Sermon Text: John 10:1-10
Date: April 26, 2026
Event: The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A

John 10:1-10 (EHV)

“Amen, Amen, I tell you: Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the door, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2The one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The doorkeeper opens the door for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own sheep, he walks ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will never follow a stranger, but will run away from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6Jesus used this illustration in speaking to the people, but they did not understand what he was telling them.

7So Jesus said again, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: I am the door for the sheep. 8All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the door. Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.

10“A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Enter Through the Door

Have you ever locked yourself out of the house and had to get back in by some unusual way? Maybe using another door that you know, if you wiggle just right, will release? Maybe crawling through an open window? Maybe picking the lock on your own door? Sometimes situations like that call for a good amount of creativity.

Now, if you looked and saw someone trying to get into your neighbor’s home by doing any one of those things, what would you think? Someone wildly shaking a back door? Someone taking the screen out of an open window and wiggling through a small opening? Unless you could see for sure that it was your neighbor, you’d probably have some concerns about what might be happening there. Perhaps it would be enough for you to go check things out yourself, to call your neighbor to see what might be going on, or even to make a quick phone call to the police to have an officer swing by.

There are normal ways to enter a secured area, and there are questionable ways. That is true now, and that was true in Jesus’ day as well. In our Gospel for this morning, Jesus uses the picture of someone trying to secretly and maliciously enter a sheep pen to compare himself, who seeks to save people, with those who try to deceive and lead us astray.

Now, I’m not sure of all of your individual animal raising experience, but I have not ever raised any sheep—our two cats are already more than I can handle—but you probably don’t need to be well versed in an agrarian society to be able to understand Jesus’ statement: Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the door, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. That makes sense, right? If you’re supposed to be in that sheep pen, you’re going to enter and leave the normal way. But if you’re climbing over the fence in some remote part of the pen or coming in from an overhanging tree like a cartoon wolf trying to get at the flock, you’re probably not supposed to be there. If you’re entering the pen that way, you’re probably there to steal or do some other harm to the sheep.

Note the difference for the person who is supposed to be there: The one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The doorkeeper opens the door for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When the shepherd arrives, he makes it known. Those in charge of guarding the sheep allow him access and even let him take the sheep out to graze because they know the shepherd will do right by the animals and bring them back safe and sound. His intentions for the animals are only good. He cares deeply for these animals and even knows them not merely as a group of livestock but by name, like a herd of pets.

In this scenario, not only is the doorkeeper ok with everything that is happening, but so are the sheep. When he has brought out all his own sheep, he walks ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger, but will run away from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers. The shepherd who is supposed to be there is good, and anyone unfamiliar who tries to do something different is bad.

The crowd was confused by Jesus’ illustration, so he continued on to be clear that he was talking about himself: “Amen, Amen, I tell you: I am the door for the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

The spiritual implications of Jesus’ point become pretty clear: just as the shepherd and the proper door are safe for the sheep, so he is eternally safe for his people. But anyone or anything else, the one climbing in over the fence, the stranger trying to lure the sheep away, presents an existential and eternal danger for his people.

What does this look like in practice, away from the sheep illustration? Last week I had the “privilege” of seeing a brief video clip of a pastor standing in front of his congregation and claiming that the idea of Jesus dying for our sins was an outdated idea, that we needed to move on from the violent pictures of Jesus’ death, and that any God who demands a blood sacrifice is “problematic.” He clearly didn’t understand sin, grace, love, forgiveness, or anything, and clearly had no respect for the primacy of God’s Word. And even the youngest child here would have been able to identify that this person was not talking about Jesus the way Jesus talks about himself.

Sometimes it’s very clear when the person trying to get into the sheep pen shouldn’t be there. The guy saying we shouldn’t talk about Jesus dying anymore was driving a bulldozer through the sheep pen fence while wearing a shirt that said “I steal sheep” on it. But not everything is so clear. Sometimes, the people trying to break into the sheep pen are those who kind of look as if they should be there, or at least talk the talk a little bit. But this is where Jesus’ work as our Good Shepherd has a lasting effect.

In his illustration, Jesus said, “The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger, but will run away from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” As Jesus’ sheep, you learn and know his voice so that when someone tries something funny, tries to distort his Word, tries even to blend in like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you can identify it. We spend our time in Bible class studying God’s Word, but we also study how it has been misused and abused by others, historically or in our own day, so we can more easily identify these problem areas. But you know the accent of your Good Shepherd; you know the tone and tenor of his voice. If someone tries to speak for him but does not have his voice, you are like a sheep that is wary of the stranger and will refuse to follow him.

As Jesus shifts the picture to himself as the door or gate for the sheep, perhaps our mind jumps to elsewhere when Jesus teaches about striving to enter through the narrow, difficult door rather than the wide and easy way. And Jesus’ picture of himself as the door points us to an even more fundamental spiritual truth about our relationship with Jesus.

Jesus is the door; the only way to enter God’s presence is through him. This might make us think of Jesus’ encouragement to the disciples on Maundy Thursday evening. In answer to Thomas’ concern that they didn’t know where he was going so they couldn’t know how to follow him, Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus is the exclusive way to God; any other door or pathway that claims to lead to God actually leads to eternal disaster.

And those alternative pathways are all over the place. You look inside of you, and you’ve got all sorts of signposts in your own heart that claim to be the path to God. Usually, these paths and doors look like your own work. The thought of “I can be good enough to make up for the bad I’ve done” or, even more deludedly, “I have been good enough to make God happy with me and let me into heaven.” But there is certainly no end to the other spiritual and religious pathways that others will put forward to get to heaven, organized or not. Some try to wrap themselves in the garments of Christianity while containing something entirely different underneath, while others are nakedly not about Jesus at all.

Perhaps we could add just a two-word phrase to Jesus’ statement—all who came before me were thieves and robbers—and say that all who came before or after Jesus have been thieves and robbers. Any spiritual way of thinking that is not exclusively focused on Jesus, on his life to be lived in our place, on his death to pay the punishment our sins deserved, on his resurrection to prove his victory over all of our spiritual enemies, anything that is not Jesus, Jesus, and only Jesus are thieves and robbers. Any door promising to lead to eternal life that is not Jesus is a trap. Anyone who tries to lead us out but is not our Good Shepherd has nothing but our worst interests in mind.

Knowing that, it should be pretty clear where our focus should be—now and for eternity—Jesus. His love is the love that shepherds us through the best and worst times of our lives. His love is the love that takes away our sins, nailing them to his cross. His love is the love that assures us that because he lives, we also will live now and forever in eternity. Without Jesus, we have nothing; with Jesus, we have everything.

And so, my brothers and sisters, enter through the singular, correct door. Find in Jesus the purpose for your life and the certainty of eternity. In your Good Shepherd, you are cared for now and will be forever, or to use Jesus’ words, you have life, and have it abundantly.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria