Tasting the Gruel of Love

The Shepherd’s Gate

Dr. Larry Thorson
January 17, 2010

John 10:2-3a

² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice.

Our series “Why We Need a Good Shepherd” continues today at the gate of the sheep pen. We read in John 10:2-3a

² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice.

Often sheep pens, at least the smaller ones, don’t have gates or doors. George Adam Smith, the 19th century biblical scholar tells of traveling one day in the holy land and coming across a shepherd and his sheep. He fell into conversation with him and the man showed him the fold into which the sheep were led at night. It consisted of four walls, with a way in. Smith asked him, "This is where they go at night?" "Yes," said the shepherd, "and when they are in there, they are perfectly safe." "but there is no door," said Smith. "I am the door," said the shepherd.

Now this was not a Christian shepherd and he wasn't speaking in the language of the New Testament. He was speaking from an Arab shepherd's viewpoint. Smith looked at him and asked, "What do you mean you are the door?" "When the light has gone," said the shepherd, "and all the sheep are inside, I lie in that open space, and no sheep ever goes out but across my body, and no wolf comes in unless he crosses my body; I am the door."[1]

I kind of like that story. I imagine Jesus sitting in the entry way to my life keeping anything harmful away.

When we were on the island of Iona in Scotland, we saw some clever but simple gates that required hands to open and then once open sheep couldn’t wander through the opening while humans were walking in. Sheep like to wander. So do we. You can leave church with every intention to live a holy life but somehow during the week along comes that bad attitude, that bad thought, that bad action and we’ve wandered off into something spiritually unhealthy.

So fences and gates are good. They protect us from outside predators and from ourselves. In some of the larger sheep pens there are gates with gatekeepers. They’re designed to hold the flock of many shepherds at one time. They were kind of like hotels for sheep. Gatekeepers were hired so that the shepherds could take a break and visit with the other shepherds.

The gatekeeper had a pretty important job. He was to only let owners of the sheep in his pen come inside. No one else had any business there. But I doubt that was a very difficult job. The pens weren’t that big, but it was still an important job.

We know the Bible compares us humans as sheep and Jesus as the Good Shepherd but who’s the gatekeeper? Who dictates what we open our life to and what we don’t? Jesus never said who the gatekeeper represents but when you reflect on it, every human being has a built in gatekeeper in their life. It’s called experience. That gatekeeper works hard. For example the very first time that you walked into this room, the gatekeeper was sending messages all through your body. “It’s cold in here”. “They have a lot of grey hairs.” “Where’s the drum set?” “Wow that screen is big.” “I hope it’s not going to be one of those loud churches.”

The gatekeeper has a huge database of our experiences. I as your pastor may remind you of another pastor whom you liked or didn’t like. The music may hit a chord with music that you heard in your past. All that data comes at us either helping or hindering us from fully experiencing the fresh new potential of this day.

That’s what the gatekeeper does. Last week I told you about a 13 year old boy who moved in last summer one house over from our church. He had never, ever stepped inside a church until Jamail Havard, whose parents are members of our church, invited him to our Middle School Club. I remember Brandon asking Jamail about Club, “Is it fun or is it boring?” You see his gatekeeper, his previous experiences, knew of only three experiences involving adults; fun, boring or scary, the later being another story. What Brandon has experienced with our Middle School Club is that it’s both fun and boring. But apparently his gatekeeper says it’s fun enough to keep coming back because he’s become one our leading kids.

The next step for Brandon is to open the gate of his heart and invite Jesus to come in. That’s where it gets a little hard. He knows to open the door of the Family Center on Wednesday nights, go up the steps, turn right and then turn left into the Middle School Club room. But what does that mean to open the gate of his heart and invite Jesus to come in?

My whole and sole purpose for being a pastor is to help people open the gate of their life and invite Jesus to come in. But I can’t actually open that door for anyone. I can help open the huge, heavy front door to this sanctuary and help people come in here. I can help open the door to the Fireside Room for a quarterly seminar that I teach about becoming a Christ follower and a member. I can even stand up here and give a demonstration of how someone can open the gate of their life and invite Jesus into their life. I can’t open that gate for you. Only you can open that gate.

