I AM: I Am The Gate with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaChurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

All right, MetaCurch, it's so good to be back with you guys.

I'm excited to jump into this series.

Uh I am so, so thankful for Pastor Noel and Pastor Lee Wong for opening the first two weeks of this series.

Will you guys show them some love for just the great job that they did?

I was uh I was so encouraged and inspired by their messages.

Now, if you're new to MetaCurch, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here, and I'll tell you a little bit about this series that we're in.

Uh we are leading up to Easter, and so the question that we wrestled with is what's the best way to spend our Sundays together as we gather for an hour or so to prepare us for Easter.

And of course, Easter is all about Jesus, and so we thought that the best use of our time was to take these weeks to get a deeper and deeper understanding of who Jesus is.

Now, there's a lot of ways to go about that, but we felt that this year we should let Jesus speak for himself.

While Jesus was on earth, John was one of his 12 disciples, who's also one of his closest friends.

And after Jesus' time on earth was through, John put together a document.

This was his eyewitness testimony, his account of the life of Jesus as he saw it and heard it and experienced it.

And in this document that we call the Gospel of John, there are seven times that he quotes Jesus using these I am statements.

It's what we're calling the I am seven.

This is deeply, deeply important because it is Jesus giving us profound insight into who he is from his own mouth.

So far, we've seen Jesus describing himself as the bread of life.

Last week, Noel did a great job of teaching Jesus' I am the light of the world statement.

Today we are moving into the third of our I am seven.

We're gonna be in John's gospel in the tenth chapter.

And it opens this way Truly I tell you, anyone who doesn't enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in some other way is a thief and a robber.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice.

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

And when he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them.

The sheep follow him because they know his voice.

They will never follow a stranger.

Instead, they will run away from him because they do not know the stranger's voice.

Now Jesus gave them this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.

And so Jesus said again, truly I tell you, and here's our third, I am.

I am the gate.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you and we thank you for how you love us.

We thank you for a time to lift our voices to you, to give you our attention, our time, our energy, our worship.

We're wanting to dig deeper into who you are, Jesus.

And God, we are gathered here pursuing you, your word, your purpose for our life.

God, some of us are gathered here or online as seekers, some as skeptics, some are curious.

And so, God, we open our minds and we open our hearts and we ask that you do what you continue to do day by day, moment by moment, which is to speak to us.

God, we believe you're desperate to impress your truth on our heart.

And I pray we would have the humility to lay down all our own preconceived ideas, all our own truths to discover the truth you have for us today.

So help us and guide us during this time.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to get going, say, Amen.

Amen.

This statement has so many layers to it that we're gonna unpack today.

I am the gate.

But before we understand how Jesus opens John chapter 10, the full context comes by understanding the story that just preceded it in John chapter 9.

John 10 · chapter mention John 9 · chapter mention

And I'll tell that briefly.

In John chapter 9, Jesus and his disciples, along with a large crowd that has been following Jesus pretty much everywhere he goes, they're on their way into Jerusalem when they encounter a man, and scripture says this man was blind from birth.

John 9 · chapter mention

That means there is not one single moment of this guy's life that he has had any vision whatsoever.

Now, being blind has a lot that it entails for your life.

It creates some very real hardships, and any kind of a disability is a difficulty to live with.

However, to understand what it meant to be blind in this ancient setting 2,000 years ago, we have to understand the worldview around disabilities.

So today, in 2021, we have as our core assumption, this is important, a core assumption that someone who is disabled is still every single bit as valuable and worthy as all other human beings.

And so, because our core assumption is that there is nothing on the deepest level that separates someone who is disabled, we create in society ideals to pursue.

Some of those ideals would be to make sure that people with all sorts of disabilities have access to all buildings, that they have a pathway to pursue a career, that they have advancement and can thrive in life to the greatest degree possible.

And the reason we have to understand what that means for us today is because not only did they not have that core assumption in Jesus' time, they actually had a core assumption that was the opposite.

They believed that if you were born or developed a disability, that it was the gods actively punishing you.

So obviously you had done something, you had messed up, you had some sin in your life, or maybe your parents had sinned, or maybe your parents' parents' parents had sinned, but because of your disability, you were in fact a second-class citizen.

