Sources of Strength for the Spiritually Weary
Reflections on Hebrews 12:1-3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
—Hebrews 12:1-3
Weary and Losing Heart
What we call the “book” of Hebrews originally was a letter, written by someone (maybe the apostle Paul) and sent to a congregation like ours to encourage them in light of particular challenges they were facing. It’s unusual that we don’t know who wrote it, who they wrote it to, or where it was delivered.
Fortunately there are lots of clues in the letter itself that, taken together, can give us a clear enough picture of what was going on that inspired someone to write it.
Our passage concludes a section that begins way back in chapter 10. It provides a little more context about their situation. The people in this church had been publicly humiliated for their faith. Some had their property seized. Some had been imprisoned. Others stood in solidarity with the persecuted. They stood side by side through a very public social crisis. That’s good! But it sounds like some are now tempted to stop meeting together (10:25). Maybe associating with other Christians feels—especially other Christians on the wrong end of public opinion—is too much of a liability. They were strong for a season. But now they are growing weary and tempted to lose heart.
That’s a feeling I can relate to: weary. Tempted to lose heart. I’m tired. And so when I bump into the heart of our passage—the main exhortation and command—I have a problem. Our passage says:
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, (v1)
Even at my best, this passage is not my energy. I don’t like to run. I don’t understand people who like to run. At my best, this metaphor wouldn’t do anything for me.
But I’m not at my best after the year we’ve had. Maybe you aren’t either. A pandemic and all its challenges—physical, mental, relational, logistical; ugly and demeaning arguments about justice on social media and in person; a contentious election; mistrust about masks and conspiracy theories. Some of us have been in the crosshairs for our faith; others for our politics. Maybe last summer some of us tried to stand in solidarity with sisters and brothers who were facing a horrific public, social crisis. But this summer we’re tired. Maybe it feels like too much of a liability to be associated.
So I don’t want to run a race. I want to take a nap.
We are tired in body and tired of mind. Some of us here today are tired in our spirits. Someone here today, I’m sure of it, is trying to decide whether it’s worth it to keep going in their faith. Some are weary and are ready to lose heart not in a general way but spiritually.
How do we throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for us when we are spiritually weary?
This passage offers two sources of strength for those who are spiritually weary.
Rely on the Faith of Others
The first source is this: Rely on the Faith of Others
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses (v1)
The therefore at the beginning of our passage connects us to the previous chapter, to a long list of faithful people from previous generations who endured faithfully during hardship. Our passage calls these people a great cloud of witnesses.
The phrase great cloud means that there were a lot of them.
Hebrews 11 lists some, but not all of them, beginning with Cain and Abel. Abraham (11:8-22) and Moses (11:23-29) feature prominently. And Joshua and some of the judges and some prophets are mentioned, too.
There are others in Hebrews 11 whose stories don’t appear in our Bibles but they were part of the Jewish tradition in the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The great cloud of witnesses experienced a lot of hardship. They left behind inheritances and trusted in God’s provision. They lived as refugees in new lands. They waited a long time for promises to be fulfilled. They defied unjust governments. They endured persecution.
This list of witnesses serves two purposes:
First, the author is trying to put his congregation’s present suffering in perspective by offering examples of faithful suffering from the past.
Yes you lost your property—Abraham, too, left behind his father’s household and wealth and followed God to a strange land.
Yes you have been mocked and shamed and even imprisoned—others, too, were beaten and imprisoned and even killed.
These experiences didn’t crush them. They endured it all by faith. (that phrase—by faith—is repeated 19 times in chapter 11).
The author isn’t trying to trivialize their experience. No one who is weary feels comforted or encouraged when you trivialize their experience.
My wife and I tried for years to have biological children. Some people tried to trivialize it by making light of the situation—“Well at least it’s fun to try!” Yeah, at first. But everything loses its appeal from repetition. Others tried to trivialize it by comparing it to worse things: “At least you didn’t miscarry.”
Even if someone means for comments like these to be comforting, they rarely are. What we did find comforting was the few times someone listened to our story patiently and replied like this: We’ve been through that too. It was very hard. We never got answers to all our questions. But God was faithful. We saw his faithfulness in the following ways....
The author of Hebrews isn’t trivializing the congregation’s experience. He’s not saying, ”It could be worse!” Instead he’s normalizing their experience. Yes, your experiences are taxing. Others have been there before. You will be ok.
The Christians in Hebrews join the great cloud of witnesses for us. And they put our own current experiences into historical perspective.
They help us recognize that
we are not the first generation of Christians that is tired.
we are not the first generation of Christians that is tempted to lose heart.
we are not the first generation of Christians to do the math and wonder if life would be easier if we didn’t identify ourselves with other Christians.
