Right Savior Wrong Expectation
Mark 11:1-11
Message #40
This is the beginning of the final week of the earthly life of Jesus. It’s the beginning of Passover week, and on Friday of this week, thousands and thousands of Passover lambs will be slain. And on that same day, the vast majority of Jerusalem will miss God’s true Passover Lamb being slain on the cross to once and for all pay for our sins. It all begins with the Triumphal Entry today.
Jesus has been moving with a determined commitment to get to this exact place on this exact day because God has some very exact prophecies for Jesus to fulfill on this day and in the way that Jesus enters Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the people have their own ideas.
So, while Jesus was on his way to fulfill these crucial Messianic prophecies, the Jewish people were looking for a Savior. And Jesus was the right Savior (the Messiah). He was the Savior they were looking for. He was the answer from heaven to their problems.
But the people’s expectations were not God’s plan on this Triumphal entry day. And that is exactly the problem. The people’s expectations were their expectations. They wanted a Savior from heaven, but they wanted a Savior on their terms (not God’s). That makes the people of Jerusalem a perfect picture of many of us today.
Mark 11:1 (NLT)
1 As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem . . .
The traveling ministry of Jesus is over. From the northern edge of the Golan at Caesarea Philippi to the southern desert of what is now Jordan, that part of the ministry has now concluded. And now he is climbing the steep road from Jericho to Jerusalem to approach not just Jerusalem, but to approach the cross to pay for our sin, in our place, to be able to offer us an entrance to heaven through faith in him. That is what this Triumphal Entry was truly about. That is why Jesus had come to this moment.
But the people’s expectations of Jesus were drastically different. Jesus had to come to give them (and us) a way to freely receive the eternal, glorious, Kingdom of Heaven. But the people were expecting Jesus to give them “Their Best Life – NOW.”
And now there is a massive crowd following Jesus, not just the twelve and the ministry support disciples, but also a steadily growing crowd because of his miracle healing, celebrity status. Plus, it’s the beginning of Passover week, the largest of all the Jewish festivals, and Jerusalem would swell by over one million visitors for Passover. And so, there could easily be thousands of people expectantly walking with Jesus waiting for him to prove that he was their deliverer.
But what the word “deliver” meant to the people was different than what the word “deliver” meant to God. And so, we have the right Savior but a drastically wrong expectation from the people.
By the way, Passover is the celebration of God delivering his people from the oppression of slavery, and unbeknownst to most of this crowd, the entire Passover event was a picture – a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ and this exact moment when Jesus arrived to be God’s Passover Lamb.
You can go to the Calvary Chapel Nuevo or Word By Mail websites or phone apps and search “Christ in The Passover” – awesome. Alright, do we have the background? Again, Mark 11:1.
Mark 11:1 (NLT)
1 As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead.
As Jesus approached Bethany and Bethpage, this is where he raised Lazarus from the dead, and these towns were still a-buzz from that miracle, and so even more people would join him. All in all, it had to be thousands of people, all with very high expectations of what they wanted Jesus to do for them.
But Jesus knows what the people need first is a Savior to deliver them from the eternal effects of their sin, and so Jesus goes on fulfilling God’s prophecies and God’s plan. And so, Jesus says to two Disciples in Mark 11:2-3,
Mark 11:2-3 (NLT)
2 “Go into that village over there,” (Bethpage, very close to the Mt of Olives) he told them. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.
3 If anyone asks, ‘What are you doing?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs it and will return it soon.’”
There are numerous prophecies being fulfilled in the Triumphal Entry, and this is a critical one, and so the two Disciples went to work.
Mark 11:4-7 (NLT)
4 The two disciples left and found the colt standing in the street, tied outside the front door.
5 As they were untying it, some bystanders demanded, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”
6 They said what Jesus had told them to say, and they were permitted to take it.
7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it, and he sat on it.
This was to fulfill a critical prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, written 500 years earlier, which said the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, and this prophecy was being fulfilled on the exact day that Daniel prophesied it would be fulfilled (Daniel 9).
