To understand the words of Jesus in John 10, we must observe that John 10 follows immediately after John 9, the story of the man born blind. In that story, Jesus healed a man born blind. And yet the Pharisees, a group of religious rulers, did everything in their power to debunk this miracle and therefore to reject Christ as one sent from God. The blind man was eventually cast out from the Synagogue for not going along with them. At the end of that story, there is an exchange between the blind man and Jesus, overheard by some of the Pharisees in which Jesus tells them two things about themselves: firstly, that they are in fact the ones who are blind, meaning that they have no spiritual insight or understanding. And, secondly, that, although they are blind, they nevertheless say that they see, and so their guilt remains.He follows this saying with what is said in John 10: “…he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber”. In this saying he identifies the Pharisees as those who do not enter the sheepfold by the right way. We might say that he means that they approach the task of shepherding the people inappropriately.What they ought to do is to enter by the door. For, as Christ says, “…he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep and leads them out”.The door, then, is Christ. He will say twice slightly later in verses 7 and 9, “I am the door”. The shepherd represents the good spiritual leader, who enters by Christ. And he enters the sheepfold, which is the Church. The sheep are God’s people. The doorkeeper, who opens the door is surely the Holy Spirit, the one whom Christ said would lead his people into all truth (John 16:13).Some of the Church Fathers believed that the door could represent both Christ and the Scriptures and this seems a good interpretation. John Chrysostom, for example, said, “The Scriptures He calls the door. They call us to the knowledge of God, they protect the sheep, they shut out the wolves, they bar the entrance to heretics. He that useth not the Scriptures but climbeth up some other way, i.e. some self-chosen, some unlawful way, is a thief…Some other way, may refer too to the commandments and traditions of men which the Scribes taught, to the neglect of the Law” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on John).That is a very insightful observation. In Jesus’ time, there were those who shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces by teaching commandments of men that were on the surface meant to help people to live by the Scriptures. But, in fact, they lead people away from the true meaning of the Scriptures, and so separated them from the God. The greatest extent of this, of course, was when they refused to acknowledge that the Scriptures were really all about Jesus, and that they pointed towards him.But the preaching of something else other than Christ and the Scriptures can take many forms. We must heed the message of John 10: there are wolves and they do seek the lead the sheep of God astray. This is part of the reason that we have John 10 in our Bibles: it is to exhort us to listen for the true voice of Christ in the Scriptures, as preached by faithful shepherds, and to listen for and to that voice, and not to follow the voice of another.It is one of the great tragedies of the modern Church that preaching the Scriptures appears to be some kind of novelty! Friends, there is no point in preaching if we do not preach the Scriptures and if we do not preach Christ. The Holy Spirit will not bless such preaching. The sheep will not listen to it. Their hearts will not be stirred to love for God and for Jesus. They will recognise it for the emptiness that it is and they will look elsewhere and go elsewhere to find true nourishment.A quotation from the English Puritan, Richard Baxter, comes to mind: “We speak as dying men to dying men. There is no time for embroidery.”I have no time to say anything else to you – anything that proceeds from my imagination or from my opinion or from my own blessed thoughts. You may be interested to hear about these things in other contexts. But here, as I stand before you, I have only one task, one duty, one burden, which is to deliver the message to you - the message that comes from God himself. Woe to me if I stand in the way! Woe to me if I let my ego or my insecurity eclipse the glory of Christ which is revealed in the Sacred Scriptures. Friends, do not listen to my voice, but listen for the voice of the true and Good Shepherd!Again, there is quite a lot of talk at the moment of revival and a renewal of interest in Christianity. No doubt there are various boardroom meetings in centralised locations, considering how this propitious cultural moment might be seized for the benefit of the Church. Good questions to ask perhaps. But the only answer is Christ and the Scriptures. We do not need think tanks and diocesan strategies and complex vision statements to understand this. Christ tells us plainly. Preach the Gospel! Preach the Scriptures! Christ says to his shepherds: You have orders. Obey them! To the sheep: listen for his voice and follow!The sheep will hear his voice and they will follow because they will know that they will find true spiritual nourishment. So cancel the diocesan think tanks! Cancel the boardroom meetings! Cancel the complex vision statements! Cancel the political virtue-signalling. And let one notion reign supreme and entire: the Gospel, the Scriptures, Christ above all!The Chief ShepherdAnd yet all of this is incomplete without one further recognition: and that is that the true Shepherd, the chief Shepherd of all, is Christ himself. Our reading this morning is curtailed before Christ reveals this to us: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And this is contrasted with the previous statement: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”God has given the gift of the pastoral ministry to the church: bishops, priests, teachers of the faith. These are essential ministries because the people need to hear the Word of God taught, explained, and proclaimed. And yet we all have to remember – people like me more than anybody else – who and what we are proclaiming. As the Apostle Paul said, ‘We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord’ (2 Cor. 4:5). This is what it is all for: the Scriptures, the preaching, the Sacraments, the Church itself - it is all meant to point us to Jesus Christ.The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Yes, the pastor of the people of God must sacrifice for them and for their good. He must protect them and lead them. But ultimately, we all must follow after the Chief Shepherd, who is Christ. And we all must remember that he laid down his life for us, that we might know forgiveness and everlasting life. And it is essential to recognise this about pastors and teachers, so that we avoid the error – prevalent in the first century church as much as it is today – of celebritising and venerating the shepherds of the Church in place of Christ himself. Ultimately, you do not follow me, or another priest or pastor, or a YouTube influencer. You follow Christ, as I do also.Today, we frequently encounter what could be called “The Cult of Leadership”. I do not believe that “leadership” is a biblical word. Use it if you like, but it speaks more of a secular, bureaucratic or even political approach than true pastoral ministry. The true shepherds of the Church do not sit on top of an organisational hierarchy, issuing commands and bossing people around as apparently omnicompetent CEOs. Rather, they preach the Scriptures, sacrifice for the flock, protect them from wolves, and they always remember that they are in fact part of the same flock, the same flock that follows the true Shepherd, Jesus Christ.Abundant Life“If anyone enters by (the door),” says Jesus, “he will be saved and will go in and out and find green pasture”.This is a beautiful image, which reminds us, of course, of Psalm 23:‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.’And Christ’s saying here can be interpreted in different ways, but the main point is quite clear: entering through Christ the door and the Scriptures, the sheep will be led out to pasture. They will find food and rest, and they will be lead to a place of peace and restoration.One of my favourite interpretations of this passage comes from St Augustine:‘Going in must refer to inward cogitation (that is meditation; considering the Scriptures, contemplative prayer and so on); going out to outward action’. And then he quotes from Psalm 104:23, ‘Man goes out to his work and to his labour until the evening’.In Augustine’s interpretation, going in represents the spiritual practices of encountering Christ in the preaching of the Church and in meditating upon Christ in prayer and contemplation. Going out represents our daily activities: our work, our labour, our interactions with the world and with other people. In both our meditation and in our action (in prayer and in work), Christ tells us that we will find green pasture in him, that is spiritual food, fruitfulness, and the restoration of our souls.He says this in another way in v.10 of John: “I came that they might have life and have it in abundance.”Again, this can be interpreted in different ways, but the basic point is clear: Christ came to give us something wonderful that is only available in Him. Regular attenders of this Church have probably heard me say before that there are two words for “life” in the Greek New Testament: one, bios, refers to biological life, which we share with the animals and the plants. The other, which is zoe, refers to spiritual life, the life of the heart that is made aliv