I AM the GATE/DOOR for the Sheep
John 10:1-10
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
10-05-2020
The Goose Meets a Sheep
[Slide] A couple of weekends ago, we took my granddaughter (the Goose) to Tanner’s Orchards. She rode the train, met a unicorn, bounced in the bounce house, and played in a huge wooden ship.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was the animals. They had goats, and chickens, and llamas, and alpacas. But Carolelynn liked feeding the sheep the best.
The first thing I noticed about the sheep was how expressive their faces were. Each one seemed to have its own personality. They loved eating the food that she gave them and she said that their tongues tickled her hand.
I couldn’t help getting a little emotional as I thought that our little sheep Carolelynn and how we get to be a part in shepherding her as she grows up. She won’t be a little goose for long.
I AM
We continue in our series on the “I AM” statements of Jesus from the Gospel of John.
So far, we have heard Jesus make the staggering claim that He is the bread of life (John 6) and last week He proclaimed that He is the light of the world (John 8).
After telling the crowd that He was the light of the world, He gave them a case study in what that light does to a human soul.
In John 9. Jesus heals a man born blind and the clearer his sight becomes the more the Pharisees are proven to be blind.
Our text this morning is a continuation of Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees concerning the blind man. Chapter 9 ends with this stinging rebuke:
[Slide] Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 9:38-41)
Jesus watched the shepherds of Israel, the Pharisees and religious leaders, kick this poor sheep out of their fellowship. And He has a lot to say to them about how much they have failed in their provision and protection of the sheep under their care.
Turn with me to John 10.
Prayer
Out of His Mind!
John Piper points out that the key to these verses is found in 19-21:
[Slide] “The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”
But others said, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (John 10:19-21)
In Jesus’ day, demon-possession and insanity were thought to go together. All this talk about about sheep and gates, and shepherds had convinced some in the crowd that he was simply a nutcase and nothing more.
But another group listened and came to the conclusion that although they didn’t understand the whole word picture He was trying to show them, it certainly wasn’t the ravings of a mad man.
And then they ask a question - Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? Demons hurt not heal. The miracle of the man born blind receiving His sight was still on their minds.
They weren’t ready to declare Him Messiah and bow down to Him but they were curious about what was really going on.
The choice was then, and still is, between believing Jesus was insane or He was the promised Messiah.
[Slide] C.S. Lewis famously wrote in his classic book “Mere Christianity” :
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
[Slide] Jesus’ Relationship to the Sheep
[Slide] “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. [Slide] When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” (John 10:1-5)
Most of us are not very familiar with sheep or shepherding. But the people that Jesus was talking to lived in an agrarian society and in the Near East even today the shepherd is a very common figure in culture.
The picture that Jesus paints for them is a sheep pen. This would be a large enclosed structure in town, perhaps connected to a house, that was made up of stones with briars on top.
The shepherds would come in from grazing the flock in the pasture and bring them to the sheep pen where they would be kept with other flocks overnight while the shepherd slept at a nearby inn.
There would be a night watchman that would guard the sheep and he was the only one who could allow access to the sheep in that pen.
So right after healing the blind man, Jesus says that “anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber.” He adds that only the shepherd of the sheep would be permitted in the pen.
Often times, robbers would try to steal sheep from the pen. They couldn’t go through the gate because the gatekeeper would stop them so they would climb over the wall. They couldn’t lead the sheep out so they would slit the sheep’s throat and throw him over the wall to a waiting accomplice.
Everyone in the crowd listening to Jesus that day understood who He was really talking about - the Pharisees!
Jesus was calling them thieves and robbers! We’ll come back to that in a minute.
The shepherd knows His sheep and He calls them by name and leads them out. They would often give sheep names based on their appearance - brown leg, fluffy, black ear.
Most of have an image of a ranch where the cowboy shepherds the sheep by driving them while a sheep dog, or a pig in the case of Babe, maintains order in the flock.
But the shepherds of this time didn’t drive the sheep, they led the sheep.
The sheep follow him because they know His voice. They will not follow a stranger because they don’t recognize their voice.
But I think we see what He was saying, right?
All throughout the Bible, we are likened to sheep. It’s not a compliment. Sheep aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box. They are helpless and utterly dependent on the shepherd.
One pastor I listened to this week pointed out that there are no wild sheep. If you let a normal animal run free, they will go wild. If Bucky gets out off his leash, he will be gone in 60 seconds. Eventually, he will come home but he will be singing Born Free!
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)
When shepherds would have the sheep grazing in the hills, they would set up stones into a semi circle and herd the sheep in there at night. There would be an opening and the shepherd would literally lay across the opening to keep thieves, animals, or any other dangers out and to keep the sheep from wandering away.
Here we come to our third I AM statement from Jesus - I AM the gate for the sheep. Jesus changes the metaphor. You know this gate I’ve been talking about? I AM the gate! Some of your translations have the word door and this could be translated either way.
I want to use the word DOOR to help us understand what Jesus is teaching.
I am the only way in to the sheep. I am their protector. I am their security. I am their peace.
Deity
Remember that when Jesus using these two little words, “Ego Eimi” (I am) He is claiming to be God and He is using the name that God gave Moses to use:God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14)
The religious leaders understood what He was saying and that’s why they were planning to execute him for blasphemy.
