The Shepherd Is The Gate
John 10:1–18 Can you hear your shepherd calling?
The Door That Searches for You
John 10:1–18 — Can you hear your shepherd calling?
My Father’s Dog
Growing up, we had a rowdy Labrador named Max. He was 100 percent my father’s dog. My brothers and I would play with him and try to give him commands, and he would rarely listen to us.
A few times, Max escaped the backyard and went tearing through the neighborhood for hours. We couldn’t catch him. Every time we tried to corner him, he’d bolt, because he wouldn’t listen to us.
Then my dad would get home from work. One call, one whistle, and sure enough, there was Max, making a beeline straight for home.
That’s very close to the picture Jesus gives us in John 10. He talks about sheep who know their shepherd’s voice, who listen only to him, and a shepherd who knows his sheep by name.
What are the voices calling for your attention? Are you attuned to the voice of our shepherd?
The Gate, the Shepherd, the Sheep
As we turn to John 10, Jesus gives us three powerful images I want to hold on to: Jesus as Shepherd, Jesus as gate, and us as his sheep.
The chapter opens with a parable about sheep pens and shepherding in the ancient world. I expect Jesus to connect himself to the role of shepherd, but his first interpretation focuses on something else:
“Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
— John 10:7–9 (NRSV)
What does Jesus mean, I am the gate? Here in California, I’m used to ranches with high fences and big gates enclosing huge tracts of land, but you wouldn’t really see that in the ancient Middle East. Shepherds were often all mixed together, finding any patch of grass they could for their flocks.
At night, a shepherd would find a natural alcove in the rock, or pile up stones into a crude pen. And often there was no physical gate at all. The shepherd would simply lie down across the entry point. He literally became the gate.
Jesus’ image here is deeply personal and protective. The only way a sheep could get out of the pen was by crossing over the shepherd. And a predator could only get at the sheep by coming straight through him.
Jesus vs. the Gatekeepers
That contrasts sharply with what we’ve seen from the Pharisees for weeks now. For several chapters, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day have been acting like gatekeepers. They keep showing up to decide who’s in and who’s out. Jesus is out. We don’t like him. The man healed of his blindness in chapter 9 is causing too much trouble; he’s out too. Even Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, is being pushed out. In fact, I don’t see them welcoming anyone into their club in the entire Gospel.
Then Jesus comes along, and he doesn’t offer to do their job better.
Jesus doesn’t say, “I’m a better gatekeeper.” He says, “I’m the gate.”
It’s a radically exclusive claim. There is only one door into the life God has for us. Jesus is the only way to salvation.
For two thousand years, that has been the cornerstone of Christian belief. Jesus is our way, our gate, our door. And because it’s so vital, Christians have had to reaffirm that center again and again. But there are many voices pulling us in other directions.
When the Church Forgets Its Center
Throughout church history, we find moments when God’s people needed to reassert this fundamental commitment. One of the most notable came in 1930s Germany, with the rise of the Nazi regime.
By 1933, Nazi ideology was seeping into the church. A very influential group calling themselves the “German Christians” (not all Christians in Germany, but that was the name they chose) wanted to reshape the church around their politics.
Hitler was seen as God’s divine messenger. Scripture was being reinterpreted through the lens of the Volksgeist (the spirit of the German people). Faith was pushed to a private, spiritual sphere. They adopted the Nazi Aryan principle and began excluding ministers of Jewish descent. Leaders began pushing a dictatorial “Führer principle” into church government. The church was becoming an arm of the state, and the gospel became a tool for political propaganda.
These temptations are not new. They’ve plagued the church from the beginning: shrink faith down to one private sphere, or put our trust in some charismatic leader. In Germany, they came to a flash point.
So in 1934, theologians and church leaders gathered in Barmen, Germany, and drafted what’s now known as the Barmen Declaration. Karl Barth, one of the leading theologians of the twentieth century, was its main writer, with many others contributing. It’s still one of the confessional documents of our denomination, ECO.
They were not setting out to split the church or begin a new denomination, but to reassert the church’s center: Jesus Christ is Lord.
The very first article of the Barmen Declaration quotes John 10, where Jesus declares, I am the gate. With Jesus as our only entry point, they came up with six declarations that are vital for God’s people in any generation. Here is a brief summary:
- Jesus Christ is God’s final word. There are many voices we might follow, some good, some bad, but none deserves our ultimate allegiance except Jesus Christ himself.
- Jesus is Lord of all of life. He’s Lord over our private and spiritual lives, and he’s also King over our nation, our politics, our community.
