Don’t Get Distracted
Hebrews 12:12-17
The Boeing 747 Dreamlifter is a 747 plane modified to haul cargo instead of passengers. It can haul more cargo than any plane in the world. It weighs about 600,000 pounds and usually requires a runway of 9,200 feet. But in November 2013, a wayward Dreamlifter missed its intended destination of McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas. Well, the plane wasn’t wayward, but the pilots were. They were lost up there. They accidentally landed their jumbo cargo plane nine miles north at the wrong airport – the city owned Jabara Airport. Jabara has no control tower and a 6,100-foot runway.
A spokesperson at McConnell Air Force Base – the right airport – said, “The tower was in contact with the pilot … [but] the guy had no clue where he was landing.” The pilot told the McConnell radio tower, “Apparently, uh, we, uh, have landed at Beech Factory Airport” (a third airport located between McConnell and Jabara). He didn’t even know where he’d landed once he landed!
Eventually it got sorted out. The aimless pilot finally figured out which wrong airport he had landed his plane. A replacement crew came and, after removing most of the cargo, they were able to take off on the shorter runway and get the plane to McConnell, the right airport.[i]
Not paying attention can lead you to the wrong destination. That’s why the writer of Hebrews encourages us to “Look to,” or “fix our eyes on,” “Jesus, the founder and perfecter – the beginning and end – of our faith.”
Sprinters fix their eyes on the finish line before they ever leave the starting blocks. Marathoners fix their eyes on the finish when it comes into sight, and they’re careful to stay on course throughout the long race. They’re looking around, paying attention to where they’re going. Pilots are supposed to know where they are going, and if what’s in their windshield as they approach is wrong. As followers of Jesus, we fix our eyes on Jesus, and we follow him. As we move through this life, we go where he goes. If we’re following a person, no matter who that person is, they’ll eventually lead us away from Jesus. If we’re following an ideology, no matter what that ideology is, it will eventually lead us away from Jesus. If we’re floating through life like a feather on the wind, we’ll quickly get blown away from Jesus by the winds of culture and custom and society.
If we’re going to make to the finish line of life as followers of Jesus, and enter the rest he has for all God’s people, we have to fix our eyes on him, and follow him. We have to make sure that we don’t get distracted along the way. As we continue our journey through the New Testament book of Hebrews, turn with me to Hebrews 12:12-17.
We look to Jesus. Jesus is always the goal. He is also the means. He is the ultimate example of enduring faithfulness. He also enables us to endure faithfully when we’d rather bow out of the race. His suffering for us, his death in our place, and his victorious resurrection are the WAY to have a relationship with God.
But he doesn’t leave us to run the race alone, even though he’s already run, and completed, his. He fills us with the Holy Spirit and ENABLES us to endure. He gives us strength. Remember the beautiful promise of Isaiah 40:31, that “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Now, look at V. 12. In other words, finish the race. Every distance runner knows the feeling of the drooping hands, when you no longer feel like you can pump your arms, and weak knees. I remember talking to one of our college students, Joe Muha, when he was still in high school. He was a very good distance runner in high school, and he ran both cross country and track.
He was talking about running one race in particular, and it was one of the best races he’d ever run. As he got closer to finishing, his body started giving up. He’d used up the glycogen stores in his muscles, the energy source for that kind of running. He was low on electrolytes. Muscles weren’t firing the way they were supposed to any more. His legs were numb below the knees. Endurance athletes call that hitting the wall. He DID finish the race that day. How did he do it? He said, “I just started focusing on lifting my knees.” Get the knees up. One at a time, focus on getting those knees to come back up. Not only did Joe finish, he ran a personal best time that day.
What does Hebrews say? “Lift your drooping hands.” I know you’re tired. Get your arms pumping. “… And strengthen your weak knees.” Get your knees up. Focus on pumping your arms. Focus on getting your knees up. And you’ll be able to keep going. The image here is of a runner who has hit the wall. They don’t think they have anything left. Muscles aren’t working right anymore. Form is crumbling. The brain is saying, “Quit. Stop right now. You can’t do this anymore. You’re done.”
