I Am - The Gate 2026

I Am – 2026

I Am the Gate – John 10:1-10

Series Slide

Good morning on this amazing day that the Lord has made… (weather comment)…

It is good to be in the house of the Lord today, is it not?  Thank you again to Linda and Lance for stepping in as Amanda and Cindy lead the Navarro College Choir in New York.  And, we don’t want to forget about Dustin and all those with him as the Navarro College Cheer teams compete in Daytona.  Yes, there is a bit of a challenge having church staff who work at the local college, but there are so many more benefits.  While I love the members of the church who sing in the choir, we truly enjoy the talent those choir students bring to this church!

And, our College ministry continues to grow because of Dustin’s connections at the College.  In fact, I am looking forward to Bulldog’s Belong Sunday on May 3 when the Navarro College Students take over!  They will be leading all aspects of the services on that day in both Sanctuary services and The Current.  Through these ministries, we are reaching the next generation of church leaders!  My hope and prayer is that the work we do will prepare the students of today to lead in their culture, offering Christ in meaningful ways, eventually leading the churches of tomorrow.  They are the ones who will proclaim the name of Jesus to the generations ahead!

But today, we are proclaiming the name of Jesus.  Specifically, we are talking about the fact that Jesus proclaimed that he was God in the flesh.  When Jesus proclaims, “I Am,” he is claiming the name God revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush.  It was such a big deal to the leaders in the synagogues and temple that when

Jesus spoke the phrase Anain Aramaic and written as Ego Eimi in Greek, what the Pharisees heard was the Hebrew, YHWH.  They knew Jesus was claiming the Holy name of God as his own identity… and for that, they picked stones to stone him in the streets.

There is no doubt that Jesus was claiming that he was God incarnate.  And, along with that self-proclamation, Jesus goes on to reveal the character of God. 

What does God look like? 

God is the Living Water that satisfies when nothing else will. 

God is the life-giving and sustaining Bread of Life.

God is the Light of the World that illuminates and outshines the darkness.

God is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep

God is the resurrection and the life that we need for today and for eternity

And today, we are looking at the fact that Jesus revealed in himself that God is the door, or the gate.

As we just heard, let us now look a little more closely at the text before us, but I am going to read a slightly different translation than the one we heard a moment ago. 

Jesus has been telling them that those who climb over the fence to take the sheep are thieves and robbers, but the shepherd is the gatekeeper… the shepherd is the one the sheep know and follow.  But, Jesus spoke this in a parable, so…

John 10:6-9a

…they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.

John 10:9b-10

Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

(Prayer)

Sermon Slide

It was my first official church job.  I was the Youth Minister of a small church in Quitman, TX.  And, it was also when I bought my first vehicle on my own… a used 1988 Chevy S-10 pickup.  It was a great little truck and I did everything with it.  I even hauled hay… not much, but I did haul some hay; which leads into the next part of the story.  You see, we were going to be in a parade, and the youth were going to ride on a trailer with hay.  One of the church members had a ranch, and he told me to drive through the pasture, go to the barn, and take as much hay as I needed.  So, I drove along the road, more like a trail, through the pasture to the gate, opened the gate, drove on up to the barn, and started loading hay. 

Any ranchers out there want to tell me what I left out of that list of activities? 

I learned that day that you always leave a gate the way you found it, Amen!  Yes, I had to help round up the cows that got out into the wrong pasture, and it was that day that I got my first dent in my pretty black truck when an ol’ Hepher decided she didn’t want to go where I was guiding her and gently bumped my tiny little truck.  You know, some lessons have consequences attached.

Gates and doors are important.  They keep things inside… They protect from what is outside… They give a defined place to enter and exit… and, they symbolize a place of safety and comfort.

Now, before we get into that, we need to look at something else.

As we think about this passage and Jesus’ claim to be the gate or the door for the sheep, we need to keep in mind the context of the conversations surrounding this passage. 

Jesus and his disciples have just walked through the area around the Pools of Siloam just off the Temple Mount, where Jesus healed a man born blind.  This just so happened to be on the Sabbath, so it caused a huge scene with the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were questioning the formerly blind man about the healing.  This is the famous passage where we read, “One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”  When the Pharisees finished questioning the man and didn’t get the answers they wanted, they threw him out of the Synagogue… in other words, they excommunicated him. 

Then Jesus came to the man, revealed his identity, and invited him to follow him.  When the Pharisees saw and heard this, they confronted Jesus

You see, these Pharisees had made themselves out to be the gatekeepers.  Their first “gate,” so to speak, was the Torah.  They knew the Torah – the Law of Moses, detailed in the first 5 books of the Bible.  Then, they created all these rules to make sure no one broke the laws of the Torah. 

Here’s an example of one of their guardrails for the Torah… one of their fences to protect the Law.

Now we can make an ethical argument, but nowhere does it say that you can’t eat any meat soaked in milk… You know, like we do when we make a Chicken Fried Steak... 

You can make a health argument, but nowhere in the Bible does it say that you can’t have cheese on your burger…

The Torah states that you shall not have a kid boiled in its mother’s milk.  That was a pagan practice… but the priests took that rule and said you can’t eat meat and drink milk… then they said you can’t have meat and dairy in the same meal… then they said you can’t prepare meat in the same kitchen you prepare dairy products…

Along with the Torah and all the rules they created around it, they had traditions.  Some of the traditions had become more important than the people who practiced them and the God to whom they were to point.  I love the way our Tenebrae Service made this point. 

