I Am the Door

Today on Summit Life with JD Greer. It is not mean or arrogant to say that Jesus is the only door, if he says he's the only door. If he's God, if he is the I Am, then he gets to make the rules about salvation. It's his door. It's always been his door. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. I don't know about you, but I really don't give much thought to doors and gates unless they stop working properly. They're usually constructed to help keep people or animals out, but of course they can also certainly be opened to let them in. Today, Pastor JD explains perhaps the most overlooked of Jesus's I Am statements. I Am the door. Though most people recognize this as Jesus's claim to be the only way to salvation, and don't get me wrong, he for sure is. It is also a statement that is far richer and deeper than we may realize because Jesus is indeed the only door to salvation.

He is also the door that leads to a flourishing life here on earth. So let's not waste any time and jump right into God's Word. All right, John chapter 10. If you got your Bibles this morning, John 10. We are looking at the I Am statements of Jesus, seven times in the Gospel of John, where Jesus takes the loftiest name of God in the Old Testament, I Am Yahweh, and he claims it for himself.

And then he attaches to that name one of our greatest areas of brokenness or need. And so today we come to the third of those I Am statements. John chapter 10, verse 9. I Am the door. If anybody enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Doors or gates are a big deal in Scripture. You've probably never done a study of doors in the Bible, but you might consider it. In Genesis, for example, Genesis tells us that after Adam and Eve had sinned, angels were placed at the entry gate, the door, to the Garden of Eden with flaming swords in their hands that pointed every direction to bar re-entry into the Garden of Eden. By the way, I've always thought the ultimate Indiana Jones movie would be for him to find that gate with those angels and the Garden of Eden behind it.

That's way better than the Crystal Skull or the Dial of Destiny or any of the dumb stuff they did after the Lost Ark and the Holy Grail, but that's just my opinion. But you had a door there at the beginning, a door that was guarded by angels. Then there's the door to Noah's Ark. The Book of Genesis says that the Ark that God had Noah build to save himself and his family and a selection of the animals only had one door, and that after Noah's family and all the animals had gone through that one door safely, that God himself shut it. One of the most significant features of the temple's design was the singularity of the doors. The temple was not built like our church facilities with multiple entry and exit points. There's no fire codes to deal with back then.

There weren't multiple points of egress and regress. There was just one gate, one gate through which people could enter the tabernacle courtyard. And that was what one way was covered by a really thick curtain. And the first thing you encountered upon entering the temple was the bronze altar on which sacrifices for sin were offered. The message, there's one way God was saying to get to me, and it's through this altar right here. Then there was the door into the Holy of Holies itself where the Ark of the Covenant was, which was also covered by a thick curtain of blue and purple and scarlet. Only the high priest could pass through that door. And only one time a year on the Day of Atonement when he sprinkled the blood of a sacrificed lamb on the mercy seat that was on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

If anybody else ever tried to enter that area by any other way for any other reason at any other time, they were struck dead on the spot. Very interestingly, by the way, in front of the entry to the Holy of Holies were carvings of angels standing guard. And then another two carved angels on top of the mercy seat there on top of the Ark of the Covenant symbolic of those angels with the flaming swords that guarded the entry back into the Garden of Eden. It's all there to say doors were a big deal in the Old Testament, which makes Jesus's claim here all the more significant. Let's read the conversation in John 10 where Jesus makes this claim, okay? The context for this conversation, by the way, in case you forgot from last weekend, is that Jesus has just forgiven a woman caught in adultery and he's just given sight to a blind man.

The Pharisees had responded very negatively to those two miracles. They resented Jesus's power on the one hand, and they showed an utter callousness for the forgiven woman and the healed man on the other. So in these stories, you are going to see Jesus is setting up a contrast between his heart for people and the Pharisee's heart for people, or I should say lack of heart for people. And so Jesus says, verse one, truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, well, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him, the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them with an eye roll, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door.

If anybody enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. In those days, there were two kinds of sheepfolds. There were city sheepfolds, and there were country sheepfolds. And Jesus draws on the imagery of both of them here to make his point and kind of weaves back and forth between the two of them.

And so I'm gonna kind of untangle it for you. City sheepfolds were big and communal. At night, shepherds would bring their flocks into one big communal sheep pen where a paid sentry would stand guard while the shepherd went out with his buddies or got a good night's sleep somewhere or whatever. As many as five or six flocks at a time were kept together in the one pen.

If you ever go to Israel one day, you can see the ruins of some of these large sheep pens. When the morning, the shepherd would come by to pick up his flock. And of course you ask, well, how would he separate out his sheep from the others since they're all mixed together?

