This ties back to the teaching about the blind man. The Holy Spirit was opening the ears of His sheep to hear His voice. The Spirit of God came upon Jesus, and everything that He did, He did by the power of the Spirit of God. Whom does the porter represent? The porter is the Holy Spirit.
( John 10:3) To him the porter openeth and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.
This is a tremendous claim He is making here: Israel is the sheepfold Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Remember, they said, “Are we blind also?” Our Lord made it very clear that they were blind. The religious rulers are rejecting the Lord Jesus, and now they’re challenging Him. You see, in the incident of the man who was born blind and was healed by Jesus, the man had been excommunicated, put out of the temple. They would not have had the credentials of the Messiah and would have had to climb over the fence. Anyone else would have been a thief and a robber. No one else could have had the credentials that He had. He was the Messiah, and He came in through the door. How accurately the prophesies were fulfilled. Jesus was simply a carpenter, and wore a carpenter’s robe. But when the Lord Jesus was born, He was just a branch out of the stem of Jesse, the peasant. His son, David, had the anointing oil poured on him, and that line became the kingly line. Jesse had been a farmer down in Bethlehem. By the time Jesus came, the royal line of David had dropped back to the level of the peasant. At the time that He was born, He was a rod out of the stem of Jesse (see Isa, 11:1). Not only was He in the line of David, but He was born of a virgin according to prophesy (see Isa.7:14). He was born in Bethlehem according to the prophesy (see Micah 5:2). He came in the line of David according to the prophesy (see Luke 1:32). “But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law” (Gal.4:4). That is, He came in by fulfilling the prophesies of the Old Testament. This is a tremendous claim that He is making here. He goes on to say that anyone who doesn’t come by the door, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. Jesus is telling them that He came in by the door. The shepherd represents the nation Israel. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. ( John 10:1-2) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. The next morning the shepherds would identify themselves to the porter, and he would let them in the door to get their sheep. They would trust them to the porter who kept the sheep then they would go to their homes for the night. In the evening all the shepherds who lived in the town would bring their sheep to the sheepfold and turn them in for the night. The ancient sheepfold of that day still exists in many towns in that land.