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Psalm 118:19-24 19 Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD. 20 This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it. 21 I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. 22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. 23 This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 24 This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
John 10:1-10 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
I Am the Gate
“I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus says. “I am the gate.” This is the fourth in our series on the I AM statements of Jesus, statements found in the gospel of John that Jesus used to describe Himself. Through these statements we can know and understand Jesus better. The better we know Jesus the deeper we can move in relationship with Him.
Let’s begin with gates. Gates usually have two purposes. To keep one thing in and another thing out. They allow access but also limit access. The purpose of the fence and a gate is often to protect something. A gate is different from a fence. A fence is a permanent boundary. It blocks both entry and exit. A gate is flexible, it opens and closes. It can keep some in and some out.
Gates can save lives. If you have a pool in your backyard you are supposed to fence it in and have a locked gate. It protects little children from wandering into the yard, falling into the pool and drowning. In this case keeping someone out protects them.
A gate can provide safety and security. A gate keeps those inside safe. Think of the fence around the Learning Center’s play area. Without the fence the little children could wander out which would not be safe. It keeps the children safe while they are there. It’s keeps them from wandering away. There are three gates in that fence though. If there is as fire drill when the children are outside they will use a gate to get to the parking lot where they gather. There is a gate between the two playgrounds. This gate separates the older children from the younger children. The children don’t usually use it but they can. There are doors the children usually use to get out to the playground. We can think of them as gates also. They use these doors to come in and out each day. They are not locked in there forever though, they can go in and out.
The gates also keep others from entering the area. Now of course some have climbed the gate to get into the playground. We have caught them at it sometimes. The fence and locked gate keeps most of them out and protects the playground equipment.
A gate controls entry and exit. Gates can be a way of excluding people. When I lived in Ardmore we had season tickets to the Wings, the Philadelphia lacrosse team. We had to show our tickets to the gatekeeper before we could go through the gate and into the stadium. Anyone who tried to jump the gate was going to be in trouble.
Think of how air travel has changed since 911. I remember when we could go with people to the gate onto their plane or meet them at the gate. Now you can’t go any further than the security gate and you have to meet people at Baggage Claim. The reason it changed was to keep air travel safe, to keep us safe. The whole annoying procedure of putting everything with you in a bin, emptying out your pockets in bins, taking your belt off if it has a metal buckle and going through a screening machine is to prevent anyone from sneaking on a bomb and blowing up the plane or getting on with a weapon and hijacking the plane. Unfortunately, very real threats nowadays. The gate keeps us safe. It excludes terrorists and bad people; the thieves and bandits of our day.
So who is Jesus saying He is here? What does it mean that He is a gate? God’s people are often called His sheep. The hundredth Psalm says “Know that the LORD is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” The beloved 23rd Psalm which uses the idea of God as our shepherd and our place as his sheep. The psalm you head in our Old Testament reading, Psalm 118 can be interpreted as referring to the Messiah when it says, “This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.” Jesus is the gate through which we find salvation. Jesus is the sole legitimate means of access to God’s flock. There is no other way to access the abundant life Jesus promises than through Jesus. It was through His life, death and resurrection that we are reconciled to God. His righteousness is counted as ours. He, and he alone gives us access to the Father.
Remember I said gates can exclude people? I don’t want us to think of Jesus as a gate that excludes some people. The gate is for all the sheep, it is only to stop the thieves and bandits; not block any sheep. Jesus welcomes all who would come to Him. The life that Jesus offers does not eliminate the threats posed by the thieves and bandits but sustains His followers in the face of those dangers.
What did it mean in His culture and how does it speak to us today? Shepherds are common in the Middle East, the people of Jesus’ day would have been quite familiar with them. The only time we see sheep is probably when we drive in the country and see them on farms and there are no shepherds with them. For that we would need to go much further west.
In order to understand our passage it will help to understand something of how people kept sheep in Jesus’ time. Jesus is describing two different ways that sheep are kept. In a town there can be a common pen where multiple herds of sheep can be kept. This pen would keep all the sheep safe and it would have a gatekeeper who would only let in those shepherds he knows. Anyone who climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.
The second type of pen is one that is used when the shepherd is out in far away pastures. The shepherd builds them out of brush possibly with thorns on the top. They are temporary shelters where the sheep can come in at night for safety and go out and find pasture during the day. The shepherd leaves a gap for the sheep to enter and exit. At night he lays down across this opening and he literally becomes the gate. Nothing gets out or in except through him.
When the shepherd laid his body across the opening to the pen he kept the sheep in and any predators out. There were a surprising number of predators in ancient Israel; wolves, panthers, foxes, hyenas, and jackals, lions and bears. The shepherd protected the sheep from all of these.
Who are the predators in our world? They are both people and things. Anything that tempts us from following Jesus. All the shiny things of the world that would divert us from the path. Everything that lures us away promising that they will fulfill us, that tempts us to trust in them rather than Jesus. That if we just have that new car, bigger house, more money we will be happy. Jesus laid down His life for us so we could know the joy of relationship with God. When we find that joy all the false happiness in the world fades before it. There are also the predators of worry, fear, anxiety, loneliness, illness and grief. These would steal away our peace, eat away at our trust in God. Jesus came to free us from these.
What does it mean to our beliefs, our behavior and our lives? Jesus is the gate through which all must pass to gain access to the Father. Jesus is central to our beliefs. If we believe this we will want to tell others of Jesus so they too can come into the presence of their heavenly Father. We will pray for our families that they will accept Christ into their lives; that they will pass through the gate and become one of God’s sheep.
Several times Jesus says that the sheep know the voice of their shepherd. Jesus is our shepherd and we need to know His voice. If we want to know His voice than we need to spend time with Jesus. Time reading our Bibles, time in prayer and time in worship. This will not be a chore. It will be our delight to spend time listening to His voice and following Him. We will follow Jesus willingly wherever He leads us in life, trusting that He knows what is best for us.
The only other place in the New Testament we see the image of a gate is in Matthew 7:13-14 where Jesus says, 13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” The gate is used here as an image for something that limits access. The narrowness of it means it is easy to overlook. The Christian life is not necessarily the easiest way but it is the only way that leads to salvation. It is worth the effort to find the narrow gate.
Those who follow Jesus have the freedom to go in and out; still using the image of sheep, they find pasture. Pasture for sheep is what is necessary for life. So do we find all that is necessary for life in Jesus. Wholeness of heart, mind, soul and body. Healing for our bodies, minds and emotions.
When we hear Jesus voice, when we follow His call we will find abundant life. Freedom from the burdens of sin and death. The abundant life that is ours through Christ does not mean that we will never have struggles; it does not necessarily lead to comfort, wealth or material goods. What is does mean is that we will have the things of God. Relationship with God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We will know God’s presence in our lives; His power, His steadfast love, His abundant forgiveness. The gate into relationship with God stands open for us, we are welcomed into God’s sheepfold, embraced in God’s love and become part of God’s family.