But what does that mean for someone to open the gate of their life and invite in the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ? I read an interesting story about Robert Allen Zimmerman, better known as folk rock singer Bob Dylan. One night in late 1978 Dylan was performing a show in San Diego and it was proving to be more physically demanding than usual. He says "Towards the end of the show someone out in the crowd...knew I wasn't feeling too well," recalled Dylan in a 1979 interview. "I think they could see that. And they threw a silver cross on the stage. Now usually I don't pick things up in front of the stage. Once in a while I do. Sometimes I don't. But I looked down at that cross. I said, 'I gotta pick that up.' So I picked up the cross and I put it in my pocket...And I brought it backstage and I brought it with me to the next town, which was out in Arizona...I was feeling even worse than I'd felt when I was in San Diego. I said, 'Well, I need something tonight.' I didn't know what it was. I was used to all kinds of things. I said, 'I need something tonight that I didn't have before.' And I looked in my pocket and I had this cross."

Dylan believed he had experienced a vision of Christ in his Tucson hotel room. "Jesus did appear to me as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords," he'd later say. "There was a presence in the room that couldn't have been anybody but Jesus...Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up."

Not long after that Dylan was recruited by a new start up church called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship that was meeting in a Beverly Hills hotel with a number of other well known actors and musicians. The first thing the Vineyard pastors wanted of Dylan was to have him go through an intensive three month discipleship program. Initially he turned them down because it would interfere with his touring schedule. One morning he woke up feeling extremely compelled to drop everything and take the discipleship training even if it meant postponing his touring schedule. For the next five years he became a dynamic witness for Christ from the songs he wrote to the concerts he performed in. But then for whatever reasons, Dylan seems to have closed the gate to Christ and now from a very distant outsider’s perspective it’s hard to tell that Christ had ever moved in.

What happens is that the gatekeeper of our experiences might allow us to open the gate and invite Jesus in. But each day we have to invite him in afresh. It starts with a simple prayer. “Lord Jesus, I confess to you that I am a sinner in need of a savior. I open the door of my life and invite you in.”

For Christ to come in to our life, we have to open the gate. But opening the gate is an action requiring something to happen. Most of us have had the experience of buying a car. You know the experience. You test drive a number of cars and then find one you can at least tolerate at your price. You sit down with the salesperson, haggle the price, watch an afternoon slip away and finally you say the simple words “I’ll take it.” Then you stand up, thank the salesman for his time, walk out to your old car and drive home without the new car. Right?

That’s not how it works is it? When you say “I’ll take it” you next have to give up part of yourself for that car. I’m a firm believer in keeping cars almost forever and paying cash for whatever car I do buy. But turning over that cashiers check when I do have to buy a car hurts so much. I hate that experience with a passion. I like shopping for cars, I like test driving cars, I don’t even mind negotiating for cars but I hate turning over that cashiers check. But turning over that cashiers check is the meat behind the words “I’ll take it.”

When Jesus comes walking up to the gate of our lives and asks to come in, it’s easy to say “Sure, come on in, I accept you as my savior.” I’ve asked dozens of people if they would like to pray to receive Jesus Christ into their heart and a number of them have prayed the “sinner’s prayer” with me to receive Christ. “Sure, Jesus come on in.” But then they stand up and go back to life like it always was.

That’s especially striking among the youth I work with. At least half of our kids come from homes where neither parent has been in church since the parents were young. When our kids leave Club they return to life exactly as it was when they left.

One of our newest girls just moved to the area and started attending Middle School Club this fall. She’s at Forest Home this weekend thanks to you. Her mother, it turns out went to Forest Home as a high school student years ago with her Presbyterian church youth group and opened the gate of her life to Jesus in those days. But in the ensuing years wandered from the Lord and went through some really tragic situations. One day, not long after they moved her, she and her daughter drove by our church and saw the sign “Presbyterian” and the Lord used that to remind her of happier days walking with the Lord in a youth group at a Presbyterian church. I’m so glad they’ve chosen this church to worship in. It proves that that gate can be opened again.

But what I tell everyone is if you open the gate of your life to Jesus Christ, he’s not going to tolerate the foolishness you’ve been involved in. For the youth if they come to me and they’re smoking weed, I tell them they have to give it up. Smoking marijuana is against the state law and therefore God’s law. If a guy is abusing his wife, he’s got to stop. You need to tithe your income and your time. You’re going to need to be quiet before the Lord each day. There has to be a willingness to attach meat to the words “I’ll take it.” Otherwise the Good Shepherd won’t be your good shepherd. But the nice thing is, if someone decides to open the gate of their life to Jesus, he’ll give them the ability to change. So we don’t have to clean up our act before we open the gate. We just have to be willing to open the gate and allow God to change us.

So where is your gate right now? Is it closed with Jesus on the outside? If Jesus came to your gate, would you even be able to recognize him from all the other people at your gate? Jesus said to his followers in Revelation 3:20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. .