|
“I
AM”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 10:1-10
“Very truly, I tell you, I am
the gate for the sheep.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS this very morning, in our lives, we are
hearing Jesus, our Lord, saying to us, “I
am the gate for the sheep.” Yes,
we have to seek to find out what this means for us.
But we need to realize that we are actually listening to Christ
Himself. Even my position
as the preacher does not mean for me merely to say to you what others
scholars have said about Jesus, and what this meaning is to them.
We shall do better by directing our minds and our hearts only to Him who
says of Himself: “I am.” Jesus
Christ is the Word of God and He is speaking directly to you, in your
very soul.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus is recorded with saying “I am” at least 21
times. Here are a few of
them: “I am the bread of life. Before
Abraham was, I am. I am the
light of the world. I am
the good shepherd. I am the
way, the truth, and the life.”
Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, may speak to us as we are reading
the Bible, and His speaking to us does not have to do with a
commentator’s interpretation.
When I was in college, coming to the end of my first semester, which was
actually in the spring, the head of the mathematics department told me I
was a mathematician and that I needed to stay for summer school.
I had a place, beside a creek, on the side of a mountain, where I
would go, read my Bible and pray.
One day I was there, and I read from Acts chapter 1, “While
staying* with them, Jesus
ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise
of the Father.” And
at that moment I believed the Lord was speaking to me, and ordering me
not to leave Montreat, until I received the promise of our Father.
You see that this had nothing to do with an interpretation of the
passage. Interpretations are very important, but there are times when
the Word of God is communicating “I am” by speaking directly to us.
After God had spoken to me, in this situation, I prayed saying, “Yes,
Lord, I will stay for summer school.”
Then I walked back to my dormitory. And right before I walked in, I looked up into the sky, and I
saw a cloud shaped exactly like a cross, and after a few moments of
strong amazement the cloud disappeared.
God, in Christ, was telling me, “I am the voice who spoke to you
through those scriptures. I
am in the cross cloud over your head.
I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the gate for the
sheep. I am”
By the Word of God telling us, “I am” He is speaking to us,
directly, at the time we need to hear, that He is for us and actually what He does for us, what we cannot do for
ourselves.
There was a theology professor who came from Scotland to Fuller
Theological Seminary in California for a summer.
He was staying about 200 yards from the beach.
One day he was going out to swim, and when he came to the beach,
he saw a little old man walking slowly along the beach.
Rev. Torrance spoke to him before he went in to swim, but when he
came out of the water, the elderly man came to ask him who he was and
where he is from.
When Torrance told him that he was a Presbyterian minister from
Scotland, and was here to lecture for the summer, the man’s face lit
up, and he said that his father had been a Presbyterian minister, and he
grew up in a very faith oriented home.
But he felt very guilty right now because his wife of 45 years of
a happy marriage was dying of cancer.
His heart was broken. He
felt like he didn’t have faith, and he didn’t even know how to pray.
What did J.B. Torrance say to him? Did he tell him how to find faith, how to pray—in other
words, did he throw him back on himself?
No, he told him that Jesus has heard his cry for faith and is
answering it; he told him that in Jesus Christ you have someone who is
already praying for you. Jesus
is for you and doing what you need, and He is doing for you what you may
not be able to do for yourself.
Even though the Rev. Torrance was telling this man about Christ’s
presence, devotion, and love within him, this man was also being led to
turn to Jesus in his soul and hear Christ say, “I am.”
It is interesting that when Moses had his experience of meeting God in a
bush that was on fire, and the fire wouldn’t stop, God told Moses that
Moses was going to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt.
Moses was going to lead them into freedom.
13 But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and
say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and
they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ 14God
said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’*
He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am
has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:13-14)
With John recording Jesus saying “I am” at least 21 times, and his
is the only Gospel with this recorded, he is showing us that Christ is
deeper within us than we may be aware of.
Christ, and our Father, and the Holy Spirit are dynamically
united together; they are the ground of your being, and they are in you, finding ways to say “I am”
to you.
In our denomination, the PC(USA), we have what we authorize as our
constitution. It is made up of The
Book of Order and The Book of
Confessions. The Book of Confessions has official Church faith documents from as
early as the Apostle’s Creed that we say every Sunday, through all the
later centuries of the Reformation.
One of our confessions is THE
THEOLOGICAL DECLARATION OF BARMEN.
It was written by Presbyterians and Lutherans, in Germany, at the
beginning Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, to the Churches for the purpose of
guidance to whom they should follow and obey.
They wrote this: “We confess the following truths: ‘I am the way,
the truth, and the life…I am the gate; if anyone enters by me, he will
be saved.’” They used
some “I am” statements at the beginning of the document, and then
they wrote on of the greatest statements, to me, in all our confessions.
“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one
Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in
life and in death.”
That was their way of saying to the churches they need to listen to the
one saying “I am” in there hearts and not Adolf Hitler.
I love the Bible as our Holy Scriptures.
I have given 27 years of my life reading it.
But, when we get to heaven, I don’t think we will be reading it
anymore. We will be meeting
the ones who have been in our hearts saying “I am.”
And when we meet Christ, face to face, in heaven He will probably
say to us, “This is who I am.”
Let us pray…
Amen.
|