1 Therefore, seeing that we are also surrounded with such a great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every burden and all wandering from the path that skillfully surrounds us. Run the race that is set before us with perseverance,
2 turning our eyes away from other things and focusing them toward Jesus, the One Who begins and fully completes our supernatural belief and trust, Who, because of the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, thinking little or nothing of the shame, and is now sitting down at the Right Hand of the Throne of God. *
3 For consider Him Who endured such opposition of wicked people against Himself, so that you don't become weary and weak in your minds.
4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, fighting against wandering from the path and missing the mark.
5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children, "My mature son,  don't take the chastening of the Lord lightly. Don't become despondent when you are rebuked by Him,
6 for whomever the Lord loves He chastens and scourges every mature son whom He receives.
7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with mature sons; for what mature son is he whom the Father doesn't chasten?
8But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then you are illegitimate children, and not mature sons.
9 Furthermore we have had fathers, our flesh and blood, who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shouldn't we much more willingly be in obedience to the Father of spirits and live?
10 For they truly did chasten us for a few days as it seemed right to them, but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.
11 Now no chastening for the present seems to be an occasion for joy, but an occasion for grief. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are vigorously exercised in themselves.
12 Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees
13 and make upright paths for your feet, so that the lame don't stray from the path, but rather are totally cured.
14 Run swiftly toward harmony with each and every person and holiness, without which no one can see the Lord,
15 diligently seeing to it that no one has too little of the divine power for righteousness, holiness, and redemption of God; seeing to it that no root of wickedness springs up and troubles you, and, by this wickedness, many are contaminated;
16 seeing to it that no one fornicates or is ungodly, as Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal.
17 For you know how it is indeed truth that afterward, when he desired to have received the blessing, he was rejected, for he found place for a renewed mind, though he sought it carefully with tears.
18 For you have not come to the mountain that you can touch and feel and burning with fire and gloom and darkness and a sudden storm
19 and the sound of a trumpet, and the sound of a voice uttering words, which [voice] those who heard begged that the utterance should not be spoken to them any more.
20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, and if so much as an animal touched the mountain, it had to be stoned or shot down with a spear.
21 And the sight was so terrible that Moses said, "I'm shaking with fear.")
22 However, you have come to Mount Zion, and to the City of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an unlimited number of angels,
23 to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, who are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made complete,
24 and to Jesus the One Who intervenes with the new arrangement of inheritance, and to the sprinkled blood that utters better things than [the blood] of Abel.
25 Discern and don't avoid Him Who speaks. For if those who avoided Him Who spoke on Earth didn't escape, it will be much worse if we turn away from allegiance to Him Who speaks from Heaven,
26 Whose Voice then shook the Earth, but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I shake, not only the Earth, but also Heaven.
27 And this utterance, "Yet once more," reveals a change of those things that are shaken and thrown down, like things that were created, so that those things which cannot be shaken or thrown down may remain.
28 Therefore, since we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have divine power for righteousness, holiness, and redemption, by which we serve God in a way that is well-pleasing [to Him], with respectful reverence and godly awe:
29 For our God is a consuming fire. * *