Sermon Tone Analysis

The 10 Gates of Jerusalem

 

by the late Dr. Fred Brown

(Preached at Bill Rice Ranch, Founders Week, 1981)

 

Many years ago I was preaching in Charleston, West Virginia.

On the program was also a man I had never met, an older man named Harris Gregg, who lived in Chattanooga.

He was called on to lead in prayer.

I never heard anybody pray as he prayed.

That old man had been talking to God for some time!

What a prayer!

I was late getting to this meeting because of the weather.

Harry Rimmer, on the same program, was also late getting there.,

So Dr. Gregg preached all day Sunday before we arrived.

We might as well have stayed home, because he had already captivated the hearts of the people when we arrived.

So enamored were they of his ministry, we were hardly noticed.

When he was announced, he came to the platform, dropped his floppy Bible on the pulpit and simply said, “The Gospel as found in the second chapter of Genesis.”

No matter where it was in the Word of God, every time he got up to preach, he would introduce it in the same way.

If he were preaching from the book of Esther, “It is the Gospel as found in the book of Esther.”

He could show you Jesus Christ on every page of the Bible.

I want God to let me see Christ in all the Scriptures.

I want to show Christ in the Gospel as found in the third chapter of Nehemiah.

There we find some marvelous truths.

My subject is “The 10 Gates of Jerusalem.”

In the Song of Solomon, chapter 2 and verse 9, we have a remarkable statement: “My beloved (that is Christ) is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.”

In Luke 24:32, the two on the road to Emmaus said, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”

He revealed to them things concerning Himself “in all the scriptures.”

He is on every page, in every book.

Pictures of Him are all through the Word of God.

So we may look for Him and things pertaining to Him “in all the scriptures.”

Isaiah 60:18 says, “Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.”

Gates play an important part in the life of a city.

Particularly was it so in those days when cities had to be protected with walls and gates.

When the gates were burned, the city was desolate and open to the enemy.

But when gates were in their place, the city was safe.

So there is tremendous significance about gates.

I shall not read all this chapter but just mark the gates for you.

In the third chapter of Nehemiah and verse 1, “They builded the sheep gate.”

In verse 3 is “the fish gate.”

In verse 6, “the old gate.”

In verse 13, “the valley gate.”

In verse 14, “the dung gate.”

In verse 15, “the fountain gate.”

In verse 26, “the water gate.”

In verse 28, “the horse gate.”

In verse 29, “the east gate.”

Then in verse 31, “the gate Miphkad.”

There are your ten gates.

They repaired the area between them, then set the gates in their proper place.

*The Sheep Gate--the Beginning*

\\ By this gate the sheep were brought into the city in preparation for sacrifice.

At the sheep gate we see work of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, “slain from the foundation of the world.”

This is the foundation Stone upon which God builds His program.

All God’s expectations, then, now and forever, are in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The journey starts at Calvary.

We must begin at the beginning.

There is no other approach to God except the cross.

The way of the cross leads us home.

So we start at the starting place: salvation through faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In describing the building of this gate, it says all--the priests, the princes, the common folks--were involved, indicating that salvation is the common need for all men.

Everybody needs the access afforded by this gate.

The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was for everyone.

Some today say that Christ died only for a certain number of people.

But the Bible says, “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our’s only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Every human being who ever breathed the breath of life, who has ever lived on the face of this earth as a son of Adam, needed salvation.

Christ Jesus provided salvation for all people when He died on Calvary’s cross.

If that were not true, then multitudes could shake their fists in the face of God for the rest of eternity and say, “You created me and gave me no chance at Salvation.

I could not have been saved had I wanted to.”

Not true.

Everybody who is lost will be lost without excuse.

Christ provided for every sinner by His sacrifice on the cross.

Everybody will be responsible for his own lost condition, because he has refused what Christ did for him.

John 10:9 says, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”

First Peter 2:9: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.”

John 10:1: “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.”

When I was in college, Dr. Munhall came to campus to preach to the young preachers for three weeks.

Already 91 years old, he was one of the greatest preachers I have ever known.

He talked one day about a preacher he knew in England.

He told us how, when just a young student, this man would go out preaching at every opportunity.

An old preacher connected with the school had a church nearby.

Seeing the potential of this young man, he asked him to preach for him on a Sunday evening.

This older preacher, a huge man, about filled the buggy they rode in to the service.

This young student was a rather small fellow.

The big man couldn’t get up in the pulpit by way of a door (the pulpit stood out over the folks), so the sexton of the church would put up a ladder, and this big preacher would crawl up into the pulpit.

On the way to the church, he picked this young student preacher’s mind.

Knowing he had but one sermon, he still asked him, “What are you going to preach tonight?”

The young man told him.

Then the older man asked, “What is your text?”

The young man told him.

“How do you illustrate it?”

The young preacher told him some of the stories he used as illustrations.

To the old man’s amusement and, he thought, to the young man’s consternation, he went up the ladder and into the pulpit, looked out over the audience, announced the young man’s text and preached his sermon, using all his illustrations.

After he finished, he introduced the young preacher, wondering what he would do after he had already preached every detail of his only sermon.

The young preacher didn’t hesitate an instant, didn’t bat an eye.

Being smaller, he didn’t need the sexton’s help to climb into the pulpit.

He went around and walked through the door into the pulpit.

He laid his Bible down, looked out over the audience and stared particularly hard at the old preacher sitting there in front of him who had preached his sermon, and said, “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.”

(Laughter.)

\\ The young preacher illustrated it well.

You have to go by the right way.

Christ is not a door; He is /the/ door.

The sheep gate represents the one entrance into the presence of God--by way of the cross, where the sacrifice was made, where the blood was shed, where His dear Son died for us.