When God Doesn't Meet Your Expectations

I am so excited about what we're going to talk about today.

It is so relevant to all of us.

But let me sort of set the stage a little bit and get us all on the same page.

If you're new, we're in the middle of a year-long study.

We think it's going to take about a year, called Following Jesus.

We are going through the entire book of Matthew.

And if you have kids that are first grade through high school, they're doing the same thing.

They're going through the same stories every Sunday, so whole families get to grow together in this.

But we're just trying our best to see Jesus more clearly, to understand him better.

And it doesn't matter if you're someone who's been following Jesus for decades or you're new to the whole Jesus thing, even just thinking about it.

People joined Jesus at multiple stages throughout his journey.

It doesn't really matter when you jump in.

Jesus is so, He's God.

And so it doesn't matter if you've been a part of this from the very beginning or today's your very first Sunday, we are all, I believe this to my core, we are all designed with the capacity to know the God who created us.

And so no matter where you're at, knowing Jesus more clearly, seeing him more clearly, it will only bless you.

It will only help you.

Because there's no one like him, and there's no one who can do what he can do, and there's no one who can lead you like Jesus.

And so the more clearly we understand him, no matter if we've been following him for years or days, or we've never even made that decision, the more clearly you understand who he is, the more set up you are to live the life that you're meant to live, because he's meant to lead you in life.

And so we're following Jesus.

Now, even if you are new, it's okay.

Every Sunday is designed to stand on its own.

And really, we've broken up the whole book of Matthew into a bunch of smaller series.

The one we're in right now is called New Roads.

Basically, we're at this interesting moment in the ministry of Jesus.

It's still pretty early in his ministry, but he's decided that it's time to sort of take things on the road.

It is time for word to really get out.

He's so far worked with his followers, he's done a lot of things here and there, but it's time to sort of officially get things going.

We see this in Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

It says that Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the good news about the kingdom.

And he healed every kind of disease and illness.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

And he said this to his disciples the harvest is great, but the workers are few.

So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest.

Ask him to send more workers into his field.

Jesus says, Look, everyone out there needs to know.

And I've got you, but we need even more.

And here we are today, years later, and we're part of that.

Jesus is asking his disciples to go out and to sort of build new roads.

That's the analogy we're using.

He's asking them to go out and do things that have never been done before.

To be trailblazers and to sort of claim new territory.

It's a really difficult thing that he's asking them to do, but he sends them out.

In fact, we'll pull up our map of Israel at the time and see.

Jesus is living in Galilee, which is at the top there, and he sends his disciples out to all of Galilee and all of Judea.

Um, and he says, Hey, I want you to go and get the word out.

He sends them two by two.

And then a little bit later in Matthew chapter 11, it says that when Jesus had finished giving these instructions to his twelve disciples, he himself went out to teach and preach in towns throughout the region.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

So we'll bring our Mac back up.

So Jesus sends all his disciples out, and then Jesus himself says, All right, now I'm gonna go and I'm gonna teach and preach and do all kinds of things in the area that I'm in.

And so there's a lot of miles being traveled right now between Jesus and his followers.

Things have sort of officially taken off.

New roads are being built, and as we've seen for the last few weeks, Jesus is really honest that that's a difficult thing.

It is hard to do something that's never been done before.

Building new roads is it's not it's not easy.

Jesus was really honest about some of the challenges that they would face, and today we're gonna see Jesus encounter some of those interesting dynamics that come when you are doing something that's never been done before.

Not everyone's gonna get it, not everyone's gonna fully understand.

You're gonna meet with some resistance.

Sometimes that resistance is overt and it's intense.

We're not quite there yet with Jesus.

We'll get there.

Sometimes that resistance is just people not getting it, not understanding.

All these miles are being traveled, but the moment we're gonna look at today is a moment where some people come to Jesus with some really honest and vulnerable concerns.

And we're gonna get to see Jesus speak to a tension that all of us can understand.

It's the tension of unmet expectations.

What happens when life doesn't go the way you think it should go?

All of us know what that feels like, whether you're 16 or 60.

We all know what it feels like to have unmet expectations.

You get your hopes up, your expectations are high, and then what actually happens in reality doesn't quite meet what you thought it would be.

I actually have a really clear memory of one of the most disappointing moments of my early life.

