When Disappointment Becomes Bad Hermeneutics

At around 9 p.m. tonight, November 13, 2026, I was listening to a sermon on SermonAudio entitled When Disappointment Clouds Your Thinking, preached by Chris Starr of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. The sermon is part of a series entitled Truth for the Troubled Mind and examines the familiar account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.

Early in the sermon, the pastor made a statement that immediately caught my attention. To paraphrase it: Disappointment is a real emotion, but it is a really bad interpreter.

That is an excellent statement. In fact, I think it deserves serious consideration. Disappointment can influence how we interpret our circumstances, how we understand the actions of others, and how we think about God. When life doesn’t turn out the way we expected, we can begin drawing conclusions that may not be justified by the facts.

But as I continued listening, I began to realize that the sermon itself was demonstrating something equally dangerous.

Our desire to find a solution to disappointment can become a really bad interpreter of Scripture.

The pastor takes the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and develops four stages of the disappointed heart: the disappointed heart, the confused heart, the slow heart, and the revived heart. The basic argument is that disappointment led these disciples into confusion, their confusion contributed to their failure to believe, and Jesus corrected their thinking by opening the Scriptures to them.

The problem is that the text does not establish that sequence.

Luke 24:21 records these words:

“But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.”

There is no question that these disciples were disappointed. Their sadness is explicitly mentioned in the narrative. They had placed their hope in Jesus as the one who would redeem Israel, and now He had been crucified. From their perspective, everything they had hoped for appeared to have collapsed.

But here is the question the sermon needed to ask: Did their disappointment produce their misunderstanding, or did their misunderstanding produce their disappointment?

Those are two very different things.

The pastor presents their disappointment as the cause of their confusion. Yet the narrative points in the opposite direction. Their understanding of the messianic mission was incomplete. They did not understand the necessity of the Messiah’s suffering, death, and resurrection. Consequently, when Jesus was crucified, they interpreted His death as the destruction of their hope.

Their misunderstanding appears to have produced their disappointment.

Jesus identifies the problem in Luke 24:25–26:

“Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”

Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not tell them that their disappointment has clouded their thinking. He does not diagnose their emotional condition as the cause of their theological confusion. He identifies their failure to believe all that the prophets had spoken concerning the Messiah.

Could their disappointment have intensified their confusion? Certainly. That is psychologically possible. But there is a massive difference between something being psychologically possible and something being the teaching of a biblical passage.

That distinction matters.

There is another significant problem. The pastor emphasizes that these disciples are standing in front of Jesus and do not even recognize Him. Their understanding of Christ, we are told, was too small.

But Luke has already explained why they did not recognize Jesus!

Luke 24:16 states:

“But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.”

The text does not say their disappointment blinded them. It does not say their emotions prevented them from recognizing Jesus. It does not say that their understanding of Christ was so inadequate that they could not recognize Him.

Their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

Then, in verse 31, we read:

“And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.”

This is not a minor detail. It is central to the narrative. Jesus had already explained the Scriptures to them, yet they did not recognize Him until their eyes were opened during the breaking of bread.

Something is happening in this passage that cannot simply be reduced to a lesson about emotional confusion and corrected thinking.

Then the sermon takes another interesting turn. The pastor declares that the disciples were traveling in the wrong direction because they were leaving Jerusalem. Their disappointment, according to the sermon, had led them to make a bad decision.

But where does Luke tell us that?

We know they were traveling to Emmaus. We know they were sad. We know that after recognizing the risen Christ, they returned to Jerusalem. What we do not know is why they were originally traveling to Emmaus. Perhaps one or both lived there. Perhaps they had other reasons for making the journey.

Jesus never rebukes them for leaving Jerusalem. Luke never condemns their journey. There is no statement that traveling to Emmaus was an act of disobedience, a spiritual failure, or a decision produced by emotional instability.

They returned to Jerusalem because they had just encountered the risen Christ! They had something extraordinary to report to the other disciples.

Why must we turn every movement in a biblical narrative into a spiritual lesson? Why must a geographical direction become a moral direction? Why can’t two people simply be traveling somewhere without their destination becoming evidence of their spiritual condition?

We need to stop inserting meaning into the text and then preaching that meaning as though God put it there.

But the most troubling part of the sermon is its proposed solution to disappointment.

The pastor asks his congregation whether Jesus had opened the Scriptures to them that day. He then tells them that without this experience, they are unprepared for their next disappointment and are headed toward confusion and spiritual sluggishness.

The solution to disappointment, it seems, is that I need Jesus to speak to me and teach me the Scriptures.

But what does that actually mean?

Am I supposed to read my Bible? Am I supposed to pray until a particular verse comes into my mind? Am I supposed to experience some special illumination? How do I know that Jesus has opened the Scriptures to me? What distinguishes that experience from simply reading a passage and understanding what it says?

And, most importantly, how does that solve my disappointment?

I am not asking these questions because I oppose reading the Bible. I have devoted much of my life to studying, teaching, and discussing Scripture. I believe Scripture is the Word of God. I believe it reveals Christ, communicates the Gospel, exposes our sin, and provides extraordinary comfort and hope.

But I do not believe we honor Scripture by making it promise things it never promises.

Imagine a Christian who has prayed for years for a loved one suffering from a devastating illness. This Christian reads the Bible faithfully. They understand the Gospel. They know God is sovereign. They understand that Christians suffer. They believe in the resurrection and the promise of eternal life.

