Run Through Exhaustion

Introduction

Hebrews 8:1–6 ESV

1 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2 a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. 3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. 4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. 5 They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” 6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.

Hebrews 12:1–3 ESV

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

I’ve been a sports fan as long as I can remember, and have therefore enjoyed good sports movies. My earliest sports movie recollection is a film by Warren Beatty, Heaven Can Wait. Beatty’s character was named Joe Pendleton. He was the star quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams (who are, of course, the LA Rams again now, after years in St. Louis!). Joe was about to lead his team to the Super Bowl but is struck by a truck while riding his bike. An overzealous angel prematurely removes him from his body, assuming that he was about to die. When he arrives in heaven Joe refuses to believe that his time is up. So, he pleads his case that he needs more time on earth. He successfully argues his point with Mr. Jordan (the overzealous angel’s supervisor). But there’s a problem. He can’t go back into his original body because it’s been cremated. So, they’ve got to find another dead body for him to enter. Lo and behold, there’s this multi-millionaire who’s just died—murdered by an unfaithful wife.

Joe comes back to life in the multi-millionaire’s body. Then he buys the Rams so that he can become their starting quarterback and lead them to the Super Bowl. The problem is that his wife still wants him dead! Right before the Super Bowl, he’s shot. The Rams must start the backup quarterback in the game. But during the game the backup takes a brutal hit, and guess what happens? He dies. What happens after that? Right again. Mr. Jordan sends Joe into the back up quarterback’s body. He comes back and leads the Rams to Super Bowl victory!

What does this story have to do with hope? I’m glad you asked. The message of the movie is that “heaven can wait” because heaven can’t possibly be better than getting what I want right now. If I attain my dream, that’s heaven! But the truth is that is when I do get what I want, I quickly find out that there’s something else I want that’s even better.

In Hebrews the Pastor demonstrates that there’s nothing better in the present life than the heavenly reality for those who have Jesus as their great high priest. As he presses even further in on the glory of Jesus’ priestly ministry, his message is that life is better in Christ now. Not simply that everything’s going to be better in the “sweet by-and-by” of heaven, so you’ve got to keep grinding through the “nasty now-and-now” on earth until you get there. There’s some truth there, but his message is that the reality of heaven’s sweet by-and-by has broken into the nasty now-and-now, and that makes all the difference in the world for God’s people. So he fixes their gaze and focus on the heavenly realities so that they will understand its impact on them right now.

It's All Better

What makes life better? There may be as many different answers to that question as there are people. However, when I say “better” I don’t mean “easier.” When it comes to new technology, advertisers promise that what’s new will make our lives better because it will make our lives easier, more convenient, more comfortable, more materially prosperous. It’ll give me more control over my life. New technology has completely changed our daily lives, making many things easier in a more connected world. But is life necessarily “better” because things are new or easier? The stress that comes with constant connection via technology is well testified. We’re not made to be “on” all the time. So, you can’t just assume that new technology means a better life.

It is easy for our view of a better life to be tethered to our perception of how much control we have. Life becomes better to the degree that I am able to exercise control over everything from my self-definition to my environment. During my undergraduate years I memorized the poem Invictus, written by William Ernest Henley in 1875. The last stanza of the poem declares,

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

It is a fist-shaking defiance in the face of adversity. “I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul,” he writes in the first stanza. There is a resonance in the human heart with the need to be the master and captain of our lives. We find ourselves making declarations like this in response to the wearying battle for control. There are certainly times when the ability to summon this kind of defiant resilience in the face of adversity is a benefit.

On January 1, 2023 actor Jeremy Renner was tragically crushed under the steel tracks of his 14,000 pound snowcat. His body was literally broken from toe to head and he groaned in agony for every breath. His neighbors and nephew were desperately tending to him, exhorting him to hold on as they waited for Emergency Medical Services to make their through the snow and render aid. Miraculously, he survived. Diane Sawyer interviewed Jeremy and his family just a few months after the accident. She asked the family, “Are you amazed by this recovery? What do you attribute it to?” Jeremy’s sister, Kim, said, “Yeah. It’s just being stubborn as [bleep].” “That’s 100% what it is,” another family member chimed in. “He’s not going to let anything take him down.” Jeremy laughed and said, “I have that tenacious belief.” Sawyer replied, “I mean, this is like Hawkeye belief.”[1] “Well, I don’t know. It’s just belief man,” was Renner’s response. “His fellow superheroes and friends already know that about him,” Sawyer tells us. “Jeremy Renner does not give up.”