Uh, and this is in jest, like there are serious ones I could use, but you know, as a as a kid of like the 80s and the the early 90s, a big part of my life growing up, some of you guys are in my generation, you'll relate to this, were Saturday morning cartoons.

Any like Saturday morning cartoon people out there?

Yeah.

Now kids just like pick the episode of the show they want to watch on demand, and it's really hard for me, it's like hard for me to tell my kids, you don't know how easy you have it, you know, because it's not like my life was hard.

In my day, we had to wait till Saturday morning to watch cartoons.

It just doesn't, it's not like my parents saying they had to walk miles to places, it doesn't have the same kind of sting to it.

So can't do that.

But it it was we waited till Saturday morning, you had cartoons, and a big part of Saturday morning cartoons were commercials.

And it was like the first time in the 80s and 90s where companies were actually allowed to market to children that actually wasn't allowed legally until about that time.

And man, they would bring out like there were commercials for things that as a kid you'd just be like, I have to have that.

I must have that.

There were things my mom would never let us have.

Like I remember these commercials for all these different slip and slide things.

Like, there was one with a crocodile, and you'd slide down it and go through this crocodile thing, and it was like, my mom was like, no.

Um, but there was one commercial that to this day, like, it's in my soul.

And it spoke to me, and I said, I have to have it.

It was for a board game called Crossfire.

Now, I just okay, I didn't expect I didn't know if anyone would relate to this.

Apparently, some of you guys, I just heard like a visceral reaction.

People are like, oh, like you guys have seen this commercial then.

Some of you who are are my generation relate to this.

So I'm gonna show you guys the 32nd 1991 commercial for the board game Crossfire.

Understand I'm eight years old when this comes out.

I'm obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ken Griffey Jr.

uh in baseball, and I love anything that's like has explosions and energy.

Testosterone hasn't quite hit me yet, but it's about to, and I'm ready for it, okay?

Here's the commercial for Crossfire.

Man, you got like an 80s hairband singing that song, right?

There's lightning, there's fire, they're like a kid flies off into space, the kids are wearing leather jackets, which I never wore leather jackets as a kid, but I assume that if you had one, you were really cool.

And I saw that commercial and I was like, mom, mom, mom.

We have to have crossfire.

And my mom, who's awesome, got it for me.

She's great.

But the problem is, yeah, hear it from moms, getting their kids things that they don't need or really want.

Um the problem though is that the reality of Crossfire does not match the commercial.

It's a bit of a letdown.

Here's here's footage of what it actually looks like to play Crossfire.

It's just not the same.

You know, it's just like, and you play it as a kid and you'd be like singing the song, trying to pump yourself, crossfire, and it just didn't work.

It was like honestly one of the first real letdowns I had in life where I realized, oh, I was lied to.

I was lied to.

I mean, that game flew from the sky in a bolt of lightning, and there was an arena, it was like a dystopian post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of thousands of people gather to watch people play this game.

Just did not live up to that.

And I experienced at a young age what it's like when you have the disappointment of unmet expectations.

And then life keeps going, and those same feelings happen just in more serious ways.

Like we all know what that feels like.

And sometimes it's silly stuff like a movie trailer that gets you hyped for a movie that isn't that good.

Sometimes it's it's really heavy.

You know, it's things like like marriage.

Let's go there.

Okay?

Sign up for the generations marriage group.

It's gonna be great.

Um but no, like mar I got married at 21, my wife was 20.

We were high school sweethearts, and we thought, we thought we were like set up for success because we were in love.

Like, you don't understand.

Anyone who tried to give us advice, like, hey guys, you might wanna, you know, we were like, thank you, but I mean, we are in love.

And so we got uh an apartment that cost$385 a month.

And it wasn't the 1960s, okay?

It's not that long ago, it was the 2000s, so just understand that that's because it was a terrible, terrible apartment in a very dangerous place.

And uh we had one room, didn't even have a bedroom, it was a studio apartment.

There was there was our bed, a couch, a TV, and a desk.

And that was it, and a bathroom.

And I remember like not being, we weren't prepared for those dynamics and all the frustration of being full-time college students working full-time to try to pay for everything, and and like the fights and the arguments.

I remember the first time we had like a serious fight in our apartment.

