What Are We Even Doing Here? · Daryl and Karen Updike

Please Save Us (Mark 11:1-11)

March 30, 2026·34 min·2 clips

"Hosanna" means "oh, save now," and the crowd is quoting Psalm 118 as Jesus enters Jerusalem.

He opens by returning to Bartimaeus. That reminder matters because the blind beggar’s cry for mercy sets the tone for what follows, and the preacher uses it to show that people with physical sight can still miss who Jesus is. He then moves into Mark 11. The scene is Jesus entering Jerusalem, but the sermon treats that entrance as a chosen act rather than a parade, because the king comes in a way that shows both authority and humility. He pauses on the command to bring the colt. Jesus does not borrow out of ignorance or weakness; the details are presented as proof that he knows where the animal is and who will release it, and that his lordship reaches into ordinary arrangements. The colt itself becomes the point. It is new, untamed, and not the sort of animal a royal procession would normally use, which lets the sermon set human ideas of majesty against Jesus’ own way of ruling. He leans on Matthew Henry. That reference frames the animal as rough and untrimmed, and the sermon keeps pressing the same claim: the one entering Jerusalem is not staging grandeur, but showing authority in a quiet way. He also recalls how Jesus treated children and sinners. Those memories are not side notes; they are part of the argument that Jesus keeps choosing the lowly, the overlooked, and the inconvenient places to show what his kingdom is like. The borrowed colt matters too. The preacher stresses that the animal is not Jesus’ property, just as the disciples usually travel on foot, and that small practical fact becomes another way of showing how unshowy this king’s arrival is. He turns again to the stillness of the animal. D.A. Carson’s observation is used to underline the calm of the unbroken colt under the Messiah who controls nature, just as storms and unclean spirits also yield to him. The sermon keeps coming back to the same point. Jesus is God, and the whole entry into Jerusalem is handled as evidence of that truth rather than as pageantry. He closes in prayer. The ending thanks the Father for sending the Son and asks that the truth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection would be received with faith, forgiveness, and salvation.

As heard by us

A reverent look at Mark 11 that presents Jesus as the rightful king who enters in humility.

This review treats Mark 11 as a study in kingship, with Jesus entering Jerusalem as the rightful king and doing so in humility on a borrowed colt.

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Why you'd press play

You want a king who arrives quietly and still commands the room.

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