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]