The Daily Audio Bible

¹⁴ Follow after peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one can see the Lord. ¹⁵ Take good care that nobody lacks God’s grace; don’t let any “root of bitterness spring up to cause trouble,” defiling many people. ¹⁶ No one must be immoral or worldly-minded, like Esau: he sold his birthright for a single meal! ¹⁷ You know, don’t you, that later on, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. There was no way he could change either his mind or Isaac’s, even though he wept bitterly in trying to do so.

From Mount Sinai to Mount Zion

¹⁸ You haven’t come, after all, to something that can be touched—a blazing fire, darkness, gloom and whirlwind, ¹⁹ the sound of a trumpet and a voice speaking words which the hearers begged not to have to listen to anymore. ²⁰ (They couldn’t bear the command that “if even a beast touches the mountain, it must be stoned.”) ²¹ The sight was so terrifying that even Moses said, “I’m trembling with fear.”

²² No: you have come to Mount Zion—to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to where thousands and thousands of angels are gathered for a festival; ²³ to the assembly of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God the judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people who have been made perfect, ²⁴ and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which has better words to say than the blood of Abel.

The kingdom that cannot be shaken

²⁵ Take care that you don’t refuse the one who is speaking. For if people didn’t escape when they rejected the one who gave them earthly warnings, how much more if we turn away from the one who speaks from heaven! ²⁶ At that point, his voice shook the earth; but now he has issued a promise in the following words: “One more time I will shake not only the earth but heaven as well.” ²⁷ The phrase “one more time” shows that the things that are to be shaken (that is, the created things) will be taken away, so that the things that cannot be shaken will remain.

²⁸ Well, then: we are to receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken! This calls for gratitude! That’s how to offer God true and acceptable worship, reverently and with fear. ²⁹ Our God, you see, is a devouring fire.