Whether or not Renner is familiar with Invictus, that’s the kind of resilience and fight he displayed while on the precipice of death. And it likely played a role in saving his life. At the same time, if his neighbors weren’t in their garage with the door partly open to allow his nephew to slide under the door and beg for help; if the wind hadn’t died down just enough to allow the medical helicopter to land and transport him to the hospital, all his individual resilience would not have saved his life. Renner, of course, is aware of this miraculous confluence of events. Friends, defiant resilience in the face of adversity may be a benefit, but is not able to control life and make it better.

Dr. Elissa Epel is a world-renowned psychologist and expert on stress. In her book The Stress Prescription, she writes,

A sense of control is one of the pivotal factors that drives our stress levels up and down. We love control…We want to know our future. And not only to know it, but to have the power to determine how it unfolds to the greatest extent possible.[2]

Even though feeling a sense of control helps to regulate our emotions, Dr. Epel points out that this is a double-edged sword. We respond to the uncertainty of life by attempting to exert more control so that our lives become more predictable and safer. That will make stress more constant in our lives and toxic to us.

When it comes to God’s promise of a better life, “better” is not determined by the measure of control we are able to exercise over it. That’s the problem that the Hebrews are having. I can hear them talking to the Pastor now. “Pastor, you sold us a bill of goods! This whole life with Jesus thing is supposed to be better, but we’re catching hell!” It becomes necessary for the Pastor to readjust their definition of better.

Simultaneously, just because life is better, doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting.

A common implement in CrossFit workouts is the Concept2 rower. While I despise running, I enjoy rowing. In the 2018 CrossFit Games, one of the early surprise tests was a marathon, but on the rower! A marathon row is 42,195 meters, or 26.2 miles.

Following the Games a few members of my gym decided we’d like to train for a marathon row. Prior to this adventure, I’d never rowed more than 5,000 meters in one session. We set the date for December 1, 2018 at the gym, and put a plan in place from September through November. It began with multiple 10km rows per week. Then a 15km row. The next increase was a half-marathon, 21.1km rows. Eventually, a week out from the marathon, the row distance was 30km. When I completed that last long-distance row before the marathon date, I thought to myself, “That really hurt. How am I going to make it to 42.2km?”

I experienced thoughts similar to what authors Jerry Lynch and Walter Scott address in their book Running Within.

Fatigue is both physiological and psychological. Glycogen stores become depleted and you become physiologically tired. A message is sent to your brain “Why am I doing this? Let everyone pass, I can't keep up.” Those thoughts hold us back. We end up becoming upset and anxious, which fosters the feeling of fatigue. We need to EMBRACE it and make positive adjustments to push through it.

To complete a marathon means learning to run (or row, in my case) through the exhaustion. Fatigue and weariness set in. It’s inevitable. This is one reason why many people who start a marathon don’t actually finish.

The marathon analogy is perfect for what embodied hope looks like. As the Pastor begins to wrap up his “word of exhortation,” he tells the Hebrews they have need of endurance. He’s pointing out to them and us that the life of faith in Jesus Christ is like running a race that God has marked out for you, and you need to endure. Fatigue is setting in, and some of them seem to be in danger of dropping out. Embrace the reality that there’s not way to run the race without facing fatigue or exhaustion. So, if you’re going to finish, there must be a compelling reason to run along with the strength to press through the fatigue. God both calls and empowers his people to run through the exhaustion. The compelling reason to run through the exhaustion is because we have Jesus both as our example of faithful endurance and as the source for the strength we need to endure. “How do you run through the exhaustion?” Here are our three coaching points to answer that question, Stay With the Crowd, Drop the Weight, and Keep Your Head Up.

Stay With the Crowd

For this very reason, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay down every weight and the sin which controls us so tightly. Through endurance let us run the race set before us. (Hebrews 12:1, author’s translation)

The great cloud of witnesses that the Pastor is referring to in Hebrews 12:1 are the members of the hall of faith in chapter 11, of whom he says the world was not worthy. You see, the race that the Pastor is describing is neither a sprint nor a relay race, where I run my leg of the race and pass the baton on to you. It’s a marathon—a strange marathon. I don’t compete as an individual. I’m not trying to win the race and beat everybody else. It’s a marathon that I run with a whole bunch of other folks who are in the race with me, and the goal is not for me to break away from the pack and cross the finish line. The goal is that we all run together and cross the finish line together. We need community if we are going to hold tightly to the hope set before us in Christ.