Uh, Megan got out of bed to go sleep on the couch.

But she was just as close to me on the couch as she was in the bed.

Because I sit I was slept in the middle of the couch in the bed.

So she's like, I'm not sleeping next to you, and she kind of laid there, and I was like, it's kind of the same, you know.

But but we had we had serious struggles in that first year, and we've had struggles, you know, we've been married almost 20 years.

That's how it goes.

It marriage is awesome, and I'm so grateful that that I'm married to my wife.

I love her.

But I can say that it didn't meet our expectations, because our expectations were were silly.

Like our expectations were were shaped by movies and television that painted a picture that just isn't reality.

And so the the reality of marriage and how much work it was and how boring a lot of it was, and how it was jobs and bills and and all of that, it it just hit us pretty hard.

And we've all been there in some part of life.

What happens when life doesn't meet up with our expectations?

But let's take it to another level, and this is what we're gonna see in our story today.

What happens when maybe it's God who doesn't meet our expectations?

It sounds almost blasphemous just to ask that question, but it's not because scripture is filled with stories of godly men and women, people who love the Lord very, very much and live their lives dedicated to God, having moments where they say, God, this doesn't feel like it's going the way it's supposed to go.

I've been faithful to you, I've served you.

And and life is not lining up with what I think it should, given the fact that I'm doing everything for you.

Scripture is filled with stories like that.

And today we're gonna read one.

We're gonna go to Matthew chapter 11, verses 2 through 19.

Matthew 11:2–19

And I'm just gonna read this in its entirety.

It said that John the Baptist, who's in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing.

So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, Are you the Messiah we've been expecting?

Or should we keep looking for someone else?

Jesus told them, Go back to John and tell him what you've heard and seen.

The blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the good news is being preached to the poor.

And he added, God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.

As John's disciples were leaving, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds.

What kind of man did you go into the wilderness to see?

Was he a weak reed swayed by every breath of wind?

Or are you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes?

No.

People with expensive clothes live in palaces.

Were you looking for a prophet?

Yes, and he is more than a prophet.

John is the man to whom the scriptures refer when they say, Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way before you.

I tell you the truth, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist.

Yet even the least person in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is.

And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advanced advancing, and violent people are attacking it.

For before John came, all the prophets and the law of Moses look forward to this present time.

And if you're willing to accept what I say, he is Elijah, the one that the prophets said would come.

Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.

To what can I compare this generation?

It is like children playing a game in the public square.

They complained to their friends, we played wedding songs and you didn't dance.

So we played funeral songs and you didn't mourn.

For John didn't spend his time eating and drinking, and you say he's possessed by a demon.

The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say he's a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners.

But wisdom is shown to be right by its results.

So there's a lot there, and uh there's a lot that we could cover, and so we do this from time to time.

Uh certain things that Jesus said about John being Elijah, and what is that all about, and things like the that John is the greatest of all who have come before him, but even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.

What does that mean?

Rather than go into all of that here and now, we're gonna record a follow-up episode.

Uh, we do this every once in a while, we call it the cutting room floor, things that just don't quite make it into the message, but they're really interesting.

And we'll post that on Wednesday.

Um, so if you want to take part in that, listen to that, we'll put it on YouTube, our website, on our podcast.

We'll go into more detail about some of that stuff.

I just don't have the time to go into all of that.

So much is here.

But what I want us to focus on for the purpose of this conversation is this simple reality that John the Baptist has dedicated his entire life to Jesus up to this point.

He is the prophet who went ahead of Jesus to prepare the way for Jesus.

He's the one who pointed people to Jesus.

He told many of his own disciples, hey, follow that guy.

He's done everything he can to set Jesus up, and he's been faithful, and he is in prison.

And he hears that Jesus is out there and Jesus has kind of gone public and he's doing incredible things, and yet John still sits in prison.

And that doesn't seem, at least the way we read the story, it doesn't seem like that matched John's expectations of what it would be like when Jesus really got things going.

But John didn't imagine himself in prison.

He probably imagined himself by Jesus' side.

And hasn't he at least earned by his faithfulness and his dedication and his uh his effectiveness?

Has he not earned a little bit of help from Jesus?

But instead he just sits in prison.