You were not allowed to integrate into society, you were seen as an outcast.

The only career you could pursue was panhandling on the steps of the synagogue or temple, hoping that someone in their piety would show off by throwing you some change.

A family was out of the question.

As a blind person in Jesus' time, you were guaranteed that you would never have a wife.

That meant that you would never have any kids.

That meant no lineage, no legacy, no career, no love, no future.

To be blind was to repeat the exact same steps day after day, week after week, month after month, until God mercifully killed you.

Being blind was a terrible existence.

It meant much more than having a slight disability.

Now, in 2021, we're not perfect at playing out our ideals of how people should be able to interact regardless of disabilities, but we do have it as an ideal.

We have a different core assumption.

Now we could have a whole another sermon about the reason we believe that in 2021.

But to say it shortly, we believe that in 2021 because of what happened in John chapter 9, 2,000 years ago.

John 9 · chapter mention

You see, as they approached this man, Jesus and his disciples, they started trying to have this big theological argument with Jesus.

And, you know, there's nothing wrong with theological arguments, in fact.

I love talking theology and philosophy and thinking deeply about things.

However, what religion often does is it likes to sit in its own ivory towers and theorize about all these deeply intellectual pieces of information, all the while disregarding the fact that the people who are really on the ground are desperate, hurting and dying.

This blind guy doesn't care about their theorizing of Old Testament scripture.

What he cares about is getting his sight so that he can actually pursue some form of a meaningful life.

The question they wanted to know is who sinned, right?

It was a given at that time that because he had a disability, someone had sinned.

And it was a weird situation because he was blind from birth.

So it's like, did he sin in utero?

Like, is that even possible?

Or did his parents sin and he's being punished for it?

Or is this like preemptive punishment for a sin God knew he would create later?

I mean, all these big questions, and Jesus pushes right past that.

In fact, he teaches a profound truth, a truth that is very good news for all of us, because all of us suffer, and we might suffer uniquely, and your suffering might scale differently, but your suffering is just as real to you as it is to anybody else.

Jesus said, He is not blind because he sinned.

His suffering is so that in this moment the power of God can be revealed.

And in that one moment, all of a sudden, Jesus reframed our suffering.

He reframed the evil in the world and all of the things that happen to us to say, it is not God punishing it, but it is God wanting to use it in our life to demonstrate his own greatness and glory.

Oftentimes we think of God wanting to use our strengths, and he certainly does.

But the world usually sees God most clearly in our weaknesses, in the parts where we are most desperate and where we are most hurt, and yet God uses us in incredible ways.

Jesus heals the blind man, he gives him a new lease on life, and it would seem like all of his problems are solved, and yet they had just begun.

The Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders, called the man into the synagogue.

And here's what you have to know about the synagogue.

The synagogue is the local place of worship, but it's so much more than that.

It's also the seat of society.

And so your integration into the larger social circles of life, they start at the synagogue.

In other words, if you can't enter the synagogue, which they were not allowing disabled people to do, then you had no chance of joining society.

I can't even imagine as he's called into the Pharisees who hold like all of the power in the religious sphere, in the social sphere, in the political sphere.

He comes in and he can actually see it.

He can see what he's been missing his whole life.

He gets called in, and maybe he's thinking, like, the Pharisees want to hear the story and they want to know all about it, and they want to congratulate me, and they want to like print me out my membership card.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I get to join the synagogue now, but no.

You see, the Pharisees hated Jesus.

They spent most of their time trying to figure out how to stop him, putting together a plot, if they could pull it off, maybe to even have him killed.

They saw an opportunity in the blind man because Jesus had healed him on the Sabbath.

And the way the Pharisees read the Old Testament law, the law that was given to Moses that had guided them for thousands of years, is that you couldn't do any work on the Sabbath.

And so they were trying to say that this miracle constituted work.

And if Jesus is working on the Sabbath, then he is breaking the Jewish law.

He can be brought up on charges as a criminal.

And so they pull the man who has spent his whole life blind, his eyes are now open.

And they just go at him again and again and again, trying to get him to betray the very person who just healed him.

And they won't give up very easily.

In John chapter 9, verse 24, it says, So a second time they summoned the man who had been blind and told him, Give glory to God.