For more on the prophecies fulfilled in the Triumphal Entry, search for “Palm Sunday Prophecies” on either website or phone app – it will blow your mind.
So, the Disciples threw their cloaks on the donkey as a make-shift saddle, and the crowd followed suit because the crowd was all in at this point. And so, in Mark 11:8,
Mark 11:8 (NLT)
8 Many in the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others spread leafy branches they had cut in the fields.
This was an ancient custom of displaying submission to a King. For the people to lay their cloaks on the ground for the King was saying, “We place ourselves under your authority.” The problem was the crowd had their own expectations of what was required of the King in order to earn their submission to him.
And so, much like today, the crowd’s acceptance of Jesus was subject to Jesus being the King they wanted him to be and doing what they wanted him to do. They were expecting Jesus to fix their political, military, social-life (removing Roman rule). What they wanted, what they expected, was for Jesus to improve their life NOW.
And that expectation created a huge crowd just like it has for the largest church in America where the pastor is famous for saying, Jesus will give you your best life now.
And Jesus absolutely will give you your best life now. The problem is how YOU define your best life now and how GOD defines your best life now are often two very different definitions. Your definition is often driven by your flesh and by the world, and God’s definition is driven solely by eternity.
And then Luke tells us, these next verses occurred just as the crowd crested the Mount of Olives and began the descent into Jerusalem.
Mark 11:9-10 (NLT)
9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting, “Praise God! (Hosanna!) Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessings on the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David! Praise God (Hosanna) in highest heaven!”
The people are quoting the famous Messianic Psalm 118. Hosanna means “Lord, save now,” referring to the Savior. Matthew says they were also crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” which was a well-known title for the coming Messiah. This crowd did see Jesus as the possible Messiah (at least on this day), and they were making quite a public scene about it.
And this is the first time that Jesus had ever allowed anything like this to take place. Jesus had never allowed this type of public fanfare to occur. But here, it is critical that this happens today in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament.
In fact, in Luke’s account, in Luke 19:39, some of the Pharisees told Jesus to stop the crowd from using these Messiah phrases about him. And in Luke 19:40, we read,
Luke 19:40 (NLT)
40 He (Jesus) replied, “If they (the crowd) kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!”
It had to be made absolutely clear on this day Jesus was entering Jerusalem as God’s promised Messiah, and so the crowds cried out. But they were crying out for the Savior that they wanted. They were not crying out for the Savior that heaven sent.
The people wanted a Savior that would free them from the rule of Rome, and they wanted a political/military Savior. But God knew what they needed first was an eternal salvation Savior.
And we know the crowd never got that because in just a few days, this crowd completely turned on Jesus. They gave Jesus four days to begin to give them their best life now, and when he didn’t, this same crowd screamed at Pilate, “Crucify him! Crucify him! We have no King but Caesar.”
But all the hosanna’s this crowd was singing out on the Triumphal Entry day were true. Jesus is our Savior come from God. He IS the eternal King from the line of David, and he is coming again to set up a Kingdom that will never end.
Jesus is everything the Bible says he is, and he will ultimately do everything the Bible says he will do. The problem for this crowd, and for some people today, is that God is not going about it the way the people want him to, and God is not doing it in the time frame the people want him to do it in.
This is the beginning of the week that God provides an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven for all who will put their faith in Jesus Christ. But the people are missing it because although they have the right Savior, they have the wrong expectations.
And so, our text today kind of ends flat.
Mark 11:11 (NLT)
11 So Jesus came to Jerusalem and went into the Temple. After looking around carefully at everything, he left because it was late in the afternoon. Then he returned to Bethany with the twelve disciples.
Here Jesus is doing recon in the Temple because he’s got work to do here tomorrow. But for today, it’s late. He’s already fulfilled some key Old Testament prophecies, and that’s enough for one day. So, he gathers up his Disciples and heads to his friend’s house in Bethany for the night, because Jesus never spent the night in Jerusalem until it was in a prison waiting to meet the cross the next morning.
