Episode 19: Are You Expecting Too Little?

Easter isn’t just about what happened. It’s about what it means.

The resurrection didn’t just prove that Jesus is alive. It revealed what God was doing all along.

In this episode, we look at how the story of Easter reframes everything. What looked like loss was actually fulfillment. What felt confusing was part of a greater plan. And what people were asking for was far smaller than what God came to do.

If you’ve ever wondered what God is doing in your life, this is the moment that changes how you see it.

Transcript

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Welcome to Rooted with Emily Talento, where we explore who Jesus is through context, culture, and covenant. We are still in the middle of Holy Week. Last episode and this episode are going to be a little bit of a different thing than normal. We've been talking about how to study God's word and the importance of reading it in context and all the things like that. And we'll jump back in in our next episode. Last episode, we talked about the overarching feeling, tension towards Holy Week. If you haven't listened, I highly recommend it. Basically, we look at the crowd and how they could go from praising Jesus, saying Hosanna, to then calling for him to be crucified just four days later. So crazy. And how, in many ways, we are the crowd. So if you want to hear how we are the crowd and the argument I make there, go check it out if you haven't. I really believe you'll walk away thinking about the crowd and holy week differently than you did before. So today we're gonna jump in, we're gonna be talking about Easter specifically. I think oftentimes we view Easter as an event, Jesus' resurrection, right? But I think a better way of looking at it is as a lens, something we see the world through. And that's what we're gonna be unpacking today. If you've ever looked at your life and thought, what is God doing? That is the place where viewing everything through Easter matters. Now, the resurrection, this is so important, doesn't just prove something about Jesus, it shows us how God works. So here's the problem. We often measure God's faithfulness by the outcomes that we see. So if something works out, oh my gosh, great, God is faithful. If something doesn't work out the way we wanted or expected, then something must be wrong. Here's the shift I think we need. God isn't just working in individual moments, he's also fulfilling things across all time. And so when we get so locked in in each and every detail of our lives, we're missing what he's doing on the grand scale. Last episode we talked about how scary it is that we could follow Jesus and still not understand what he's doing. But the reality is none of us understand what he's doing. What makes it scary is when we're fighting for our own expectations. If we reject our own expectations and surrender to his will and trust that whatever ends up happening is ultimately for our good and his glory, it actually turns into the best position that we could possibly be in. That view changes everything because we could be inside something that doesn't make sense, that isn't clear, and yet still know that God is working and fulfilling. This view changes the way we wait, it changes the way we respond when life falls apart. Now, this is what's hard. This is the problem. It's not a one-time realization. Oh my gosh, I understand how God works. I'm done for life. I understand life's easy now. It's something that we have to continue to remind ourselves of constantly. Easter shows us this pattern of how God works, and that's what we're gonna be looking at today. We could see it in three different movements. So let's start in promise. We're gonna read Luke 24, verses 6 and 7. Now, some context. Could you imagine your really good friend, who you all so happen to put all of your hope in, is murdered in the most brutal way imaginable. Truly. I think we often look at the Easter story and we know what happens. Like it's expected, and so we're able to kind of take the humanness out of it. But looking at it as a real story of real people, this was atrocious. This was horrible. So you have his friends, these women, who decide to go and pay respects, bring spices. They're devastated. And they had to go watch him be killed in a brutal, awful, unbelievably horrible way. They get to the tomb, and the stones rolled away. Now they just watched his body be defiled in all of these horrible ways. I would imagine the first thought is you didn't do enough. Like you you you already killed him, you already tortured him. What else like just let him let him lay in peace? And then a man in dazzling apparel, this is verse four of chapter 24, appears to them. And they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground. Now I can imagine in their time traveling around with Jesus, they saw some pretty crazy things. And something tells me that in all of that time, it it didn't prepare them for meeting what we know to be an angel. They are frightened and bowed their faces to the ground. The med said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead? A crazy line. For them. Verse 6, it says, He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and on the third day rise. They probably felt pretty stupid in that moment. Because Jesus told them, but he also said a lot of things. And in our situation, we're reading everything in full context. So we know the end of the story. But they don't know the end of the story. And Jesus again is saying a lot of crazy things. And so, what is literal, what is not literal? He speaks in parables all the time, but he told them what he was gonna do. What does this tell us? What does this show us? Jesus' resurrection wasn't random, it wasn't reactive, it wasn't God saying, Okay, so they kill Jesus. How can we make good on this? No. Jesus told his disciples what was gonna happen before it even happened, before they even went down to Jerusalem. They technically knew the plan, but they didn't understand it in the moment. We're gonna stay in chapter 24, jump to verse 27. Oh, okay, this context us. So we talked about this a few episodes ago. This is the road to Emmaus. It's actually becoming one of my favorite passages in the Gospels. And for background, you have two