The Glory

The Savior Who Deals with Disappointment

4.19.26 [Luke 24:13-35] River of Life (3rd Sunday of Easter)

1 Pt. 1:2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Amen. 

Do you know what it’s like to be disappointed? 

It’d be a little strange if you didn’t, wouldn’t it? 

Sometimes it seems like life is full of disappointments. It comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. When we first experience the sting of disappointment, it can seem like our lives are over. When we don’t get the A, don’t make the team, don’t win the big game, at first, we don’t even know how to process it. But we learn, don’t we? We have to. Because life is full of disappointments. 

As we grow up, the disappointments grow, too. They get heavier. More consequential. More devastating. People you trust betray you. Things you thought you could rely on—your savings, your health, your connections, your education & training—let you down. You make plans and get your hopes up about a purchase or a trip. You put a day on the calendar, and your hopes are dashed when a big expense you weren’t expecting, an illness, or a tragedy comes up.  

The more of ourselves—our time, our energy, our money, our heart and mind—we invest into something, the more disappointed we’re going to feel when it doesn’t work the way we hoped. God’s wise word defines the devastation of disappointment. Pr. 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick. You know that sick feeling, don’t you? 

That’s the sick feeling that Cleopas and his travel companion were feeling on Easter Sunday afternoon. Luke tells us they were making a seven-mile journey from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and talking with each other about everything that had happened. 

Just seven days earlier, they had likely been a part of the Palm Sunday parade. They joined in the rejoicing. They shouted Mt. 21:9 Hosanna in the highest heaven! Hosanna to the Son of David! Cleopas and his companion were riding the high of the whole city of Jerusalem being stirred and asking who this man riding on a donkey was. They gleefully responded: Mt. 21:11 This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. 

How could it all go so wrong in such a short period of time? How could a city that was stirred turn on the Son of David so quickly? How could this man, who demonstrated such power in word and deed, be silenced and slaughtered without putting up a fight? 

How could the chief priests and the rulers of the people be so blind and miss the Messiah? How could they arrest him and hand him over to a pagan governor to be put to death by crucifixion? He was supposed to set us free from Rome’s tyranny! We thought he was God’s Anointed One—the one he loved, the one he chose, the one he empowered—but how could that still be true? How could God ignore the cries of the one he loved? How could God afflict the one he chose? How could the One God empowered die in such shame and weakness? 

As Cleopas and his friend mulled all this over in their minds, there were only two possible conclusions. Either they misunderstood who Jesus really was—they made him out to be the Messiah and he wasn’t—or they missed their opportunity—God sent his Anointed One to redeem Israel, and Israel rejected him and ruined their chances of being redeemed by crucifying him. You can understand why their hearts were so sick with grief and disappointment.

As they were coming to grips with all this, another man came alongside them. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t seem to know anything about what was going on in Jerusalem. When he asked them what are you talking about? they stopped dead in their tracks. This stranger added insult to their injury. And Cleopas snapped back You must be the only guy in the city who has no idea what’s going on. So they clued him in. Only they had no clue who they were talking to or what they were talking about. 

They gave him the backstory and the sad story and the strange developments from that morning. To them, the empty tomb was a confusing afterthought. Then this stranger responded in a puzzling way. Lk 24:25 How foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things? 

In their minds, the Messiah was supposed to deliver Israel from suffering. How could he do that if he suffered and died? It was unthinkable! And that’s why they were so disappointed. 

And, so often, that’s why we’re so disappointed, too. We expect that God should set us free from hardship, set us free from suffering, set us free from grief, pain, and disappointment. There is a part of us that kinda expects God to be a bulldozer parent. Maybe you know what a bulldozer parent is. 

A Bulldozer parent proactively removes obstacles, challenges, frustrations and failures from the lives of their children with the idea that this is going ot make their children happier.    

Can you see that this isn’t good for kids in the long run? 

By removing the experience of failure and frustration from their development, these parents are unwittingly setting up their kids for a lifetime of frustration and failures. It’s not good for them! 

So why do we expect God to do that for us? 

Well, maybe you don’t think you do expect that from God. Maybe you recognize that hardships and heaviness help develop resilience. Maybe you see how failures and even suffering produce perservance and develop your character. But I think you only see that on the backend of bad stuff. Because it is very rare for us to think, when we’re in the thick of disappointment and suffering, Oh, this is for my good. God is disciplining me. God is developing me. God is showing me his tender love. God is strengthening my faith. 

It is only after we sit down and God opens our eyes that we see these things. Yet, God is always good. He knows what is best for us. He knows that when you live in a fallen world, you will experience frustrations and failures. He knows that life in a sin-sick world is full of disappointments. He knows, first-hand, that in order for us to be set free from suffering we must be first be set free through suffering. 

That’s what Jesus did. And after he did that, he also gave us grace upon grace. He connected the dots for those who knew their Bibles. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them that God has been predicting that his Messiah must suffer many things to enter glory with all those he redeemed. 

Now, we don’t have time to go through the 400 plus prophetic details that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled. But let’s look at the three details that Cleopas and his buddy were the most hung up on. Jesus was a prophet who was powerful in word and deed but still ignored. Jesus was a powerful leaders who was betrayed and handed over by Israel’s own leaders. Jesus was an innocent man who died in a twisted, cursed way by being crucified on a tree. 

The Old Testament is litterd with prophets who were powerful in word and deed and stil ignored by the people. Let’s look at two. Moses and Elijah. God perfomed grand miracles of judgment through Moses and Elijah—the 10 plagues and the 42 months of drought during the day of Elijah. Yet the people and their kings refused to listen and repent. The same thing happened during Jesus’ ministry. Jesus would literally forgive someone’s sins and also give them the ability to walk again and the Pharisees would mutter, who does this guy think he is? Is 53:5 He was rejected by men. 

In the Old Testament, King David was betrayed by close friends. His son, Absalom, made a power play for the crown and tried to kill his dad. David's most trusted advisor took Absalom’s side, too. Even when David came out on top of the battle, he gave strict orders to treat his son gently. Joab, David’s top general, ignored that and plunged three javelins into Absalom’s heart. Jesus was betrayed by a close friend, Judas, for a meager sum of silver coins. His right-hand man, Peter, ignored his warnings and broke his heart by denying even knowing him. He was arrested and crucified. 

But this was foretold too. God promised in Genesis 3 that the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head would have his heel struck. God foreshadowed Jesus’ sacrificial death with the Passover Lamb—a spotless, young male lamb whose blood was brushed on the door frame to spare the lives of all firstborn males. Isaiah 53 speaks of a suffering servant who would be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. By his wounds we are healed. God promised his Messiah would suffer and die. Again and again. God never promised to set us free from suffering. He promised to set us free through suffering. 

And that’s what he did. And it’s something that we can only see when we spend time with Jesus in God’s Word. Jesus invites us to open his Word and see how God loves us and shows us his love. 

Because Christ died for us when we were ungodly, unrighteous, and his enemies, we have been justified. We know God loves us and has set us free from Satan’s power, sin’s tyranny, and death’s terror. He has invested his very best, his beloved everything in our redemption. 

We have been set free and the living Word of God has been set in our hands. The body and blood of the Lamb of God have been given to us for the forgiveness of our sins. We are prepared for a life that includes setbacks because we have a Savior who stood in as our substitute. We are prepared for a life that involves disappointments, because the Son of God has been righteous enough to redeem each one of us. Our hope has not been denied, but we find our hope in Christ, the Anchor of our faith, who walks alongside each one of us.