The Daily Audio Bible

¹⁴ Pursue peace and holiness with all, without which no one shall see the Lord.

¹⁵ Watch carefully, so no one falls away from the grace of God. Let no root of bitterness spring up and trouble you, lest many be defiled by it.

¹⁶ Let there be no fornicator or profane person (such as Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal).

¹⁷ For you also know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place for repentance, though he sought that blessing with tears.

¹⁸ For you have not come to the mountain that can be touched - nor to burning fire, nor to blackness and darkness and tempest,

¹⁹ nor to the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words - from which those who heard it excused themselves so that the word would not be spoken to them anymore.

²⁰ For they were not able to abide that which was commanded: “Yea, if a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with an arrow”.

²¹ And so terrible was the sight which appeared, that Moses said, “I fear and quake”.

²² But you have come to the Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God (the celestial Jerusalem), and to the company of innumerable angels,

²³ and to the assembly and congregation of the first born (which are written in Heaven), and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just and perfected,

²⁴ and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament, and to the blood of sprinkling which speaks better things than that of Abel.

²⁵ See that you do not despise Him Who speaks. For if those did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more so shall we not escape if we turn away from Him Who speaks from Heaven.

²⁶ His voice shook the earth then. And now He has declared, saying, “Yet once more will I shake, not the earth only, but also Heaven.”

²⁷ And this, “Yet once more” signifies the removing of those things which are shaken (as in things which are made) so that the things which are not shaken may remain.

²⁸ Therefore, seeing we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may pleasingly serve God with reverence and godly fear.

²⁹ For our God is a consuming fire.