of Jesus' disciples, and they're walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and which is a town, seven miles from Jerusalem, and they're debriefing the events of the last few days. Could you imagine? Like the most like your friend is murdered in front of you, like like literally, like there was no just cause. Like it it was horrible. And so they're debriefing on this walk, and then this man comes to them and is like, what are you guys talking about? They don't realize that that person who's asking them questions is Jesus himself. He's risen. They don't know that yet, and they don't recognize him. And so after they explain to him what's going on, he has some insights for them. Picking up in Luke 24, verse 27, it says, And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them all the scriptures and things concerning himself. Again, at this point they don't realize it's Jesus. But again, this shows us that this wasn't God being reactive, this was always a plan from Genesis. And we could see this actually very clearly. We can look at Genesis 3. This isn't in my notes. Genesis 3. As soon as Adam and Eve said, God is giving them the consequences for their actions. You have Genesis 3, verse 15. This is God speaking to the snake. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. This is known as the proto-evangelium, and it is known as the first mention of the gospel. So immediately, and I would argue, even before the fall happened, obviously God knew that Jesus would be coming and dying and resurrecting in the way that he did, but he allows us to be a part of it every step of the way. We obviously didn't know that. There were so many things that were said across the Old Testament that people just missed, but in hindsight, we could see oh, there was always a mention, there was always a whisper, there was always something that we were pointing to. The resurrection wasn't a surprise ending, it was the fulfillment of something that had been put in place thousands and thousands of years before. So we talked about promise, we talked about fulfillment, and now we're jumping into understanding. Let's jump to Luke 45, all one chapter today. So easy. Okay. This is when Jesus is appearing to his disciples for the first time. It says in verse 45. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. They didn't need new outcome, they needed new understanding. It comes back to Easter being a lens in which we see things through. These again were men who knew scripture. They traveled around with Jesus. How dumb must have they felt when he revealed to them that he had been telling them what he was going to do the entire time. And they missed it. Not because they weren't listening, not because they were dumb, but because they weren't looking at it through the right lens. I want to zoom out and look at this week. Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, Jesus resurrecting. Now, the crowds weren't wrong for wanting to be saved. They weren't wrong for wanting freedom. They weren't wrong for wanting relief. They weren't wrong for wanting to watch their circumstances change in front of their eyes. But their expectation was too small. They wanted to be saved in the moment, but Jesus came to reconcile man to God. Romans 5 8 says, While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And first Corinthians, let's flip to it. The crowd was focused on their immediate problem, but Jesus was there dealing with their ultimate problem. He wasn't there to fix the here and now. He was there to fix what separated them from God. They wanted their circumstances to change, but God was offering restoration. They wanted things to work out, but God was offering them something so much better a way back to Him. But why are we the same? We have the whole story. We can see God's faithfulness time and time again. We can see that He's always working in all situations and circumstances, and yet we still struggle to recognize that even when things don't look like they're going our way, even when it doesn't look like he's working, he is. He's actually working on something deeper and greater than we can even imagine. We settle for less. Our expectations are far too small. The resurrection isn't just that Jesus rose. It's that the biggest problem that we will ever face has already been dealt with. It's already been fixed. Anything we experience is minimal in comparison to the reality of being separated from God. That's not to say everything will be easy. I mean, Jesus makes it very clear in John 16, 33 that in this world we will have troubles. There are hard things that will happen. However, in those difficult seasons, in those tragedies and hardships, we can be confident that victory is already ours. Jesus already won. Romans 8.28 says that God works all things together for good. If God was faithful in the most confusing, unexpected moment, we can trust that he will be faithful to us now. If you're in a place that doesn't make sense and you don't really like what's happening, then I would encourage you to put on Easter glasses. The lens in which we see the world has to change. Because we can't go based off our own understanding. But if we're looking at things in view of the resurrection, in view of Easter, this idea that God made things work in a way that did not even seem remotely possible, no one could have guessed. And he won't leave you where you are right now. Remember, we don't have to understand. In fact, we will never understand what he's doing fully. But the faster that we could recognize that his word is true, that he is good, that he's been faithful, then the faster we can live in true peace. We don't have to worry about all the various circumstances. We can rest in him. I hope this idea of Easter glasses or the resurrection view is able to help you put life into perspective, especially going into this Easter weekend. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really do hope it helped make things more clear. If you haven't yet followed, subscribed, whatever it is that this platform you're watching or listening to this on has, I'd really appreciate it if you could do that. I would also appreciate if you could follow me on Instagram at Emily Talento and at rooted with Emily Talento. I will see you next time.