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Thank you, Jackie. Do have a Bible with you. If you would like a Bible, do stick up your hand and you can have one now in the next few minutes. We are continuing today our series on the I am sayings we've heard In John, chapter 6, verse 48, Jesus has said, I am the bread of life. In chapter eight, verse 12, he said, I'm the light of the world.

And tonight we're thinking In John chapter 10 how Jesus says in verse 7, I am the gate for the sheep. There's sort of two, two I am sayings in this chapter, so we're going to hold back on verse. Verse 11 is going to talk about the shepherd. So we'll come back to this chapter next week. Now we're thinking about Jesus being the gate.

The gate. Well, let's pray as we come under God's word. Just going to pray some words from Psalm 115. Not to us, O Lord, not to us. But to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and righteousness.

Lord God, as we hear your word proclaimed tonight, we pray that we would give glory to you, that we would see Christ clearly, not having our own thoughts, but having your thoughts after you. In Jesus name, amen.

Oh, goodness. There's all sorts of technology up here that I don't need or understand. Okay, we are. We're thinking about Jesus being the gate. And there's a lot of voices in our world, aren't there?

Did you notice voices came up in the, in the passage? And you think about voices in the world, all sorts of claims to your time, things that want you to listen to them. There's social media, there's BBC News, there's whatever it might be, people in the playground, voices all around us, our friends, family, we're bombarded with it, aren't we? This has always been the case. You know, newspapers have been always having their own voice, giving us not just the events of the day, but their interpretation of.

And this is just compounded today, isn't it, by the number of voices that just vie for our attention. And it's kind of bewildering, isn't it, in some ways. And you know, you might wonder, how do you choose which voices to listen to? How do we actually discern to whom we should listen? You know, is it just by our tradition or what we happen to hear first?

You know, how can we know what to listen to? You know, Fake news is an absolute buzzword, isn't it? At the moment, everything's fake news, or at least it strikes me that anything that you disagree with is fake news, isn't it? And if you agree with it, it's obviously true. That tends to be how the news actually goes, isn't it?

Is there a real way, though, we can tell what is fake news and what is real? Well, this is actually exactly what our passage is about. You know, you're hearing messages. How are you going to tell what to listen to? How are you going to tell who to listen to?

You see, our chapter today, chapter 10 follows on from chapter nine. If you look in verse one, Jesus says, very truly, I tell you Pharisees. Now that phrase you might know from the old King James is verily, verily or in other translations, truly, truly, I say unto you. Jesus loves to say this whenever he says this. He's not starting a new, a new discourse.

He's commenting on something that's happened before. So Jesus here is commenting on the events of chapter nine. And what happened in chapter nine, in short, was that there was a fellow who was born blind and he was healed by Jesus on the Sabbath. And you would think that was what would be focused on. Instead it ended up being an argument about the Sabbath, ended up being an argument between the Pharisees and Jesus about the Sabbath.

Jesus said it was right to heal this man. The Pharisees say, no, it wasn't. It was clearly not right because it was on the wrong day. Now the man kind of gets caught in the middle by the end of the passage. He's actually not.

He's a bit non committal, to be honest. Throughout the chapter, he's kind of wondering who we should listen to. He's chuffed he got healed, but at the same time he doesn't sort of want to make enemies with the powers that be. So he's sort of caught in the middle. And so we have this sense at the end of chapter nine, well, who should we listen to and how would we know, you know, which of these parties is right?

So here's the question as we enter into chapter 10, and it's important for us because the answer that Jesus gives to this blind man is our answer today. You know, he felt caught between the middle of two, two voices. And how do we discern? Well, the answer Jesus gives is our answer for today. So let's dive in.

The first thing we're going to see is that true ministers of the gospel lead people to Christ. True ministers of the gospel lead people to Christ. As we've said, there's this sort of rabbi against rabbi situation between The Pharisees and Jesus. And we wonder, how are we going to discern who's correct, who we should listen to? Well, Jesus picks this up.

Follow me with verse one. Very truly, I tell you, Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber, okay? So he starts talking about a sheepfold and a gate, and he says, you've got to enter in by the gate. If you're not entering by the gate. We get this, okay?

