WHEN JESUS ‘DISAPPOINTS’ US

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 15, 2020 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: April 15, 2020 from Luke 7:18-23

Theme: Disappointment with Jesus comes from having mistaken expectations of Him.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

Click HERE for the live-stream archive of this Bible Study.

Something very remarkable happened early in our Lord’s earthly ministry—something that is almost surprising to find in the Bible. He was busy and active in teaching and healing people. And along the way, His most important earthly spokesman—John the Baptist—sent and asked Him a disturbing question:

“Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” (Luke 7:19).

These are bold words. And the story that’s behind them introduces us to an important problem that many people deal with: What happens when the Lord Jesus, somehow, doesn’t quite meet our expectations? What happens when we become—dare we say it?—’disappointed’ with Jesus in some way?

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This story is part of a portion of Luke’s Gospel—Luke 7:18-35— that deals with misunderstandings. In verses 24-28, Jesus dealt with some misunderstandings that the people had about John the Baptist. And then, in verses 29-35, He dealt with the misunderstandings that people had about how John’s ministry related to Jesus’ ministry. These were important misunderstandings that needed to be cleared up. But Jesus began by dealing with a misunderstanding—an incorrect expectation—that John the Baptist had about the Messiah. And we should take a moment to explain how this misunderstanding came about.

John the Baptist had been sent by God to be the forerunner of the Messiah. His ministry was promised to us in the Book of Isaiah 40:3; where he was presented as “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” John’s ministry was to announce the coming of the ‘cleansing’ and ‘purifying’ ministry of the Messiah. In Malachi 3:1, God says;

“Behold, I send My messenger,
And he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom you seek,
Will suddenly come to His temple,
Even the Messenger of the covenant,
In whom you delight.
Behold, He is coming,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

“But who can endure the day of His coming?
And who can stand when He appears?
For He is like a refiner’s fire
And like launderers’ soap.
He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;
He will purify the sons of Levi,
And purge them as gold and silver,
That they may offer to the Lord
An offering in righteousness (Malachi 3:1-3).

At the end of Malachi, John’s ministry is described in the manner of the bold prophet Elijah to announce the dreadful day of judgment. In Malachi 4:5-6, God said,

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse (4:5-6).

And so, when John the Baptist announced the coming of Jesus on to the scene, he was expecting Jesus to begin functioning immediately as the conquering Messiah who would overthrow all unrighteousness and powerfully reestablish the kingdom reign of King David. But that’s not what was happening. John had faithfully preached the call to repentance unto righteousness; and it got him thrown into prison by King Herod. And as he sat in prison, he had heard about the things Jesus was doing. Jesus was healing people, and performing miracles. But He wasn’t conquering and He wasn’t taking the throne. When would the kingdom be brought into reality? Jesus was not meeting John’s expectations. And John was beginning to be disappointed. He sent to ask the Lord about it.

And that’s when we come to our passage:

Then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things. And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to Jesus, saying, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” When the men had come to Him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’” And that very hour He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind He gave sight. Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Luke 7:18-23).

One of the benefits we can draw from this story is the encouragement it gives us in our own times of seeming disappointment. Even the best of us can feel disappointed with the Lord at times. John, after all, was a very great man of God. Jesus even goes on, in verse 28, to call him the greatest prophet born of women up to that time. And if even such a great saint as John could fall into times of disappointed expectations of Jesus, then certainly so can we.

But another great benefit we draw from this story is that it shows us why those disappointments can happen—and what we can do to set our hearts right. The problem is never with Jesus. He always—upon closer examination—exceeds our expectations. Rather the problem is with us. Our disappointments with Jesus come from having incorrect and far-too-inadequate expectations of Him. They come from expecting Him to be something different than what He is. They come from failing to grasp the whole picture that the Bible gives us of who Jesus is, and what He is like, and what He has come to do for us.

By God’s gracious help, we need to have those incorrect expectations brought into line with the truth of God’s word. And that’s what the Lord shows us how to do in this passage.

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Now; let’s look at this passage a little more closely. First we see the danger we are all under; and that is that …

1. WE CAN HAVE INCORRECT EXPECTATIONS OF JESUS (vv. 18-19).

Luke tells us, in verse 18, “Then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things.” The “things” that Luke spoke of were the things Jesus had been doing—most immediately, the words of instruction He gave in the Sermon on The Plain that we find in Chapter 6; and the healing of the centurion’s servant and the raising of the widow’s son in Nain that we read about in Chapter 7. Luke 7:17 tells us that the report of these things went throughout all Judea and all the surrounding region. The report even came to John in prison.

But Luke then tells us that John called two of his own disciples to himself, and sent them to Jesus to ask this very troubling question: “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” John was not doubting Jesus’ identity. The Holy Spirit had made it very clear to John that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John had seen the Spirit descend on Jesus at His baptism; and he heard the voice of God confirm that Jesus was His Son. But John had been expecting the Messiah to immediately behave as a great conquering king—one who would come as a mighty refiner’s fire from the very start. Instead, Jesus—it seemed—was simply going around teaching and healing people.

