Don’t Let Physical Problems Distract You from Spiritual Threats

When I sit down to read the gospels, I find that Jesus sometimes says and does things that surprise me. Sometimes, for example, He reacts very negatively to something the disciples say or do that, to me at least, seems innocent enough. For example, in Mark 8 Jesus gets really upset at the twelve because they misunderstand His metaphor. He tells them to watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, and they mistakenly think He’s talking about bread. Not their brightest moment, but it seems like a simple mistake. To Jesus, however, it’s a very big deal. “Do you have hardened hearts?” He asks His disciples.

Upon first really pondering Jesus’ reaction, this seemed to me like quite the accusation. Misunderstanding a spiritual metaphor led to Christ asking if they were spiritually blind and hardened in their hearts. In fact, Jesus goes on to paraphrase an expression that is normally used to refer to Israel’s rejection of His work when He asked, “Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear?” Why such strong language for what seems like a simple mistake?

Now, if I think that Christ is overreacting, that means that I see things differently than He does. And if I see things differently than He does, then I’m wrong and He’s right. So when I come to passages where what Jesus says or does bothers me, I need to keep plugging away until I see what it is He sees so that I can think how He thinks. So let’s take Mark 8 as our model. What is it that made Jesus so upset with His disciples?

A Little Bit of Context

Whenever we read Scripture, we need to look at the context. Sometimes the gospels feel like a bunch of random stories connected together by the simple fact they are all about Jesus. Take a closer look, though, and I think you’ll see that these “random” stories are more closely connected than you might think.

For example, the fact that Jesus warns about the leaven of the Pharisees in Mark 8:15 comes right after Jesus faced off with the Pharisees in Mark 8:11-13. In other words, Jesus’ statement to the disciples was in response to something going on at that time. It wasn’t just random statement out of the blue. The Pharisees had done something that really upset Jesus, and He warned the disciples and apparently expected that they would be bothered, too. Of course, they weren’t. They were concerned about bread, which is what upset the Lord.

But when we read the exchange with the Pharisees, it doesn’t seem that explosive. I mean, they had accused Him of being possessed by Satan (Mark 3:22) and begun planning His death by this point in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 3:6). Asking for a sign seems like small potatoes in comparison. But once again, the context matters. Jesus had just fed 4,000 people (Mark 8:1-10). Now He sails to a different region and is met by a coalition of Pharisees who come to argue, asking for a sign from heaven. The idea seems to be, “Yeah, feeding 4,000 people is impressive, but we want more. We want you to do something supernatural in the heavens, the stars.”

The sequence of events is important to note. Jesus gets in a boat and sails to Dalmanutha (Mark 8:10). The Pharisees ask for a sign from heaven (Mark 8:11). Jesus sighs deeply in His spirit, in other words He is really bothered by this, and instead of giving a sign tells them they will get no sign (Mark 8:12). He then gets in the boat and leaves immediately, despite having just arrived (Mark 8:13). Apparently, Jesus was so bothered by what He saw that He got out of there and decided He needed to warn His disciples.

Dangerous Unbelief

Mark never tells us what the leaven actually is. Matthew clarifies in his parallel account that it is the teaching of the Pharisees (Matthew 16:12). But the teaching is a problem because it masks the unbelief of the religious leaders of the day. They missed who Jesus was because they weren’t willing to accept the signs right in front of them, another point that is made in Matthew’s account (Matthew 16:2-4). The Pharisees had all the evidence they needed, but their hardened hearts wouldn’t accept it.

Jesus saw this evil unbelief and feared that it might impact His disciples. Jesus understood that doubt in God can quickly spread like a cancer. Like a little teaspoon of yeast, the unbelief the Pharisees could infect even His own followers, and so Jesus got them out of there. He was so bothered that He kept thinking about the encounter after they left, and finally spoke up and warned His disciples, “Watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees!”

And the disciples? They were clueless. They hadn’t been bothered much at all, or at least they had moved on. While Jesus was deeply disturbed and continued to think about the encounter, the clueless disciples were arguing over who blew it and forgot to buy them bread. This is why Jesus was upset. This is why His language was so strong. He saw a great spiritual threat and when He attempted to warn His followers, they had already moved on and were focused on physical problems.

Physically Safe and Spiritually Vulnerable

As I began to understand Jesus’ concern for His disciples, I have to admit that I felt a little bit ashamed as a dad. I work hard to keep my family safe, whether it’s seat belts, security systems, life insurance, the list could go on. We are careful about screen time and don’t let them climb too far over the ledge above the stairs. But I’m not always as in tune to the spiritual dangers around them.

One of the most impactful books of last couple years was The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. In that book Haidt made the sad observation that most parents wouldn’t let their 8 year old kid walk to the corner grocery store alone, but they would give him or her unfiltered access to the internet. Sadly, far more children are messed up by unfiltered internet than by walking to the grocery store alone. I mention this as an example because I fear many parents are very concerned about their children’s physical safety, educational development, and career success, but can miss the the spiritual dangers they will face.

But it’s not just parents. We all can be so fixated on fixing our physical problems (“Uh oh, we forgot to buy bread”) that we miss the spiritual threats around us (“the leaven of the Pharisees”). We can become so fixated on making money or taking care of our to-do list or running errands or fixing this problem or addressing that issue that we ignore the raging spiritual war that is all around us. We don’t see the threats that come from unbelief, or pride, or ingratitude. We aren’t spiritually sensitive to our weakness and desperate need for God’s empowering Spirit. We can’t be. We don’t have enough time and there is too much going on.

Jesus was rightly frustrated with the slowness of His disciples to see the dangers around them. They were problem-solving, but they were focused on the wrong problems. Jesus could get them more bread, as He pointedly reminded them. He didn’t want them focused on bread; He wanted them focused on the spiritual war around them. That same Jesus will supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19). It’s our job to put Him and His kingdom first (Matthew 6:33), and part of that is looking out for the spiritual threats around us.

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. This article originally appeared on his Substack.

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Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash