I had heard about this book for several months from various friends and acquaintances before i finally ordered it. One of the friends who had told me about it had prefaced her sharing with a "warning" of sorts: "Don't read it unless you're serious about the Gospel and obeying what Jesus says." Quite in line with the Bible verse in James 4:17 "Remember that if a man knows what is right and fails to do it, his failure is a real sin" (J.B.Phillips). This friend was correct; however, as i have now read this book, i can't help but think that the truth inside it is not any different from what every Bible-believing Christian has already read. What David Platt does in his writing is to simply preach the "Gospel truth" to us once again, but he puts it into the context of a people who have gradually gained warped ideas about what that "gospel" really says. If you have grown up in the United States of America, this book is for you. If you have ever read through the New Testament, seeing where Jesus states that "Anyone who comes after Me must deny himself...anyone who follows Me must hate his father and mother and brother and sister...anyone who follows Me will face persecution"...if you have read those verses and thought, "Truly, He didn't really mean that...."then this book is for you. This book was for me. I needed the message, because the message is one of trust in God and whole-hearted obedience to Jesus. It is a call to examine our lives through an eternal perspective, to get down to the nitty-gritty, to say "Okay, if what Jesus says is true, if i really am a follower of Jesus, saved by grace, saved for good works, a vessel of good news, then what do i do about it?"
With a subject as deep and potentially life-altering as this one, what i appreciated the most about Platt's writing was his obvious humility. (And this from a guy who was labeled as "The youngest megachurch pastor in history.") He doesn't claim to have all the answers, only the desire to take Jesus at His word and obey. He says at the very beginning, "I am on a journey...I do not claim to have all the answers. If anything, I have more questions than answers. But if Jesus is who He said He is, and if His promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus."
So, without further ado, let the excerpts begin! :-) (I wasn't sure how to narrow down my list of excerpts i wanted to include, so i'm giving you plenty to read through. Hopefully i won't get a notification from the publisher of the book that i breached their copyright laws...hey, my whole purpose is to give you just enough of the content to inspire you to go buy the book for yourself!)
Again, starting in the first chapter, "My model in ministry is a guy who spent the majority of his ministry time with twelve men. A guy who, when he left this earth, had only about 120 people who were actually sticking around and doing what he told them...Jesus Christ--the youngest minichurch pastor in history. So how was I to reconcile the fact that I was now pastoring thousands of people with the fact that my greatest example in ministry was known for turning away thousands of people?...I am on a journey. But I am convinced it is not just a journey for pastors. I am convinced these questions are critical for the larger community of faith in our country today. I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe. And I am convinced we have a choice. You and I can choose to continue with business as usual in the Christian life and in the church as a whole, enjoying success based on the standards defined by the culture around us. Or we can take an honest look at the Jesus of the Bible and dare to ask what the consequences might be if we really believed him and really obeyed him."
"...I could not help but think that somewhere along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable. We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually abandoning ourselves...The kind of abandonment Jesus asked of the rich young man [Mark 10] is at the core of Jesus' invitation throughout the Gospels. Even his simple call in Matthew 4 to his disciples--'Follow me'--contained radical implications for their lives...Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation. In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves. And history tells us the result. Almost all of them would lose their lives because they responded to his invitation...This brings us to the crucial question for every professing or potential follower of Jesus: Do we really believe he is worth abandoning everything for? Do you and I really believe that Jesus is so good, so satisfying, and so rewarding that we will leave all we have and all we own and all we are in order to find our fullness in him? Do you and I really believe him enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture--and maybe in our churches--turn the other way?"
From a section entitled, "Discovering the Truth and the Beauty of the Gospel," "The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. We prefer to sit back, enjoy our cliches, and picture God as a Father who might help us, all the while ignoring God as a Judge who might damn us. Maybe this is why we fill our lives with the constant drivel of entertainment in our culture--and in the church. We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him...Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender...This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel....This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel."
From the chapter "God's Global Purpose from the Beginning till Today," "On one hand, we were created by God to enjoy his grace. Apart from everything else God created, we were made in his image...But that was not the end of the story, because on the other hand, God immediately followed his blessing with a command. 'God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." ' God gave his people his image for a reason--so that they might multiply his image throughout the world. He created human beings, not only to enjoy his grace in a relationship with him, but also to extend his glory to the ends of the earth. Simple enough. Enjoy his grace and extend his glory....The global purpose of God evident in the history, writings, and prophets of the Old Testament carries over into the New Testament. In the Gospels we see how Jesus ended his time on earth by commanding his followers to take the gospel to the ends of the earth...This is the final, ultimate, all-consuming, glorious, guaranteed, overwhelmingly global purpose of God in Scripture. It is the great why of God. God blesses his people with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all peoples on the earth." "The message of biblical Christianity is not 'God loves me, period,' as if we were the object of our own faith. The message of biblical Christianity is 'God loves me so that I might make him--his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness--known among all nations.' Now God is the object of our faith, and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is."
