A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. And Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them out of my hand.
My father is greater than all in what he has given me, and there is no snatching out of his hand. The father and I are one, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. When I saw this, just this little paragraph which I just read to you from chapter 10 of St.
John, chapter 10. I was confused because I've spent the past week on chapter 10, which is a long chapter. So that I was sort of expecting that out of this book today. We have so many books, you have to have a librarian at your right hand to keep you on course. Anyway, we we are dealing today with this chapter 10 of Saint John, the chapter about shepherds and sheep and and gates and doors and sheepfolds and calling sheep by name, I must say that after being ordained fifty years, this chapter has always confused me.
It seems such a mixture of mixed metaphors and time and space and talks about the Messiah and divinity and good shepherds and sheep and pastors, and you get confused until you really read and study it, as I've done during the past week. And I tell you, it's an eye opener. A really it's a staggering argument. This chapter 10. The whole thing is security in Jesus Christ.
That's the whole thing. And here it is in a nutshell. You can't put this thing in a nutshell. But here it is in the scheme it's a real solid argument. And it's there for anyone who wants to read it carefully, but carefully, and to get some of this background about sheep and pastures and all the rest of this stuff.
The first thing is that our blessed Lord, talking to the Jews, uses two metaphors. It's not a mixed metaphor. First of all, he says, I am the gate, and then he says, I'm a door. Notice, they're not the same. For fifty years I thought they were the same.
It shows that you can still teach an old dog new tricks. So the first thing is that Christ identifies himself with the sheepfold and where he is the gate and the door. The second is he identifies himself with the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. And here, I don't want to get down into nitty gritty words, but here there's a very important little trick.
The Greek word for good is That's not the word used here. The word used here is And ordinarily, we we translate kalos as beautiful, good, charming, winning. But when Christ says, I'm the good shepherd, he the Greek is not agathos, the word for good. The word is kalos. We'll come back to that.
And it's very significant. Very significant. And then, you see, Christ says, I am the gate, I am the door, I am the good shepherd. You have to come through me or you're lost. Then he says, I am God.
In other words, he's making a promise of security in him, and then he's saying, I can make this promise because I am God. I am the Messiah. How do I know he said that? Because that's what the congregation thought he said, the the people all around him thought he was saying. Because what did they do?
They went and got their stones to stone him. Because they said, we are not stoning you for the good things you've done. We're stoning you because you made yourself out to be God. Can anything be clearer than that? And that's coming from his opponents, from his enemies.
So there you have it. It's a solid argument that Christ identifies himself as the only way to salvation, and he guarantees it because his speaking is God. And it's all there in this long chapter 10, and it's repetitious. Now let's go back. Let's look at this gate and door.
Now remember, I'm not drawing upon my imagination here. One of the best commentaries we have on this is by Barclay. And there were two kinds First of this whole business of sheep and shepherds is very, very it's a large topic. Because as as Morton, maybe you read that in the steps of the master, Morton has a lot in there about sheep and pastors in Palestine in our Lord's time. In The United States, we identify sheep with meat for food.
Morton says that in the time of Christ, sheep were identified because of their wool. Well, you say, so what? We don't care about wool today. There's a great deal behind that, because the shepherd went out with the same sheep year in and year out. He did get to know them by name, and they got to know his voice.
No hoax about it. And then when we have that little phrase that the good shepherd goes in and out of the sheepfold, I never knew that there was anything special about that, but there is. That's a Barclay says that's a Hebrew phrase, and it was a phrase which indicates utter security. Utter security. I mean utter security that we go in and out through the gate or the door of Christ with utter security and with joy.
Don't forget that. With joy. We'll come back to it. And so the gate the gate was every corral had an opening where they kept the sheep at night. But you had a fancy one that was usually near a village where there was a door and the door had a lock.
And the door had a watchman. So that when a shepherd brought his flock in, it was an individual thing, he was recognized by the doorman. They unlocked the door and put the sheep in the corral. That was a real first class corral. On the other hand, when the sheep got too far out from the village, there would be a rough I've seen them in some I saw them in Guatemala.
You have just a rough circle made of bushes and trees and stakes, any old thing, and then you have an opening. And when Christ says, I am the gate, you know, that would always just seem to metaphor to me. What so what? Here's the gate. Ah, but according to Barclay, the good shepherd, when he got all his sheep in this rustic corral, he put himself on the ground across the opening.
So nobody could go in and no sheep could come out without waking him up. That was the good shepherd. And Morton gives some instances of even in his time, the book's about 50 years old now, where shepherds did lay down their lives to Bedouins for their sheep. It was understood, and there was an affection between the shepherd and the sheep for years of care. There was a mutual relationship, which you don't find out in Wyoming or Colorado.
You see, that's all of those little words. In one case, you're talking about a door, and the other way case, you're talking about a gate. And when Christ says, I'm the gate, you have a picture of him lying of the good shepherd lying there on the ground across the gate so that no nothing can go over, in, or out without waking him up. Now come back to this word good. The difference the the basic difference, between those two words is one of attractiveness.
They both mean good. They both can be used for what is morally good. And I think this is the best way I can bring out the the essential difference is attractiveness, attractiveness. Something that is winning, something that is charming, something that is wince. I can say, Jack Smith is a good doctor, meaning he knows his business.
But when I say, The good doctor stopped in to see me this afternoon, what's the word good there mean? Or I say, Good Mrs. Smith visited the sick this afternoon. What does that word good mean there? That she's an efficient housewife, that she can drive a car, she's a good seat.
What does it mean? This word kalos, you see, has an additional meaning to simply being good. The doctor is not only a very competent physician, but he is a charming character. He wins my admiration. I enjoy his company.
I feel comfortable and secure. That's all in that word kalos. And that's the word John uses here. He does not use the word agathos for our lord. Christ says, I am the good shepherd, kalos shepherd, the winning shepherd, the charming shepherd, the shepherd you wanna be with, the the the shepherd you enjoy whose company you enjoy.
That's your shepherd. Nothing repulsive. Nothing to to be afraid of. Nothing to be embarrassed by. He's the good shepherd, the kalos.
Now that's all in that one little word. Isn't that amazing? Took me fifty years to find that out. But what a comfort. Then we come then we come after this after all of this.
But if I do perform, even though you put no faith in me,