Great question. You may not know this, but sheep have remarkably discerning hearing. They have notoriously bad eyesight, yes, and they're pretty stupid as far as animals go, but they have really good hearing. And so when the shepherd would call out to his sheep, only his sheep responded and the rest all stay put. Thieves would sometimes try to steal sheep by dressing up like the shepherd and impersonating him. And here was the thing, they could usually fool the guard.

They'd wear a hood. They identify themselves by the shepherd's name. The real problem was fooling the sheep. The sheep would recognize the difference between the voice of the stranger and the voice of the true shepherd. That's what Jesus is talking about in verses four and five. My sheep recognize my voice.

They follow me and they will not respond to the voice of an imposter. So those are the city sheepfolds, but then there were also country sheepfolds. You got sort of an ad-hoc pen out in the countryside that somebody would throw up.

Anybody could use that pen. Didn't have high walls, had low walls, but those pens usually had no door, which meant that the shepherd would sleep right there in that little gap. The shepherd was the door. He would keep thieves or wild animals from coming in. Sometimes thieves would try to sneak over the walls while the shepherd slept so that they could get at the sheep.

Getting over the wall was pretty easy. It was getting the sheep out that was the problem. Sheep are heavy. It was nigh unto impossible to get their fat rear ends over that wall without the sheep making a ton of noise. Like, oh, you bad man, or whatever they would say.

Sorry, I'm still a dad. That's a dad joke. That's what Jesus is referring to in verse one when he says that one who does not enter under the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man's a thief and a robber. Jesus was saying these Pharisees, they're like the thieves who were trying to climb over the walls and steal the sheep. They're the ones who are imitating the voice of the shepherd, but those with ears to hear and those with eyes to see, like this forgiven woman and this blind man, they recognize that I'm the true shepherd.

And they follow me. They recognize that I'm the only way back into God's pasture. I'm the door. I'm the door. I'm the one door back into the presence of God.

So here's what we see in all that. We see first, number one, we see the way of salvation. Salvation. Jesus is the door. He is the one gateway back into the presence of God. Just like there was one entry point into Noah's ark through which Noah and his family could enter the shelter, the ark and be saved. And just like there was one way to safely enter the temple courtyard and that was to come by the way of the altar. And just like there was one way, one entry way into the Holy of Holies, one time a year on the day of atonement with the blood of a sacrifice in your hand, Jesus is the one door into the presence and the pasture lands of God.

In fact, when you start to see all the imagery around the death and resurrection of Jesus, it's pretty overwhelming. When Jesus died, the curtain that guarded the door into the Holy of Holies was ripped in two from the top to the bottom. That was symbolic of the fact that Jesus's torn body was now the entry way back into the presence of God.

His blood was sprinkled on the heavenly mercy seat so that we could come back into God's presence. You all remember how I told you that when Adam and Eve were driven out of the presence of God at the Garden of Eden, that God had put angels with flaming swords in front of the garden to bar their re-entry. And images I told you of those same angels were put over the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant, one on each side. And they're also put there in front of the Holy of Holies recreating this barring into the Garden of Eden.

Remember that? Well, a little detail that the Apostle John includes about the resurrection that most people read right over is that when Mary first got to the tomb on resurrection morning, it says she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the foot. Two angels, one at the head, one at the foot. You see what's being recreated? Jesus's resurrected body is the new mercy seat. He had taken the flaming sword of God's judgment in our place, and now he's the door through which we can re-enter the garden of God's presence and come boldly to the throne of grace with any need we have for help any time that we need it. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

You can always find more resources online free of charge by visiting jdgreer.com. We'll return to our brand new teaching in just a moment, but first try to imagine a world where everyone has access to the life-changing truth of the gospel. The truth is there's billions of people right now who don't have that access that we take for granted here. Well, our vision at Summit Life is to change all of that. With your prayers and financial gifts, we produce broadcasts, podcasts, devotionals, and more to help spread the gospel far and wide, and together we can make an eternal difference if we join hands. Will you help us advance this mission, become a monthly gospel partner today, or give a one-time gift? Let's share the hope of Jesus with a world that is in desperate need. We'll send you a thank you gift, a Bible study that partners with our current teaching series, for your donation to the ministry right now.

So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com. Now let's return to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. I know it's popular today to say that God is like a mountain. There are many ways to the top. They're all headed the same direction.

