Preaching

Abstract

Gamrie’s Christians often described Christianity as a life of worship and a life of sacrifice. But what does a life of sacrifice look like and how is it related to worship? My friends explained how ‘unsaved’ persons were entirely guided by the sinful ‘lusts’ of the flesh, whereas Christians (the ‘saved’), although still in possession of this ‘fallen nature,’ sought instead to be guided by the righteous yearnings of the ‘spirit.’ The activity of sermonizing reflected this divide. Sermons that catered to the saved were referred to as ‘Bible teaching’ whereas sermons directed toward the unsaved were referred to as ‘gospel preaching.’ This differentiation between preaching to the unsaved and teaching the saved was made sense of with reference to the consumption of different foods. Drawing on Pauline thought, preaching was likened to ‘milk’—the food of unweaned babies—since the simplicity of this gospel message of ‘born-again salvation’ was held to be the only suitable sustenance for such spiritual infants. The saved, being more mature, while also partaking of this milk, ‘hungered for’ the ‘meat’ of Bible teaching—the deeper truths of the Bible— which, when ‘feasted upon,’ would, like protein, help them grow and develop. These four pairs of concepts—‘unsaved’ and ‘saved’; ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’; ‘preaching’ and ‘teaching’, ‘meat’ and ‘milk’—help us to see how sermonizing can be understood as a type of sacrifice.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

(Ezekiel 3:3)