12:1 Wherefore, seeing we also are encompassed with so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin
which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience
the race that is set before us,
12:2 Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith;
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God.
12:3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners
against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
12:4 Ye have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.
12:5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh to you
as to children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked by him:
12:6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every
son whom he receiveth.
12:7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons:
for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
12:8 But if ye are without chastisement, of which all are
partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.
12:9 Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected
[us], and we gave [them] reverence: shall we not much rather be
in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?
12:10 For they verily for a few days chastened [us] after their
own pleasure; but he for [our] profit, that [we] might be
partakers of his holiness.
12:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous,
but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable
fruit of righteousness to them who are exercised by it.
12:12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the
feeble knees;
12:13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is
lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
12:14 Follow peace with all [men], and holiness, without which
no man shall see the Lord:
12:15 Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God;
lest any root of bitterness springing up, trouble [you], and by
it many be defiled;
12:16 Lest there [be] any fornicator, or profane person, as
Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birth-right.
12:17 For ye know that afterward, when he would have inherited
the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of
repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
12:18 For ye are not come to the mount that might be touched,
and that burned with fire, nor to blackness, and to darkness,
and tempest,
12:19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which
[voice] they that heard, entreated that the word should not be
spoken to them any more:
12:20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And
if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned,
or thrust through with a dart:
12:21 And so terrible was the sight, [that] Moses said, I
exceedingly fear and tremble:)
12:22 But ye are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels,
12:23 To the general assembly and church of the first-born, who
are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the
spirits of just men made perfect,
12:24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the
blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than [that of]
Abel.
12:25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they
escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, much more
[shall not] we [escape], if we turn away from him that
[speaketh] from heaven:
12:26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath
promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but
also heaven.
12:27 And this [word], Yet once more, signifieth the removing of
those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved,
let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably, with
reverence and godly fear.
12:29 For our God [is] a consuming fire.
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