I got my way, you got your way. Different religions may call God by different names. They have slightly different rules. But they all basically teach the same thing, and they're headed to the same place. But do you see how out of sync that is with what the Bible teaches from cover to cover? There is always only one door, and God is in charge of it. And the most terrible judgments, death itself, await those who attempt to enter by any other way. Which leads me to the second thing we see in Jesus' claim to be the door. Number two, we see a claim to exclusivity.

A claim to exclusivity. Jesus said, I am the door, not a door. I am the door. I am the one. I am the one door to Noah's ark. I am the one door into the Holy of Holies. And maybe that feels mean or arrogant or judgmental to you for me to say, but friends, it's not mean or arrogant or judgmental to say that if it's true. I'm not in charge of the door.

God is. I haven't told this story in a while, but it's a classic. Years ago, before I was married, I was taking a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where I was serving at the time as a youth pastor, back to Greensboro, North Carolina, which was the closest airport to my house. It was a red-eye flight.

You know, little red-eye flight. You know, late at night. There were only three of us in the gate area when I got to the gate. It was like 1130 at night or something like that.

One of the people in the gate area was an elderly man who looked at least 80 years old, or maybe 180. I really couldn't tell. But bottom line, he didn't seem long for the earth.

One foot in the grave, one foot on a banana pill at any moment. You know, you just didn't know what was going to happen. The other was a beautiful young woman in her early 20s. Now, at the time, y'all, I was young and single, long before I met Veronica, okay? So I prayed about where God wanted me to sit. And it felt like ice cream spinach.

You know, I'm going to be honest with you. And I mysteriously found my feet leading me to sit next to the young woman. I found out she was from Chile, down in South America. And turned out she was on her way back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Harvard University. But she was stopping off to see some friends in Greensboro first.

Well, I had just graduated from Campbell University, known around the world as the Harvard of the Sandhills. So I felt right there we had a connection, okay? Her name was Bertha, okay?

Not Bertha, but with a Chilean flair, Bertha. We started talking about what we were doing with our lives. And I told her how Jesus had changed my life and how I wanted to go into law. But he redirected me into kind of where I was headed now. And I wanted to spend the rest of my life telling other people about Jesus. My motives at this point were at least partially right. She was so full of questions, y'all.

I mean, asking me how I arrived at this certainty, how it changed my life, just all kinds of questions. Then at some point in the conversation, she just looked at me and she said, you know, she said at Harvard, I'm around some of the most driven, intelligent men in the world, but I don't think I've ever heard any of them speak with such conviction and clarity and winsomeness about anything. And I find that deeply attractive.

And I thought, well, this is awesome. She's going to get saved. We're going to get married. This is going to be an awesome story that I get to share at conferences about how we met. We sat next to each other on the plane and we kept talking about Jesus and our lives for basically the entire journey.

As we began our descent into the Greensboro Airport, I thought I'd better close the deal for Jesus. And I said, well, would you like to receive Jesus as your savior, Berta? And then to my surprise, honestly, surprise me, she said, no.

She said, no, you know, that kind of stuff, it's just never really worked for me. She said, I really am so happy that you have found your peace in Jesus, but I relate to my God in a totally different way. So I said, Berta, I don't think you understand, okay? You see, Jesus said in John 10, John 14, 6, showed her some of these verses that he was not a way to God, a door, but he was the way, the door. He's the only way of salvation.

She said, yeah, but it just doesn't fit me. We all have our own way to God and my way is good for me and your way is good for you. And I kept saying, Berta, look at what he said. And she said, surely you're not saying to me that there's only one way to come to God.

Surely you're not saying that your way is the only way. And I affirmed that I was, that was indeed exactly what I was saying, except it was not me saying it, it was Jesus saying it. She looked at me and she said, that has to be the most arrogant, close-minded thing I've ever heard anybody say.

I cannot believe anybody today in a modern day, I cannot believe anybody with any education at all would be so bigoted as to think that there's only one way to God. And then she just kind of sat back and folded her hands. I sat there, honestly, a little dumbfounded, slowly unwinding the wedding plans, by the way. But I was trying to figure out what to say. And then the pilot came on the little intercom and he announced our final descent into Greensboro and I had an idea. Berta said, I said, I sure am glad the pilot of this airplane does not look at the airport the same way you do truth. She said, what do you mean? I said, I just say he comes on the PA right now and announces, you know, I am sick of that arrogant little control tower, always telling me where and how I got to land this 737. That just doesn't work for me, honestly, anymore. I'm an open-minded pilot, so today I'm going to attempt to land this aircraft upside down on the interstate or nose tip first on the tip of the Bank of America building.