Then their loved one dies.

What misunderstanding needs to be corrected?

What passage of Scripture needs to be opened to them so that they will no longer experience disappointment?

Perhaps their theology was not the problem. Perhaps they understood everything correctly. Perhaps they are disappointed because someone they loved is dead.

We seem to have developed a form of Christianity in which virtually every painful human experience must be traced back to some spiritual deficiency. If you are disappointed, you need a better understanding of God. If you are anxious, you need more faith. If you are depressed, you need to focus on the promises of Scripture. If you are struggling, you need to pray more, read more, believe more, or surrender more.

And what happens when someone does all of those things and the pain remains?

Too often, we simply send them back to do it all again.

We have to recognize the fundamental difference between the disappointment experienced by the disciples on the road to Emmaus and many of the disappointments we experience in our own lives.

The disciples believed their hope of redemption had been defeated. But it hadn’t.

Jesus was alive!

The event they believed had destroyed their hope was actually essential to the accomplishment of God’s redemptive purpose. The crucifixion was not the defeat of the Messiah. It was the sacrifice through which He accomplished redemption.

They discovered that their understanding of what had happened was wrong.

But that is not necessarily what happens with our disappointments.

The marriage really did end. The child really did die. The illness really did become permanent. The job really was lost. The opportunity really is gone.

Reading the Bible does not reverse those events. Correct theology does not necessarily eliminate the emotional pain associated with them.

The resurrection of Christ gives us an eternal hope that transcends those circumstances. But eternal hope does not mean that every earthly disappointment disappears, nor does it mean that we will discover some wonderful explanation that makes everything that happened suddenly make sense.

Consider Jesus Himself in Gethsemane. No one has ever possessed a more perfect understanding of God’s redemptive purpose. Jesus understood the necessity of the cross. He understood what He had come to accomplish. He knew the resurrection was coming.

Yet He said:

“My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” (Matthew 26:38)

Perfect theological understanding did not eliminate sorrow.

Consider Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul prayed repeatedly for the removal of his thorn in the flesh. He received an answer from Christ Himself: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

But the thorn remained.

Consider Job. God actually speaks to Job. Job receives something far beyond what most Christians are describing when they say God spoke to them through their morning devotional. Yet Job is never given the explanation for his suffering that the reader receives in the opening chapters of the book.

Sometimes Scripture provides comfort without explanation. Sometimes it provides hope without changing our circumstances. Sometimes it gives us the language to express our grief without resolving the questions that produced it.

And this brings us to perhaps the greatest irony of the entire sermon.

The pastor begins by warning us that disappointment is a dangerous interpreter of God’s purposes. Yet he goes on to suggest that when we expect God to remove a trial, God may instead be intending to develop our faith, and that when we expect immediate deliverance, God is accomplishing something through a process in our lives.

How does he know?

How does anyone know what God is specifically accomplishing through a particular disappointment in my life?

Scripture certainly teaches that trials can produce endurance and that suffering can be used in the lives of believers. But that does not give a pastor access to the secret purposes of God in every tragedy, every loss, every illness, and every shattered dream.

We warn people against interpreting God’s purposes through their circumstances, and then we stand behind a pulpit and offer our own interpretation of God’s purposes in those very circumstances.

Perhaps the most biblical, theologically responsible, and compassionate thing we could say to someone experiencing disappointment is something Christians seem remarkably reluctant to say:

I don’t know.

I don’t know why God permitted this to happen. I don’t know what He is accomplishing through it. I don’t know whether your circumstances will improve. I don’t know whether you will ever receive an explanation.

But I do know what God has revealed in Christ.

I know that Christ died for sinners. I know that He rose from the dead. I know that our justification rests upon His righteousness, not upon our ability to understand our circumstances, maintain a positive emotional state, or achieve some level of spiritual maturity that makes us immune to disappointment.

I know that our hope is not ultimately found in discovering why everything happened the way it did. Our hope is found in what Christ has already accomplished.

That is the Gospel.

The road to Emmaus is not primarily a lesson in how to manage disappointment. It is an account of the crucified and risen Messiah, the fulfillment of Scripture, and the revelation that the suffering and death of Christ were not the destruction of God’s redemptive purpose but essential to its accomplishment.

There is extraordinary comfort in that message. But it is Gospel comfort, not a psychological technique.

And there is something profoundly disappointing about taking one of the most remarkable resurrection narratives in the New Testament and reducing it to another sermon telling hurting people that they need to read their Bibles and have Jesus speak to them.

We have something infinitely greater to offer.

We have Christ.

Not Christ as a technique for fixing our emotions. Not Christ as a method for making sense of every tragedy. Not Christ as a guarantee that our disappointed hearts will become delighted hearts if we just understand enough Scripture.

We have Christ crucified and risen for sinners. Christ who has accomplished our redemption. Christ who is our righteousness. Christ who remains our hope even when our circumstances never change, our questions remain unanswered, and our hearts continue to ache.

Disappointment is a real emotion and a dangerous interpreter of God’s purposes.

But our desire to explain disappointment can be an equally dangerous interpreter of Scripture.

Original Sermon: When Disappointment Clouds Your Thinking — Chris Starr, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, November 11, 2026. Part of the series Truth for the Troubled Mind. Available on SermonAudio.

Scripture for further study: Luke 24:13–35; Matthew 26:36–46; 2 Corinthians 12:7–10; Job 38–42.

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