“They were discussing among themselves, ‘We didn’t bring any bread.’ Aware of this, Jesus said, ‘You of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves that you do not have bread?'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We tend to be a reactive people. When a problem presents itself, we focus on that problem until it gets solved. Then we go back into whatever our regular pattern is until the next problem presents itself. Then, we give that all of our attention until it is gone too. If we are not careful, our entire world can be defined by merely what’s in front of us that we can see at the moment. The problem with this is that there’s more to the world than we can see if we’re only looking forward. When we fixate on the immediate, we can easily miss out on the ultimate. Matthew tells the story of when the disciples once fell into this trap. I got the chance to talk about this recently with my Wednesday night Bible study group. Let’s explore the idea today for a few minutes together.

In Matthew 16, after Jesus arrived back in His home region after a ministry trip that ended with His second dramatic feeding miracle, He was met by some of His ideological opponents demanding proof of His identity. He responded by calling out their duplicity and condemning their lack of faith. Then, He went on the road again. He and the disciples got in a boat, and sailed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee from where they had been before.

When they arrived in this new location, the disciples realized that in their haste to leave, they had forgotten to bring bread. This seems odd to us at first read, but in a day without restaurants and grocery stores and even convenience stores, this was a big deal. Besides that, it was embarrassing. They were often the ones who handled the logistics of their travel, and they had forgotten a pretty essential item.

In response to this, Jesus told them to “watch and out beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Well, the disciples, already frustrated at themselves for their embarrassing memory slip, thought that Jesus was fussing at them about forgetting the bread too now. Matthew tells us that they were “discussing among themselves, ‘We didn’t bring any bread.'” I imagine this was a bit more than a sterile “discussion” about the situation. I suspect it took the form of an argument with lots of blaming fingers being thrown around as to exactly whose fault this was. If Jesus was upset with them, somebody was going to get run over by the bus, and none of them wanted it to be them.

Jesus, however, was not in the least bit concerned with the bread. As He would later remind them, He had miraculously fed enormous numbers of people with just a little bit of bread not once, but twice. If their group really needed bread, were the disciples so obtuse to think He wouldn’t be able to provide it for them? Jesus was actually making a spiritual point about the interaction with the Pharisees and Sadducees they had just left, using the present tension as an opportunity to encourage the disciples to not get sucked into the teachings of these groups. But the disciples didn’t get it. They were just too focused on what was in front of them to catch what was going on around them.

How often is this same kind of thing our problem too? We put all of our attention on whatever is right in front of us, and forget entirely about the enormous X-factor of God in all of our situations. When we do that, faithfulness to God’s commands – especially when keeping those commands seems to be entirely at odds with whatever the immediate situation seems to demand of us – is often the first thing to go. We can’t see Him and the rewards He has promised for faithfulness and righteousness any longer. We can only see the problem. And, accordingly, we only react to the problem.

Can you think of some situations in which reacting only to the problem before us and without regard to the large picture of Christ’s command to love like He did could cause additional problems for us to have to deal with later (if not in the moment as well)?

How about when you feel like someone is attacking you in some way? When you’re under attack, loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you doesn’t even register in your mind, does it? Instead, what do you do? You defend yourself. You attack back. You meet their force with not just equal force, but with overwhelming force so as to both punish them for their transgression as well as to convince them not to do it again.

Or, to borrow a page from Matthew’s description of the disciples’ situation here, what about when you are facing a need you don’t know how to meet? In those moments, when we react just to the situation without regard to the God who has promised to never leave us or forsake us, His being able to provide “all these things” for us when we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness doesn’t even register on our radar. Instead, we start looking for ways to grab what we need even and sometimes especially at the expense of the people around us. We’ll beg, borrow, steal, and put ourselves in debt as long as it gives us a semblance of assurance that we will be able to meet our own needs all by ourselves.

The challenge that we face in every circumstance we find ourselves in, but especially the hard ones, is to open our eyes to the bigger picture of reality.

Every single day we face the choice to live as followers of Jesus who believe there is a God who loves us perfectly, who is absolutely committed to our good, and who is more than capable of handling whatever it is we happen to be facing in a given moment, or if we will live as the atheist or pagan who does not have any such beliefs available to him.

Think about it: If in a moment of crisis we stop living out the character of Christ and instead live out the character of the world (selfishness, greediness, ugliness, vengefulness, and etc.) what we are proclaiming by our actions is that at least in the moment we do not believe in the God revealed in the pages of the Scriptures. Instead, we believe in ourselves and whatever we can manage to put our hands around on our own.

The disciples here were living and thinking like Jesus wasn’t even there. They had forgotten bread, and that was the only thing they were thinking about. Forget the two dramatic feeding miracles Jesus references in rebuke of their clueless faithlessness, they had forgotten His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. “So don’t worry, say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.”

By their mindset in this moment, they were proclaiming one of two things: Either that God does exist, but He isn’t like the Scriptures describe Him to be, or that this God doesn’t exist at all and we are on our own.

Here’s the warning for us: If the disciples could live and operate like Jesus wasn’t even there when He was literally, physically standing right there next to them, then we can do the same thing even more easily than they did.

So, how do we guard against this? How do we prevent ourselves from getting so focused on what is in front of us, that we lose sight of who is with us? Well, as a starting point, we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, in prayer, and in an active engagement with the church. When our worldview is being actively shaped by the Scriptures, when we are intentionally seeking God in prayer, and when we are being constantly encouraged by our brothers and sisters in the church, we are far more likely to be able to keep our perspective broad and high than when we aren’t experiencing any of those things.

Another tool in our toolbelt here is worship. When we worship, we are focusing our attention on God rather than on our problems. This is because worship has us acknowledging, celebrating, and participating in God’s character. When our minds and hearts are committed to worship, this keeps our spiritual eyes up and taking in the ultimate of God’s majesty rather than fixated on the immediate in front of us. Worship helps us to not only see, but celebrate who God is. This naturally reminds us that there is more to the world than our issues as well as an active source of help in dealing with them.

Reading good books can be a help here, especially the spiritual classics of the past. When we meditate on the godly wisdom of other followers of Jesus who have thought and wrestled through some of the same challenges we are facing before us we can find encouragement, hope, and help to look beyond our troubles to the relief waiting for us on the other side of them. This can also help us see our situations from a perspective we hadn’t considered before.

Serving someone else can be a real help here too. When we serve someone who is going through their own hard time (and this isn’t the same as trying to solve their problems for them) we naturally have to focus on them and their challenges rather than us and ours. This often allows us to see our problems through the lens of their problems which often makes ours seem a lot smaller than they seemed before. That is, it allows us to see that the world is bigger than just us and what’s going on in our own lives. Now, this service has to be genuine and humble. It can’t be merely about making ourselves feel better. But when we get involved in serving, our attention is shifted.

There are times life comes demanding our attention. That’s a normal part of living in a world that is broken by sin. In each of these moments, we have the choice of how we will respond. Will we see only what’s before us, or will we remember that there is a much larger world beyond that; a much larger world presided over by a God who is good, who loves us, and who is committed to helping us? I hope you’ll make the right choice today.