The "Door"

John 10:7–18 NASB95

So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and 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. “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. “He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. “He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

10:7-10                  December 1, 2019

1st Sermon in Peculiar People Sunday school Class

Fathom Kimes

This Lesson is called “The Door”

Let us pray.....

Our Father..........

This is the Word of God

7 So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

8 “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

9 “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and 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.

Before I get into the exposition of the text, I want to begin with a quick introduction of the book first.

The book was probably written anywhere between A.D 85 and A.D 95. The author of this Gospel is traditionally accredited to the apostle John, who was the son of Zebedee and the brother of James. However, the book does not expressly state the author’s name. Some scholars argue if John was in fact the author, but the majority of scholars believe in the authenticity of the Gospel and that it was written by the apostle himself. I think it is clear that John wrote the book for several reasons, but either way, whoever wrote it, certainly had an intimate relationship with Jesus and was giving an eyewitness account of the ministry of Christ.

Many Christians, when pointing a new believer to Christ, will have them turn to the Gospel of John, and we do that with good reason, we see the importance of the way in which John speaks about Jesus, who He was, and why He came here, and so, direct people to John as a good starting point for someone first coming to the faith. All of the Gospels are from the same source, that is, the Holy Spirit, and point expressly to Jesus Christ, but this one differs in one extremely important way, it shows the absolute deity of the Lord Jesus Christ….one commentator puts it in this way:

“all of them (talking about the other 3 Gospels) had the same object in view, to point out Christ, the three former exhibit his body, if we may be permitted to use the expression, but John exhibits his soul. On this account, I am accustomed to say that this Gospel is a key to open the door for understanding the rest; for whoever shall understand the power of Christ, as it is here strikingly portrayed, will afterwards read with advantage what the others relate about the Redeemer who was manifested.”

Because of this, many scholars believe that the Gospel of John should have probably been the first Gospel in the New Testament, but was rather put 4th due to the time in which it was written.

Also , because of the way that John was written, many, in modern New Testament studies, believe that there is a big problem with the 4th Gospel, because the first 3 Gospels point to Jesus as a historical figure but not of Him as divine. They would argue miracles were done through Him by God, much like what occured through the other prophets, but none of the other 3 Gospels discuss Him as being Divine. Of course this has led others to say that this is not the “problem”, but rather the “Glory”, of the fourth Gospel.

The book can be split up into 3 sections: The first part being Opportunity, which begin in chapter 1 and goes through 6......The second is Opposition, which is chapters 7 through 12..........and the third is Outcome, which is chapters 13 through the rest of the book, through chapter 21.

In today’s study we are going to be focused on a small part of the Opposition section, a segment that I am referencing as “Who really is Jesus?”. In chapter 10 alone, Jesus refers to Himself In verses 1-10 as “The Door”, in verses 11-21 as the “Good Shepherd”, and in verses 22-42 as the “Son of God.” It would take much more than one teaching to go though all of these today, so I am going to focus on just one, Jesus, as the “The Door.”

To put this in context and bring us up to our passage today, I am going to give a quick introduction of chapter 10. In verses 1 through 6, Jesus begins the parable about the Good Shepherd. The reason Jesus used this parable was because everyone who was listening would understand exactly what He was communicating to them. At the time, a sheepfold was made of rocks and was completely closed in with just 1 opening for a door. At night there would be a porter (or gatekeeper) who would literally lay in front of the opening so that the flock could not escape and no thieves or robbers could come and steal the sheep. Many flocks would usually be enclosed within the same sheepfold. Every morning, all of the shepherds would come and call their sheep, and each sheep would come to their own shepherd by following the sound of their own shepherds voice. The sheep could discern their masters voice, so even if someone came to steal or lead the sheep away, the sheep would not follow them because they only listened to the voice of their own shepherd. Because of this, false shepherds had to steal the sheep away. They would have to climb in or find some other deceptive way to enter the sheepfold. Only true shepherds could come through the door. They were the only one’s recognized by the porter and allowed to enter the sheepfold.

After Jesus said the parable, they were still not understanding what Jesus was referring to as we see in verse 6, So beginning in verse 7, In contrast to verse 1, He distinctly calls Himself the door, whereas in verse 1 He mentions the door in a more generic way. But here, Jesus says that He is the door, which is the greek word (th-you-dah), which literally means the door or the entrance. So here Jesus says He is the (singular), door to the sheep. And notice in verse 8 He says, all who came before me ARE thieves and robbers. He did not say "WERE” thieves and robbers. Now I have to say, he may be speaking here of, at least in part, of some of the prophets of old, who were not sent but still prophesied when they were not spoken to, but more specifically He is speaking to the present Scribes and Pharisees, which is why in verse 8 He uses the word “are” instead of “were”, thieves. These did NOT come through the (th-you-dah), through Christ, through the exclusive entrance, but rather came through religion, through force through deception. Because of this, Jesus is rebuking them, and He is doing so publicly.

In verse 9 Jesus repeats, “I am THE Door”, He repeats this for further confirmation, to reiterate that He alone is the exclusive entrance.

In his sermon covering this same text, Dr. S. Lewis Johnson says this, “One of the great figures of salvation in the old testament was the ark of Noah....How many doors were in the ark? There was 1 door in the ark. That was the figurative way of expressing that there was 1 way of deliverance from the flood. Peter speaks in his epistle of how that is an illustration of salvation. The tabernacle, perhaps the greatest visual picture of the salvation of God in the Old Testament. How many doors were there into the tabernacle? Well there was 1 door. All of this designed to stress the exclusiveness of the salvation that God provides. One may call this narrow intolerance, if he wills, but it is the narrowness of truth. Every expression of the fact that there are different methods of salvation and that it is simply important to believe in something and to believe it sincerely, all of those are false ideas. The world is flooded with them.”

End quote..... Now Jesus continues his discourse and affirms His previous declaration by what He says next, that “If anyone enters though Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”

We must understand that in order to enter through Jesus we must be His. We must rely solely upon Him. We must believe upon Him. We must trust Him. This can only happen by the work of the Father through the Spirit.

Earlier in the book in John chapter 6 verse 44 Jesus declares, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”

And again in John chapter 6 verse 35 Jesus says, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”

And 2 verses later, in verse 37, Jesus again states, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.

And later in the book, in Jesus * said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

You see, no one can come to the Son and thus come to the Father, unless it is given to Him by God, in other words, God calls him and he responds in faith, and faith is, as Paul writes in his letter Ephesians, also a gift of God. The entire work from start to finish of our salvation is a gift, a gift of grace from the Father.

Charles Spurgeon puts it this way:

“There can not be any point of contact between absolute deity and fallen humanity except through Jesus Christ, the appointed mediator. That is God’s door: All else is a wall of fire. You can by Christ approach the Lord, but this is the sole bridge across the gulf.”

And lastly in verse 10 we read, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

The false teacher, (the thief), wants to get from sheep. The Good Shepherd seeks only to give to the sheep. The false teacher seeks money, power and ungodly authority over the sheep. The good Shepherd came to lay His life down for the sheep. The false teacher comes to kill (whether that be physically or spiritually), the Good Shepherd came to give life and to give it more abundantly.

This is who we have in Christ, the exclusive entrance to eternal life, and the beginning of that life here on earth, a life where we are safe from the enemy and led by the Spirit, a life that cannot be lost, but is eternal. For what can mortal man do to those who are guarded by Christ, to the man that is protected in Jesus’s sheepfold in which He is the Door?

Let us pray.....