Jesus Is The Door
Introduction
Scripture
“I am the door.” The setting for that claim of Jesus is the story of the Great Shepherd. Jesus’ hearers did not understand the story when he told it to them, so without reservation, as plainly and as boldly as he could, he made the reference to himself, saying, “I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”
Let’s live with the setting of that story for a moment. In Jesus’ day, there were two kinds of sheepfolds. There was the communal sheepfold in the villages and towns. The shepherds keeping their sheep out in the fields by day would bring them back into the village at night, and they would be enfolded in that sheepfold. It was a well-contained place with a strong door, and that door had a doorkeeper. Only the doorkeeper had a key to the door, and no one could enter the sheepfold except a shepherd known by the doorkeeper. That’s the kind of fold Jesus was talking about in the first part of our Scripture lesson.
But there was a second kind of fold. During the warm season, the shepherds would take the sheep far, far away from the villages. They would stay gone for weeks at a time, and at night they would enclose the sheep in folds that were built out on the hillside. Those folds were simply walls enclosing a space, with an entrance. There was no door to that entrance, and once the shepherd had put his sheep in the fold for the night, he himself would lay down across the opening. So there is a sense in which the good shepherd was the door. And for the sheep to enter or depart from the sheepfold, they had to pass over the shepherd’s body. It was that kind of sheepfold that Jesus was talking about when he referred to himself as the door.
In the most literal sense, the shepherd was the door. For there was no access to the sheepfold except through him.
The purpose of a door is to either shut something behind us or open something to us. Isn’t that simple?
What Jesus Closes Out?
What does it mean to be saved? To enter the door and shut something behind us? At the very heart of it, it means at least this: Through Christ the door is shut to an old life of sin and guilt, pain and loss. Doesn’t that sound awfully fundamental? It is. But I don’t know a more desperate need on the part of people today than the need to know that their sins are forgiven, that their guilt can be done away with, that they are accepted, and that the door to the past can be shut behind them.
Illustration
Hear this. Jesus said, “I am the door.” A door functions to close something behind us. And if we don’t allow that to be closed behind us, we can’t experience the opening of the door to something before us. That’s our next consideration
What Jesus Opens Up
The life to which Jesus calls us, the door that Jesus is, is an open door to life. There’s a quality of life that we will never know apart from Jesus Christ. For not only are persons saved, delivered, and healed through, Jesus who is the door closing something behind them, but if they enter through Christ the door, the next verse says they will go in and out and find pasture. It’s a beautiful image of being protected and sustained. It is a life of trustful relationship to God and loving service to our neighbor
