OET-RV HEB Chapter 12

12 So then with us having a cloud of witnesses around us, we should discard everything that’s a burden, as well as the sin that is always so near to us. We should run the race that’s ahead of us with endurance, 2 with our eyes on Yeshua, the originator and perfecter of our faith, who endured execution on a stake and disregarded the shame of that event for the satisfaction that he’d gain. Now he’s seated there in the seat of honour beside God’s throne.

3 You all need to think about Yeshua and how he persevered when sinners quarrelled with him (although they only hurt themselves) so that you can be strong on the inside and persevere. 4 So far, you all haven’t had to resist to the point of sweating or shedding blood in the struggle against sin. 5 What’s more, you’ve failed to remember what Solomon encouraged his children to do, which also applies to all of you:[ref]

“My child, learn carefully when the Lord trains you.

Indeed, you shouldn’t become despondent when he corrects you.

6 Because it’s the people that the master loves that he disciplines,

Indeed he punishes every child that he calls his own.”

7 It’s for your own discipline that you all have to endure. God is treating you as his children, and what sort of father wouldn’t discipline them? 8 If you all weren’t disciplined (which all children experience), then you wouldn’t be true children, but rather illegitimate ones. 9 What’s more, our human parents trained us when we were children and we changed our behaviour, so, we should accept it even more when our spiritual father, God, trains us so that we can have life. 10 Indeed, they were disciplining us for a few days according to what seemed best to them, but God our father does it for our benefit so that we can also distance ourselves from sin. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful, however later it produces peace in those who’ve been trained in this way so they do what is good and right.

12 So then, straighten your drooping arms and paralysed legs, and be strong.[ref] 13 Make your paths straight[ref] so that those who’re lame won’t be discouraged, but rather come and be healed.

14 Strive to live live peacefully with everyone and to distance yourselves from sin, because no one will get to see the master without doing that. 15 Watch carefully to make sure that no one misses out on God’s grace, and to make sure that no bitterness grows up among you that could mess up many people’s lives,[ref] 16 and watch also that none of you are sexually immoral or godless like Esau who sold his own inheritance for a single meal.[ref] 17 As you all know, even afterwards when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected because he couldn’t find a way to undo what he’d done despite looking for it along with his many tears.[ref]

18 You all haven’t come to what can be touched and to a blazing fire and to darkness and to gloom and to a storm (like Israelis encountered at Mt. Sinai)[ref] 19 and to a a trumpet blast and then God speaking a message. But when they heard him speaking, they pleaded for him not to say anything else to them, 20 because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be killed.”[ref] 21 Even Moses, when he saw how frightening everything was he said, “I’m trembling because I am afraid!”[ref]

22 But in contrast, you’ve all come to the city of the living God (Mt. Zion), to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of God’s messengers to the assembly, 23 and to the assembly of the eldest sons who have been registered in the heavens, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the people who’ve been declared innocent and who’ve been made perfect, 24 and to Yeshua, the mediator of a new agreement, and to the sprinkled blood that says even more than Abel’s blood did.[ref]

25 Make sure that you all obey God who’s speaking to you, because if the ancient Jews were punished when they were warned on earth (at Mt. Sinai), how much more God will punish any of us who don’t obey what he reveals to us now (from Mount Zion).[ref] 26 When God spoke back then (from Mount Sinai), it made the earth quake. However, at this time he promises, “I’ll make the earth and also heaven quake one more time.”[ref] 27 The words ‘one more time’ mean that God will take away everything that he shakes, since it was him who created all those things. So everything that he doesn’t shake and take will last forever.

28 So then, since we now live in a kingdom that can’t be shaken, we should be thankful, and so offer acceptable worship to God, with awe and the deepest respect 29 because ‘the God we worship is a fire that burns things up’.[ref]