We're. We're a thief and a robber. Verse 2. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. Verse 3.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him and the sheep listen to his voice. Now, as I first opened this passage earlier in the week, I'm going to be honest, I. I was quite confused for a while. And I think the reason I got a bit confused is because I learned in English that you're not supposed to mix your metaphors, okay? Did.

Did anyone learn this? The thing is, no one told the first century that, okay? No one told Jesus that in England in 2000 years, you're not supposed to mix your metaphors. And so a little bit later in the chapter, when he starts talking about Jesus as the shepherd, I was like, but Jesus is the shepherd. And here he's saying he's a gate.

How can he be a gate and a shepherd? Is he letting himself into the gate? Is he walking through his. Like, how does this. Oh.

And then in the end, I realised it was actually just me being dense because I was worrying about my English lessons rather than what it actually says. Let's not get too much tied in knots right here. Jesus is the gate. He's the one you enter by. And actually, at this stage, Jesus is talking about not himself as the shepherd directly, but he's talking about ministers of the gospel, people who are leading other people.

Because he's talking about the Pharisees, okay? And his disciples. Who do you listen to? We can see that because in verse three, the gatekeeper opens the gate for him. That is the shepherd.

And the sheep listen to his voice. If we want to push the image, the gatekeeper is going to be God, isn't it? Opening the gate to people who lead the sheep in through to Jesus. Okay? Does that sort of make sense?

So, in other words, leaders who are true ministers of the gospel are going to lead people to Christ. That's how you tell. That's the important thing. They lead people to Christ. That's quite simple, isn't it?

And that's really the message, you know. How are you going to listen? Who should you listen to? You listen to the one who leads you to Jesus. The place someone leads you is obviously very, very important.

I did hear recently there's a remake of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Does anyone like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? It's coming up. It's coming up. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest with you.

I don't know what your prevailing memory of it is. Hopefully it was a flying car. It could be something else. The child catcher. Oh, it's grim, isn't it?

The child catcher. Anyway, that's all I can remember, to be honest with you. I know there was a flying car, but I think flying car, I just see childcatcher straight away, you know, Chitty Chitty Bandwagon. Well, if you knew where the childcatcher was leading you, not to a good place, you know, that's not the one to follow. Okay?

The one you follow is the one that leads you to the right place, isn't it? You know, you say no to strangers, they're not taking you home. You follow the minister that is leading you to Christ. That is how you discern. That is how you discern.

It's true then, and it's just as true today. And it's so important for us to have this in our minds. It's important to stress this because there will come a time in most of our lives if there hasn't been already, when you will have to choose a church. Okay? I don't know how many people have chosen a church here before you've been in the position.

You've moved house or you've gone to university or something like that. And you've had to choose a church. And how do you do that? How are you going to choose?

Well, here's how you choose, says Jesus. The one that leads to me, the one that leads to Christ. That's the only criterion, really. Does the church. Does the ministry of the church and the people preaching is Christ proclaimed?

That is the question. That is the most important question.

Because if you're not being led to Christ, then you're being led by a thief and a robber according to Jesus, and not by a shepherd. Shepherds lead to Christ. See, the problem that the guy in chapter nine had was that the Pharisees were the majority. And the majority always feel like they've got a bit of a sort of a monopoly on the truth, don't they? It Sort of feels safe to follow a majority, doesn't it?

But Jesus is saying, actually, no, it's not about that. You know, the Truman is going to lead. To me, it might be that all the churches around are preaching something else, but actually we're about Christ. We're going to follow Christ. We want to hear Christ preached because he is the gate.

So that's the first point we think about true ministers. Well, the second thing is Jesus starts to talk about the people or the sheep in the image. Verse 4.

Or actually, let's go back to verse 3. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He leads them out. Now, we've already said, already said that this is human ministers.

And you might be thinking, okay, so how does this image work here? Obviously, we'll find out next week that Jesus is the good shepherd. Spoiler. I'm sorry. Jesus is the good shepherd.

And if the true minister is preaching Christ, then it's really Christ's voice you're going to hear when they speak. When they speak, you need to hear Christ's voice proclaimed. So it's not like Jesus is saying you will recognise the voice of the great vicar or something like that. He doesn't mean that. He means when somebody speaks, you can recognise Christ's voice that they're proclaiming.