Jesus then drops a truth bomb on them - all who have come before me are thieves and robbers.
Wait a minute. Abraham was a shepherd as was Isaac and Jacob. Moses was a shepherd and so was David.
But Jesus wasn’t talking about them.
Turn with me to Ezekiel 34. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God calls Israel’s shepherds (religious leaders) to account.
“Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.” (Ezekiel 34: 2-6)
When I was at my previous church, our senior pastor would often read these verses to remind us what bad shepherding looks like.
God makes it clear that He will judge them for not shepherding His sheep:
“‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.” (Ezekiel 34:7-10)
Think back to the man born blind. He was a sheep who needed a shepherd and the Pharisees interrogated him, insulted him, and excommunicated him! They failed him completely.
What’s interesting is that little present tense “are.” We will talk more about this next week, but Jesus said:
[Slide] “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
But as we will see next week, Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is the shepherd that God predicated would come.
[Slide] Only way way in
Jesus drops the sheep metaphor and makes clear that He is talking about salvation - I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.
Jesus came to the sheepfold of Israel and called His sheep by name, one by one.
The only way into the sheepfold is through Jesus.
In another of the I AM statements that we will explore in a couple of weeks, Jesus said,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
There aren’t multiple doors. There isn’t a door that works for me and one that works for you. There is only one way back to the Father and that is through a saving faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Christianity is sometimes accused of being narrow minded. I’ve flown with my son and he could say, “Dad, landing on the runaway is so narrow minded. I want to land in the swamp. Either way we get on the ground.”
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt 7:13-14)
In John, this is described in many ways:
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:12)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
And here in chapter 10
“I am the gate/door, whoever enters through me will be saved.” (John 10:9)
These are exclusive claims. Only through Jesus can you be saved from the wrath of God. But it is also inclusive because of those words, “all and whoever.”
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
The door is open but God doesn’t pull you kicking and screaming through it. Have you put your faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?
“…now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor 6:2)
[Slide] Offers protection, provision, compassion, and security
“They will go in and come out and find pasture.” (John 10:9b)
When I go to the Trembleys in Iowa, I am their house guest. I have my own room and I am giving the freedom to come and go as I please.
This was a Hebrew phrase that describes every day living.
“You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.” (Duet 28:6)
{Slide] Jesus offers the sheep protection. At night, the shepherd would lay down across the opening and become the gate/door. He keeps them safe from wild animals or thieves.
The sheep feel safe and secure in the enclosure for the night.
We are going to explore Psalm 23 in depth next week but we know that David writes:
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)
Jesus leads them out of the enclosure during the day to help them find food and water and good pasture. He provides for the sheep’s needs.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” (Psalm 23:1-3)
You may read this and take the analogy too far and ask, “Doe this mean we go “in and out of salvation?” Jesus answers that one later in the chapter:
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)
If you are in Jesus’ sheepfold, if you know His voice and follow Him, then He provides for your needs, your protection, your provision.
This Monday and Tuesday, ten people from CBC attended the For the Church Conference from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
One of the speakers, Ray Ortlund said something that all of us have been thinking about the rest of the week.
He said when you get to heaven Jesus will welcome you and say, “You know, I know you had a hard time on earth. Do you need a hug? And you will say yes.
And a year later, He will say, “You good now?” And you will say yes because you will be healed and whole in a way you’ve never been before.
Do you trust Him?
[Slide] Real Life
Jesus finishes this part of the discourse with some of the most famous words in all the Bible:
[Slide] “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 10:10)
In this context, He is talking specifically about the Pharisees lack of care, compassion, and protection of the sheep.
Their sole motive is to destroy the sheep:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” (Matt 23:13-15)
But there is someone behind the Pharisees of Jesus day and ours that is a thief who wants to steal your dreams, kill your body, and destroy your soul in hell - satan.
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (I Peter 5:8-9)
But Jesus offers something radically different. He says that He has come to give life and life to the full. This word means “exceeding, superabundant, to the fullest measure.”
Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse:
“I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (John 10:10, The Message)
God is a God of abundance:
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Eph 3:20)
This abundant life is not about getting more stuff. It’s not about health, wealth, and and the American dream.
In another I Am statement that we will get to soon in the next chapter of John, Jesus says,
“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 10:25-26)
This abundant life is eternal, resurrection life. It starts now and last forever. You are no long held in slavery to fear, shame, guilt, or your past.
Why don’t more Christians experience this abundant life? Because the majority of people in America who say they are Christians have read very little of their Bibles and honestly don’t know God very well.
David Kinny has written “Before we can understand the sufficient, abundant life need to sufficiently and abundantly believe in an extraordinary God.”
Jesus provides light in the midst of the darkness, peace in the in the midst of the chaos, and hope in the midst of despair.
In a little mission church in South Africa, there is a small metal door called the “door of hope.” In that town, more 50 babies were being abandoned in the streets and left to die. Now people know that they can bring their babies to the door of hope and the church will take care of them. They rescued 50 babies last year!
We want everyone to experience this abundant life but it must start with us!
Video: New Life in Christ [Right Now Media]
Ending song: Not I, But Christ in Me
