Let's turn together in God's Word to the book of John. I'm reading from the English Standard Version, a literal translation of the originals. You'll turn with me to the gospel of John. We continue in chapter 10, and you'll notice in this the second message in chapter 10 that there is a very definite linking with last week. In fact, it probably would be most appropriate if we could explore this entire chapter in one Sunday, but because of the length of that sermon, knowing how much you enjoy staying here and listening to preaching and could do it all day long, and I hate to deprive you of that. Nevertheless, I thought it most prudent that we tackle this in at least three weeks, dealing last week with Jesus' claim to be the shepherd. We will continue to attach ourselves to the themes of last week as we now introduce him as he is describing himself as the gate. But this can't be held in isolation for he is providing these teachings all in one context, and so we will continue to link these together as we explore the different themes in John chapter 10. Return with me then to John the 10th chapter. I'm going to begin actually to grab some of that context at verse 6, reading through verse 10. Listen for it is God who speaks to us. This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them, 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 listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by 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. May the Lord bless the reading of his Word and the hearing of his people. The battle cry of the reformation, the solas of the reformation. One of those was solar, Christus, Christ alone. Christ alone. I want to say that at the outset because that will form the theme of the teaching today. Christ alone. There was a child. We mentioned the 23rd Psalm last week. There was a child who once said, the Lord is my shepherd, and that is all I want. Is it in fact in the words of a child, a profound truth that we also would affirm? Last week we explored a little bit, the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. We talked about together considering why it is we would not want. Because the Lord as our shepherd was adequate. The Lord as our shepherd provides all that we have need of. He provides security. He provides all that is needful for living and for life. He provides our belonging. We become part of his flock. He provides for our safe keep. The Lord is our shepherd. We have no other wants. If we rightly understand that the Lord is our shepherd and what all being a shepherd communicates. The Lord is my shepherd. He's all that I want, says the child, and we echo, yes indeed. The Lord is my shepherd. He is all that I want. Two types of pins have been introduced already. When I say pin speaking here of where they keep the sheep. Last week there was a porter by the door of the pin. Last week we had in mind and what was pictured to us was more of a structurally sound or an intentionally built sheep pin, probably in the location of a town. And there as the shepherds came into town for various reasons passing through or because they needed to gather there for some official reason, as they gathered in this place they would take all of their different flocks down to this pin. There would be a porter by the gate. He would let them put the sheep inside the pin and then the shepherd would leave to take care of whatever he needed to. Upon his return the porter recognized the shepherd allowed him access to the pin but how does he separate his sheep from all of these others. I don't know if you've driven by many pastures lately where you might see cows or sheep or goats but except for the few who might have some sort of a speckled appearance to them or have some sort of a dApple coat. You can't really tell that much difference between them. You might be able to pick out a few one or two but your entire flock can you discriminate from all of them to pull out your flock without leaving one behind or taking one that doesn't belong. The sheep we discovered last week have such a relationship with the shepherd in the east that they hear his voice. You recall and only say by way of reminder whereas we heard sheep with sheep dogs and golf carts and four wheelers they lead by speaking living with singing to their sheep. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd and when the shepherd stands and he speaks and calls for his sheep if there are a hundred sheep that are gathered there from five flocks, 10 or 15 or 25 heads will pop up and they will begin to make their way towards the shepherd who will lead them out. None of the others because they know that that voice they hear is not their shepherd. Only the ones who belong to the shepherd will hear the voice but then there is another pin. One that doesn't require all of that separating and segregating because when the shepherd calls his sheep out he then leads them out to pasture and when he leads them out to pasture as night begins to fall there will be a makeshift pin. One with stacked rock or something some other sort of a barrier and then there will be thorny bushes or gravel that are put on top of the rock to keep anything from crawling over and then the one flock is gathered inside of that pin and the shepherd will stand sit or sleep in the gate as their protector. He doesn't leave his sheep. He stands there's no port or to keep watch. He alone keeps his flock as they are segregated out and belonging to him. I emphasize this because this theme of calling out from one pin gathering up into another where Christ alone is our shepherd will continue even on into next week. What I want to emphasize there and I only mention it now because it's hard to do what we're doing today without keeping all of this in mind. Jesus was calling out to his people who were still under the religion of the Pharisees and he was calling them out of that formal