- Christ shapes the church: not culture, not some ideology or preference, but Christ alone.
- Church leaders are called to be servants, not rulers.
- The church belongs to Christ, not the state. The church and the state have distinct callings, and God is Lord over both.
- The gospel is our central message and our mission. It isn’t a tool for some other ideology.
Blue Carpet, Rose Carpet
The leaders at Barmen didn’t set out to split anything, but making this stand did create division. Insisting Jesus is the only way will, by necessity, cut other ways out. Sometimes it will split the church itself. This is always lamentable, but sometimes it has been necessary. At other times, a church split would be comical if it weren’t so sad.
I grew up hearing pastors joke that churches split over the silliest reasons, like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary. I’ve heard that particular illustration so many times that I was sure it was just an exaggeration pastors like to tell. This week, for the first time, I looked it up.
It’s real! A church in Oklahoma literally divided over the color of its sanctuary carpet. One faction wanted blue. One faction wanted rose. They couldn’t decide, so their compromise was to split the sanctuary down the middle, with blue carpet on one side and rose on the other.
You may see where this is going. The factions started sitting and worshiping in their own colors. And it gets worse. Each side had its own elders, and there were literally two communion tables in one sanctuary. You gather to celebrate the unity we have in Christ, and you go to communion based on the color of carpet you picked! (The article linked above has a happy ending — eventually the church was able to reconcile its chromatic disagreements.)
Preference, politics, and personalities are bad reasons to split a church. But when it becomes necessary to recenter our worship on Jesus Christ, division might be inevitable. That’s part of our own story. Our denomination, ECO, began around 2012. The more I learn about our history and dig into our founding documents, the prouder I am to be part of it. With the winds of changing theologies blowing, our founders felt it was necessary to reaffirm our center on Jesus and on his word alone. It was not about their own preference, but a reaffirmation: Jesus is our gate. And the Barmen Declaration became part of our foundation. Affirming that Jesus is the gate was the heart of ECO from the start.
Political, Not Partisan
The gospel is inherently political. It touches the most important parts of our lives. It isn’t some private spiritual thing. God is King over everything, so when we preach the gospel, we’re talking about all of life.
But it doesn’t have to be partisan. As a pastor, I have no interest in telling my church who to vote for. Christians should be engaged and aware of what’s happening in our country to the best of our ability. And we should vote as a part of our civic responsibility. But we have folks on every side of the political divide in our church, and I hope it stays that way.
When we vote as Christians, we should do so in allegiance to Jesus as King. That center shapes how we engage in the world. If you’re a Christian in America: vote, and vote knowing that Jesus is King over everything. And remember that our hope is not in who wins the next election. Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone.
If you’re wondering how to hold that balance, read the Barmen Declaration. It’s an excellent rubric Christians can still adopt today: civic life is part of our duty, and Christ is King over all of it.
The Shepherd Who Comes Looking
After declaring that he is our gate, Jesus says he is also the good shepherd. I love that he moves from the gate to the shepherd. If he had stopped at, I’m the gate, we might think he was setting up the same stuffy, legalistic religion the Pharisees were preaching. Here’s the line of religion; it all comes down to who’s in and who’s out.
But he doesn’t stop there. He’s also the good shepherd who runs after the sheep, finds us, calls us by name, and brings us home.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
— John 10:11 (NRSV)
John 9 is a perfect illustration of this. The man born blind is healed by Jesus and becomes his disciple, but his healing has angered the Pharisees. At the end of the chapter, they throw him out of the synagogue. And Jesus, the good shepherd, hears about it, and finds him. The chapter ends with the man worshiping Jesus as his God.
Jesus isn’t waiting at the line for us to prove ourselves worthy. He runs after the lost sheep and calls them by name. For all of us who have said yes to Jesus, it happened because our shepherd found us first.
Jesus indicts the religious leaders of his day by comparing them to a hired hand. A hired hand might do a fine job caring for the sheep. But when push comes to shove, and there are too many predators prowling, he thinks, Maybe I could look for work elsewhere. This job is getting a little too dangerous. And he bolts. Jesus says, I’m not the hired hand. I care so deeply for my sheep that I’ll actually lay down my life for them.
The Pharisees should have been the ones searching out and protecting God’s flock; instead they were excluding and oppressing the sheep.
“I Myself Will Search for My Sheep”
One of the most important Old Testament passages behind John 10 is Ezekiel 34, where God uses this exact image. Israel’s leaders were supposed to be shepherds caring for the flock, but instead they were devouring it, committing injustice, harming the sheep. And God says two very important things. First:
For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.
