John 10:9

I'd like to read in the Gospel of John, that's the fourth book of the New Testament, in chapter 10. And we're going to read at verse 9. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. He says, I am the door.

By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Now, just in the opening part, I want you to think of an expression there in verse 10.

The Lord Jesus says, I am come, that they might have life and have it more abundantly. That's what I'd like to speak on. In opening for Brother Skates this evening, I want to speak about life.

I just want to ask you a fairly blunt question here. At the start, do you have life? Do you know what it means to have life? That's what the Lord Jesus says here. He says, the reason I have come is that they might have life, and he adds, and have it more abundantly.

You're looking at someone. Nothing too impressive, I'm sure, but I have life, and I have it abundantly. And the whole point of the gospel, we even heard it if you were here today.

I forget how that went. Viving. Vival.

Vival. Having life. Having life.

And that's what the point of the gospel is. That people would come to have life. So I'm just going to look at it in three simple ways tonight.

First of all, what kind of life is he speaking about? Okay. Secondly, why did he have to come in order to give it? Says, I am come, that they might have life. Remember now, the Lord Jesus is the Son of God.

So why couldn't he just from heaven, I don't know, send a lightning bolt down and just, life. Life. Why did he have to come? And lastly, how do I, or how do you, receive this life that he came to give? First of all, what kind of life? The Lord Jesus here was speaking to people very similar to what I'm looking at here this evening.

They were people who were listening to him. They had, most of them just had a meal not too long before this interaction. Okay, so he wasn't speaking about physical life.

They could eat, they could sit, they could listen, they could walk around. But he was speaking about a spiritual kind of life that you'll read about a whole lot in the Gospel of John, and he's saying that this is why he came. Now, at least for me and the way my mind works, a simple way to understand what this kind of life is is to understand what the Bible means by death.

Okay, so if you come with me all the way back in the Garden of Eden, God told Adam and his wife that if you eat of that fruit, you will surely die, right? And the story goes, Eve takes the fruit, gives it to her husband with her. They did eat and they didn't die. Did they? They lived hundreds, hundreds of years after taking that piece of fruit.

So was God's promise wrong? Was he a little bit inaccurate in what he said, that the day you eat of it, surely you will die? No. No. What happened to Adam and Eve is the death that the Lord Jesus is addressing here in John chapter 10.

When Adam and Eve took that fruit, they died spiritually. You say, what does that mean? In a moment of time, they were separated from God. That's why it's called the fall, if you hear some preachers talk about it.

Adam and Eve and God walked in the garden like this, but the day they took the fruit, Adam and Eve fell, disconnected from God. And that's what it means to be spiritually dead. It's not so much to have a problem with your heartbeat or your pulse, but it is to be separated from God.

Now, you understand we use this expression even today in normal... For example, if you have a... I don't have mine with me up here. Oh, if you have a device, a phone, right? Or an iPad. And some of you, you're on it a lot, right? All day.

Right? And you're doing the thing where you just go like this in the next 20-second clip, right? And pretty soon you say, I got to plug it in because my phone's gonna... Oh, it's not gonna die. It doesn't have a pulse, does it? Doesn't have a heartbeat? What do you mean? You mean it's gonna be disconnected from power? It's gonna be disconnected from something that makes it come, at least in its screen, and they'll all come alive. So you see, we use this expression today for other things, inanimate objects.

And it's the same thing. God is saying that we were made for a relationship with him. We were made to be connected with God.

But sadly, because of our sin, it says it like this in Isaiah, central book of the Bible, chapter 59. It says, your sin has separated between you, that's you, I guess, and your God. So death, spiritually, is to be separated from God.

So this is the kind of life that the Lord Jesus was talking about. Now, I know a few people had to leave and go home, understandably. Maybe there's just a few people here.

Okay, maybe there's some of you and you say, I don't know. Not really sure what's going on in this place. Now, listen.

Listen. You know, big things could happen here tonight. Tonight there could be a boy here.

Or a girl. And you could become connected to God. You understand that? It's not about having some experience.

Not all of a sudden you'll go out of this little community center and you'll have a favorite verse or some favorite hymn. Connected to the living God. Life.

That's what the Lord Jesus says. He says, I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. And so what kind of life is this? This is the life that is found in being connected to God.

Because we are separated because of our sins. Now, that's important to understand, okay? The Bible puts an emphasis on that. It says you are alienated from the life of God by wicked works.

Okay? So there's only one thing that has you separated from God, or as my expression here, dead and trespasses and sins. It's just that. It's sin.

It's not a problem with IQ. It's not a problem with a specific church or anything like that. Some kind of a right, spiritual right that a person can go through.