Judaism into truth. He was calling them out of a corrupt religion the religion of the Pharisees and he was calling them into the church. He was calling them into his flock and he was calling those who had an ear to hear away from that which was corrupt which was leading them in the wrong place that had stolen the people that God had meant to be his own who had tried to seek to capture those people and called them out to his own church and led them out of that into a separate place where he alone was there to guard and to protect and to provide. He called them out of the old Judaism the old school of religion and into his church as God had promised. So one of these is watched by a porter the other is watched by a shepherd and one pin there are a number of flocks gathered but only one only one that belongs to Christ. The Pharisees that were there with Jesus were told in verse 6 had lacked an understanding of what Jesus was speaking to them. Remember what again our context is they have thrown this man that was blind out of the church. They've excommunicated him out of I won't say church. Out of the synagogue, out of the religion of the Pharisees they have kicked him out and so he is outside of religion as far as he knows. He is without hope because they had advertised to him there's only one way to be saved and it's our way. A way of works, a way of appeasement to the Pharisees, a way of strict legal obedience to all of the extra rules which they had formulated and without that there was no hope. He because of his testimony of Christ was cast out. Jesus is now saying to them I am the shepherd of the true sheep and the Pharisees do not understand and so Jesus now will clarify. His clarification is to say I am the door. I am the gate to the flock. I am the gate to the pin. I am the door to the sheep. There is no access to the pin. I have called them to gather into the true church except by me. So he has gone from saying I am the shepherd of the sheep. I am the one whose voice they hear. I am the one with relation to the true sheep to saying and you cannot gain access to the hope and to the promise and to God's covenant relation and to the presence of God. There's no access to that except by me in contrast to what? The religion of the Pharisees. Do you see the contest here? You see the conflict and the tension that continues to build. By Jesus saying I am the door, he is saying there's no other way in faith. There is no other way to God except by me in contrast to you who stand here, the Pharisees, and the religion which you have well established and he's saying being cast out of your synagogue is of no consequence because there is no salvation through the Pharisee. The Pharisee is not the gate. Jesus is the gate and the gate is the way into the family of God. There is only one gate to these pins because it was only one shepherd. So the communication there is quite clear. Jesus described himself as the shepherd who went in the gate to call out to a sheep. Now he describes himself as the gate itself. Is there any frame of reference for the Jewish mind to have grasped this? Of course certainly there is. We went over a number of passages regarding shepherds last week. This week is there anything on the gate? Is this something Jesus to formulate it and it's new or should they have heard his words and understood in Psalm 118 versus 19 through 21? Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. Only the righteous will enter through the gate of the Lord to salvation. And Jesus is saying, I am the gate. Only by entering in the gate will you have the righteousness of salvation. Jesus is our righteousness. We know this. We are clothed with His righteousness and not our own. Only the righteousness of salvation can only be obtained through the gate and Jesus is saying, I am the gate. An ancient church father, Christram said, when he brings us to the father, he calls himself a door. When he takes care of us, he calls himself a shepherd. And Acts chapter 4 verse 12, there is salvation and no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Christianity, solar, Christus, Christ alone is an exclusive religion. Now sitting in here together as we are, that doesn't seem to be such a far stretch, but we need to keep in mind the spirit of the age in which we live. I'd like to read, I don't typically read from another book for you, but John starts, the contemporary Christian has a passage that I would like to relate to you rather than paraphrasing it because I think the force of what he is saying is best when it's read verbatim. He gives two examples and then he sums it up very succinctly as to the spirit of the age in which we live. These take place in the 1960s. A social worker in Nigeria, once visited a youth in one of the back streets of Legos. On his bedside table he found the following books, I keep this inventory in your mind. On this young man's night table, these are the books that are located there, the Bible, a book of common prayer, a Quran, three copies of the Watchtower magazine, that's the magazine of Jehovah's Witness, a biography of Karl Marx, a book on yoga exercises, and what the poor fellow evidently needed most, a popular paperback entitled, How to Stop Worrying. On Commonwealth Day, May 24, 1966, the first multi-faith service was held in the church of Saint Martin in the fields in London. In it Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians took part on equal terms, making four affirmations of a supposedly common faith, giving four readings from their respective sacred scriptures, pronouncing four blessings, and only one of which the name of Jesus was mentioned for the first and the last time. The secular press was enthusiastic, hailing it as a significant milestone in religious history. These two incidents, both of them taking place in 1960s, are examples of a spirit of syncretism, and then skipping over. The