Episode 18: Why Doesn’t God Do What We Expect?

Why doesn’t God do what we expect?

Palm Sunday reminds us that the crowd wasn’t rejecting Jesus. They were following Him… just with expectations He wasn’t there to meet.

In this episode, we walk through Holy Week as a pattern. Expectation, confusion, and disappointment when God doesn’t move the way we thought He would. Not to solve it, but to understand what’s happening when following Jesus stops feeling simple.

If you’ve ever felt like God wasn’t doing what you needed, you’re not alone. You might be right in the middle of the story.

Transcript

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Welcome to Rooted with Emily Talento, where we explore who Jesus is through context, culture, and covenant. If you're new here and you haven't yet subscribed or followed or whatever it is that the platform you're either watching or listening to this on has, I'd really, really appreciate it. So let's jump in to what we're talking about today. Now, this episode and the next episode, we're gonna shift from what we've been talking about the last couple weeks. If you've been around, you know we've been talking about studying God's Word. What does that look like practically? How do we read the Bible in context? What's the overarching story of scripture? So on and so forth. We're gonna pick back up next week, but right now we are sitting in a very important moment. We are actually in the most important week of the church. We are in Holy Week. We had Palm Sunday a couple days ago. This is coming out on Tuesday. In a couple days, we'll have Good Friday, and then obviously a few days after that, we will have Easter. And so this episode and next episode will be dedicated to talking about Holy Week. Specifically today, we'll be talking about it kind of as an overarching big picture view. And then Thursday, we're going to be talking about the resurrection and what that means for us. When I was thinking about Holy Week and what exactly we should talk about, there's so many directions that we could go in. But the one that I thought to be the most interesting and the most convicting was looking at the crowd. If you don't know what I'm talking about, looking at the crowd of people who get this, call Jesus King on Sunday, but then called for his crucifixion on Friday. How do we go from acknowledging Jesus as King and praising him to four days later calling for his execution in the most painful way you could be executed? It doesn't make any sense. What if they're not rejecting Jesus, but rather following him with expectations? Don't worry, we're gonna unpack this together today. But that right there is the tension of Holy Week. So here's the problem. We don't just believe things about God, we expect things from him. Sometimes, oftentimes, expectation doesn't match reality. You just thought about something. Because I'm sure we all have multiple situations in our lives where we're not thrilled with how it's going. And what does that create? That creates confusion because there's a disconnect between what we think God should be doing and what he's actually doing. We trust God, but we expect him to move in a specific way. Now, if you're anything like me, you could probably think of a few examples from your life right now where you're like, I didn't sign up for this, I didn't agree to that, and yet here we are. Now, I could give you a few more examples, maybe you'll relate to uh work. You got the promotion you wanted, or the new job, and it's not what you thought. It's so much more work in relationships. Maybe you're praying for reconciliation, and that's just not what's happening right now. Or maybe it's spiritually, you're doing everything right, you're reading your Bible, you're praying, you're seeking God, and he just still feels far. Or maybe it's internally, you're living in obedience to God, you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing, and yet you still feel like you lack answers, you still feel like you have no clarity, and you feel like you're missing out. It's in this place, the expectation versus the reality, that following Jesus doesn't feel very simple. There's a pattern to Holy Week that we're gonna look at today. And what's interesting about this pattern is I believe we could see it in our own lives. There are four different movements. It goes from expectation to confusion to disappointment to revelation. And I believe that any of us could find ourselves in any one of these places on any given day. So, where do we go from here? We're gonna start with expectation, and we're gonna look at Matthew 21, verse 9. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. So as he entered, the crowd recognizes him as king. Now, obviously, they're right, but here's the tension. They're right about who he is, but they're wrong about what he'll do. They sort Jesus correctly, but incompletely. They recognize him as king, but they're actually asking him to do something. Now, we're gonna go into our rooted moment of the day. If you don't know, rooted moment is when we look at the original context and culture of scripture so that we can fill in the gaps that we are likely missing in 2026. So we throw around the word Hosanna quite a bit, right? We just read about it, we sing about it, except I don't think we actually know what it means. It's not a term of praise, like I think most of us think. It's a phrase that means save us now. The crowds didn't just want salvation, they wanted it immediately and on their terms. They wanted saving in a physical