Well done for making it through to Friday. It’s been lovely to share these podcasts with you over the last 5 days, and I am excited to hear Liam continue our journey through John next week.

REFLECTION:

Today’s Bible passage is John 10: 1-21. It’s a well known section of Scripture about Jesus being the Good Shepherd. Slightly unusually, the work of shepherds has been in the news this week, as Jeremy Hunt and Rory Stewart both mentioned sheep farmers in the televised debate between Tory leadership hopefuls that was held on Tuesday evening.  I’m not keen to make the podcast political, so rather than focus on the character of the shepherd, I’d actually like us to look today at another person who is mentioned in these verses; and that’s the gatekeeper.

Verses 2 and 3 say, “The One who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.”

In other translations the gatekeeper is also referred to as ‘the watchman.’ In the Bible this job was essentially 2 roles in one.

As Christians, we are perhaps used to knowing that we are sheep, and that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. As disciples of Jesus, we accept that he lay down his life for us and therefore we choose to follow his voice along the paths that he leads us.

However, the truth that we need to learn from today’s passage is that we are also gatekeepers and watchmen too.

But what exactly do these jobs entail?

In the Old Testament gatekeepers were trusted officials with great responsibility. The two roles that we normally read about are gatekeepers for a city and gatekeepers for the Temple. In either position, they had to be both alert and prepared. Temple gatekeepers were also given the job of ensuring that nothing unholy entered God’s house and they were also in charge of protecting the temple treasures.

In Isaiah 62 we read, “On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent……..Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples.”

In John 10, Jesus doesn’t just say that he is the Good Shepherd. He also says that he is the Gate. It is through him that people get to experience abundant life. So today, as gatekeepers, we are not protecting treasures or sheep; but people. In this role we are to always be alert, always look for opportunities to open up about our faith. As we do this we are preparing the way for people to meet with Jesus, to go through the gate and enter a relationship with Him.

The watchman part of the role is quite simple really – watchmen sound a warning about possible attack. In the Old Testament it involved sounding a trumpet. Today, brass instruments are not involved, but it would mean speaking up and speaking out when you see people drifting away or being caught by the father of lies.

Being a watchman means helping people to listen to the voice of Jesus in the Bible and through prayer, and sounding out a warning when you see the thieves and robbers of the world trying to take people away from the better life that God intended for them.

Now we know a bit about gatekeepers and watchmen, how can we apply this to our own lives?

Firstly, we need to know the sheep that we are the gatekeepers and the watchmen for.  You may be familiar with the saying ‘We are all sheep from the front, but shepherds from behind.’ Who are the non-Christians in our lives that are looking to us to lead them to Jesus? Ask God to show you today who the people are that you are being called to be a gatekeeper for.

Secondly, in our role as gatekeepers are we prepared and ready to take every opportunity to be that person who opens the gate for someone else, so that they can meet Jesus and hear his voice? Whether you are at work, at home, in the shops,