debate has moved on since the 1960s, however, today the main challenge to the traditional understanding of the uniqueness of Christ is not syncretism, but pluralism. Not the attempt to fuse the world's religions into a single universal faith, but the recognition of the integrity of each and all of its divine particularities, exclusiveism, syncretism, pluralism, these are the challenges of our day. Do we fuse our religions into one representing and emphasizing the sameness of all people in all places with simply having different expressions, but one God for all, or do we say that because of pluralism, we simply want to respect all religions because let's face it. There is a global consciousness now that we all have. We're concerned about people in all nations and in all places. There's a global economy that we participate in. Perhaps we are just simply expressing an appreciation of other religions and of their history. Maybe it's Western guilt because we've been successful and other nations are struggling, and so we think that somehow our religion gave us an imperialist attitude, and so therefore we should feel guilty about our religion and seek to lift up other religions to the same places of ours. Maybe it's simply a response to cultural blending as you go through the take-outers, you go through a drive-through and you hear different dialects and you hear Spanish and you hear other languages being spoken, and as you go in and you get gas and you go to the register and you're someone of another nationality there, or whatever it might be. Perhaps we're just simply saying you know it's a big world, and all of us are gathering here together, and perhaps what we should do is not emphasize the exclusive claims of the church. How could we be so pompous and prideful as the thing that we somehow have got it right? Like we're smarter than all the other people. What's wrong with that? Or the Bible claims to be exclusive? And we also need to humbly recognize that we are not projecting our ideas into religion. That's what the Pharisees did. We are receiving revelation from God. If you take any other religion and you take away its head, then you might have a system of belief or ideas or a philosophy that may very well be discovered by another person. A system of living or a moral and ethical code or a way of relaxing or a way of thinking yourself into some divine orb of power or energy that somewhere else, perhaps even doubting that we exist, maybe we're all just a dream. All of these can be thought of in the mind of a man. It just happens that there was a particular person that these are identified with, but taking him away and it might have been somebody else. Only Christianity. Only Christianity was delivered by revelation, not imagination. Only Christianity had a founder that was eternally existent and claims such. Other religions don't even seek to claim, so audacious would it sound in their view. And so human are their ideas. Right after the fall of man, God promised to restore man by sending a redeemer. And Jesus is simply announcing, I am the fulfillment of the promise of God. Your God promised to redeem you from your sin and establish his presence and relationship with you once again. And now I am coming in fulfillment of that promise. Jesus is the expression of God's fulfillment of his covenant promises. He is the word of God, the promise of God made flesh. It's exclusive because it's God's plan. Jesus is the gate. He's the soul means by which the sheep may enter into the safety of the fold. The thief comes to destroy. The thief comes to steal. Jesus came to give life. These will set up parallel systems, I believe. These will set up different ministries. They may call themselves the church, but they will not stand the test of the scriptures. They will not stand the test of faith and they will disappoint their followers at every turn. There's only one source of life. There's only one way of knowing God. There's only one place for our security eternally. Jesus and Jesus alone. So He speaks and He calls out to those sheep. And not only do they come to Him, but unlike the sheep that are left to wander in the fields and in the dangerous deserts of the Middle East, they are gathered and they brought in and they're brought out. They are full. They are fat. They're satisfied. They're healthy and they are safe from the predator. Not only eternal life, but life at its best. He says, I have come to give them life and to give them life abundantly, abundantly. Not hanging on by a thread, but abundantly. All of our anxieties, all of our fears, all of our speculation, all of it satisfied, answered by Christ. That's the beauty of faith. The beauty of faith is that our anxieties are dispelled. Our mind is given rest because the questions are answered. We're not left to wonder if what we've done is adequate to please God. We're not left to wonder if what was told to us is true. Our soul testifies to what the scriptures also testify. And that is that we are saved in Christ. The world will continue to seek as humanistic saviors, whether it's Hitler, Stalin, the next president, whoever it might be, whether he's evil or seems to be good in the humanistic sense, whether it's the tax relief that we all hope comes, whatever it might be that we think will just save us for another day, the world will continue to seek it in humanistic endeavors. But those humanistic people will always in the end confiscate your earnings, your property. They'll trample life under foot only Christ gives us life and gives it abundantly. Da Carson said, it's not the Christian doctrine of heaven that's a myth, but the humanistic dream of utopia that is the myth. Jesus is teaching here is clearly meant to show that he is the gate. Jesus is claiming to be a way or an easier way or a convenient way, but the way, the only way in Ephesians 2.18, for through him we both have access