way. They wanted to be rescued from Rome, they wanted restoration. What they didn't realize is that Jesus came to do something much, much greater. As you can probably imagine, this is where we start to shift to confusion. So we're gonna pick up in our next passage. It's Luke 19, verses 41 and 42. It says, And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. Okay, what is that saying? So let me paint the picture. Jesus just entered Jerusalem triumphantly on a donkey. You can imagine the scene, people off the palm branches and people are laying down their coats so that the donkey doesn't step on the ground. They're just showing him all of the honor and all of the praise in them saying, Hosanna. He knows he's going to save them, but again, he also knows that they're going to be disappointed in the way that he's going about it, because it's not the immediate type of salvation that they're looking for. You would think that Jesus would be happy, right? That makes sense. Except the text tells us that he was weeping. Why? Because the crowd was missing what he was doing entirely. The craziest part of the whole thing is that they weren't even wrong. One day Jesus will enter Jerusalem, bringing physical salvation and restoration. But it wasn't then. Their timeline was off. And I think that's where a lot of confusion comes from. Not just then, in this situation, but in our own lives. When God doesn't work on the timeline that we want or we expect, we get confused. And from that confusion usually comes disappointment, which is our third movement. We're gonna read Luke 23, verse 21. It says, But they kept shouting, crucify, crucify him. This is four days later. Isn't that crazy? The jump from calling him king to calling for his execution. Insane. Why? How did this happen? Why is there such a giant jump? They thought he was the guy. They thought he was gonna overthrow Rome, they thought he was going to bring immediate change. They thought he was gonna establish a physical kingdom, and that's not what he did. I would argue that part of the reason that people felt so strongly about crucifying him was because of how Jesus responded to his arrest. He didn't resist arrest, he didn't rally a political movement, he didn't take power, he took it. He allowed them to arrest him because he knew that there was a greater plan at hand. They didn't see that. They couldn't see that. And so that massive disconnect between all of the hopes and expectations that they had on him, to then him failing those expectations, that's where you're seeing this super strong pendulum swaying, this super opposite response. We love you because we think you're gonna do this for us. Oh my gosh, we hate you, you failed us. Jesus' messaging never changed. The first thing he says when he comes on the scene is the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now, people interpreted that to be a physical kingdom when that was not the case. And that right there is the tension where people live in confusion and waiting and unmet expectations. What's super scary is you could be following Jesus and like the crowd, be completely unaware of what he's doing. Now that's relatable to all of us because we all are blessed beyond measure by God. He gives us good things, he protects us, not to mention he's fixed the biggest problem that we'll ever have. And yet, because he doesn't meet our expectations, whether that is in timeline, in what he's giving us, then we have the audacity to throw temper tantrums and be babies. From this text, we know how Jesus responds. He weeps. I don't know about you, but I don't think of Jesus weeping when I'm taking matters into my own hands. He's not a distant God. He's involved. And we can see this from the Old Testament to the New. And so for our last section, this section of Revelation, remember the pattern, expectation, confusion, disappointment, and revelation. And the passage that we're going to be reading to show Revelation is in Isaiah 53. It says in verses 3 through 5, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Jumping down to verse 5. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. This is not talking about Jesus. This was written 700 years before Jesus. Now we don't have time to go through the entire thing. But if you read Isaiah 53, it sounds like it was written by Paul. It sounds like it was an account of Jesus' death on the cross. But it wasn't. What does this show us? This shows us that this was always the plan. This wasn't plan B. This wasn't, okay, Jesus, he's just gonna, you know, while I'm here to save you all from Rome, I might as well just take care of your sins too. No, the sin was the main part. God was always working, and he was working in an even greater way than they expected. We're not all that different. We're willing to accept less than what he's willing to give us. But because it doesn't come in the packaging we expect, we get freaked out. If you feel confused, disappointed, or unsure, just know that you are currently in the middle of the story. It's not done. And God has proven time and time again to be working and to have your best interests at heart. Everything is done for our good and his glory. The crowds couldn't see it, but everything was leading somewhere. Somewhere really important. The most significant thing to ever happen in all of human history. And that's what we're going to be talking about in our next episode. The resurrection happens. What does that actually tangibly mean for us today? I really appreciate you being here, and I'll see you next time.