You can see that John is basically saying to Jesus, hey, this is not the way that I expected things to go.

So what gives?

There's a lot here.

You could ask questions like, well, is John, is he jealous of Jesus?

But no, John does not have hard feelings toward Jesus in any type of envious, kind of human flesh, petty way.

In fact, in the book of John, chapter three, we see a really interesting exchange.

Uh the disciples of John the Baptist, because he had many disciples as well, came to John and said, Rabbi, the man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, the one that you testified about, he's talking about Jesus.

Look, he's baptizing, and everyone's going to him.

People used to be going to John and his disciples, now they're all going to Jesus.

And to this John replied, A person can receive only what is given to them from heaven.

You yourselves can testify that I said, I am not the Messiah, but I'm sent ahead of him.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom.

The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice.

That joy is mine and it is now complete.

He must become greater, and I must become less.

John wasn't jealous of Jesus.

He wasn't someone who was trying to, you know, clamor for attention and he didn't feel threatened by Jesus.

He loved Jesus.

He genuinely, I believe, wanted to be by Jesus' side, to be at the forefront of this new ministry that was taking place.

But it's not going the way that he thought it would go.

Perhaps some of that is rooted in what John said and the things that John said would go along with the Messiah coming.

And so, for example, in Matthew chapter, oh, let's let's actually go to Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Okay, Matthew chapter 3, verses 10 through 12.

Matthew 3:10–12

John is preaching and he's talking about the Messiah coming.

In this moment, he's actually talking to the Pharisees.

And he says, even now, the axe of God's judgment is poised.

Ready to sever the roots of the trees.

Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God.

But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am, so much greater I'm not worthy even to be his slave or carry his sandals.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork.

Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning the chaff with never-ending fire.

So look, John's an intense dude.

He's in prison, if you don't know this, he's in prison because he decided to go right to Herod Antipas, which was the Herod Antipas was the ruler of that area and convict Herod about a sin in his life.

He's a bold guy, he's a prophet.

Like prophets always challenged kings.

And so he's not, he's not like a soft guy.

He's not warm and cuddly.

John is an intense dude.

And that boldness that John had, that same boldness that would go up to Herod and say, You're in sin, and that got him thrown in prison.

He went up to the Pharisees and he called them, he called them snakes and vipers.

And he said that the Messiah is coming and you're in a lot of trouble.

That's what he said.

He's like, hey, the Messiah is about to come, like the axe is in his hand, and you guys aren't good trees, you're about to get chopped down.

Those are the kinds of things that that John said.

And he hears about Jesus, and it's like, well, okay, when is Jesus going to start chopping some trees down?

Like Herod has to be one of those bad trees.

Chop that guy down, get him out of the way, and get me out of here.

Let's go.

When is this going to happen?

Jesus, I told everybody that you were gonna, you were gonna bring it.

And maybe in his mind he had scriptures like Isaiah chapter 35, verse 4, which says, speaking of the Messiah, say to those with fearful hearts, be strong and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies.

Isaiah 35:4

He is coming to save you.

And John sits in prison going, When is that gonna happen?

But you know, Jesus spoke, and he referenced Isaiah as well.

In fact, the very next verse, after that verse, He is coming to save you, says this.

And when He comes, He will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf.

The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy.

It's almost like Jesus is saying to John, John, I love you.

And you were right that I'm the Messiah.

But you've forgotten that there's more to the Messiah than just the one who comes to oppose the quote-unquote enemies of God.

That there are other enemies that I'm I'm going after.

There's enemies like sin and death and sickness and corruption and shame, all those things.

Like I'm I'm I'm not just I'm not just doing the obvious.

And that's one of the interesting things about Jesus that we have to we have to grapple with.

We have a tendency to always imagine God's priorities to line up with whatever our immediate priorities are.

Like as an American Christian, that's that's a very normal thing.

I'll have conversations with people, and I get it.

Uh, we live in a very politically charged time, and so it's easy for us to imagine that God's number one priority must be the election of 2024.

That that is what God cares about the most.

And I think God does care about that stuff.

Absolutely.

Scripture is really clear that the kings of this world, like all the governments of this world, God is not distant or disconnected.

Like he allows kingdoms to rise and he allows kingdoms to fall, and he has a hand in that.