John 9:24

We know that this man, Jesus, is a sinner.

And he answered, Whether or not he's a sinner, I do not know.

The one thing I do know is that I was blind.

And now I can see.

You know, I grew up in church, and so I heard this story like who knows how many times, you know.

It's one of the big ones they tell in Sunday school, and they put it on the flannel board, you know what I'm saying?

And he's blind, and then Jesus like spits in the ground and puts some mud in his eyes, and he washed it off, and now he can see, and like that's the end of the story, right?

Like that's what you want.

You're blind, and now you can see.

I hope you're seeing it so much deeper than that.

His vision is step one into getting his entire life back, having meaning and purpose of family, children, finding love and acceptance, joining society, attending the synagogue.

That's all the evidence the man needs.

His eyes had been blinded and Jesus opened them.

A third time they tried to push him and they made the threat a little more explicit.

If you're unwilling to betray Jesus, then we're unwilling to give you access to the synagogue.

Remember, the starting place for integration into society is the synagogue.

No synagogue, no society.

You can't get in, then you will be an outcast with your vision.

He's so close.

And I hope we can appreciate the weight of the decision he has to make.

It is either stand by Jesus and lose everything he's dreamed of, or turn his back on the one who opened his eyes.

The Pharisees were the gatekeepers.

They stood in between the blind man and what he had wanted so desperately his entire life, they alone had the power to allow him in or to keep him out.

I want to think about the idea of gatekeepers together today because it's something that is a present part of all of our reality.

And maybe you haven't thought of life this way, but all throughout your life, there have been people and processes who have stood in between you and what you most deeply desire.

I mean, this starts pretty much from birth.

We are born and we're put into a crib, which is like a bed with gates.

And then we're finally able to crawl, or, you know, like that moment where your kid can finally walk a little bit, like they can stumble walk like drunk walk, and it's kind of adorable, but also your life is over because now everything is dangerous, you know?

And so you put up baby gates, you know?

And I it's like, I know technology has come a long way since I was a baby.

We've got like smartphones and stuff like that.

I can't figure out how to open baby gates anymore.

When I was a baby, it was like flap open.

I'm a grown man and can't open baby gates, and so it's impossible for the babies.

It's like the parent or the caretaker is literally the gatekeeper, and we experience this in real life too.

Like maybe you have baby gate flashbacks when you try to get into like the new exclusive club or get reservations at that restaurant where you just cannot grab a seat.

Maybe you have that friend who's like a Spurs seasoned ticket holder, and they're the gatekeeper.

You're always trying to like figure out their schedule.

Like, you have any vacations coming up, you know, like just so you can offer to take those tickets off their hands.

They're they're in between you and what you want being at the Spurs game.

And there are social gatekeepers as well.

We begin to really understand this around elementary school because that's when we like wake up one day and realize, like, oh my gosh, like girls aren't just long-haired boys, you know.

It's like, what is going on here?

And you like develop this crush, you know, and all of a sudden you're you're like, you've got your eyes on who you think is the cutest girl, and you're trying to figure out how to get there.

And what you realize is the most direct line is not an actual direct line, it's going to their best friend, right?

That's the line there, because the best friend is the gatekeeper to the cutie, you know, so it's like you gotta get the vote of confidence from the BFF.

And some of the single guys are taking notes for the first time ever at MetaCurch right now.

It's beautiful.

And it just keeps going, right?

Like you get to middle school, and there are social gatekeepers, and who knows what it is, you know, it's the captain of the team or it's a friend that has lots of influence, and and you want whatever they have, and so you have to do whatever they want.

And in junior high, it's like we're just we're more than happy to completely and consistently humiliate ourselves and do whatever it takes to get in the graces of the little junior high popular crew, and then we get into high school and it kind of changes because we look back on our middle school days in high school and we're like, oh my gosh, that was so embarrassing, you know.

And it's like in high school, you just spend every waking moment trying not to be embarrassed by yourself or anyone else around you, and so you want to humiliate yourself.

But in high school is usually where people start being willing to walk away from truths they've held their entire lives or inherited from their parents.

A willingness to stray from your moral compass to compromise in order to get in with the gatekeepers, you know, the people who sit at the right tables and drive the right cars and go to the right parties.

