I Am The Gate/Door For The Sheep Series

But if you let a sheep free it will eat all the grass in the same area till it’s gone and then eat each others poop and die. They will get lost, get stuck, or get what’s called [Slide] “cast down” and they can’t get back up. They will eat poison plants. They are scared by silly things.

It will look up at you as if to say, “Where am I and when are you fixing my dinner?” They will wander aimlessly.

Isaiah wrote that:

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way…” (Isaiah 53:6)

If a sheep continually wanders off, the shepherd will break its legs and will carry it on his shouldesr until it heals. The sheep will never wander away again and it will never leave the side of the shepherd.

Not long ago, 1,500 hundred sheep fell off a cliff in Turkey while their shepherds were eating breakfast. Only 400 of them died, because they were a cushion to the rest of the ones that fell.

It’s not all bad. Sheep are emotional, they bond with their fellow sheep, mourn when one dies, will rally to protect each other, and they are fiercely loyal to their shepherd.

And Jesus says that if we are His sheep we will follow Him because we know His voice.

[Video of shepherd calling his sheep]

One of the things that stood out to me this week was the fact that “he calls the sheep by name.”

Jesus knows His sheep intimately. He knows their names. If you are his sheep, He knows your name.

I ate lunch with a ministry leader named Mark Matlock when I was in seminary. We were around a big table at a noisy restaurant. We hit it off and had a great conversation.

8 years later I took a group of students to St. Louis to attend this Mark’s youth conference. The students wanted to meet Mark so they waited and finally were able to gather around him.

He looked through the students and caught my eye and said, “Wow! Jeff Williams, how are you?! How’s Maxine? Are you in this area now?

I ate lunch with him once in another state, eight years before, and he remembered my name!

But that’s nothing compared to God! He knew you before you were born:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13-16)

He knows you. He knows every hair on your head (Luke 12:7). He knows what you need. He calls you by name.

David, the shepherd-king, wrote:

“Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3)

[Slide] Jesus’ Provision for the Sheep

In verse six, John tells us that the Pharisees were clueless. They didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about. So Jesus is going to provide an explanation for them.

[Slide] “Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:7-10)