John was not alone in his misunderstanding. Do you remember the two disciples who were walking along the road to Emmaus after Jesus had raised from the dead? They met Jesus along the way—although they didn’t recognize Him. Jesus asked them why they were sad; and they told Him about ‘Jesus of Nazareth’;

a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel (Luke 24:19-21).

They thought ‘redemption’ meant something only earthly—a Messiah who was strictly a ‘Conqueror’. And Jesus, as He walked along with them, graciously corrected their misunderstanding. He told them;

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (vv. 25-27).

Jesus took them to the Bible; and corrected their mistaken expectations. He would redeem Israel—He would be the conquering Messiah. But He first had to die as the Savior of sinners.

Now; think for a moment about the false expectations people often have about Jesus today. They often, for example, have the expectation that if they place their trust in Him, they will never again have troubles or feel the overwhelming pull of temptations to sin. But the Bible never promises that we’ll never again have troubles or temptations. In fact, it promises the opposite. And so, when folks struggle or experience trials, they become disappointed with Jesus. Or sometimes a false teacher on television or the radio will tell them that if they trust in Jesus in a certain way, they will experience financial prosperity. But this again is something that the Bible never promises us. And so, when financial prosperity doesn’t come, they become disappointed with Jesus. Or people may have the mistaken idea that if Jesus is truly Lord, then there should never be tragedy or sickness or disaster in the world—never remembering that Jesus Himself promised that these things would come. And so, when these things come, they are disappointed with Jesus.

These disappointments are not because of Jesus Himself. Rather, they come from placing false and unbiblical requirements upon Him—expecting Him to do things that He never promised that He would do, or expecting Him to be something other than what He is.

And as this passage goes on to show us;

2. OUR EXPECTATIONS BECOME CORRECTED BY LOOKING CLOSELY AT JESUS AS HE IS PRESENTED TO US IN SCRIPTURE (vv. 20-22).

Look carefully at how this happened for John. Luke tells us in verse 20 that the men from John came back to Jesus and reported John’s words: “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’” And what is fascinating is that Jesus didn’t simply say, “Yes, I am He. There is not another.” He could have done that, and then sent these men away. But instead, He let them see for themselves what was happening. Luke wrote in verse 21, “And that very hour He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind He gave sight.” I almost wonder if these two men were watching all this and thinking, “John has sent us to ask this question; but we don’t need to ask it for ourselves. We can see firsthand!” And the witnessing of these things would have had a powerful impact on any Jewish man or woman who knew the Old Testament promises about the Messiah. They would have remembered such passages as Isaiah 29:17-18 and its promise of the glorious days of the coming of the Messiah;

Is it not yet a very little while
Till Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field,
And the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest?
In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book,
And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness (Isaiah 29:17-18).

And they’d have remembered Isaiah 35:4-6;

“Say to those who are fearful-hearted,
‘Be strong, do not fear!
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
With the recompense of God;
He will come and save you.’
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the dumb sing.
For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness,
And streams in the desert” (Isaiah 35:4-6).

And they would have remembered what the Messiah Himself prophetically spoke in Isaiah 61:1-2—words that Jesus even attributed to Himself during His earthly ministry;

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD” (Isaiah 61:1-2a; see also Luke 4:18-19).

And after they had seen all these things, Jesus told the two men in verse 22; “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” And when they did so, John also would have remembered these promises; and his heart would also have been encouraged that this truly was the Messiah that he and his people had been waiting for. Jesus was truly doing what the Scriptures promised that the Messiah would do.

Now, we’re not told this; but perhaps John even reflected further. He might have remembered that the Scriptures—especially Isaiah 53—not only promise that the Messiah would do these things, but that He would also suffer on the cross and die. He would be a suffering Savior before He would be a conquering Messiah. If so, then John’s disappointment would not have come about because he had not been biblical. Rather, it would have been because he had not been biblical enough. He had some promises correctly understood—but not all of them. And so often, that’s our problem; isn’t it? We just need to go to the Bible and get a fuller picture of our Lord.

This gives us a final principle. The solution is not found in demanding that Jesus fulfill our mistaken expectations; but rather in allowing the Holy Spirit to correct our expectations.

3. TRUE BLESSEDNESS COMES—NOT THROUGH THE FULFILLING OF OUR EXPECTATIONS—BUT THROUGH A FULLER UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS (v. 23).

Luke tells us that—after showing that He was fulfilling the promises of the Old Testament about Himself—Jesus said, “And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (v. 23). We cease to be offended when we cast aside our false expectations—and believe the promises.

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Are you going through a time right now when you feel ‘disappointed’ in some way with Jesus? Has He, in some way, failed to fulfill your expectations of Him? If so, you should know that even John the Baptist struggled with this. His struggle should encourage us.

But know also that the reason for the struggle is not because of Jesus. Rather it’s our mistaken expectations of Him. And the solution is always to go back to the Bible, see for ourselves what God has promised about our Lord, and—with the help of the Holy Spirit—get to know Him better.

When we do so, we always find that Jesus truly exceeds our expectations.

Click HERE for the live-stream archive of this Bible Study.

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