Sermon Preached on Sunday 15th May 2011.

Easter 4A 15th May 2011 John 10:1-10

When Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press he began to print Bibles.
This enabled the common people to have access to the Scriptures. Until then, only the Church officials had access to Scripture,
everyone else had to rely on their interpretation of it.
The printing of the Bible turned all that on its head,
No longer would everyone have to depend on church leaders to read the Bible,
Now they could now read it for themselves.

There have been numerous times in history when life has been turned on its head.
It is often called a paradigm shift.
It’s a transformation in the way we see life, events, other people, and the environment.
And it can have dramatic effects on the way we live our lives.
Like when Galileo determined that the sun was the centre of the universe
and not the earth
it totally changed the way people viewed the world.

In 1610 Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and observed the orbits of four of its moons.
He believed that there was a force
which we now call gravity
keeping the moons of Jupiter in their orbits.
This same force keeps our moon going around the earth
as our earth moves around the sun,
and our bottoms on the pews!
His observations convinced him that the earth and other planets orbit the sun.
Thus Galileo refuted those who believed that the sun and all the planets orbited the earth.

That shift in thinking went far beyond astronomy.
The Church opposed the scientific change
not because it had a Biblical position
but because it believed that the earth was the centre of the universe.

Galileo and others believed that science was a higher authority than the Church.
As a consequence the authority of the Bible was undermined.

I think that most of us have been around long enough to know that life is constantly changing,
but we don’t always accept that things must change.
The internet, for example, has greatly changed the way we communicate.
Who doesn’t have email these days?
Only the few clever ones I think.
The growth of the internet has been amazing.
It is now our primary source for information.
You can find anything you want on the internet,
And a lot that you don’t want!
You don’t have to wait for the morning newspaper or watch the evening news.
You can get instant, up-to-date information by using the Internet.
We can look at the weather radar and see what the weather will be over the next couple days.
There has been an amazing shift or change in the way anyone does research these days,
From children to PhD students.


When Jesus introduced the concept of the good shepherd,
he was attempting to shift the thinking of his day.
People looked to the Pharisees as their spiritual leaders. Unfortunately these spiritual leaders took advantage of ordinary people
and held on to power for themselves.
Things like healing, salvation or repentance of sins,
All these required their permission.
Jesus, on the other hand, wanted them to understand
that a spiritual leader is one who is like a shepherd
who acts as a gatekeeper.

A shepherd knows his flock personally.
Each person counts.
No one is better than another.
His voice is a familiar one.
He cares for his sheep,
He has their best interest in mind,
rather than his own.
Sheep follow the shepherd because they trust him.
He cares for them by protecting them at night
and sets them free during the day.

In verse 1 Jesus said, “anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.”
In other words there is only one door that leads to salvation
the door of Christ.
Jesus said elsewhere, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
This teaching greatly threatened the Pharisees.
They resisted any change that would undermine their authority or might cause them to lose power.
They attempted to remove Jesus from the picture,
By having Him killed.
But God won in the end,
As God does,
God will always win in the end,
We can be sure of that.
Because God raised Jesus from the dead.
No one else can do that.

The passage immediately before this one is the healing of the blind man,
Jesus was trying to enable people to “see.”
Jesus said, “I came into this world ‘that those who do not see, may see’
In this passage he is trying to get them to “hear.”
Jesus says, ‘the sheep hear his voice…..the sheep follow him for they know his voice”
This time he attempts to teach them by using an object lesson. Perhaps if they understand that he is the “gate” for the sheep, they will understand.
If you read ahead in verses 19-21, you will note that some got it and some did not.

What about you?
Are you able to acknowledge that a change has come about in your life – because of Christ?
Can you accept the fact that Jesus is the doorway to salvation,
the door that we need to choose Him
in order to “have life, and have it abundantly?”
What does it mean to have life and to have it abundantly?
I am sure that it doesn’t mean having an abundance of money or things.
Most of us think that we would be a whole lot happier if we were just rich and famous.
Jim Carrey doesn't think so –– and he is rich and famous.
He became rich and famous starring in lots of movies.
Carrey knows how it feels to be rich and famous,
But he says:

"I think everybody should get rich and famous
and do everything they ever dreamed of
so they can see that it's not the answer."

Isn't that interesting!
Jim Carrey is telling us that some of the things that seem so attractive don't really keep their promises.



For Jesus abundance means something quite different.

To live abundantly is to be aware that God knows us personally, like a shepherd who knows his sheep.
It means we have the confidence that we are cared for….loved.
It also means we are tuned in to God’s will for our lives,
like the sheep who listen to the familiar voice of the shepherd.

To experience Jesus in our life means we have to change.
To accept Jesus as our door or our gateway to God,
we have to do a couple of things.
First, we have to live our lives as though we are dependent on God
NOT independent of Him.
We definitely won’t have Frank Sinatra’s song “I did it my way” as the summary of our life.
Secondly, we give the voice of God the highest priority.
We will be reading His Word,
Listening to it being read,
listening to explanations of it.
We will be seeking to live our life by His Word.
As James says “We will be doers of the Word and not hearers only”
Third, we follow Christ obediently.

When we:
• Live our life depending on God
• Follow His Word,
• Are obedient to God
Then and only then will we be living in abundance.
That is God’s desire and plan for us,
We want abundance in our lives,
but we go after it in wrong places.

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear its’ self.”
Roosevelt was attempting to change the people’s thinking
And move them from despair to hope.
Winston Churchill. Churchhill once said,
“We can make a living by what we get, but we can make a life by what we give.”
He too was trying to change the thinking of society.
To follow Jesus, as sheep follow a shepherd
means to be people who give.
Captain James Cook said once,
“You are never giving, or can you ever give, enough service.”

That is the formulae Jesus gave us
When we follow that,
We will have a new church community,
And a new world.