— Ezekiel 34:11 (ESV)
God says, I’m going to be the shepherd. Israel’s leaders failed, so God himself will come and gather his sheep. What a promise.
Then, just a few verses later in the same chapter:
And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.
— Ezekiel 34:23 (ESV)
Ezekiel was writing hundreds of years after King David. “My servant David” points to the Messiah, the Son of David, who would sit on the throne and fulfill all of Israel’s promises. The Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. He will be the true shepherd of the flock.
So you might ask Ezekiel: well, which is it? Is God going to come walk among us and gather his sheep? Or will the Messiah, the Son of David, be the shepherd?
In Jesus, those two promises come crashing together. For the first time, here is God walking among his people, the Word become flesh, gathering them as their true shepherd. And here is the Son of David, the Messiah who has come to save us.
So when Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, he’s pulling on that whole tradition. I’m not a gatekeeper like the Pharisees, standing at the line of religion deciding who’s in and who’s out. I’m God himself, come to gather my people. I’m the Messiah, fulfilling all the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures, so that you can be saved.
My Sheep Hear My Voice
That brings us to the last image. If he’s our gate and our shepherd, then we are his sheep.
What I love most about this passage is how personal it is. The sheep hear the shepherd’s voice. They know him, and they follow him.
You can still see this in the Middle East today. Several flocks come together to graze in the same area at the same time. But a shepherd has formed such a close bond with his own sheep that he can walk among the mixed flocks and call his sheep out by name, and they’ll follow that one shepherd. They know each other. They’ve grown up hearing that one voice.
It’s why, in a crowded room where everyone is talking, you can still pick out the voice of someone you love. You’ve spent so much time listening to that particular voice that it cuts through all the noise.
And here’s the promise: if we’re his sheep, we can actually hear his voice. God is still speaking and still leading us. There’s more noise and distraction every single day, but his sheep can hear him. That doesn’t start with me proving myself worthy. It starts because Jesus went before you. He knew you before you knew him, and he called you to himself. I find that a deeply intimate promise: My sheep hear my voice.
Jesus contrasts his offer with that of the thief:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
— John 10:10 (NRSV)
The thief might stand for all the other voices vying for our attention. Some of those voices are good and valuable: teachers, pastors, friends. But none of them deserves our ultimate allegiance. Other voices are actively destructive, diminishing our life.
And the promise isn’t just that I can check all the right boxes and be good at my religion. Jesus is offering a full, rich, abundant life. That doesn’t mean a life with no suffering. It means walking side by side with your shepherd. He goes before us, he walks with us, he fills us every moment of the day. He’s the good shepherd who has already laid down his life so that we could be saved.
How Do I Hear His Voice?
This question comes up all the time: How do I actually hear God’s voice? It doesn’t always seem as simple as a shepherd calling in a field. I’ve asked it many times myself.
God can split the heavens and speak with a booming voice, but the ordinary way he speaks in our day-to-day lives isn’t through big, flashy moments. It’s through his word, through prayer, and through community.
If I try to do faith all by myself in a vacuum, I quickly turn God into my imaginary friend. I need the church. I need God’s community. And above all, I need his word.
Not to memorize more facts about God. It isn’t a box to check. Reading Scripture is how I learn to recognize the voice of my Creator. The more time I spend in God’s word, the more I learn his cadence, his voice, so that when he speaks into my everyday life, I recognize it. My kids can pick out my voice in a crowded room because they’ve spent their whole lives hearing me talk to them.
So when someone asks me, How do I hear God’s voice?, my first question is usually, How often are you reading his word? If you’re not spending time in it, you’re not practicing hearing his voice. And if I’m not used to his voice, how am I going to recognize it when he starts to speak in my life?
A Prayer to Close
God, reveal how I have allowed other voices to become my center.
Forgive us for the ways we have wandered from Christ as our gate.
Thank you, Jesus, that you are such a good shepherd. You love us. You know each of us by name. Teach us what it means that we are your sheep. Help us hear your voice.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
This week:
- Read John 10:1–18, then Ezekiel 34:11–24. Notice how many times God says what he himself will do for his sheep, and where you see Jesus doing it.
- Add time in Scripture each day, and step outside your favorite passages. How are you learning to recognize your Creator’s voice?
- Before the election, read the six articles of the Barmen Declaration and ask where your ultimate allegiance lies.