Then it's time to apply for college, college admission board, those are gatekeepers.

They're gonna determine whether you've done enough, your grades are high enough, enough extracurriculars, and then you go into the workforce, and it's like every single person offering a job, they're a gatekeeper.

And you've got to do your best, and you gotta come in with your you know, your sweaty hands, and you've gotta try to interview and beat out everyone else who wants that position, and you get in your career and you've worked really hard and you want that promotion, the supervisor in between you and the promotion, that's the gatekeeper, right?

And so, are you gonna just work hard?

Are you gonna play the politics?

You know, are you gonna be a brown noser and kiss, you know, their, you know, what?

And it's like, what are we gonna do to get past the gatekeepers?

Because on the other side of it, that's what we want.

And then we're dating and then we're married, and you think like I'm married, so now I'm no more gatekeepers.

Eh, wrong.

It's like now your spouse is the gatekeeper, you know, whatever sexual intimacy you're gonna have, like they have a say in it, okay?

So you're gonna realize that pretty quickly, and on and on and on it goes.

And the position of gatekeeper is predicated on power.

They are in between you and what you want, and that gives them incredible power.

And power without a good framework corrupts, right?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And so often we've seen the gatekeepers of our life use their positions to control, to manipulate, to deceive.

Their power makes them arrogant.

They demand your compromise if you want their concession.

If you want past the gate, you have to do what they want.

I know so many of us have wounds from religion.

Religion happens when people decide that they are God's gatekeeper.

I get to decide who comes in and who stays out, I get to write the unwritten rules.

We get to make the right people members and shoe the wrong people away.

It doesn't take us long, maybe by our teens, twenties, thirties at the latest, to realize we don't really like the gatekeepers.

And at that point, people diverge.

Half of the population seems to live their lives out as victims, always worrying and wondering about why life is so unfair and why everyone is keeping them from what they want.

The other part of the population decides if being a gatekeeper is how you get controlled, then they'll play whatever the game is to become a gatekeeper themselves.

The blind man, the Pharisees stood between him and what he most desperately wanted to be integrated into the society that it turned its back on him, to have life and love, lineage and legacy.

But it was too high of a cost.

His eyes had been opened.

And so he walked away from what he desperately wanted, and little did he know, by choosing Jesus, he chose what he actually needed.

And so the Pharisees kicked him out of the synagogue.

He was excommunicated, they cursed him, they denied him the one thing he most wanted in life.

And in the process, they also challenged who Jesus is.

This will bring us back to chapter 10.

At the end of John 9, it says, they ridiculed the man and they said, You are that man's disciple, Jesus.

But we are Moses' disciples.

You know, Moses, like the main character in the Old Testament, the guy who got the law from God, and he was like delivered them from the Exodus.

They were trapped in Egypt, and God used them, and he parted the sea, and he did all the things, right?

Like Moses is the biggest historical figure in all of Judaism.

And they're going, listen, we're linked to Moses.

We've got the tradition, we've got the lineage, we've got the synagogues, we've got the power, we've got the politics, and you're gonna go with that guy.

What they say in verse 29.

We know that God has spoken to Moses, but this dude over here, Jesus, we don't even know where he's from.

This moves us to John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

This moves us to the third of our I am seven.

And in John chapter 10, Jesus is gonna let them know exactly who he is.

John 10 · chapter mention

In John 10, verse 1, Jesus says, Truly I tell you.

John 10:1

Now the you is important.

This is his audience.

It's a pretty large gathering that seemed to follow him around of Jewish people.

It's the blind man who has chosen him over the life that he so desperately wanted, and it is the Pharisees that just excommunicated the formerly blind man he is speaking directly to those who are seeking to kill him.

Truly, I tell you.

Anyone who doesn't enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way.

Is a thief and a robber.

And if we read throughout scripture, this is how Jesus often teaches.

He teaches in metaphors and analogies and parables, and he's gonna set a contrast that's gonna guide the rest of this section.

Anyone who doesn't enter by the gate climbs in is a thief and a robber.

Verse 2 the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

And here Jesus draws the contrast between himself and the Pharisees, right to their faces and right in front of the Israelites that they are supposed to be in charge of.

The thieves and the robbers, and Jesus as the true shepherd of the flock.