But the race isn’t over. The finish line isn’t right ahead. You have to keep going. Following Jesus is getting hard. People are pushing back against you. Or they’re pushing you away. It would be easier to just do what everyone else is doing. Pursue the American dream. Pursue success and comfort and pleasure. Worship those false idols. No need to keep following Jesus.
And then Jesus turns around, and looks you in the eyes, and says, “Fix your eyes on me. Remember what I went through for you on the cross. The life I am giving you, even in the midst of struggle and heartache, is better than anything you’ll find in this world. And the end of the race is so worth it. So pump those arms, lift those knees, and keep following me. Remember “Those who wait on me will renew their strength. You will fly with wings like eagles; you will run and not be weary; you will walk and not faint.” Stay in the race. Finish the race.
We do not run this race alone. We have Jesus, guiding us, empowering us, lifting us up. But he’s also given us one another. Look at Vv. 13-15. Don’t just finish the race. Finish the race … together. Our pastor slowly shifts from a focus on one runner to a focus on all of the runners. The phrase, “Make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed” isn’t focused just on one runner. It’s focused on the whole group. Run well, so that those behind you, who may, in the moment, be weaker than you, can run well too. Beat the path down for them. Don’t leave the lame ones, the injured ones, behind.
In his paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, Eugene Peterson, who was himself a long distance runner, paraphrases these two verses together beautifully. “So don’t sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so NO ONE will trip and fall, so NO ONE will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!”
A wildfire was threatening people in Jasper National Park, when 18-year-old Colleen Knull sprang into action. She said, “I like to be able to help people, I like the fact that what I do in my work does good.”
You see, she is a volunteer firefighter in North Okanagan in Alberta, Canada. She was working a summer job as part of the kitchen staff at a Jasper lodge when one night an evacuation order was issued for the area. “The smoke was coming up from the mountainside,” she said. “It was big.”
She quickly spread the word to guests of the lodge and tracked down any other people camping out in the area. In total, she rallied 16 people together for a four-hour hike in treacherous terrain to safety.
Rebecca Tocher, a hiker who was in Colleen’s group said, “There was more intense smoke, my eyes were burning, there was ash falling constantly. She was an amazing leader and was just making sure that everyone was working together.”
She used her knowledge of the area and tracking skills to navigate in the dark, and later said:
“I had previously ridden a horse up to that lodge on that same trail and throughout the way me and my employer, we had cut logs on the way up. There were 67 logs, so there would be 67 cut logs on the way down…So, I used my tracking skills – following horse tracks, and horse manure.”
“She was just on it and she led it, the whole way,” said David Richmond, another hiker in the group.
“I do it because at the end of the day, I’d want somebody there to help.”
During the hike down, the group was able to communicate with search and rescue crews to help with the evacuation. Colleen eventually drove all 16 people in her pickup truck out of the evacuation zone. No one was seriously injured.[ii]
No one left behind. No one abandoned. Tough out the hard times together. Yes, we can worship God anywhere. In the woods. On the golf course. On the lake. We can worship God and give glory to God anywhere, and God can and does speak to us anywhere. But God does not want us run our race alone.
Internet sermons and helpful books and individual Bible study are great and necessary, but they are not enough by themselves. We need to be in community with other followers of Christ. When need others to be there for us, and we need to be there for others. That’s how God has built his church. There are no solo bricks in the building. The bricks overlap and strengthen one another. I need you. And you need me. We need one another.
Look closely at V. 14. It looks like it’s telling us to work toward peace WITH everyone. Live peacefully with everyone it’s possible to live peacefully with. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but that isn’t what this verse is actually saying. In the Greek language it was actually written in, the word order emphasizes the “with everyone.” The best way to say it would be, “Strive for peace TOGETHER.” The emphasis is on this being something we are to do together. Not on our own.