That's my way of landing this plane. She said, that's not a fair comparison. I said, yes, it is.

And that's Campbell 1, Harvard 0, by the way, in case you keep the score, all right. Now, I'll be honest. As the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew, I knew that I was not doing what Peter commanded us to do in 1 Peter 3.15, to answer those who object to what we say with gentleness and respect. And honestly, I hope that my brashness did not create further obstacles in Berta's heart to receiving the gospel.

But honestly, y'all, I still stand by that comparison. And today I'm proud to announce that she's part of our Summit in Espanol campus. I am just kidding.

Would that not be awesome? No, no, yeah, she's not. Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet. But here's the point, here's the point.

Here's the point. It is not mean or arrogant to say that Jesus is the only door if he says he's the only door. If he's God, if he is the I am, then he gets to make the rules about salvation. It's his door. It's always been his door.

It's his runway of salvation. In fact, I think it's arrogant for you to say that you think you can enter God's presence any old way you choose. That would make you the author of salvation, but he's the author of salvation. He's the I am. And he's the reason the I am is significant because you are not. If you were the I am, then he would need to be the I am, but because you're not, he is. Saying you can get to God any old way you choose makes you, Jesus says, not an open-minded person. It makes you an attempted thief and robber. The wise person recognizes the voice of the shepherd calling out the one way of salvation and humbly follows him.

Which leads me to number three. Jesus gives us in this an insight into conversion. Y'all as if Jesus were not being offensive enough. You ever notice about Jesus when he starts being offensive and people start pointing that out, he just piles it on. He's like, oh yeah, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Here he goes. He said, furthermore, in order for you to recognize the voice of the true shepherd, God has to give you ears to hear. Look at verse four, the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. A stranger they will not follow.

They will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers. Doesn't that raise the question? Why is it that some people recognize the voice of Jesus and others do not? Why did the woman caught in adultery and why did the man born blind, why did they believe Jesus was who he says he was? And the Pharisees do not believe that?

I mean, think about it. Who was more theologically trained? The Pharisees or the adulterous woman and the blind man? Who was still the was smarter?

Who was more morally upright? In all those cases, it was the Pharisees and yet they didn't recognize the voice of Jesus. Where do ears to hear come from? This is one of the most offensive parts of the gospel.

God has to give you ears to hear it. This was the meaning, by the way, of the healer of the man born blind. That man didn't have a stigmatism.

He didn't need a pair of glasses. He was blind. God and God alone give spiritual sight. The man healed of blindness even recognized that. He told him in John chapter 9, he said, I didn't heal myself of blindness. Only God could do that.

The only thing I know is once I was blind and now I see. This was a direct insult to the Pharisees who thought that their superior morality and their superior intellect would give them the edge in understanding who God was. And Jesus says, and Jesus says no. To discern spiritual truth requires a spiritual gift. A gift that only comes from God. You're too sinful and too blind for your intellect to figure things out.

You need supernatural illumination. You need grace. If this is who Jesus says he is, the question we have to wrestle with is, are we willing to open the door? Let him come in and let him change us. You are listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, J.D. Greer.

Okay. So pastor J.D., today we've been listening to you teach from John chapter 10, where Jesus says, I am the door. Can you give us the cliff notes version? What does that mean for us today?

Yeah, Molly, that's such a rich image. When Jesus says, I am the door, he's talking about access. That's right. And what Jesus is saying to his disciples is, I am your security. I'm the only way in, whether we're talking about salvation with God.

He's saying that I'm the one who guards you and protects you. That ultimately Christianity is not about about lifestyle rules. It's about being in Jesus. You know, it's really popping our culture right now to say there are multiple ways to get to God. Jesus kind of settled that once for all when he just said, I'm the door.

I'm the only way in. We would love for you to study this particular I am, because I think it has so much importance for how you talk to others about Jesus and how you understand your own spiritual life. So we've got a study that will take you deeper into this one and the other six I am statements in the Gospel of John. I think you'll really benefit from it.

It's available right now at jdgrier.com. So reach out to us. We'd love to start a conversation with you.

Thank you, JD. We'd love to hear from you and get you this Bible study. We'll send you a copy today as our way of saying thanks for your financial gift of $45 or more to support this ministry. Your gift to Summit Life opens the door for listeners all across the country and around the world, helping them dive deeper into the Gospel message through this program and all of our online resources. Join that mission today when you give by calling 866-335-5220.

The number again is 866-335-5220 or go online to give and request your copy at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. We'll see you again tomorrow.

Good Friday as we remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. See you Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.