In verse 3, he says, the gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hears a voice.

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

Jesus is using this metaphor to go directly at the Pharisees.

However, he's doing something deeper.

And we're gonna go deep for a couple of minutes.

We'll come back up and the rest of the message will be pretty easy to apply.

But for just a few moments, we're gonna like put on our thinking caps.

We're gonna go back into the Jewish history because what Jesus is doing here is so phenomenal.

I don't want to miss it.

So if you're ready to go deep, say I'm ready.

Like, like say I'm ready, like you're meeting.

I'm ready.

Online, type it in the chat, I'm ready, because here's what Jesus is doing.

This is called a clap back.

This is what Jesus is doing right here is he's looking right at them, and he is going to take them to task.

We have to go back in the Old Testament, the book of Numbers and the Jewish scriptures.

This is the fourth book.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.

In Numbers chapter 27, Moses.

Numbers 27 · chapter mention

Now remember, Moses is the guy the Pharisees are leveraging to say, we come from Moses.

There was Moses, there was Joshua, and now there is us.

We are the shepherds, we are the leaders of Israel.

In Numbers 27, Moses knows he's gonna die.

And he's crying out to God to find a replacement.

And let's just read through this together.

In Numbers 27, 15, it says, So Moses appealed to the Lord.

He cried out to God, May the Lord, the God who gives breath to all, appoint a man over the community in verse 17, who will go out before them and come back in before them, and who will bring them out and bring them in, so that the Lord's community won't be like sheep without a shepherd.

You may not know this, but the Jewish scriptures, what we often call the Old Testament, is written in Hebrew.

And the Christian scriptures, what we call the New Testament, was written in Greek.

And there's a little bit that's been lost in translation here.

But what Jesus is doing in John chapter 10, staring down the Pharisees who have just excommunicated one of the very Israelites that God gave them to protect and take care of, is he is quoting exact lines word for word from Numbers 27.

John 10 · chapter mention

The Jewish people were largely literate, and the ones who weren't knew the oral tradition so well that most school-aged boys would have the book of Numbers memorized.

No one had to guess what Jesus was doing here.

They claim to be in the lineage of Moses, but Jesus says, not so fast.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew, Moses was granted exactly what he asked of God, a new leader to lead Israel into the promised land.

This leader's name was Joshua.

In Hebrew, Yeshua.

Now they're in a Greek world.

In Greek, Jesus is Yeshua.

He is saying clearly to the Pharisees and everyone who is situated around.

You are the thieves and the robbers who are becoming fat off the flock you are supposed to protect.

And I, I am the shepherd of Israel.

I am the one who leads them to pasture and brings them to protection.

I am the one who all the promises of God are found in.

He is claiming his right as the true leader of Israel.

And I gotta tell you, I am so thankful to serve a savior who is not this wimpy, weak, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pet the sheep, hold the kids, turn the cheek Savior that we've all painted him out to be.

We want him meek and mild and understated and understandable.

And this guy is staring down the people with the power to hang them on a cross and is denying their authority and taking it up for himself.

Jesus did love the children and he did pet the flock and he did turn his cheek.

But when you have all of the power of the universe inside of you, turning your cheek is not an exercise in weakness.

Restrained power is the greatest power that there is.

Jesus is not weak.

And he is taking up what rightly belongs to him.

Back to John 10 in verse 4, he continues the metaphor of the shepherd.

He says, When the shepherd has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them.

And the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

And they'll never follow a stranger.

You've got to get the scene in your mind.

You have to see Jesus confronting the Pharisees, the thieves, and the robbers, and saying, They will not follow you.

They will run.

They do not know your voice.

This is true generally with the crowds and the swarms of people who would follow Jesus, and it's true specifically for the man who had just gotten back his sight.

What had he heard from the voice of the Pharisees?

He had heard their ability to grant all of his life's wishes.

It's quite an offer.

And yet he turned it down because he recognized the voice of the true shepherd.

Now, some of this was lost on the Pharisees.

Verse 6, it says Jesus gave them this figure of speech, but they didn't understand what he was telling them.

And so Jesus is gonna make it even clearer in verse 7.

He said again, Truly I tell you, I am the gate.

I am the gate for the sheep.

And I want you to see how he's tying together where he started now.

