand], and Judah with you?”


Their inward thought is that their houses will continue forever,
And their dwelling places to all generations;
They have named their lands after their own names [ignoring God].


“But you said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the remote parts of the north.


‘What business do you have here?
And whom do you have here,
That you have hewn out a tomb here for yourself,
You who hew a sepulcher on the height,
You who carve a resting place for yourself in the rock?


“Moreover, wine is treacherous and betrays the arrogant man,
So that he does not stay at home.
His appetite is large like Sheol,
And he is like death, never satisfied.
He gathers to himself all nations
And collects to himself all peoples [as if he owned them].


How can you believe [in Me], when you [seek and] receive glory and approval from one another, and yet you do not seek the glory and approval which comes from the one and only God?

who opposes and exalts himself [so proudly and so insolently] above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he [actually enters and] takes his seat in the temple of God, publicly proclaiming that he himself is God.


After this, Absalom got a chariot and horses, and fifty men to run before him. And [he] rose up early and stood beside the gateway; and when any man who had a controversy came to the king for judgment, Absalom called to him, Of what city are you? And he would say, Your servant is of such and such a tribe of Israel.

Moreover Absalom would say, “Oh, that I were appointed judge in the land! Then every man who had a dispute could come to me and I would get justice for him.”


And He said to her, “What do you wish?” She answered Him, “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit [in positions of honor and authority] one on Your right and one on Your left.”

Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the best seats in the synagogues and to be respectfully greeted in the market places.


They said, “Come, let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower whose top will reach into the heavens, and let us make a [famous] name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered [into separate groups] and be dispersed over the surface of the entire earth [as the Lord instructed].”


Now a dispute also arose among them as to which of them was regarded to be the greatest.