To close today, let’s go back to the prophecy that is central to this text. In the beginning of our text, Jesus had two of his Disciples go and get the colt of a donkey, and then the people made a King’s entrance for Jesus to ride the donkey into Jerusalem. We said this was to fulfill a very clear and well-known prophecy from Zechariah 9:9. And that prophecy has some insight as to why the people’s expectations were so far off, and maybe it gives us some insight into why our expectations of Jesus can be so far off.
Zechariah 9:9 (NLT)
9 Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey— riding on a donkey’s colt.
What words stand out to you in that prophecy. Rejoice – Triumph – King – Righteous – and especially Victorious. That is exactly the Savior the people were looking for, especially those words Triumph and Victorious.
Here’s a question. If I were to ask a non-Christian today, “What would you most like triumph and victory over, in your life, from God?” Would that non-Christian desire the true triumph and victory that Jesus Christ came to give us?
And here is the harder question. If I were to ask most church-attending Christians today, “What would you most like triumph and victory over, in your life, from God?” Would most Christians desire the true triumph and victory that Jesus Christ came to give us?
I am afraid many would not. Why?
Because Jesus came to first and foremost give us eternal victory over sin, an eternal home with God in heaven, and an eternal power to live this life until we get there. Jesus Christ came first as an eternal Savior to first secure a glorious eternal life for you.
Unfortunately, we are mostly consumed with this life and this world. The vast majority of what we think about is how to make this life better – for us. And so, most often, our first thought, when we talk about triumph and victory from God, is triumph and victory over some situation or circumstance in this life.
And sadly, when Jesus does not provide what we expected him to provide in this life, we often turn on him, just like this crowd.
This crowd was ready and willing to hail Jesus as their Messiah… if he did what they wanted! And when Jesus did not do what they wanted, they turned on him with a vengeance which I have seen over and over in thirty years of ministry.
Guys, we cannot be like this fickle crowd. We cannot be willing to crown Jesus as King in our lives if Jesus will do what we want him to do.
Instead, we’ve got to come to Jesus as Lord (genuinely) and say to him, “Lord, align my heart and my will with yours, cause me to embrace your great, eternal purpose in my life, and please keep me from expecting you to do what I want you to do. I trust YOU, Lord, I put my faith in YOU. I want your purpose and your good plan for my life, not my own.”
Jesus has been moving with a determined commitment to get to this exact place on this exact day because God has some very exact prophecies for Jesus to fulfill on this day and in the way that Jesus enters Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the people have their own ideas.
So, while Jesus was on his way to fulfill these crucial Messianic prophecies, the Jewish people were looking for a Savior. And Jesus was the right Savior (the Messiah). He was the Savior they were looking for. He was the answer from heaven to their problems.
But the people’s expectations were not God’s plan on this Triumphal entry day. And that is exactly the problem. The people’s expectations were their expectations. They wanted a Savior from heaven, but they wanted a Savior on their terms (not God’s). That makes the people of Jerusalem a perfect picture of many of us today.
Mark 11:1 (NLT)
1 As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem . . .
The traveling ministry of Jesus is over. From the northern edge of the Golan at Caesarea Philippi to the southern desert of what is now Jordan, that part of the ministry has now concluded. And now he is climbing the steep road from Jericho to Jerusalem to approach not just Jerusalem, but to approach the cross to pay for our sin, in our place, to be able to offer us an entrance to heaven through faith in him. That is what this Triumphal Entry was truly about. That is why Jesus had come to this moment.
But the people’s expectations of Jesus were drastically different. Jesus had to come to give them (and us) a way to freely receive the eternal, glorious, Kingdom of Heaven. But the people were expecting Jesus to give them “Their Best Life – NOW.”
And now there is a massive crowd following Jesus, not just the twelve and the ministry support disciples, but also a steadily growing crowd because of his miracle healing, celebrity status. Plus, it’s the beginning of Passover week, the largest of all the Jewish festivals, and Jerusalem would swell by over one million visitors for Passover. And so, there could easily be thousands of people expectantly walking with Jesus waiting for him to prove that he was their deliverer.