No, the only problem is sin. And so this is the reason the Savior came. He said, I am come that they might have life.

Secondly, second question, why did he have to come? If it is true, and it is true according to the Bible, that I'll just use myself for an example now, that I was born into this world separated from God. Why couldn't he, as God, just point at me and say, connect it? Like this was a big trip for him to take. He came.

He came here to our world. He lived here for 30 some years. And not only did he come, but as the verse is going to go on to say, it says, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd will give his life. He will go to the cross and die on that cross. So it makes you have to ask the question like, why did he have to come? Well, again, I think this is really helpful if you think about the two sides here, okay? Death in the Bible, spiritual death, is to be separated from God.

And the only reason I, in my sin, am separated from God is because of sin, right? So for me to be connected to God, I need something that can touch me and touch the throne of God. And you think about it, my little device, giving a free show and tell here, but my little device here, for it to be charged and connected to power, I need something that will touch the outlet and have power, but I also need this strange thing that Apple decides that's going to connect to my device, right? And if it doesn't touch the both ends, there won't be any charge going through. There won't be any power.

And you see, that's why he had to come. As God looked down in this world, there was no way to connect people with God. He couldn't say, pray more, give more, love more, do more charity, be a better person, read my holy writings.

He couldn't say any of that. No, in order to connect a person to God, it took somebody who could touch us, but also touch the throne of God. Now, there's a whole lot of things that touch us, those things I just mentioned, you know, getting baptized, joining a church, a lot of good works, that touches us.

But what touches the throne of God? And the answer is only God. Not even an angel can touch the throne of God. Only God.

And so God looked down in this world, and he saw that there was no way to connect people like us to himself. And so what God did is God became a human. This is the message of the gospel.

This is the, you know, there again in the book of Isaiah, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a child, a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. God with us. He came to connect us.

That's what he says. He says, I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. So please understand tonight, it's been a long day for the speaker anyway, please understand tonight, there was no way, there was no other way to connect you to God if Christ didn't come.

No way. It wasn't that he was the best way or the Christian way. He was the only way.

And if he never left the throne of glory to come into our world, no hope. That's what the Bible says, without God, without hope. But thank God he came.

And in order to connect us, again, it wasn't just that it has to touch both sides, God and humankind, man. But I would have to deal with the problem in the middle. Separated because of sin, right? And that's the great message of the gospel.

If you were to read in the Bible and you were just going to say, I just want to find out from the Bible what he did on the cross. You know, you could read pamphlets and you could watch movies and all kinds of things and find a lot of the different physical things that happened to him. They talk about a whip that had bones in it.

There's all kinds of graphic detail you can find out that happened in the first century when it came to crucifixion. A lot of that's not mentioned in the Bible. But the Bible over and over and over and over and over says that whatever he's doing on the cross, he's doing it for sin.

So, Isaiah 53 verse 5, he is wounded. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our sin.

His soul is made an offering for sin. Christ died for our sin. Here's mine.

Here's mine. 1 Peter 3. Christ also has once suffered for sin. The just for the unjust.

That he might bring us to God. You see, the way, life, it is to be connected in a relationship with God. By the way, this is why the lake of fire, for those of you who have heard the gospel, which I as I look around I think is everybody, this is why it's called the second death.

It's not the second death because everybody who goes there will physically die. In fact, we know from the Bible that there are going to be actually the first two people there will never die physically. It's not the second death because everybody dies first.

It's the second death because everyone there has already been dead in sin, which is what I'm talking about and what the Bible is teaching here tonight. And so he came so people can have a relationship and be connected with him. Okay, so life, I am come.

Thank God he came. Oh, you know, even I think of my little trip here and coming from Michigan to Ankeny, Iowa. Why am I here? Why are so many of the Christians here? A common life.

Life? Oh, we would never be here, those of you who are saved. We would never be here if we never received life. What draw would this have to come here? But no, there's so many who have received Christ and have enjoyed life and have come to know God, whom to know is life eternal, as it says later on in this gospel.

Okay, so what kind of life? Why did he have to come? Lastly, how do I receive it or how do I get it? Notice here, it's very simple. He says, I am come. This is the words of Christ now.

I am come, that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I just want to circle a word. Have.

You know how you receive it? This life is a free gift. This is the words of Scripture. Romans chapter 6, the wages of sin is death.

The free gift of God is eternal life. He came to provide it. By going to the cross, suffering for our sin, paying the debt that we deserved, facing the wrath of God.

He came to pay everything that sin demands, to settle forever sin's tremendous claim, and then to offer salvation as a free gift. Now it's being offered to you tonight, this afternoon. I'm not sure what to call this.