But sometimes we're going, Lord, like here are my priorities, and if you're God, like clearly your priorities are gonna be the same as mine.

And it's almost always the most immediate.

And Jesus kind of tells John, look, John, I know in your mind, the Messiah coming, it's gonna be, you know, the Pharisees and these religious hypocrites, they're gone, and and Rome, they're gone.

And yes, there's gonna be a time for all of that to happen.

There's gonna be a time, John, when when all those kingdoms will fall, don't worry.

But you've almost you've almost focused entirely on those things at the expense of some of the other things that are promised about the Messiah.

Things like healing and the oppressed set free.

Not just oppressed in their physical lives, but oppressed in their spirits.

And John says, I'm the Messiah.

This must have been very hard for John's disciples to hear.

I'm the Messiah.

You're right about that.

You're not wrong about who I am.

But you may have you may have missed it a little bit in terms of what I'm here to do right now.

And that's a that's a challenging response.

For essentially Jesus to answer that question of his disciples, are you the Messiah we've been expecting, or should we look for someone else?

And the answer to both of those questions is no.

I am not the Messiah you've been expecting.

I am the Messiah.

You shouldn't look for someone else.

No, don't look for someone else.

No, I'm not the Messiah you've been expecting, because your expectations of the Messiah may just be a little off.

They saw the Messiah as purely, in many ways, a political figure.

And Jesus said, I'm actually here to deal with even darker forces than Rome.

I'm here to deal with sin.

I'm here to deal with death, I'm here to deal with sickness.

That's where I'm starting.

And so John does not get a message back from Jesus saying, Don't worry, I'm on the way.

We're breaking you out.

And John's gonna die in prison.

We're gonna get to that in a few weeks.

He's gonna die in prison.

But his fate is not going to be any worse than Jesus' himself.

Jesus is going to die.

This story, though, I think what makes it so important for all of us is it gives us a framework.

It gives us a framework to think through what do we do when our expectations of God feel unmet?

What do we do when we expect God to do certain things or work in certain ways or bless our lives in certain ways?

I mean, here you guys are, it's Sunday morning, you're at church.

You could have you could be asleep.

Do you know how good sleep is?

Like, I haven't slept till 11 o'clock in years.

I don't even know if I could anymore.

Like I have four kids, but you could be asleep right now.

You could be at a restaurant, you could be eating pancakes.

And you're here.

You might be at home watching, eating pancakes.

We're not judging you, by the way.

Um but my point is, my point is, you guys are faithful, and yet I know that in this room there are all kinds of issues and struggles and problems, and it might feel to many of you like where is God right now?

I'm here, I'm at church, I'm worshiping him.

Uh, you might even be someone who serves on teams and you pray or you give financially, like God, I'm doing the stuff.

I'm doing the stuff.

When are you coming for me?

It can feel like that.

And when we have those moments where God does not seem to be living up to our expectations, what do we do?

And I want to give us three things really quickly as we wrap up.

Number one, when God does not meet your expectations, you have to examine the origins of your expectations.

Where have those expectations come from?

And this is a challenge because Jesus is very honest about what we should expect.

Now, let's let's not, I don't want to make it all seem gloomy.

Like Jesus tells us to expect blessings.

Scripture is filled with promises of blessings.

Following God, there are things in my life that I just know that was just a gift from God.

My wife is a gift from God.

She is out of my league.

I do not deserve her.

My children are gifts from God.

This church, this family that I have, this is a gift from the Lord.

And there have been things in my life, even like little things, blessings here and there that are sort of those, some of them are big, like, wow, that was God, I didn't expect that.

Thank you so much.

Some are those just like tiny little blessings, you know, like you have those days where you get a really good parking spot and you're like, thanks, Lord, and you give God credit for that, and why not?

Why not?

But we do live in a culture that has a very the American church culture has very much been captivated in the last few decades, by decades, by this.

I went like real southern for a second.

Did you guys see that?

Oh no.

It's a decades.

Um pull that back.

The church in America has been very captivated by this idea that the way you can know that God really loves you is how blessed your life is in a circumstantial way.

And so it's wealth and it's health and things like that.

And if you are wealthy and healthy and successful, then you are blessed by God.

That does not that is not the full picture that Scripture tells us.

