Focus on God (Tuesday Evening)

Me and We

Recap

What did we learn about this morning?

We learned about the spies, and giants, and David.

What lessons did we learn?

We learned to not focus on our big problems like giants but to focus on our powerful God.

Intro

It’s always better to focus on the solutions or goals rather than on problems. Because goals will always be more exciting and fun then your problems.

I grew up in California and played lots of sports. I was on lots of sports teams. We didn’t didn’t just have leagues for boys we had sports teams for girls too. During the fall, our school had boys and girl’s flag football teams.

Instead of full on tackles, in flag football, you have these strips of plastic or flags hanging from your hips and you pull those. It doesn’t sound as exciting, but its still pretty fun. Anyway our girls team was playing our school rival. I say rival because they were the only team we played in all our sports all year long every single year.

So this was a big game! Because we only had like 4 games that year. The game went back and forth the whole way. It was tight. But then the other team scored a touchdown with 22 seconds left. Our team didn’t have a lot of time to win the game.

Oh, by the way, since I am not a girl, I wasn’t playing but was on the sidelines cheering our team on. Just thought you should know that bit of information.

As my friends and I are cheering the girl’s on. I’m thinking there is no way our team is going to win. They don’t just need encouragement, they need a miracle! So I decided to give them a goal. Something to focus on. So I shout out: “If you girls win, I will shave my head!”

Not the smartest words I have said. Also within the next 22 seconds I would regret that I even opened my mouth.

Right before my very eyes, I witnessed a football miracle. Instead of trying to throw the ball all the way to the other side and get a touchdown. Our team decided to run the ball. The ball was hiked to the quarterback who turned and handed the ball to the running back. This girl then ran and ran and ran. No one could pull her flag! It was astonishing! It was as if the other team’s hands went right through the flag but couldn’t grab it!

Within those 22 last seconds. Right after I gave her something to run for. Seeing all my hair disappear, produced a miracle! She ran the whole way and scored a touchdown!

At first I was leaping for joy! Yes our team won! But then reality set in, and I soon realized what was going to happen the next day.

So what happened? What if I didn’t shout my challenge to our team? What if instead of focusing on the sight of all my hair on my head disappearing they focused on something else.

They could have been focusing on the fact that they had to march all the way down the whole field. They could have been focusing on how impossible it was for them to win. How tired they were. How good their opponents were.

But instead they focused on a prize, a goal.

God

Jesus and His disciples wanted to be alone. They had been with people all week and they needed a break. So they all got in a boat and sailed to a deserted place. A place where they could be alone.

But as they were traveling to this spot of freedom. The people somehow heard where Jesus was going. So everyone went there. They left their homes, their villages and towns to go and see Jesus. Jesus and His disciples were supposed to be alone but now there were more than 5,000 people there!

Instead of shooing the people away, Jesus stayed there, healed them, and spent time with the people. Everyone who was sick or had a broken arm was healed. Well the people loved spending time with Jesus so much that it was already getting late and people were beginning to get hungry.

Now its never good when you have a large group of hungry people and there is no food. People can start to get angry and do all sorts of crazy things.

So the disciples bring this big problem to their attention.

Matthew 14:15–17 ESV

15 Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17 They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.”

Matthew 14:

They tell Jesus, “Hey there is nothing here! No taco bell, no Mcdonalds, no Chef Sam…what are we going to do? We should send the people away!”

But you see, Jesus never sends people away. That’s one of the reasons people are drawn to Jesus, why people want to be with Jesus. Hopefully you too want to be with Jesus.

Instead, Jesus tells his disciples to give them something to eat. Jesus says, you know what I have been healing people all day long, why don’t you fix this problem.

So the disciples go on a searching party. They go throughout the whole group of people. Asking everyone if they have any food. When they finally bring all of the food they could find, they realized they didn’t have a lot. They only had 5 loaves and two fish. That’s not enough food! But that is all they had.

They had a big problem on their hands and their best was not enough. What were they to do? They surely couldn’t bring this to Jesus and say, “Alright Jesus heres all the food for the people.”

But you know that is exactly what happened! They brought the food to Jesus and Jesus didn’t complain and say this isn’t enough! This is only feed a little boy! He didn’t say that.

Instead, he prayed over the food as if to say, this will work. Well it shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Why? Because the solution was never the amount of food. The solution was giving it to Jesus. Because when we focus and give everything to Jesus, miracles happen and problems are solved.

After Jesus prayed, he broke the bread and passed out the food.

Do you know what happened? Everyone ate! But not only that. Everyone was full. They couldn’t eat anymore. There was so much food that there were leftovers.

You and We

After this Jesus and his disciples finally got their alone time they needed. Jesus went up to the mountain to pray and his disciples hung out in the boat. After a while Jesus came down from the mountain and wanted to be close to his disciples.

But they were in the middle of the lake. So he walked on the water out to them.

Well the disciples became very afraid. Because well, there is a man walking on water and you don’t see that every day.

When Jesus saw that they were afraid. Jesus told them don’t be afraid, its me.

When Peter heard this, he said,

Matthew 14:28–31 ESV

28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Matthew 14:21 ESV

21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

You see Peter started off great. His eyes were locked in. They were focused on Jesus. But the moment he took his eyes off of Jesus he began to sink. We need to be locked in to Jesus.

We need to keep our focus on Him and Jesus will take care of us!