In verse 1, he says this, Truly I tell you, anyone who doesn't enter by the gate is a thief and a robber.

Anyone who doesn't enter by the gate, he is the gate.

There's no way that the Pharisees have any legitimate authority because the only place they could get it from is Jesus Himself.

They're not entering through the gate, they are seeking to crucify it.

He's clarifying the distinction.

The false leaders, the evil shepherds, and the true shepherd who has come for the sheep.

Now, he brings clarity, but if we're honest, he also brings a little bit of confusion.

You know, usually when Jesus speaks in metaphors or when he tells stories in parables, they're pretty easy to follow.

It's like every character stays the same throughout, you know?

The dad is the dad and the prodigal son is the prodigal son, and nobody switches roles or anything like that.

And when I read this at surface level, I'm like, look, not trying to tell you how to do your job, Jesus.

You know, it's just you seem to be mixing a lot of metaphors really quickly here.

It's like you're the gatekeeper and you're the shepherd, and now you're the freaking gate.

It's like, which one?

How am I supposed to f like the gatekeeper opens the gate, and the shepherd goes in and out of the gate, and the gate is the gate.

It's like, how are you all of these things at the same time?

And in 2021, this is confusing.

But when Jesus spoke it, it was clarifying.

You see, in these ancient times, there were primarily two different kinds of sheep pens.

There was one that existed in the cities.

And in the cities, the sheep pins were protected.

They were largely made out of wood, and they had a very normal wooden gate, right?

You close the gate, you go back to your house, you come back the next morning.

There was a second kind of sheep pin, and this was out in the country.

The country was much harsher.

There were dangerous animals.

And so they didn't make the country pins out of wood.

They made it out of stone.

And this created a problem because they didn't really have the tools to make a stone gate.

It would have been too heavy, too clunky, too cumbersome.

And so they came up with an initial solution.

The initial solution was to not have a gate.

But of course, not having a gate creates its own problem.

If you don't have a gate, you're gonna lose all of your sheep.

And so they came up with a second solution.

And it was as simple as it is profound.

They built the opening to the sheep pen, approximately the size of a shepherd.

And Jesus keeps saying, My sheep know my voice, and that's more than a metaphor.

Back then they were an agrarian society, and shepherds were not like the precious moments dolls, you know what I'm saying?

They were like tough, you know.

They had some skin in the game.

They were strong, they were strong guys, right?

And very brave, very courageous, and they had unique calls.

And all the shepherds, many of them would have their sheep intermingled, grazing in the same fields, and their unique call would be responded to by only their unique sheep.

And their sheep would come running.

And a little ways before sundown, they would bring their sheep in and they would stand and assert themselves as the gate.

They'd let one sheep in at a time.

And before they let them in, they would look them over very carefully.

They took their job very seriously and they cared for these sheep.

Almost in a maternal way.

They would look through all of the wool.

They would make sure it was, in fact, their sheep so they weren't dishonest, putting up someone else's property.

And they would dig through all of that thick wool, you know, from neck all the way to tail, all the way down, making sure that they hadn't fallen, that there were no cuts.

And if they found something that was deep enough to be worrying, they were like field medics.

They would stitch and suture them back up.

They cared for the sheep.

And once they knew it was their sheep, and once they knew that it was well, they would let it in, but just one at a time and they would take their time and they would look the sheep over and they would let them in the pen.

And you had to go kind of quickly, but they would take their time.

They had to get it done before sundown because that was their only source of light.

And once the sheep were inside the pin, they were really in a good position.

Inside the pin is where you find peace.

There's no worries.

And then it would be time to go to bed.

And the shepherd would kneel down.

And he would lay in almost an M shape.

And the shepherd would become the gate.

And these country pens were very dangerous, you know.

We don't often realize it because we live in cities, and even our suburbs are cities, you know.

It's like there's a lot of building out there.

So we've kind of run off dangerous animals for the most part.

The country was full of dangerous animals.

The shepherd positioned himself for protection.

When the shepherd becomes the gate, he literally lays in the gap between the sheep and the predators.

I live not far from Government Canyon, and a couple of years ago, there was a mountain lion spotted there.

You know what a mountain lion is?

It's like a lion in the mountains.

And we like going on walks and stuff.