But what the word “deliver” meant to the people was different than what the word “deliver” meant to God. And so, we have the right Savior but a drastically wrong expectation from the people.
By the way, Passover is the celebration of God delivering his people from the oppression of slavery, and unbeknownst to most of this crowd, the entire Passover event was a picture – a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ and this exact moment when Jesus arrived to be God’s Passover Lamb.
You can go to the Calvary Chapel Nuevo or Word By Mail websites or phone apps and search “Christ in The Passover” – awesome. Alright, do we have the background? Again, Mark 11:1.
Mark 11:1 (NLT)
1 As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead.
As Jesus approached Bethany and Bethpage, this is where he raised Lazarus from the dead, and these towns were still a-buzz from that miracle, and so even more people would join him. All in all, it had to be thousands of people, all with very high expectations of what they wanted Jesus to do for them.
But Jesus knows what the people need first is a Savior to deliver them from the eternal effects of their sin, and so Jesus goes on fulfilling God’s prophecies and God’s plan. And so, Jesus says to two Disciples in Mark 11:2-3,
Mark 11:2-3 (NLT)
2 “Go into that village over there,” (Bethpage, very close to the Mt of Olives) he told them. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.
3 If anyone asks, ‘What are you doing?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs it and will return it soon.’”
There are numerous prophecies being fulfilled in the Triumphal Entry, and this is a critical one, and so the two Disciples went to work.
Mark 11:4-7 (NLT)
4 The two disciples left and found the colt standing in the street, tied outside the front door.
5 As they were untying it, some bystanders demanded, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”
6 They said what Jesus had told them to say, and they were permitted to take it.
7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it, and he sat on it.
This was to fulfill a critical prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, written 500 years earlier, which said the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, and this prophecy was being fulfilled on the exact day that Daniel prophesied it would be fulfilled (Daniel 9).
For more on the prophecies fulfilled in the Triumphal Entry, search for “Palm Sunday Prophecies” on either website or phone app – it will blow your mind.
So, the Disciples threw their cloaks on the donkey as a make-shift saddle, and the crowd followed suit because the crowd was all in at this point. And so, in Mark 11:8,
Mark 11:8 (NLT)
8 Many in the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others spread leafy branches they had cut in the fields.
This was an ancient custom of displaying submission to a King. For the people to lay their cloaks on the ground for the King was saying, “We place ourselves under your authority.” The problem was the crowd had their own expectations of what was required of the King in order to earn their submission to him.
And so, much like today, the crowd’s acceptance of Jesus was subject to Jesus being the King they wanted him to be and doing what they wanted him to do. They were expecting Jesus to fix their political, military, social-life (removing Roman rule). What they wanted, what they expected, was for Jesus to improve their life NOW.
And that expectation created a huge crowd just like it has for the largest church in America where the pastor is famous for saying, Jesus will give you your best life now.
And Jesus absolutely will give you your best life now. The problem is how YOU define your best life now and how GOD defines your best life now are often two very different definitions. Your definition is often driven by your flesh and by the world, and God’s definition is driven solely by eternity.
And then Luke tells us, these next verses occurred just as the crowd crested the Mount of Olives and began the descent into Jerusalem.
Mark 11:9-10 (NLT)
9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting, “Praise God! (Hosanna!) Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessings on the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David! Praise God (Hosanna) in highest heaven!”
The people are quoting the famous Messianic Psalm 118. Hosanna means “Lord, save now,” referring to the Savior. Matthew says they were also crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” which was a well-known title for the coming Messiah. This crowd did see Jesus as the possible Messiah (at least on this day), and they were making quite a public scene about it.
And this is the first time that Jesus had ever allowed anything like this to take place. Jesus had never allowed this type of public fanfare to occur. But here, it is critical that this happens today in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament.
In fact, in Luke’s account, in Luke 19:39, some of the Pharisees told Jesus to stop the crowd from using these Messiah phrases about him. And in Luke 19:40, we read,
Luke 19:40 (NLT)
40 He (Jesus) replied, “If they (the crowd) kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!”
It had to be made absolutely clear on this day Jesus was entering Jerusalem as God’s promised Messiah, and so the crowds cried out. But they were crying out for the Savior that they wanted. They were not crying out for the Savior that heaven sent.