Does that make sense? Yeah, because the true minister of the gospel is proclaiming Christ, and therefore it's Christ's voice that you hear. You see, what we want to hear in preaching is Christ proclaimed by human beings. Right. It's human people proclaiming Christ, not themselves.

Yeah, it's easy to proclaim your craft. It's easy to preach to. To sort of puff yourself up, to give yourself glory. But we want to be proclaiming Christ alone. And what Jesus says is that the true sheep can recognise Christ's voice when it's being proclaimed, when he's being proclaimed.

When Christ is set before you, you should be able to recognise him because you know him, because you love him. You know, we recognise those voices that we care about. I want to see how good you are at recognising voices. Got a little test for you. Okay, Now's the time to wake up.

If you've drifted off a little bit, let's have a little test. Go on from the back, whichever one, and tell me who this voice is. Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father. He told me enough.

He told me you killed him. No. I am your Father, I'm really fluent. A spoiler. You've had ages, to be fair to watch it.

Okay. Who is that? Yeah. Darth Vader, of course. And you know his voice.

Yeah. Very difficult not to hear his voice, isn't it? Okay, let's have another one.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of joy, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream. Okay. Who's that? Yeah.

Well done, Brett. Yeah. Martin Luther King, Jr. Correct. Well done.

Yeah, we know that voice, don't we? Interestingly, in both of those actually, we don't just recognise the voice. You recognise the things they say. Don't we as well? Right, we've got one more.

Hang on a minute, lads, I've got a great idea. Okay, did you get that one? Oh, who's the youngest person who knew that one? Do we need it again? No, go on, Oliver, you got it.

It is Michael Caine. Yeah. Wonderful again. What a wonderful scene. You've got that image in the bus right in your mind, haven't you?

Just there, look. We recognise people's voices when we hear them, don't we? Even famous people like that. And Jesus says, you know, you can hear my voice when it's proclaimed. You can hear my voice.

You know who I am.

Well, there's a question immediately for us, isn't there? Can we recognise Jesus' voice? Can we tell? Do we? Do we recognise if Jesus is being proclaimed or if something else is being proclaimed?

Because it's not always the case that you can go into a church and you can hear Jesus Christ being preached. That's not always the case. Sad but true. And it's something we need to realise. You see, the Pharisees should have been preaching Christ, but they weren't.

Well, it's no less true today. You can go into a churches up and down the land and not hear Christ preach. Can you tell? Can you tell? Can you recognise his voice?

Is it as clear as knowing Darth Vader? You know, because we can be enticed by the things that are being said. You know, what if someone says, well, do you know what I wanna. God wants to make you healthy and wealthy and this is what he's all about, you know, would you recognise that? Or would you be thinking, oh, yeah, I like the sound of that.

That sounds good. Or it might be something much more subtle than that. Actually. Oftentimes we hear good things proclaimed, but they're not Jesus. You know, it Might be that you hear morality preached, you know, we can be good.

Come on, guys, be good. Jesus taught us to be nice. He did teach us to be nice. The best teacher ever. But that isn't all he is.

It's not the most important thing. It might be that we hear all sorts of other things. It could be all sorts of other things. I'll let you think about that. But you see, if we hear anything, even if it's a good thing and we're not hearing Christ preached, then it's not.

It's not right. It's not a shepherd you should follow and the sheep should recognise this. We recognise this. We recognise this because like those clips, we know the things that Jesus would say and we recognise. No, that's actually not, that's not what Jesus would say.

As we read our scriptures, we get to know him. You know, we just have a gut reaction. I realise, I realise whether it's Christ or not, you see, you can't have Jesus teaching without you can't have morality without Jesus. This would be like trying to have a marriage but dispense with your wife. It would just be nonsense, wouldn't it?

Absolute nonsense doesn't work because it's all about a person. You know, you can't take those. I want marriage values.

Well, it's meaningless. Okay, finally, abundant life. So we've talked about how true ministers of the Gospel proclaim Christ and lead to Him. We've heard how we would recognise Jesus voice. And finally, when we do come to Christ, he leads us to abundant life, life to the full.