              Traditions do not make us holy.

              Traditions don’t cleanse our sins.

              Traditions do not secure our position as a child of God.

(Heather Sorenson, Tenebrae… Brookfield Press, 2024, p. 49)

The Pharisees had begun to use the Torah, the Traditions, the nationality of the people, the location of worship, and all these other things as the litmus test for who was in and who was out of God’s Kingdom.  They had self-designated themselves as the gatekeepers for the Kingdom of God, but Jesus came and said, “No, you are not the keepers of the Gate. You are circumventing the gate… You have gone around the gate… and stolen sheep or separated sheep from the pen that the Good Shepherd has let in.  You Pharisees have rejected the sheep I have accepted.”

And so, with that backdrop, we come to this passage where Jesus tells them, and us, that he is the gate.

Here is something beautiful about the shepherds' practice back then.  I referenced this a couple of weeks ago when we discussed Jesus being the Good Shepherd.  Contrary to popular paintings, the Shepherds didn’t leave their sheep out in the fields to sleep at night.  They would lead them into a place of safety.  Often, they would lead them into a box canyon, or a cave, or somewhere protected on three sides.  Then, they would gather up briars and bushes, piling them up across the opening, leaving only a narrow passage.  Once all the sheep were inside this makeshift corral, they would light a fire near the entrance and lie by the fire, blocking the entrance.

The Shepherd would become the gate.  They would keep the sheep from wandering out into danger, and they would keep danger from wandering in.  The only way in and out was through that Shepherd, who would fight to the death for the sheep in his care.

And so, Jesus says, “I am the gate!  I am the Door!”

And, with all that in mind, let’s think about what a door, or a gate does:

1.  First of all, a door protects us… it is a means of safety.  How many of you remember the 1970’s B-rate horror movie “The Town that Dreaded Sundown”?  It was a movie about a serial-killer they called “The Fantom Killer” in Texarkana.  He terrorized the entire town, seeming to kill indiscriminately.  In his final killing, a woman called for help, then escaped and hid in the corn fields.  She was the only one of his victims to survive, and he hunted for her… this gave the local police time to arrive and though the Phantom Killer escaped, he never killed in Texarkana again.  Why am I talking about this strange film? Because it was based on a true story… and the lady who survived that attack lived next to my grandparents and my then 12-year-old dad in 1946.

The experience of that year changed my dad.  Every night of my childhood, I remember my dad going around the house at sundown, closing all the blinds and locking all the doors.  Before bed he checked the doors again… why, the door protected his home from the evils of the outside world.

For the sheep, the gate did the same thing… it, the shepherd, kept all that would harm them out… the gate protected the sheep, just as our doors protect us.

2. Here’s another idea of what a Gate, or a Door, does…

A Door creates an entrance and exit.

The door, or the gate, gives us a safe way in and out of our homes.  We come into the home for safety, and we go out of our homes for opportunity.  The sheep would come into their makeshift pen for the safety it provided when needed, but it didn’t give them the opportunity to graze and find water… they had to have a safe way in and out to find the opportunities available to them as the shepherd led them to green pastures and still waters. So, the gate was an opportunity to come in to find safety, but also to go out to find nourishment.   Jesus is both the door of security and the door of abundant life.

We still use the image of a door opening to speak of exciting new opportunities.  “Door to Adventure,” “A new door has opened,” “When opportunity knocks, don’t be afraid to open the door.”  The ultimate door is Jesus… He leads us to the abundant life we were created for.

3. Finally, a door symbolizes home or belonging.  When we make it home, and we come through the door, we know we are where we belong.  The haunting lyrics of the Beatles' final #1 hit says it well:

The long and winding road, that leads, to your door

Will never disappear, I've seen that road before

It always leads me here, lead me to your door

The door is that place of belonging that we long for.  It is the Home we are striving to get to…

Throughout life, we are constantly going out and coming back… leaving and returning. 

The entire Bible is one long story of going away and coming back again. Leaving and coming home. Our lives are like that too; leaving the garden of childhood innocence to follow the road of life wherever it takes us, but in the end we find ourselves longing for home again.

We’re “knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door,” as Bob Dylan put it, or maybe you prefer Gun’s N’ Roses' version.

Yesterday, we celebrated 2 different ladies who make the final journey back home… they had journeyed through this life, but their homesick souls finally made it to the gate… to Jesus… to the home that they had longed for.

Sermon Slide

That is a journey that all of us are on… we were not made for this life… we have a home that is not made with human hands, but in the heavens.  As Renee and I talked about this week.  We are not bodies with a soul; we are each a soul that is held within a body for a short time.  We are spiritual beings longing for a spiritual home.  And someday, we will approach what John described as a pearly gate… a gate, as though it were a pearl…

I don’t know what that really means.  I can’t imagine what that will look like… but what I do know is that Jesus said,

John 10:9b-10

I am the Gate.  Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

And if Jesus is that gate, the gate that protects me, and guides me in and out… when I see Jesus, I will know that I am home.

I invite you today, to come in through that Gate, accept the protection and abundant life Jesus offers today, and experience the fulfillment of the longing for the home we were created for…

Let us pray!