And look, yo, I love my dog so much.

But if it's my dog or the mountain lion and me, I know where Petco is, bro.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I can get another dog.

I I can't find another meat, you know?

It's like, but that's where they would sleep.

And in the pen, there is peace.

And there's only peace because the shepherd is the gate.

And the gate is the protection.

And they would wake up the next morning, and they weren't just kept in the pen, they'd be brought out.

And in the pasture is the promise.

You know what sheep were created to do, they were created to graze.

A life of promise is a life where we're living out the purpose that God placed in our lives.

In the pastures, there is promise.

And at sundown they would call them in, and they knew their voice, and they would check them over.

That's passion.

That's the passion of the shepherd.

In another place in scripture, it says that Jesus is like the shepherd who will leave the 99 in the field who are found to pursue the one sheep that is lost.

I know that's true.

I know that's true because I've been that sheep.

Jesus came after me.

And he always does it at risk to himself.

He calls them back in.

He brings them back to peace.

But there is no peace without protection.

You see, I am the gate is working on several level levels here because number one, Jesus is asserting his authority as the rightful leader of God's people.

And God's people is very quickly going to expand beyond just Israel to all the nations of the world.

Jesus is the leader of God's people.

But he came for much more than that.

In verse 8, he says, All who came before me are thieves and robbers.

But the sheep did not listen to them.

In verse 9, he reaffirms, I am the gate.

If anyone enters by me, they will be safe.

They will go in and you will find peace.

And peace is a commodity that is sorely lacking in our world right now.

Peace is something that if you could purchase it financially, we would all go broke trying to find it.

We find peace because of the protection of the shepherd who makes himself the gate.

He brings us in and he brings us out into the life of promise that we are so desperate to find because every one of us is born because of a purpose that God has placed inside of us with a deep, deep longing for significance.

He will be saved.

He will come in and go out and find pasture.

Our last verse for today: a thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come so they may have life.

And life in abundance.

And I've spent a lot of my life compromising who I am and who I am meant to be in order to be let past the gates of this world, thinking that what is on the other side of it will finally fulfill the deep longing in the core of my soul.

And every time we compromise and every time we think that we've gotten close, we just realize that we are even further away.

Many people have rejected Jesus because on a deeper level, we reject all gatekeepers.

We've been hurt too many times.

We've gotten to the other side of the gate socially, relationally, career-wise, financially, only to find that it only exacerbated our loneliness and our depression and our demoralization, and we're just imploding, hoping, searching, desperate.

We don't like it.

Everyone who has power abuses it, right?

Why would Jesus not do the same?

In Philippians chapter 2, it says that Jesus was in his very self God.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

It's a core of what we believe here.

God incarnate, God in human flesh, and yet he did not see his deity as something to leverage over us.

Instead, he humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross.

Not just the shepherd, not just the gatekeeper, the actual gate to eternity itself, laid down his power so that you could find peace.

So you would have protection.

So you could live a life of promise.

And for some of you, your dealer is your gatekeeper.

And if they can show up and if you can get enough cash to get there, then maybe, just maybe, you can get high for long enough to forget how your entire life is imploding around you.

For some of you, it's on your phone, and it's like, if I can just get the likes, if I can just get the filters, if I can just erase the wrinkles, if I can just get the shares, for some of you, it's just an app like Tinder.

And it's like if I can just hook up with someone tonight, even for a moment, I will feel like I have some sense of worth.

On the other side of every gatekeeper in this world is a reminder that nothing in this world can satisfy you eternally.

Jesus says, I am the gate.

Enter and be saved.

Would you guys close your eyes and bow your heads right where you're at?

Nothing magic about that.

It just creates some space for yourself and for the people around you.

And I wonder today how many of us in Hilotus online at the saloon, how many of us have never had that moment where we put our faith in Jesus, where we trusted that He is the answer.

He is the deepest longing of our soul.

I wonder how many of you God is impressing on your heart that that thing you desperately want right now, that thing that you're getting ready to compromise for, that thing that you're willing to eskew your moral compass, whatever it is, whether it's pleasure or finance or privilege or status or a career move or a relationship.