Look with me in verse 10. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I've come that they may have life and have it to the full.

Jesus makes quite a stark contrast to this verse, doesn't he? He says there's, there's me on the one hand and there's everything else on the other hand, you know, you come to Jesus because that's where abundant life is. Everywhere else, anything else is not life.

You see, because what Jesus says is that the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but he. He came to bring abundant life. And you see this because he gave himself. You know, no one else had it all. No one else has everything.

Jesus needs nothing from us. You know, he doesn't need our signature to petition parliament. He doesn't need our subscription money, doesn't need any of that. He doesn't need anything from us. He gave it all up simply for us.

It can only be for us because he had everything and we can't even get our heads around what everything means in that sentence. He had everything and he gave it up simply so that you could have life. That's what Jesus came for. Of course you want to come to Christ. He's the door.

He's the Great one. He's the great one. Jesus comes for us to live the good life. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

I remember when I was at school an increasingly long time ago, a friend of mine I was having a conversation with and I shared the gospel with him and he said to me, yeah, no, you're probably right. You're probably like, I'll do it when I'm an old man. Do it when I'm an old man before I die. I'll do that. You know, maybe you've heard that sort of similar sentiment, you know, because I may as well have fun till then, you know, I may as well have fun until I die.

And then, you know, I'll just do it at the end. I wonder if you remember this advert. Could you show the picture from 2008? It's quite again, a really long time ago, isn't it, this picture? 2008, 2009.

Have we got it? Oh yeah, there is. Sorry, it's not on this screen. Sorry, there I am sounding like a numpty. Okay, does anyone remember this?

Okay, this was a. This was an advert on buses. An atheist advert on buses in 2008, 2009. There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Okay? It was quite a big thing, you know, obviously cost a lot of money for people to put on. I don't know what your reaction to that is, really. I just. There's just one thing about it.

It's just stupid, isn't it? And I'll tell you. And the reason is not just because it's childish. The reason is not because it's childish, which it obviously is. The issue with it is that they've not understood the gospel.

You know, you're arguing against something that's not even true. You know, don't worry, there's no God. Well, who's worrying that there's a God? Great news, There's a God. He's called Jesus Christ.

He's come for you. Oh yeah, stop worrying that someone's come to give me everything. That's like saying to somebody, look, don't go down to Brighton Pier to get that free all day pass. Have fun instead. What are you talking about?

That is fun. Like the good life is coming to Jesus. I mean this advert just makes no sense. I mean it just only can come from somebody who's has no idea who Jesus is. But maybe some of us here are sort of taken in by that sometimes, you know, this sense we can take it off now.

This sense that like maybe, oh God, just a bit of a meanie and I'll have fun until, until later times. Nonsense. Jesus has come that you may have life and have it to the full. Jesus has come for the good life. This is what the gospel is all about, you know.

Yes, there's self denial, but there's self denial in the same way that the self denial in not smoking so that you don't get emphysema, you know, it's not really self denial, is it? Let's be honest, you know. Yeah, we're denying ourselves for something so much greater, you know, Come on. Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly. Verse 9 he says, I am the gate.

This is our. I am, I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. What more could you want? They will come in and go out and find pasture.

What does the sheep need? The shepherd that leads them in and out, brings them pasture. The great life, the good life.

And so what this text, this passage teaches us today is how to discern, discern the voice of Jesus. How to hear the voice of Jesus say come unto me and rest as he says. There's voices all around us, aren't there? They bombard us. And it's not going to be an answer to sort of listen to every voice and weigh it all up, you know, you don't need to worry about doing that any more than I need to hear the voice of every child in the whole world before I know it's my child crying out to me.

I know their voices. I know their voices. I can tell. You don't need to hear every voice and weigh it up. We just need to know Jesus voice.

Now we learn that in the scriptures, don't we? And the Spirit teaches us. So we come to Christ because he is the one that gave everything. Now the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the gate, that you lead us. Lord God, we pray that we would hear and know your voice. That we would be able to discern you, Lord, that we would have a relationship with you and not be led astray in Jesus name, Amen.