I Am The Door (John 9-10) Series

What’s In a Name?

Week 5: I Am the Door

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to John 10.

Speaking of opening, since we are talking about Jesus being the door, in preparation for this I tried to count all the doors I’ve opened so far this morning. The first door I opened today was the cabinet door where we keep the coffee and coffee filters. I made the coffee. Then I opened the refrigerator door. Then I couldn’t remember why I opened the refrigerator door, so I closed it again and sat down with my coffee. I opened the door to the backyard to let the dog out, sat down in my chair, got back up to open the door to let the dog back in because she didn’t like the rain. I spent some time in God’s word, then I began to get ready for church. I opened my closet door and figured out what I was going to wear. Then I opened the shower door and took a shower. Got out of the shower, got dressed, then opened the refrigerator door again to get some milk for my cereal, which I found when I opened the pantry door.

I finished the cereal, opened the refrigerator door a third time to put the milk back, kissed Trish goodbye, opened the door from the house to the garage, opened the garage door, opened the door to my truck, got to church, opened the door to get out of the truck, opened the outer door to the church, the inner door, the office hallway door, the door to my conference room, the door to my office, the back door to my office, the door to Tom Moore’s class for our men’s prayer room, the door to the sanctuary, back to my office, the door to every Sunday school room when I popped in to say hello. The door to the bathroom, the door back to my office, the door out of my office out of the conference room, out of the office hallway, into the sanctuary, and here I am.

25 doors opened closed, opened again from the time I got up to now.

And they weren’t all doors for the same purpose, either. There were cabinet doors, refrigerator doors, garage doors, truck doors, and so on.

So when Jesus described himself as the door, it’s not out of bounds to ask, “Well, yeah, but what kind of door are you, Jesus?” What did you mean? And are you really “THE” door? Maybe you’re just “a” door, and it’s kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure story.

And if you are really the ONLY door, what happens if I don’t walk through it? What about all those other people that don’t walk through it? What if they never knew there was a door?

Our text for this morning is going to answer some of those questions. At least I hope it does. Let’s look at the first ten verses of John 10 and see if we can get some answers:

I’m reading from the English Standard Version, and it uses the word door. Other translations use the word gate, and even though a lot of times there’s a shade of meaning that makes a difference in how we read the text, there isn’t really one here. So whether its door or gate in your translation, let’s walk through this together (see what I did there?)

[READ John 10:1-10]

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray

I want to talk first about what had just happened before Jesus gave this teaching. We’ve seen already that context makes a difference in understanding these I am statements—Jesus said I Am the Bread of Life when he fed the 5,000, I Am the Light of the World during the feast of Tabernacles, when the Jews remembered how they had been guided by the pillar of fire. And context matters here too. Back in chapter 9, there was the healing of the man that had been born blind. We aren’t going to go deep in that one, but I want to point out a detail in that story that will help us understand why Jesus is talking about doors in the first place.

We read in John 9 that the Pharisees were upset that Jesus had healed this man on the Sabbath. So they are interviewing people to try to get the gist. They call in the man’s parents, and check out what the text says in verse

22 (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus[b] to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”