to the Father through one spirit. Without Jesus we remain estranged from God, lost and still deserving death. Those who with deception or force try to steal the sheep can offer them no hope. We also know that while it is an exclusive claim, it is a claim that is meant for all. It's a glorious offer. It's a glorious offer because he says, if any man, if anyone, it is an offer that is made to all men. Not all will respond. We know that because his teaching has been quite clear. Nevertheless, it is open to any who will respond. While Jesus is emphasizing how exclusive our faith is and the way of salvation is, he's also indicates that it's open to all. Teaching that salvation is offered, there is no respecter of position, there's no respecter of wealth, there's no respecter of anything other than faith. The Pharisees and the blind man must all enter through one gate, one gate. There is no gate for the Pharisee and gate for the blind man healed by Christ. There's a difference between doors and walls. Is it there? A door is a barrier and a wall is the way and Jesus is saying there is one way and all must enter by that one way. There's no other way. You can't climb over the wall that is a barrier. You come through the door and all must pass through the one door. The application to this is that no matter what your background is, no matter the nature of your previous sin, no matter if you have heard the voice of some other shepherd in the past, if you hear the voice of the true shepherd calling, then the gate is open to you. And for us as a church corporately, as we express the gospel through evangelism, as we express the gospel in our community, we can't predict who it is that God will call to enter by the gate. We cannot know who it will or will not be the one that hears the shepherd's voice. And so we extend the call, external call to all. And then we pray that God would move their hearts to hear his voice and hear him and respond. How different? How different is Christianity from the deceptions of all the other world's religions? Finally, we must enter by faith. Jesus said that we must eat of his body and drink of his blood if we are to be saved. We know that this uses the strongest possible language to indicate our close and intimate communion with God. To show that a profession of our belief must not be in some abstract thought, but it must be with Christ so personal that we have genuine communion with Him, with Christ. Entering by the gate is also telling us to believe and enter. And in faith, we take action, not simply observing the gate but walking through the gate. A.W. Tozer said, faith as Paul saw it was a living and flaming thing. Leading to surrender an obedience to the commandments of Christ, Bonhoeffer adds this to it, only who believes in his obedient, rather only who believes as obedient and only who is obedient believes. Faith is an action. It's not a feeling, it's a verb. It's not a description of something that is come over us. Faith is an activity. We walk through the gate. We commit ourselves to the gate. Boyce retails a story that's told by Donald Gray Barnhouse, another great preacher from 10th Prez. Imagine the cross has a door in it. All you are asked to do is go through. On one side, the side facing you, there's written an invitation. Whoever will may come. You stand there with your sin upon you. And you wonder if you should enter or not. Finally, you do. And as you do, the burden of your sins drops away. You're safe and you're free. Joyfully, you turn around and you see written on the backside of the cross through which you've just come, the words chosen in him before the foundation of the world. John Calvin said, since no man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering but our own unbelief. If you've seen the gate, but you've never entered. If you've heard of the gate, but you've never entered, enter now. Believe on Jesus. Believing is to thrust your faith and your trust upon him to step into Christ, to abide in Christ, to organize your life in such a way that you reflect the great hope that has been given to you in Christ. To believe on Jesus that he is the Son of God, the one true Messiah. Trust in him to reconcile you with God. Release your hold on sin and instead cling to the cross. Follow the good shepherd and he will lead you in and he will lead you out. He will make you to prosper and relieve that which stresses your spirit. He'll give you life. He'll give it to you abundantly. Grow deaf to the thieves. Grow deaf to those who would mislead you, the religious charlatans that will steal you away. Only follow the voice of Christ. All he is saying to you is come and live, come and live. But without that first act of obedience, there is no living because there is no moving to Christ. Our first act for salvation is once the Spirit of God moves within the heart of a man, he must take an action to follow Christ. We cannot talk about the action. We must take the action. Closely examine your life. Examine the course of events in your daily life. Examine your priorities. Examine that in which you hope and that in which you dream and that in which you struggle for and that which you have ordered your life to apprehend. Are you seeking to grow spiritually? Are you in love with Christ? Manifest in your presence here. Manifest in your desire to commune with him at this table. Are these your passions or is the world issued to you a different passion and a different desire? Does your soul have, is your soul anxious when you're not in communion with God or is it anxious when you're not in communion with the world? Look closely at your own heart and know that the claim of Christ is exclusive. There is no other hope unless you enter by the gate. Pursue not any other way and only come under Christ who beckons you to come unto him and take his yoke upon you for his yoke is light and his burden is not heavy.