In fact, in his day, people believed that, in Jesus' day, people believe that like rich people were clearly blessed by God because they're rich.

And Jesus is like, I'm not so fast.

It's actually really hard for the rich to have a deep connection with God because it's so easy for them to worship their money, and his disciples were confused.

I know people who are very successful and wealthy, and and God has blessed them, and he's blessed their companies.

And I also know them well enough to know that their lives are not problem-free.

Their kids still have struggles and issues, they still have tension at home, they they still have all kinds of maybe it's health problems.

It it's not, there's no picture that we have in scripture of God saying, Hey, um the people that I love never have problems.

The way that you know you're loved by God is that everything always goes smoothly.

I'll tell you this.

Sometimes one of the biggest ways you know that you're in God's will is things aren't going smoothly because you experience resistance, because we have an enemy.

It's not that simple.

And so sometimes our expectations of how God should be, they're shaped by lies that we've been sold in church.

That if if you really love God, he'll give you this, this, and this.

And sometimes he does, and it's awesome.

And when he does, you say thank you.

But Jesus was very honest.

He said, Hey, to his disciples, um, you're gonna get arrested, you're gonna get persecuted, people will hate you, people will say all kinds of things about you.

It's not just the good stuff, it's the good and the bad.

It all goes together.

We have to examine our expectations.

Where have they come from?

Sometimes they come from kind of lies in church, sometimes they just come from our culture.

We sort of take what our culture feels about God and we sort of paste that on to God, and we have this weird concoction in our minds of what God ought to be like.

That's honestly a very selfish thing.

Like, sometimes our expectations of God just come from selfishness.

I knew a guy years ago, and uh, and he was kind of wrestling with whether or not to follow Jesus.

He was feeling compelled to follow Jesus, and he was right on that line, like he wanted to get baptized, but he kept kind of going back and forth, like I'm ready to go all in, but not.

And here was his biggest issue it was the fact that God wanted us to acknowledge him in an exclusive way, like Jesus.

And he struggled with that because there's a lot of other religions in the world.

He's like, what does it matter to God?

It shouldn't matter to God if you know we call him Jesus or Buddha or Allah or whatever.

Like he should just be happy with the fact that we acknowledge him.

Like that was his take.

We had a conversation and he said that.

And I'm like, really?

Really?

And I know that's not true because if I called him by the wrong name, he would correct me like that is not my name.

But in his mind, shouldn't God just be happy with us acknowledging that he's there, even if we don't call him by the right name?

And like, look, yes, if that's your expectation of God, is that he should just be pleased with base level acknowledgement, but that's not what God has shown us.

God has shown us time and time again throughout scripture that he wants to be known intimately by name, that he wants to reveal himself to us, that he doesn't just want to be this spirit in the sky, that he wants us to know him personally, and he has a name.

And and all throughout scripture, he's revealing himself more intimately.

God wants to be known.

That's his expectation that he's set.

And so when God isn't meeting my expectations, I have to start by just examining the origin of my expectations.

Have they come from from me, from my culture, from things I've heard out there, or have they come from God Himself?

What expectations has has God set?

It's kind of like when I take my kids on a long trip and I tell them it's gonna be a long drive.

It's gonna be long.

And they start asking, are we there yet?

Really early.

I'm like, I don't know where you got this idea.

But I set very clear expectations.

We're gonna be here for a long time.

Right?

We have to have the humility, we have to have the humility to allow God, the God of this universe, to be the one who defines the expectations for us.

And so if we find that, God, you're not living up to my expectations, well, who set those expectations?

That's where we start.

Number two, this will go quick.

Uh, you adjust your expectations.

That's what Jesus is really asking John the Baptist to do.

Hey, you need to adjust your expectations.

You see the Messiah completely and totally through this lens of like domination and fighting the enemies of God, but there's another side to the Messiah, which is healing and helping and saving and rescuing.

And I'm starting there, John, and it's it's it's okay, I'm gonna get to all of it.

But do you have the humility to adjust your expectations?

When confronted with disappointment and what God has said, like, do you have the humility to say, Lord, I surrender these to you?

Some people don't.

Some people abandon God when God doesn't do what they think God should have done.

And I get that to a degree.

But if we're honest with ourselves, that's an incredibly selfish and prideful thing.