This great cloud of witnesses has already run the race we’re in. They know how it ends. The author of Hebrews wants us to look at them and be strengthened in our weariness, encouraged when we’re tempted to lose heart.
So, first, the great cloud of witnesses are examples—of those who walked through the valley of the shadow of death and came out the other side.
Second, these witnesses play another, more important role.
The Greek word translated “witnesses” here is martys, from which we get the English word “martyr.” It can mean what it sounds like—someone who testifies to their faith by dying for it. And a few of the people in Hebrews 11 did just that. Some were stoned, sawn in two, put to death by the sword (11:37)! But most of them weren’t. Most were witnesses in the normal sense: they watched something happen and then testified about it.
As different as their circumstances were, all of the witnesses listed in Hebrews 11 saw the same thing: they experienced and witnessed the faithfulness of God.
Yes, they endured hard things and believed (by faith). But what’s more important than their example is their testimony. Consider these examples:
“By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life” (11:11)
“By faith they [the Israelites] passed through the Red Sea as though dry land” (11:29)
“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after the Israelites had marched around them for seven days” (11:30)
At first blush it may look like the witnesses’ faith caused these miraculous things to happen. But that’s not the case.
If you go back and read the story of Sarah, you’ll see that Sarach received the promise before she believed the promise. Her faith didn’t make her pregnant.
God did that.
If you go back and read the story of the Red Sea crossing, you’ll see that the Israelites didn’t part the sea with a great act of faith. God did that.
If you go back and read the story of Jericho, you’ll see that marching and blowing trumpets didn’t make the walls fall down. God did that.
Which is all to say that the testimonies of the great cloud of witnesses point to something beyond them all—they all point to what God did. They are not role models that we should imitate them so much as they are witnesses that we should listen to them. Another way to say this is that we are surrounded by the witnesses, but we aren’t instructed here to fix our eyes on them. They are there to point us to something else.
When we are weary and tempted to lose heart, we can rely on the faith of others who can tell us, “Look what God did!”
One symptom of being spiritually weary is that you can’t see past your own experience, your own questions or disappointments. You can’t see God at work. That’s totally normal. And that’s why other Christians are such an important source of strength when we’re weary.
Other followers of Jesus have been through hardship too. Others have doubted their faith, doubted their friends, doubted God. Others have been abandoned and bruised. Others have felt that God was slow in keeping his promises. When we feel that way we need them to say, “I’ve been there. Look what God did.”
When our faith is weak, we rely on those whose faith is strong. When we don’t feel God’s goodness and when we can’t see the path in front of our feet, we need to rely on the faith of others. Not only a few others but such a great cloud of witnesses.
We have an advantage over the original audience for the book of Hebrews. The author only lists biblical examples. That’s not because there are no other faithful witnesses anywhere else. It’s because there hadn’t been much Christian history at the time the letter was written. They were within the first generation of Christians. But we have 2,000 years of history—2,000 years of faithful Christian witnesses. We have witnesses in our own generation—in our own church and in our own lives.
When we are weary, we can rely on the faith of others.
Reduce Your Focus to Jesus
This first source of strength points us to the second—a better one. The great cloud of witnesses testifies about Jesus. They prompt us to Reduce Our Focus to Jesus.
The passage uses two words to describe Jesus, both of which are a little strange (and both of which come up over and over throughout the book of Hebrews)
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (v2)
First, Jesus is the “pioneer” of our faith. Some translations say author or originator. The Greek word can mean a range of things. If you take the sense of the word as author it means that the faith we have is a gift from Jesus. As Philippians 1:6 puts it, Jesus “began a good work in you.” That “good work” is faith. Jesus began it. He is the author.
If you take the sense of the word as pioneer it means that he went first. Hebrews 2 tells us that Jesus became like us—like his brothers and sisters—by taking on flesh and walking among us so that he could experience all the things we experience.
For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” (2:18)
This race we’re running—Jesus ran it first. He knows the pain of separation and betrayal and disappointment. That means he can do more than forgive us. He can empathize with us. Like the great cloud of witnesses he has been here before.
Jesus is also the “perfecter” of our faith. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6). Like the great cloud of witnesses Jesus has experienced the hardships we experience and he endured:
For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame (v2)
Unlike the great cloud of witnesses, he finished the race—once and for all. He completed the race in such a way that he ensures the outcome for all of us.
For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame—that’s the race—and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God—that’s the end.
Because Jesus endured the shame of the cross and was raised from the dead, he has made the outcome of our race sure. There are no odds on this race. No gamble. We will finish. We will win. Not by white knuckling it but because of what Jesus has already done.
