A Serious Warning Against Refusing God

12 Therefore strengthen your slackened hands and your weakened knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame will not be dislocated, but rather be healed. 14 Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. 15 Take care that no one falls short of the grace of God; that no one growing up like a root of bitterness causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; 16 that no one be a sexually immoral or totally worldly person like Esau, who for one meal traded his own birthright. 17 For you know that also afterwards, when he[fn] wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, because he did not find an occasion for repentance, although he sought it with tears.

18 For you have not come to something that can be touched, and to a burning fire, and to darkness, and to gloom, and to a whirlwind, 19 and to the noise of a trumpet, and to the sound of words which those who heard begged that not another word be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.”[fn] 21 And the spectacle was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”[fn] 22 But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to tens of thousands of angels, to the festal gathering 23 and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood[fn] that speaks better than Abel’s does.

25 Watch out that you do not refuse the one who is speaking! For if those did not escape when they[fn] refused the one who warned them on earth, much less will we escape,[fn] if we[fn] reject the one who warns from heaven,

• 26 whose voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised, saying,“Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also heaven.”[fn]

27 Now the phrase “yet once more” indicates the removal of what is shaken, namely, things that have been created, in order that the things that are not shaken may remain. 28 Therefore, since we[fn] are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us be thankful, through which let us serve God acceptably, with awe and reverence. 29 For indeed our God is a consuming fire.