To say, God, it's basically like saying, God, I know better, and God, I could do a better job if I were you.

And so because you didn't live up to my expectations, I'm done with you.

That's that's a dangerous thing.

We have to be willing to adjust our expectations in light of who God is and what he said and what he does.

And I believe that if we read Jesus and we read him honestly, we find that his expectations are very clear.

Final thing, number three.

And worship team, you guys can make your way out.

This is the ultimate thing to do.

It's to just let our expectations go.

Let them go.

Like, let them go.

I want to go back to what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11, verses 15 through 19.

Matthew 11:15–19

He says, Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.

To what can I compare this generation?

It's like children playing a game in the public square.

They complain to their friends.

We played wedding songs, you didn't dance.

So, in other words, like we played happy songs, no one's dancing.

So we played funeral songs, you didn't mourn.

We played sad songs, and no one seemed to like let it stir them.

You can't win.

That's what Jesus says.

He's like, John didn't spend his time eating and drinking, and you say he's possessed by a demon.

The son of man, on the other hand, he feasts and he drinks, and you say he's a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners, but wisdom is shown to be right by its results.

Jesus says, like, I can't win.

I don't know what to do with this generation.

It's like I can't win.

If I were to starve myself and be like hyper-religious and do all this, you'd say, Man, this guy, he's just crazy.

He takes things way, he's too intense, like John the Baptist.

But if I'm too lax and I'm having fun and I'm I'm going to to gatherings, I'm having dinner at friends' houses, you're like, oh, he's not serious enough.

In other words, Jesus is kind of saying, like, I'm just, I am who I am.

And I'm not at the mercy of your expectations.

And if I was, it wouldn't go well anyway, because y'all are fickle in terms of what you expect.

Jesus just says, I am who I am.

And so here's the ultimate, the ultimate place to get with God is where you just say, Lord, I don't have expectations.

I'm in.

I'm along for the ride.

I've given my life to you.

I've surrendered to you, and I don't know what's coming up, but I'm in.

If anything, my expectations are that unexpected things will happen.

Guys, there is so the number of things that have happened just in the last few years that I could have never imagined happening in our church.

In our church, I remember I gave a message in early 2020, and it was called 2020 Vision.

In January of 2020, and it was all about how you want to really see clearly what's coming.

And uh and I had all these plans for that year.

I mean, I had big plans, all these ideas, and within a few months they were gone.

They were gone.

And at that time we had two services, and we were growing, and it was great.

And if you would have told me in early 2020, hey, uh fast forward to 2024, you're gonna be a one-service church, I'd be like, what?

That's backwards.

No, three services.

But you're also going to have uh substantially more people at one service than you have at two right now, I'd be like, that doesn't make any sense.

How is that even possible?

Where will they park?

Right?

And I'm just using this as a silly example because my point is, I could not have understood all the things that would take place and all the shifting that would happen to get to this place.

And if I had lived the last four years or tried to lead the last four years based out of my expectations of what ought to happen, I'm just saying we would be in a very different place as a church.

But when you let the expectations go and you say, Lord, I don't really know what you're gonna do, but I bet it's gonna be awesome and probably really hard.

But I'm in.

That's when you get to live this adventure with God.

I had a person in a newcomer gathering a few weeks ago ask me, what's the five-year plan for this church?

And I just looked in the eye and go, I don't have one.

I don't.

I don't know.

Whatever my five-year plan would be would be foolish and stupid compared to what to what God has in mind.

He's taught me, at least for me, maybe other leaders are different, and that's great.

But he's taught me that, hey Justin, you don't have 2020 vision.

You don't.

I do.

One step at a time.

Just walk with me, just go with me, and I'll tell you what you need in the moment, I'll tell you what you.

I might even be good enough to give you like the next step, but I'm not gonna give you the next 10.

And if I can just let go of my expectations and how I think it ought to go and it ought to be, and say, Lord, I'm just in.

And I expect unexpected things.

I expect you to take us in directions and my life in directions that I wouldn't have taken it, great.

And I expect some of those things to be awesome and amazing and like mountaintop experiences, but Lord, I also expect valleys, I expect struggles, I expect hardship.

I and who am I?

Who am I to act like I don't, like I'm above that?