It's beautiful outside. Anyway, it's offered to you, okay? Do you have life? There's no reason you need to leave this community center and continue on another night without life. Oh, it's an amazing thing if I could only get it across to you, what it is to have life, and I can tell you it's a real thing.

I remember coming to conferences and listening to some of the conferences around here in Iowa. Sometimes before the gospel meeting, some guys would stand up and tell how they were saved. You know, in my family, my mom and dad, when they moved from India to a little town in Arkansas, and we went to a small church.

My brothers and I were the Sunday school, and the Sunday school treat, quite the treat, and the prayer list was very small, right? And I remember thinking as they would go around and pray, and they would mention my name, I thought, I don't like that. I don't like being on people's prayer list. And I heard these stories that people would tell of how they were saved, and I said, I could do that.

So, you know, one day when I was about seven years old, I sat in the living room, and I opened my Bible, and I went over some of the stories I heard. I heard a man say that he put his name in John 3 16. I thought, that's great.

I'll do that. So I opened it to John. Great gospel, great verse.

Wow, how many people will be in heaven just because of the truth of that verse? And I said, for God so loved Joseph Baker that he gave his only begotten son for me, that if I believe in him, I won't perish but have a eternal life. I looked up at the clock. I wrote down, I highlighted the verse.

I wrote down the date. I wrote down the time. Sitting in the living room right across there was my mom.

She was folding some laundry. And there it was. I had my experience.

I had my story. I didn't have life. I didn't have life.

I want you to just stop now. I want you to just stop and think about all the things I had. I had an experience.

I could tell you the date and the time. I had a verse. I don't think you could do better than the verse I had.

I even had a witness. Mommy. You say, wow, what are you missing? I didn't have Christ.

You know what the Bible says? He that has the Son has life, and he that doesn't have the Son, though they have everything else, does not have life. I want to stop and ask you here at this conference. Do you have Christ? Do you? Or do you just have a story, just an experience? Oh, there's a story when every one of us welcomed Christ, but it's more than having the story, and it's more than having the experience.

It's about a living relationship with a living person who went to the cross to deal with our sin and rose again from the dead at the right hand of God. And so he came to have life, and again, he's offering it. The Savior is offering it as a free gift.

You don't have to, even as Brother William continues tonight in the gospel, you do not have to leave here without Christ. God willing, some of us will come back in this auditorium tomorrow, and among all the other things, we will thank God for bringing us eternal life. And you could, for the first time, have appreciation that he gave his life so I could have life.

Right? You could receive him today. There's a man not far from, I think, where Brother Murray here, Mr. McCandless, where he grew up, Sarnie, Ontario. He comes from Vietnam.

He came from a background where he worshipped his ancestors. I don't know, really, all the backgrounds here. As he would say, as luck would have it, but we all know it wasn't luck, don't we? He got a job there in Sarnia.

He got contacted through this local church. He didn't think much of it, thought they were kind of strange, but he thought it would be good for his son. His son was saved.

And this man, no background, really, no understanding of the gospel, had hardly heard the name Jesus. He comes and he's sitting in a tent, listening to the gospel. And it wasn't really the thing that maybe it was for many who are here.

It wasn't that he finally understood that he was a helpless sinner. It wasn't that he finally understood that Christ finished the work. It's that for the first time he understood this, that he's not dead anymore.

He's raised again from the dead and he's alive. And he thought if he's alive, that means everything he said is true. And before the night was over, Lee Lang had trusted Christ and was saved.

And he called us up and we went over there and it was quite enjoyable. He sat in front of us, this big bowl of pho. Oh, I don't know if you'd like it.

I liked it though. It's got a little spice to it, you know, and it's good. And that was it.

And we said, Lee, what happened? What happened? And he told us a story. And my friend here, who I was speaking with, he asked him, well, like, how do you feel? How does it make you feel now? He says, you know how it feels? It feels like all my life I've sat inside a cold, dark room. And in the room, he's broken English, but he says, in the room, there's been a window and through that window for the last few years, it's like I've seen the Christians enjoying the warm sunshine.

And he's like, but I've always been in this cold room. He said, but when I heard that message last night, that he's risen from the dead, I don't know. He says it was as if he brought me out of my cold room and he brought me out into the sunshine and he closed the door forever.

And I said, that's a great way of describing abundant life. I hope there's nobody here who thinks it's a bore or a chore to be a Christian. No, friend.

Abundant life. You could have it tonight. You could have it before we say, let us pray.

If you were to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Now just keep your seats and keep listening as Brother William continues in the gospel.