The Preacher's Bible

Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. ⁴You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.

⁵You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;

⁶for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.” ⁷It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? ⁸But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. ⁹Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? ¹⁰For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. ¹¹All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. ¹²Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, ¹³and make straight paths for your feet, so what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. ¹⁴Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord, ¹⁵looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and many be defiled by it, ¹⁶lest there be any sexually immoral person or profane person, like Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal. ¹⁷For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears. ¹⁸For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm, ¹⁹the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them, ²⁰for they could not stand that which was commanded, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned”. ²¹So fearful was the appearance that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”

²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels, ²³to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, ²⁴to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel.

²⁵See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven, ²⁶whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.” ²⁷This phrase, “Yet once more” signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. ²⁸Therefore, receiving a Kingdom that can’t be shaken, let’s have grace, through which we serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe, ²⁹for our God is a consuming fire.