Like who am I to say that I don't want to go through the hard stuff?

So many people suffer.

It's okay.

And so the lesson we have from John in this story is that Jesus is not going to meet our expectations.

He's not gonna meet our expectations.

Sometimes he exceeds them, sometimes he doesn't live up to them because our expectations might be misplaced.

But he's God, and he's not at the mercy of our expectations.

And what we've got to do as followers of Jesus is say, Lord, I'm gonna examine my expectations, I'm gonna adjust my expectations, and help me, Lord, just let them go, and I'm going to follow you as you are.

I'm gonna serve you as you are.

You shape me, I'm not gonna try to shape you based on what I think you ought to be.

And when you surrender to that and you live in that, you put yourself in a position to be entirely useful to God.

Where you just he just knows I've got you.

And I can use you however I feel like you're you're you're best used in this world to be part of my kingdom, to do bigger things than you ever thought possible.

And those bigger things might be things everybody else sees as big, or they might be really small, simple things, but he sees them as big.

The point is, if you have a heart and a desire to say, I want to be used by you, Lord, I want to be part of what you're doing in this world, I'm not just concerned with the stuff that I've got going on, I want to be part of what you're doing.

Let go of your expectations, let them go, and just say, Jesus, I'm in.

I'm in.

And I expect the unexpected.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper as we close.

And uh I should have expected this because we do it every Sunday, but I don't have.

Dennis again for the win.

This guy.

Wow.

Everybody needs a Dennis, I guess.

That's great.

You know, as we take this, and if you're new, we do this every Sunday.

Um, you're welcome to join us.

You don't have to, there's no pressure.

There's a uh little cups in the back.

You can grab one right now if you want.

They've got bread and juice in them.

This this brings us to a simple moment.

Um Jesus going to the cross.

We come to this moment every Sunday.

But this moment, like I said, it's simple in the sense that it's it's the same thing every week.

It's Jesus giving himself up for us as a sacrifice.

But it's also the most complex, multifaceted thing that you could ever imagine.

What I want us to focus on in this moment, really quickly as we pray, is that to his disciples, this was unexpected.

This is not how they saw the Messiah doing things.

They thought that the Messiah, as far as blood being spilled, would be the Messiah spilling the blood of his enemies.

They didn't think that the Messiah would shed his own blood as a sacrifice for people.

Jesus being nailed to a cross was not what anyone saw coming other than Jesus.

He talked about it a lot, but they thought he was using a metaphor for something else because they couldn't imagine Jesus being defeated.

And maybe that's the most unexpected thing is that Jesus Christ hanging on a cross, dying, was not a moment of defeat, but a moment of incredible victory.

Because it's the moment that our sin was dealt with completely and totally, it is finished.

It's the moment that death lost ultimately because Jesus lives.

And so this moment, it's like it's an encapsulation of God doing what no one expected him to do and praise him for that.

Because if the Messiah had just lived up to the expectations of the people, he would have been just some political revolutionary who started a war.

But because Jesus is the Messiah and He's God and He does not live to meet our expectations, he does what he knows is best and what is right.

Rather than live up to the expectations of the people, Jesus went far beyond that and he died for us and he sacrificed himself for us.

And now we are free from the curse of death and we are free from the power of sin.

We have new life inside of us, we have mercy and grace, and we live forever because of what Jesus has done for us.

Our bodies might die, but our spirits do not because he is alive.

This is unexpected, and it's beautiful.

And so thank God.

That's what I want to say as we as we take this.

Thank God for not doing what we expect him to do sometimes.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this bread.

This represents your body.

This is your body given up for us as a sacrifice.

For centuries, your people made sacrifices, animal sacrifices, just reminding them over and over again that sin has to be dealt with, that someone has to pay a price for sin.

And no one ever expected that someone to one day be you.

No one ever expected the King of Kings to come and humble himself and die on a cross as the ultimate and final sacrifice.

Thank you, Jesus, for being what we wouldn't expect.

Let's take the bread.

This represents your blood spilled for us on the cross.

Your word had said there can be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood, and no one expected that blood to be your own.

You weren't making a threat when you said that.

You were making a promise that you yourself would pay the full price, the ultimate price.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you for this.

Thank you again for not doing the expected, but doing so much more.

Let's take the juice.