All of the references are to “we” and “us.” “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… Let us lay aside… Let us run the race… The only time he speaks in the singular here is when he refers to Jesus. So, his emphasis on the life of faith is corporate. It’s life as the people God together. Running the race with the crowd. He wants to see everybody cross the finish line. And it’s been that way throughout the letter. He had said that very thing to them in chapter 3 & 4.

Hebrews 3:13–14 ESV

13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Hebrews 4:1 ESV

1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

The race we run in the church, we run together. We stay with the crowd. And when I read this first part of v. 1 I get the image of a group of people running a marathon at around mile number 17. They’ve already run a long way, but they’ve still got a long way to go. And there’s a large crowd on the sidelines, who’ve run the race already, and are cheering them on and helping them push past the exhaustion. If you’ve ever been a part of a competition and there’s a large crowd cheering for you, you’re able to keep going.

How do you run through exhaustion in the Christian life? It’s not by a rugged individualism. Stay with the crowd that’s surrounded by the cloud.

The question for the Christian is never simply, “how am I doing at running the race?” The question always includes, “how are those around me doing running the race?” “Where are those around me starting to fade and fall off and lag behind?” You see that’s part of the reason why the race gets exhausting, and why we need supernatural strength to press on. It’s because God calls his people to bear one another’s burdens. He calls his people to carry those who are weak at the moment.

Drop the Weight

This gets especially challenging when you’re compelled by the gospel of Jesus Christ that the local church should look like its community in all of its diversity—Black, White, Asian, Latino[EM1] , citizen, immigrant, rich, poor, young, old—pursuing unity in diversity under the banner of Jesus Christ, it can mean much more cultural discomfort.

So, this vision, this pursuit of faithfulness to Christ by pursuing unity for the sake of the gospel is like running a weird sort of marathon. You run it together with a group of other folks who are running the same race. That’s one way of talking about what the church is. By God’s grace, he would have us run through the exhaustion by running together. We might be cool with that. OK, I get it. I’m not alone. I need to run with the crowd if I’m going to run through the exhaustion.

The second point is where it gets kind of sketchy. How do you run through the exhaustion? Well, you’ve got to drop the weight. The Pastor says, “since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay down every weight and the sin which controls us so tightly.”

Recently I purchased a weight vest to add more load to some of my training. If I have the time, I will take a 3-4 mile weight vest walk after my workout. At the beginning of the walk the additional weight doesn’t feel too bad. But by the time I’m getting close to the end of the walk, all I want to do is take the weight vest off and drop it on the street. The walk would be so much better in the moment if I didn’t have that vest weighing me down.

The Pastor’s saying, here’s the deal. We can’t run the race God has marked out for us if we’re not willing to deal with the problem of our sin. When he says, “let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely,” the verb that’s translated as “lay aside” means to “lay down” or to “put away.” It’s used only nine times in the New Testament. Seven out of those nine times it’s used in the context of laying aside or putting away sin. Here are three examples.

Romans 13:12 ESV

12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Colossians 3:8 ESV

8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

James 1:21 ESV

21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

(Matt 14:3; Acts 7:58; Rom 13:12; Eph 4:22, 25; Col 3:8; Heb 12:1; James 1:21; 1 Pet 2:1)

It’s hard to deal with sin. What about the cliques, the spoken and unspoken walls we allow to remain in the church, where we decided that we can only do life according to our affinity groups? It’s much easier to ignore it, brushing sin aside and not engaging it. It’s much easier to try and ignore it instead of confessing it. But there’s only one chapter in this whole letter where we don’t find the word sin. He’s been careful to show us how Jesus, by his sacrificial death on the cross dealt with the problem of sin. But he’s also been careful to show us that Jesus intercedes for his people before the face of God the Father, and that he helps his people overcome temptations. The Pastor said in ch. 2, “surely it’s not angels he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham” (v. 15). Then in v. 18 he says, “Because he himself suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Do we really want to lay aside those things that are hindering our ability to run well, that sin of disunity that seems to control us so tightly? In the choices and the decisions we make as individual believers and churches every day do we ask the question, “is this a help or a hinderance to God’s call for us to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?” We’ve got weight that we need to drop if we’re going to pursue this unity. The reason this gets sketchy is because we might shake our heads ‘yes,’ but when the rubber meets the road, our actions can give a different answer. Because this is hard. He didn’t say, “let us lay aside every weight and sin that bugs you every now and then.” He said, “that clings so closely.” He’s not talking about the stuff we don’t have a problem with. He’s walking right up the street of the things that mess us up. He’s saying, “that’s what God would have you all lay down.” If it was easy, he wouldn’t have told us that Jesus helps his people. If it was easy, we could do it ourselves.

