Sermon Tone Analysis

*I Am the Door*

 

*John 10:1-10*

*November 13, 2005*

* *

Before I begin today’s message I would like to share something with you.

This was the daily reading for October 20th in “Experiencing God Day by Day”, a daily devotional prepared by Henry Blackaby.

Here is what he said/:/*/ /*

/“He will be like a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver.

Then they will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness/.”

From Malachi 3:3

 

Then he says, ”The quality of our worship is not based on our activities but on our character.

Churches can mistakenly assume that the better the music, the more impressive the building, and the more eloquent the preaching, the more worshipful the experience will be.

Genuine worship, however, originates from within our hearts.

If our relationship with God is not healthy, all these things are nothing more than religious pageantry.

The Levites were the worship leaders of their day.

Their task was to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people.

God declared that before they could worship Him in righteousness, He would first refine them with His refiner's fire, purging them of any impurities.

Merely being members of the religious profession, having official responsibilities in the temple, and going through the rituals of worship, did not guarantee that their religious activities would be acceptable to holy God.

Today, we tend to look to external things to enhance our worship.

The true quality of our worship, however, rests within us.

If we have not allowed God to purify us first, our worship will be void of His presence.

If we do not have a pure heart, we may give offerings, but they will be unacceptable to God.

Attending a religious service will not automatically ensure an encounter with God.

If you are not satisfied with the quality of your worship, don't be too quick to blame your environment.

Look first to your own heart.

Allow God to refine your heart until it is pleasing to Him, and you will be free to worship God as He intends.”

Now back to today’s message.

Our focus is on the fact that /Jesus is the door that shuts out the pain of the past and opens into a trustful relationship with God./

Let’s read John 10:1-10 together.

\\ /"I assure you, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber!

For a shepherd enters through the gate.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice and come to him.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they recognize his voice.

They won't follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don't recognize his voice."

Those who heard Jesus use this illustration didn't understand what he meant, so he explained it to them.

"I assure you, I am the gate for the sheep," he said.

"All others who came before me were thieves and robbers.

But the true sheep did not listen to them.

Yes, I am the gate.

Those who come in through me will be saved.

Wherever they go, they will find green pastures.

The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.

My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.

/

 

*Jesus’ Self-Portrait*

You never really know a person until you know how that person perceives himself.

I’m sure you must have had those experiences like I have had when you were sharing with another person and that sharing became deep, when pretentious were dissolved and defenses failed and honesty prevailed.

You sat on the edge of your seat or you stood at attention in your mind to listen to what that person had to say, because you knew that person was sharing his innermost feelings about who he is and what he’s about.

Those are the kinds of moments when people really meet, when deep calls unto deep and soul touches soul.

When it’s the Son of God who is sharing with us in that sort of fashion, the intensity and the revelation multiply a hundredfold.

And that is precisely what is happening to us throughout the Gospel of John, where Jesus shares with us his great claims about himself.

In these great “I Am” passages, Jesus is telling us who he is.

He’s sharing with us his innermost conviction about his own life.

There is a sense in which these sayings of Jesus gather up the whole of the gospel message, for they’re really autobiographical vignettes.

They are Jesus’ self-portrait.

So let’s look at one of these sayings of Jesus.

Listen to it.

Sit on the edge of your seat, if you will.

/“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.

Now, with that kind of image, the theme of my sermon is disarmingly simple.

Listen.

The purpose of a door is to either shut something behind us or open something to us.

Isn’t that simple?

*I.

What Jesus Closes Out*

Christ is the door.

“If any person enter by me, he will be saved.”

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.

The New Testament abounds with some challenging, gift-giving words that too many of us have taken little thought of.

Listen to Paul as he speaks to Timothy.

/“This is a saying sure and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”/

And listen to Jesus as he speaks in the Gospel of Luke.

/“Those who are healthy do not need a doctor, but those who are sick.

I did not come to invite the virtuous, but to call sinners to repentance.”/

And listen to Paul as he writes to the Romans.

/“God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”/

Now nail this down in your mind; underscore it.