A Gospel Appetite

At Athens, Paul encounters a wide range of religious belief. With this comes a diversity in terms of what each group preferred to hear. The Jews would have wanted to hear about Law, of how they could better keep the rules so as to attain that level of righteousness required by God. The Greeks wanted to hear about virtue and be intellectually stimulated. Paul's gospel is not what they want to hear. The Jews could not accept as their Messiah one who was killed, and they did not understand that the very righteousness of God was required, and this could come only as a gift of God through faith. The Greek philosophers could not accept the notion of a bodily resurrection; Stoics has a Platonic view whereby man had an immortal soul which went to heaven, while Epicureans dismissed an afterlife altogether. Paul's gospel by contrast had as a central doctrine the Christian hope of eternal life through bodily resurrection. The matter of different "appetites" for preaching in our day naturally arises. There is a range of preferences for preaching in our churches. Some only want to hear thrilling explanations of prophecy. Others want only practical advice on Christian living. The Bible contains these and much more, but the question every preacher must ask of his sermons is "Is Christ preached? His rich life, his atoning death, his glorious resurrection, his accomplishment of redemption, his continual intercession, and his soon coming?" Yes, we preach many things, but above all else our sermons must be Christ centred.