Maybe you can be honest enough to know that behind that gate is a deeper sense of longing and loneliness and sadness that there has to be something bigger than this world, bigger than what we can see and hear and taste and smell and feel.

There's gotta be something more.

You know it in the deepest depths of your soul?

What would it mean for you to experience peace?

What would it mean if God, who owns it all, left a perfect heaven to lay his life in the gap, to stand between your peace and the world's evil?

What would it mean if a God loved you as an individual enough to lay his life down?

To pay the price that your own sins and misdeeds have accrued?

What would it mean to find promise in the pastures of God?

What would it mean for the Lord to be your shepherd, to go without want, to be led beside still waters, to lay down in the green grass?

What would it mean for a God to have a purpose for your life?

How do we enter the gate?

Scripture says it's serious.

That God loved the world so much that he sent his son, and that our responsibility, it's none of our work, all of his, is simply to believe.

To believe in our heart that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he's done what he says that he's done, that he is God who came to a broken world, who died in your place, rose again defeating death, ascended to heaven, and is coming back someday for you.

I want to give you an opportunity to express that faith.

If you're ready, you can join me in a simple prayer.

You can say it out loud, or you can speak it even in your mind where God can hear your thoughts.

If you're ready to enter the gate, would you pray something right now like this?

Jesus, today I choose to believe.

That you died for me.

I believe you rose again.

And I believe you are coming back someday.

I thank you for your promises.

And I thank you for a new eternal life.

If you prayed that prayer you just made, the biggest decision you will ever make in this life, the only decision that has eternal ramifications.

I think there are others who are here who have already believed.

And the greatest news is that once you believe you are God's forever, there is nothing in all of creation that can separate you from the love of God as displayed through his son on a cross.

However, we're also given the freedom, and in our freedom, sometimes we stray.

And I wonder if today you realize that although you belong to God, you have been trying to navigate in the world alone.

It's time to come back.

Come back to the gate.

Come back to the shepherd.

It will be painful because the world wounds us and it scars us.

And nobody likes to be discovered, but Jesus is waiting.

Lovingly look you over.

It's in Jesus we find healing.

If that's you, I'd like to pray for you.

Father, I do not stand here as someone who is exempt from exactly what we're praying about, God.

I have strayed so many times, and I've gotten it in my mind that the world can offer me something that will fulfill in a way that only you can.

God, how many times have I experienced the humility of tucking my tail and coming back to you?

And every time you greet me with love, you greet me like the father whose son has been in a far-off land, who's waiting on the hill.

God, you don't make us run to you, you run back to us, embrace us, clean us up, put a robe and a ring on our hand.

God, you kill the fattened calf, you throw the party.

How many times have I wasted my inheritance, God, and yet you're there welcoming me back in.

I pray we would stray no longer.

Jesus, we thank you for showing us another glimpse of who you are.

God, we rejoice and we celebrate with all of heaven for those who have chosen to put their faith in you.

We love you.

We love you.

And we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

A couple of things before we uh dismiss.

Number one, uh, some of you have just made the most important decision you will ever make.

And we want to know that and we want to celebrate with you.

And the easiest way to do that is to sign up for baptisms.

Now, we always want to be clear, baptism does not save you, you know.

The moment you believe in Jesus, your eternity is secure.

Baptism is a public acknowledgement of what Jesus has done on a spiritual level in your life, and it's an opportunity for your faith community to celebrate with you.

So, baptisms are coming up on April 11th.

I also want to remind you about our very simple strategy to grow our impact here in San Antonio and beyond, and that is to invite and invest.

And we really are asking you guys to be bold and courageous in your invitations, both in person with family, friends, and coworkers, as well as making sure that you're sharing our content online.

We put quite a bit of time and energy, especially Marco, our media director, into putting some videos together.

We released the first one a couple days ago, and these are targeted videos to invite people in our community to Easter.

So make sure that you're getting online, that you're sharing those things.

We invite and we invest.

And uh we always want to remind you guys to give because God is doing real work in real life.

It's making a real difference.

And so give not just to help this keep going, but to help it keep growing.

So this QR code situation is so beautiful because you can scan that with your camera right now and you get links to everything, to giving, to baptism, to all of our classes we offer and everything else.

We're gonna keep this series going.

I love you guys.

I hope to see you here next Sunday.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaChurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.