by David Platt, 2010
The American Church has lost its way in the American Dream. “We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”
Christian news publication, 2 headlines side-by-side: “First Baptist Church Celebrates New $23 Million Building.” On the right the article said, “Baptists have raised $5,000 to send to refugees in Western Sudan.”
“Every year in the United States, we spend more than $10 billion on church buildings. In America alone, the amount of real estate owned by institutional churches is worth over $230 billion…My heart aches even as I write this, because the reality is that I preach every Sunday in one of these giant buildings. How do we even begin to reverse the trends regarding where we spend our resources?”
“God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?”
“Set a cap on our lifestyles…”This is enough and I am giving away everything I have or earn above this line.”
Radical Experiment – one year:
- Pray for the entire world; (www.operationworld.org)
- Read through the entire Word
- Sacrifice, not give, but sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
- “GO” Spend your time in another context. “A true brother comes to be with you in your time of need.” “God sent Himself, the Son.”
- Commit your life to a multiplying community. www.radicalthebook.com – stories, links, helps that can make your one-year experiment a thrilling success. Dr. David Platt is lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills, a 4000 member congregation in Birmingham, Alabama…
Pages 34-36, he describes Jesus sweating out blood in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Picture Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he kneels before his Father, drops of sweat and blood fall together from his head. Why is he in such agony and pain? The answer is not because he is afraid of crucifixion. He is not trembling because of what the Roman soldiers are about to do to him.
“Since that day countless men and women in the history of Christianity have died for their faith. Some of them were not just hung on crosses; they were burned there. Many of them went to their crosses singing…
“Did these men and women in Christian history have more courage than Christ himself? Why was he trembling in that garden, weeping and full of anguish? We can rest assured that he was not a coward about to face Roman soldiers. Instead he was a Savior about to endure divine wrath.
“Listen to his words: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” The “cup” is not a reference to a wooden cross; it is a reference to divine judgment. It is the cup of God’s wrath.
“This is what Jesus is recoiling from in the garden. All God’s holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him, and he is sweating blood at the thought of it.
“What happened at the Cross was not primarily about nails being thrust into Jesus’ hands and feet but about the wrath due your sin and my sin being thrust upon his soul. In that holy moment, all the righteous wrath and justice of God due us came rushing down like a torrent on Christ himself. Some say, “God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away.” But this is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son.
“One preacher described it as if you and I were standing a short hundred yards away from a dam of water then thousand miles high and then thousand miles wide. All of a sudden that dam was breached, and a torrential flood of water came crashing toward us. Right before it reached our feet, the ground in front of us opened up and swallowed it all. At the Cross, Christ drank the full cup of the wrath of God, and when he had downed the last drop, he turned the cup over and cried out, “It is finished.”
“This is the gospel. The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the Resurrection so that all who trust in him will be reconciled to God forever.”
Wayne added to this the thought that we humans have never experienced the complete absence of the love of God on this earth. Even non-believers experience his light and love. Jesus experienced, not only the full outpouring of God’s wrath on our sin, but the full absence of God – the darkness and evil that Jesus experienced was complete.
Here is what I wrote in 2011: “Jesus is our Great High Priest – Hebrews 4:14-5:10. He took upon Himself all our sins from the beginning to the end of time and the anguish of soul He felt in the garden was the knowledge of being separated completely from God, because of our sin! What would this world be like without God completely – we do not want to imagine it. This is what caused Jesus’ anguish in the garden – He entered Hell for us – total separation from God! He was not fearing the suffering on the cross – many humans have experienced that – He was fearing something we cannot imagine – something so terrible–complete separation from the Love of God.”