But we live in a world that emphasizes, celebrates, and even values the individual over the body. The community. Yes, the individual matters. Jesus leaves the 99 he already has to save the one (Matthew 18:12-14). But that doesn’t mean the community doesn’t matter, or is secondary. Hebrews makes that crystal clear.
“But exhort one another every day …” (3:13)
“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.” (4:1)
“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that NO ONE may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” (4:11)
“And we desire EACH ONE OF YOU to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.” (6:11)
“Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (10:25)
The people running the race with you matter. They aren’t competitors. They’re teammates, and teammates don’t leave one another behind.
Finish the race. Finish it together. And don’t get distracted. Look at Vv. 16-17. Esau was the older brother of Jacob. He was, by birth and by tradition, the rightful heir of God’s promises to his grandfather Abraham. But in a moment of hunger, he came in and sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of stew. Esau gave up what was rightfully his because he was a slave to his appetites. There’s no biblical evidence that Esau was sexually immoral, aside from this passage, although there are some extrabiblical stories about it that the original recipients may have been familiar with.
It’s also true that in the Bible, the unfaithfulness of God’s people to God is often described in words that point to sexual unfaithfulness. Judges 2:17 says, “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.” Spiritual unfaithfulness is described using the extremely powerful metaphor of “whoring after other gods.”
The poor Old Testament prophet Hosea was told BY GOD to marry a prostitute, and his marriage would be a sign to the people of their unfaithfulness before God. Hosea 1:2-3 says, “When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.”
Esau wasn’t swayed by intimidation or threat. He lost his birthright willingly. He got distracted. How do we get distracted as we follow Jesus? How do we find ourselves wandering away willfully?
The first way is through idolatry. The image of idolatry as a “bitter root,” or “root of bitterness,” is found in Deuteronomy 29:18. “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit.”
We may not literally bow before an image of a false god, but we bow internally. To money. To power. To greed. To comfort. To success as this world defines it. To winning. To the American dream. We are tempted to chase after false idols every day.
The second way is by allowing our appetites to rule us. Esau sold his birthright because he was hungry. But he didn’t rule his appetites. His appetites ruled him. Appetites are not in themselves a bad thing. They can serve or they can be served. Our appetite for food keeps us alive. It can also make us unhealthy if it runs unchecked. Our appetite for sex can build an intimate marriage and a beautiful family. It can also tear one apart. Our appetite for pleasure can lead to wonderful times of celebration. It can also lead to addiction and disease. When our appetites rule us, we are constantly running after other things, our eyes fixed on other things, instead of on Jesus.
When I was on the track team in high school, there was another runner on the team who coach had running sprints, but he wasn’t a really fast sprinter. But track teams don’t usually cut athletes, anyone can participate. There just may some meets you don’t get to run in. But you’re a part of the team.
This runner would come out of the blocks, and his head would immediately start swiveling right and left. Looking at the other runners, who were typically way ahead of him pretty quickly. Looking into the stands and the infield to see who was watching. He was supposed to lock his eyes on the finish line before he ever came out of the blocks, but he never did. And he spent the entire 100 or 200 meter run looking around. But usually finished last, as he weaved his way down the track, his body going wherever his eyes looked.
Yes, he finished the sprint. But life in Christ isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. Actually life with or without Christ is a marathon. But if you aren’t following Jesus, there will be times where it may seem easier. Following Jesus sometimes makes it harder than it already is. And we get tired. We hit the wall. We want to quit. But even in the tiredness and struggle, life in Christ is the adventure of a lifetime, and the end makes every moment of struggle worth it. So don’t quit. Finish the race. Finish it together. And don’t get distracted. Let’s pray.
[i] Rick Plumlee and Molly McMillin, “Wayward Dreamlifter captivates the Air Capital,” The Wichita Eagle (11-21-13)
[ii] Kevin Charach, “’She led it the whole way’: 18-year-old B.C. woman leads hikers to safety in Jasper National Park,” CTV News (7-25-24)