Many people will respond to all this talk about "going on mission trips and to other countries" with "Well, what about the needs right here in America?" and other such questions. Well, David Platt has something to say to that: "These statements sound spiritual, but when we probe deeper, they seem more like smoke screens. They are smoke screens because most of us really are not very concerned about the needs right around us. Most Christians rarely share the gospel, and most Christians' schedules are not heavily weighted to feeding the hunger, helping the sick, and strengthening the church in the neediest places in our country. But even if we were doing these things, we would still be overlooking a foundational biblical truth when we say our hearts are for the United States. As we have seen all over Scripture, God's heart is for the world. So when we say we have a heart for the U.S., we are admitting that we have a meager 5 percent of God's heart, and we are proud of it. When we say we have a heart for the city we live in, we confess that we have less than 1 percent of God's heart. Certainly there are great needs here. But must we insist on dividing the Great Commission [Matthew 28:18-20] into an either-or proposition? Who told us that we had to choose to have a heart for the United States or a heart for the world? Based on the purpose of God we've seen in Scripture, shouldn't every Christian's heart be ultimately consumed with how we can make God's glory known in all the world?" "It sounds idealistic, I know. Impact the world. But doesn't it also sound biblical? God has created us to accomplish a radically global, supremely God-exalting purpose with our lives. The formal definition of impact is 'a forcible contact between two things,' and God has designed our lives for a collision course with the world."
Now, if what was covered already wasn't "touchy" enough for you, the chapter on "American Wealth and a World of Poverty" will surely strike a chord in your heart. It certainly did for me. "Are you and I looking to Jesus for advice that seems fiscally responsible according to the standards of the world around us? Or are we looking to Jesus for total leadership in our lives, even if that means going against everything our affluent culture and maybe even our affluent religious neighbors might tell us to do? Jesus never intended to be one voice among many counseling us on how to lead our lives and use our money. He always intends to be the voice that guides whatever decisions we make in our lives and with our money." (jumping in during the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler) "...But the beauty of this conversation is what the Bible tells us in Mark 10:21: 'Jesus looked at him and loved him.' What a wonderful phrase! Jesus was not telling this man to give away everything he had because Jesus hated him or desired to make his life miserable. Jesus was telling him to give away everything he had because Jesus loved him. Jesus apparently loves rich people enough to tell them the truth. Luke 12 echoes this theme of love. There we read how Jesus told all his disciples, 'Sell your possessions and give to the poor.' But listen to what he said right before that: 'Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.'...Let me amplify and paraphrase, then, what it seems Jesus was saying: 'In light of the fact that you have a God in heaven who is set on caring for you as a shepherd does his sheep, as a father does his children, and as a king does who is passing on an entire kingdom, don't be anxious. Sell your possessions, give to the poor, and don't worry. Your God--your Shepherd, your Father, your King--has everything under control.'...When God tells us to give extravagantly, we can trust him to do the same in our lives. And this is really the core issue of it all. Do we trust him? Do we trust Jesus when he tells us to give radically for the sake of the poor? Do we trust him to provide for us when we begin using the resources he has given us to provide for others? Do we trust him to know what is best for our lives, our families, and our financial futures?...The point we can learn from this event [a story about John Wesley living on minimal when he could have had surplus] is that our perspective on our possessions radically changes when we open our eyes to the needs of the world around us. When we have the courage to look in the faces of brothers and sisters whose bodies are malnourished and whose brains are deformed because they have no food, Christ will change our desires, and we will long to sacrifice our resources for the glory of his name among them...Why not begin operating under the idea that God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?Now we're getting radical. Or maybe we're getting biblical...Consider what could happen. What if you and I decided that having a $50,000 salary doesn't necessitate living a $50,000 lifestyle? What if you and I had simple caps on our lifestyles and were free to give the rest of our resources away for the glory of Christ in the neediest parts of the world? Scripture clearly teaches that God intends our plenty to supply others' needs [2 Corinthians 8:14]...The point is not simply to meet a temporary need or change a startling statistic; the point is to exalt the glory of Christ as we express the gospel of Christ through the radical generosity of our lives ...We must avoid the error of imposing upon ourselves or others laws that are not commands in Scripture. At the same time, this should not stop us from asking the questions and letting these questions drive us to Christ."
Finally, from the chapter called "Why Going is Urgent, Not Optional." "Many stories are told today of God revealing Christ in dreams and visions around the world to people who have never heard of Jesus. Consequently, many Christians have begun leaning on the hope that God is using other ways to make the gospel known to people who have never heard of Jesus. But we need to remember something. There is not one verse in the book of Acts where the gospel advances to the lost apart from a human agent. One might point to the vision Cornelius had. But God called Peter to get up and go to Cornelius to help him understand his vision and embrace the gospel [Acts 10]. God clearly has decided to use the church--and only the church--as the means by which his gospel will go to the ends of the earth. This, then, is the answer to our question of what happens to people who never hear about Jesus. All people know God, and all people reject God. All people are guilty before God, and all people are condemned for rejecting God. God has made a way of salvation for the lost, and people cannot come to God apart from faith in Christ. As a result, Christ commands the church to make the gospel known to all peoples. If this is true, then the implications for our lives are huge... This is a cause worth living for. It is a cause worth dying for. It is a cause worthy of moving urgently on. We have the gospel of Christ in us, and we do not have time to waste. Some wonder if it is unfair for God to allow so many to have no knowledge of the gospel. But there is no injustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known among those who haven't heard. That is unfair...The question is not 'Can we find God's will for our life?' The question is 'Will we obey God's will?' Will we refuse to sit back and wait for some tingly feeling to go down our spines before we rise up and do what we have already been commanded to do? Will we risk everything--our comfort, our possessions, our security, our very lives--to make the gospel known among unreached peoples? Such rising up and such risk taking are the unavoidable, urgent results of a life that is radically abandoned to Jesus."
~Published 2010, Multonomah Books