The people wanted a Savior that would free them from the rule of Rome, and they wanted a political/military Savior. But God knew what they needed first was an eternal salvation Savior.
And we know the crowd never got that because in just a few days, this crowd completely turned on Jesus. They gave Jesus four days to begin to give them their best life now, and when he didn’t, this same crowd screamed at Pilate, “Crucify him! Crucify him! We have no King but Caesar.”
But all the hosanna’s this crowd was singing out on the Triumphal Entry day were true. Jesus is our Savior come from God. He IS the eternal King from the line of David, and he is coming again to set up a Kingdom that will never end.
Jesus is everything the Bible says he is, and he will ultimately do everything the Bible says he will do. The problem for this crowd, and for some people today, is that God is not going about it the way the people want him to, and God is not doing it in the time frame the people want him to do it in.
This is the beginning of the week that God provides an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven for all who will put their faith in Jesus Christ. But the people are missing it because although they have the right Savior, they have the wrong expectations.
And so, our text today kind of ends flat.
Mark 11:11 (NLT)
11 So Jesus came to Jerusalem and went into the Temple. After looking around carefully at everything, he left because it was late in the afternoon. Then he returned to Bethany with the twelve disciples.
Here Jesus is doing recon in the Temple because he’s got work to do here tomorrow. But for today, it’s late. He’s already fulfilled some key Old Testament prophecies, and that’s enough for one day. So, he gathers up his Disciples and heads to his friend’s house in Bethany for the night, because Jesus never spent the night in Jerusalem until it was in a prison waiting to meet the cross the next morning.
To close today, let’s go back to the prophecy that is central to this text. In the beginning of our text, Jesus had two of his Disciples go and get the colt of a donkey, and then the people made a King’s entrance for Jesus to ride the donkey into Jerusalem. We said this was to fulfill a very clear and well-known prophecy from Zechariah 9:9. And that prophecy has some insight as to why the people’s expectations were so far off, and maybe it gives us some insight into why our expectations of Jesus can be so far off.
Zechariah 9:9 (NLT)
9 Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey— riding on a donkey’s colt.
What words stand out to you in that prophecy. Rejoice – Triumph – King – Righteous – and especially Victorious. That is exactly the Savior the people were looking for, especially those words Triumph and Victorious.
Here’s a question. If I were to ask a non-Christian today, “What would you most like triumph and victory over, in your life, from God?” Would that non-Christian desire the true triumph and victory that Jesus Christ came to give us?
And here is the harder question. If I were to ask most church-attending Christians today, “What would you most like triumph and victory over, in your life, from God?” Would most Christians desire the true triumph and victory that Jesus Christ came to give us?
I am afraid many would not. Why?
Because Jesus came to first and foremost give us eternal victory over sin, an eternal home with God in heaven, and an eternal power to live this life until we get there. Jesus Christ came first as an eternal Savior to first secure a glorious eternal life for you.
Unfortunately, we are mostly consumed with this life and this world. The vast majority of what we think about is how to make this life better – for us. And so, most often, our first thought, when we talk about triumph and victory from God, is triumph and victory over some situation or circumstance in this life.
And sadly, when Jesus does not provide what we expected him to provide in this life, we often turn on him, just like this crowd.
This crowd was ready and willing to hail Jesus as their Messiah… if he did what they wanted! And when Jesus did not do what they wanted, they turned on him with a vengeance which I have seen over and over in thirty years of ministry.
Guys, we cannot be like this fickle crowd. We cannot be willing to crown Jesus as King in our lives if Jesus will do what we want him to do.
Instead, we’ve got to come to Jesus as Lord (genuinely) and say to him, “Lord, align my heart and my will with yours, cause me to embrace your great, eternal purpose in my life, and please keep me from expecting you to do what I want you to do. I trust YOU, Lord, I put my faith in YOU. I want your purpose and your good plan for my life, not my own.”