Both of these aspects of Jesus’ work are crucial—both pioneer and perfecter.
It’s tempting to view Jesus as far off and unaffected by our experiences. For many of us, it’s easy to imagine him seated at the right hand of the throne of God without thinking much about the shame of the cross.
The Christian tradition I grew up in talked a lot about Jesus as perfecter of our faith—the finished work and the crown of diamonds and all that. And it’s true. But it’s only half true.
We were less good at talking about Jesus as the pioneer of our faith. I’m learning it still. I’ve had to find new guides—a broader cloud of witnesses—to help me see how important it is that Jesus not only endured the shame of the cross but also the normal pain of human life on earth. Black and Latino sisters and brothers have helped me see Jesus in the dirt of everyday life. They help me see that when Jesus finished his earthly race, he was covered in the same dust and sweat and mud that covers all of us. They help me see that Jesus too was
Publicly humiliated
Imprisoned
Had is property taken when his clothes were divided by Roman soldiers
Who was abandoned by his closest followers when they decided that associating with him was too great a liability
Our author says
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (v3)
I suggested earlier that you should Reduce Your Focus to Jesus. One translation says look only at Jesus. What might that mean?
If you are spiritually weary, it might be because you are burdened by the failures and abuses of Christian institutions and organizations. It may well be that the great cloud of witnesses feels like a liability. You may be tired from constant news of cover-ups and power plays and in-fighting. My wife calls this collection of institutions and organizations and agencies and denominations (what we call “evangelicalism”) The Firm.
At some point you have to separate Jesus from The Firm. You have to look only at Jesus and look hard so you don’t lose him among all the operations of The Firm. Jesus can be found in The Firm—absolutely. But he can be obscured there, too. And if you’re weary, you’ve got to look only at Jesus.
There’s a paradox here, as there often is in the Christian life. Fixing your eyes (only) on Jesus doesn’t mean that you go it alone and hide away from everyone else and seek Jesus by yourself. Verse 1 won’t allow that. The great cloud of witnesses is part of our relationship with Jesus.
When it all works the way it’s supposed to, Relying on the Faith of Others and Reducing Your Focus to Jesus are one and the same, not two separate strategies. German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes what this looks like in his book Life Together, right at the beginning of WW2. He wrote:
“God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of a man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”
Good witnesses will always point you to Jesus. If the witnesses you’re listening to aren’t pointing you to Jesus, you may need to shut off the newsfeed, stop the doom scrolling, and make time to be quiet with Jesus. It means you may need to take the time to hear about Jesus from a good witness and then make time to get better acquainted with Jesus yourself.
In This Together—Ideally
Before we end, we have to deal with this section of our passage I don’t particularly like:
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race that is before us (v1)
Take a look at what’s plural and what’s singular. Let us is plural; the race is singular.
This is a sports metaphor. But it’s not a competition—we’re not trying to beat other people across the finish line. We’re trying to get everyone across the finish line together. We—together—are running one race.
We are in this together.
Unfortunately the reason many of us are spiritually weary is because our experience—especially in the last year—is that we are not in this together. We have been doubting each others’ motives when we should have been carrying each other’s burdens; we’ve been questioning the sincerity of other peoples’ faith when we should have been testifying to Jesus; we’ve been denying peoples’ experiences when we should have been empathizing with their struggles.
Our passage describes a better way.
Mark 2 tells the story of some friends who understood this. Four guys have a friend who can’t walk. They hear that Jesus is in town and believe that if they can put their friend in front of Jesus, Jesus will heal him. So they carry their friend to the house where Jesus is teaching. And when they get there, the house is so full of spectators that they can’t squeeze their way in. So they climb the roof, make a hole in the ceiling, and lower their friend down in front of Jesus. The audacity!
We don’t know how the friend on the mat felt about all this. We don’t know if he said, “Please take me to Jesus!” or “Guys, this is embarrassing. Put me down!”
We do know that Jesus heals the man who can’t walk—because of the faith of his friends.
That’s what it looks like to run the race together. Sometimes we’re the weak friend who needs to be carried. Sometimes we’re the strong friends who need to do the carrying.
That means there’s a takeaway here for all of us:
If you are weary and losing heart, tell someone. There’s no shame. Someone here as been where you are before and they can help you see where God is at work.
If you are not weary and not losing heart, remember that your job is to be a witness—to remind the rest of us what God has done for you and what he can do again.
All of us, whatever condition we’re in, need to look—together—at Jesus and keep sharpening that vision.
This is the manuscript for a sermon originally delivered at Roosevelt Community Church (Phoenix, AZ)