David Platt On "Going or Staying"

  Written by David Platt

One important question that I’ve been asked is why I — with a passion for the unreached and unengaged peoples of the earth — serve as a pastor in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most churched cities in America. It’s a great question and one that often perplexes me. Here are three conclusions that I have come to in my own personal wrestling with this question.

God Called Me

First and foremost, I am a pastor in Birmingham because I believe this is where God has specifically called and ordained me to pastor. Years ago, my wife, Heather, and I said that if there are nearly two billion people in the world who have little to no access to the gospel — and most of them live overseas — then the only way we can stay here instead of moving there is if we’re convinced we can do more to affect them from living here than living there. And whenever that is not the case, we want to take a one-way ticket overseas.

We have given God a “blank check” with our lives. Wherever he wants us to go, we will go. And I trust that he has used and will use that blank check according to his wisdom. Five years ago, I was living in New Orleans, teaching seminary, and traveling around the world. I had no desire to pastor a church in Birmingham. But in God’s sovereign wisdom and by his boundless grace, he led me here. And I trust— I pray! — that he is using me here for the sake of the unreached and unengaged.

Leading God’s People for God’s Mission

Second, my heart’s desire is to shepherd, equip, and mobilize the people of God for the purpose of God. I believe God’s purpose for his people is for them to enjoy his grace and extend his glory to the ends of the earth (this is obviously all over Scripture; see particularly the bookends in Genesis 12 and Revelation 7).

This God-given desire fits well with the people among whom God has placed me. God has been gracious to people in Birmingham. He has given us abundant gospel access. Not everyone in Birmingham is saved, but people in Birmingham have access to the gospel. And many have been saved. By God’s grace, many have been born into families where they have heard and received the gospel at an early age. This is evidence of the mercy of God!

And God gives mercy for the sake of mission. He has given us the gospel in Birmingham for his glory among all nations. And I absolutely love shepherding, equipping, and mobilizing people who are overwhelmed by God’s grace to live for God’s glory among all peoples. And I rejoice that this is happening as we send out people from our church throughout Birmingham and around the world.

Undo the Hidden Assumption

Finally, when I contemplate this question — why someone with a passion for the unreached and unengaged peoples of the world lives in Birmingham, Alabama — I conclude that the question itself contains a hidden assumption that, with all due respect, I am not comfortable with. This question almost assumes that those who have a passion for the “unreached and unengaged” should live among the “unreached and unengaged,” and those who have a passion for the “reached and engaged” should live among the “reached and engaged.” But I am convinced by God’s Word that every follower of Christ should have a passion for the “unreached and unengaged.”

Together, we have all been given a command to make disciples of all nations (i.e., panta ta ethne, among all the people groups of the world). Obedience to the Great Commission, therefore, requires commitment to taking the gospel to all the people groups of the world. This is a command for all of us, and it is not an option for any of us. How God calls us to carry out that command obviously varies from person to person and church to church. But whether someone is a pastor (or Christian, for that matter) in Birmingham, Minnesota, Seoul, Beijing, Delhi, or London, we are all commanded to make disciples among all the people groups. Therefore, we all need a passion for the unreached and unengaged.

Like every other follower of Christ, I want to live — wherever I am — with a God-given, Christ-centered, gospel-saturated, world-embracing longing to see every people group on the planet reached with the gospel so that our life-giving, grave-conquering, all-satisfying King receives the praise that he is due. That’s the primary motivation that drives me as a pastor in, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama.

For Your Sakes He Became Poor

 "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." 2 Cor. 8:9

It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. " The Word became flesh" (John 1:14); God became man; the divine son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises.  Needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.  and there was no illusion or deception in this; the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.  The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.  Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.

How are we to think of the incarnation: the New Testament does not encourage us to puzzle our heads over the physical and psychological problems that it raises, but to worship God for the love that was shown in it.  for it was a great act of condescension and self-humbling.  "He, Who had always been God by nature," writes Paul, "did not cling to His prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped Himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man.  And, having become man, He humbled Himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal" (Phil. 2:6), Phillips).  And all this was for our salvation.  The key text in the New Testament for interpreting the incarnation is not, therefore, the bare statement in John 1:14, "the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us," but rather the more comprehensive statement of 2 Corinthians 8:9, "you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his porverty might become rich."  Here is stated, not the fact of the incarnation only, but also its meaning; the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way that shows us how we should set it before ourselves and ever view it- not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

For the Son of God to empty himself and become poor meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony- spiritual, even more than physical- that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it.  It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who "through his poverty, might become rich."  this Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity- hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory- because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a  cross.  It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

We talk glibly of the "Christmas Spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis.  But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning.  It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas.  And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians-I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians - go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet them) averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side.  That is not the Christmas Spirit.  Nor is it the spirit of those Christians- alas, they are many- whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob.  For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor- spending and being spent-to [I would add: ultimately bringing about the glory of God], enrich their fellow men, giving time, trouble, care, and concern to do good to others-and not just their own friends-in whatever way there seems need.   There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be.  If God in mercy revives us, one of the things he will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives.  If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit.  "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich."  "Let this mind be in you , which was also in Christ Jesus." "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free" (Ps. 119:32).

Excerpted from Knowing God by J.I. Packer.  Copyright 1973 by Intervarsity Press.  

"All Hail The Power of Jesus' Name"