Keep Our Heads Up

How do we run through exhaustion? We’ve got to stay with the crowd. We’ve got to drop the weight. And we’ve got to keep our heads up. When I say “keep our heads up,” I don’t mean it in the sense of a motivation speech a coach gives to a team when they’re down in the dumps. I mean it in the sense of Psalm 121, where the psalmist says,

Psalm 121:1–2 ESV

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

The Pastor says essentially the same thing here in v. 2. How do you run through the exhaustion? Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus is the founder of all true faith in God. That is, he is the pioneer of faith. The Pastor used this word before in 2:10 when he said that it was fitting that God, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Jesus’ entire life, as one commentator says, is the very embodiment of trust in God. There is no better example of faith for us to see or follow. From beginning to end his life was one of perfect obedience. Although he was a son, we’re told in 5:8-9, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.”

Philip Hughes says it well in his commentary,

“It is on him...that in every age the gaze of faith is focused.”

Remember what he said in ch. 11 as he talked about Moses? V. 25-26, Moses chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Why? Because he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. In every age faith keeps its head up, focused on the Savior Jesus Christ.

This keeping our head up and looking to Jesus is not simply about Jesus as our example. He’s our example, yes, but the Pastor doesn’t call us to look at Jesus. He says let us look to Jesus. Look to Jesus for help. Look to Jesus for strength. Look to Jesus for hope. Look to him in the sense of relying upon him. Because he’s not just the founder of faith. He’s the perfecter of faith. A perfecter is someone who brings something to a successful conclusion. As the perfecter of our faith, Jesus brings us through to the end.

This verse is the fifth time in the letter where the Pastor tells us that Jesus has taken his seat in the position of power and authority at the right hand of God. Why so many times? Isn’t it enough for him to have said it in 1:3 and left it at that? He repeats himself so much because the Hebrews are having trouble running the race. They’re having trouble enduring through the point of exhaustion. It seems as though the powers of this world who are causing this trouble, both the people who are against them and their own sin; it seems like those things are stronger than the Savior they have trusted in.

So he reminds them and us over and over again that Jesus is right now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Jesus finished the work that the Father gave him to do. He endured such hostility against himself from sinners. He endured the cross, despising the shame. Throughout his entire life as he endured the hostility, as he endured the suffering, as he endured the cross, what was set before him was joy. The road to the joy ahead of him was through the cross. That joy was an ever present focus. His joy is not just being in the position of authority with the Father. The joy set before him was also to bring many sons and daughters to glory.

Here’s how I would translate v. 3 of our text: “For consider him who has endured against himself such hostility by sinners, so that you might not give out after your souls become tired.”

Some of us in here are exhausted. Your souls are tired. You feel as though your soul’s strength has been exhausted. Do you understand that God is not surprised by that? Do you understand that you’re not in some unusual place in the life of following Jesus? Do you understand that exhaustion comes with the territory? The point of this passage is not that faithfulness to Jesus means that we won’t get exhausted. It is that faithfulness to Jesus means that you will become exhausted. Can you embrace the fatigue this morning…Can you sit in it and hear God saying, “I want you all to keep running through the exhaustion!” How? Keep your heads up! You endure through the exhaustion by setting your focus on Jesus, the one who endured such hostility against himself from sinners.

I can’t put it any better than Helen Lemmel does in the hymn she penned in 1922,

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in his wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of his glory and grace.

How do we run through exhaustion family? We stay with the crowd. When your soul becomes tired, don’t drift away from the church. Stay in it. We drop the weight. We always stand ready to have our sin exposed by God so that we can confess and repent. And we keep our heads up, looking to Jesus who is both our example of endurance and the source of the strength we need to endure.