One of the most fascinating images in the scriptures about preaching is that of a nursing mother. Believers in Jesus need to crave milk – the milk of solid teaching from the Word of God. Not only does Peter say this in I Peter 2:2, but so does Paul in I Corinthians 3:2, and Paul (or the Writer to the Hebrews if you’d prefer) says the same thing in Hebrews 5:12,3.
The basic idea in all three of these passages is that milk – the kind of milk that babies get…from women’s breasts – this is how Christians ought to view the preaching of the Word of God, indeed, the most elementary teachings of the Word of God. Some truths of Scripture are mother’s milk and some are steaks. But all of it is useful for training in righteousness. All of it is able to make us wise unto salvation. And all of it is nourishing.
But, if like me and Jonathan Edwards, you believe that everything in the Universe is typological of Christ, then the question is: “what does nursing have to teach us about preaching”. This isn’t allegorizing. This is recognizing that God has created nursing as a means of teaching us about how people are to teach believers about Christ and the Word of God, and how believers are to receive that teaching and preaching.
So, in what follows I’d like to offer some observations about breast-feeding and preaching that may help us to understand what it means to truly preach the Word.
First, Love Hurts. As I watch my lovely wife begin nursing our newborn son again, I get to wince when she winces and grimace when she grimaces. Nursing hurts. Not always. But at first it hurts. And there are lessons here.
We need to recognize two things. A) women have to get their bodies in nursing shape. B) babies have to be taught to eat properly. I think it ought to be fairly obvious how these two lessons correspond to preaching.
The preacher needs to preach the Word of God until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Because it does hurt. Anyone who’s experienced bloody nipple chafing from sports knows how horrible miserable that is. According to my wife, nursing can be even worse. But you just have to keep going. Preaching the Word of God requires rhetorical conditioning. One must plow through the pain that comes with dying to your own notions of intellectual grandeur or homiletical majesty. The Word of God is not improved by worldly philosophy and oftentimes – most times – it is only diminished by our efforts to gussy it up and make it “intellectual”. That’s not to say that there are no intellectual aspects of the Word of God. Of course there are! and they are vitally important. But the Academy and the Pulpit are two very different places. Just as a woman needs to callous her nipples and areolae, so a pastor needs to callous his pride and learn to preach the simple Gospel and the plain Word of God.
Moreover, just as the preacher needs to learn to preach the Word the parishioner needs to learn to receive it. For a baby this means opening wide, getting a good latch and NOT BITING! Again, the parable is clear. Opening wide means taking in as much of the Word of God as possible. The baby needs to receive what the breast offers and not try to control the influx of lactation. Take what the Word of God offers you and don’t try to control what the Word says – receive it ALL and let it form you. Getting a good latch means not being distracted while hearing preaching. Participating in a sermon is experiential. Too many people hear preaching and bible teaching passively. That is wrong. If your pastor cannot see your eyes and so respond to your expressions then something is wrong. Preaching is a kerygmatic event. It is not like watching a TV screen. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience where you and the preacher are united by the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit so that the preacher can speak God’s truths and the parishioner can hear God’s word and interact with the preacher. Or at least it should be. If a preacher could preach the same sermon to a full house as to an empty, then something is wrong with the way he preaches to a full house.
Babies need to latch. Parishioners need to be committed to hearing and receiving God’s Word. Put away distractions. Spend Sunday morning’s in prayer to receive God’s Word. Commit yourself for that 20 minutes to an hour to hearing directly from God through the medium of man – frail though he may be.
Lastly, DON’T BITE! Babies in their frustration bite. Don’t bite your pastor. Don’t bite the breast that nourishes you. He may be a boob, but he’s the boob God gave you. Biting won’t help anybody.
Secondly, It Sucks to Suck. As the kids say, it does, indeed, suck to suck. Beware of this. Too many Christians listen to preaching and read commentaries not to draw closer to God, not to be sanctified, not to become saturated in the Word – but to be entertained.
Granted, the Word of God is entertaining. But its entertainment value is secondary to its transformational value. Don’t simply suck without getting nourishment.
And pastors, if you see a parishioner who is sucking and not being nourished: kick ‘em off the boob! I mean this seriously. Too many turn Chrisitanity into a means of intellectual exercise or mental escape, or worse, and demonically, a way to compete with others and gain power and renown. Such people need to be severely warned. Turning the Word of God into some idle distraction or devilish means of superiority is a grave and serious sin.
Thirdly, Donate Life. We fail to realize this, despite it being obvious, but a mother who nurses isn’t just giving her milk: she’s giving her life! Mothers give themselves, their own substance to feed another person! If anything is a picture of Jesus saying that the Bread is His Body, then nursing must needs be! When a mother gives her milk, she gives of herself.
There are several lessons we can draw from this.
Preaching must be personal. I don’t, by this, mean that it has to have a bunch of forced and corny anecdotes. I mean it must be real to you. My wife can’t give my child another woman’s milk from her own body. Nor can I preach another man’s sermon and have it be real. The words may be true, but if they aren’t true to me, then I’m a meaningless medium. It’s been said that a pastor can never take his congregation further than he’s gone. I believe that. And when a person tries preaching truths he hasn’t experienced or which aren’t true to him, he’s just playing word games.
Preaching is truth through personality. Again, we don’t need the banal personal stories. What we need is God’s Word spoken with the conviction of certified, tried and tested truth!
Just as real nursing gives life from mother to child and creates trust, so preaching truth from the preacher’s own life creates intimacy and bonding with the congregation.
Accept no substitutes. Too often mothers dry up or are simply unwilling to suffer through the pain to nurse their children. While I cannot speak to the moral issues there, I can and will speak to the moral issues of a preacher trying to foist formula on the faithful! Don’t do it.
Let me be frank.
If you’re a pastor and you have nothing to say from God’s Word, so you go and plagiarize someone’s sermon…it’s still plagiarism if you buy it…then you have no business in a pulpit. Get out and let someone whom God has anointed come in and give the people of God the Word of God so they can be anointed by God by the Holy Spirit of God to live the life of God in the Son of God for the Glory of God.
If you’re a pastor and all you got is formula, you’ve no business in a pulpit.
And if you’re in the pew and what you’re getting is ersatz milk – stop imbibing that phoney stuff and get yourself the real thing. Crave the pure milk. Accept no substitutes.
A real preacher, like a real mother, is going to be full to bursting with the Word of God. He’s going to have so many sermons, so much truth, so many things to say that he’s not going to be able to hold it in: indeed if he tries he’s gonna hurt and it’s gonna burn and he’ll get sick. A true preacher cannot hold his milk in – he’ll be leaking all over, and he’ll get no rest until he feels that sweet release, that intoxicating relaxation that comes from the great let-down of preaching.
Friends, I’m afraid that too many great and godly men are getting mastitis because they’ve nobody to drink of the pure Milk of God while others are chased around by gaggles of brats who are being bottle-fed the formula of self-help, prosperitizing, and worldly psychology.
Find a pastor who preaches the Word of God. And then crave that Milk. Open wide, latch on, drink deeply, grow in intimacy, and use the pure Milk of the Word to grow into the man or woman of God whom you’ve been called to be in Christ.
Amen.