Don’t Become an Entertainment-Addicted, Approval Junkie
Chapters
0:0 Intro0:23 The Church in America
4:10 Call to be a Christian
00:00:00.000 | The following excerpt is taken from John Piper's recent sermon, "The Plundering of
00:00:09.240 | Your Property and the Power of Hope," preached at Passion City Church in
00:00:13.920 | Atlanta, Georgia on January 18th. The sermon was based on Hebrews chapter 10
00:00:19.480 | verses 32 to 36. Here's what John Piper said. "The church in America, as I at age
00:00:27.840 | 69 have watched her now for a long time, is slowly awakening from the distortion
00:00:39.200 | of about 350 years of dominance and prosperity in America." Let me say that sentence
00:00:47.920 | again. Paradigm determining for me. "The church in America," and I'm just thinking
00:00:54.640 | right across the board, no particular denomination, Protestant, Roman Catholic,
00:01:00.880 | Eastern Orthodox. "The church in America today is slowly awakening from the
00:01:06.640 | distortion of about 350 years," namely the length of our country, "of dominance,"
00:01:18.560 | distortion of dominance, "and prosperity." What I mean by dominance is that in most
00:01:27.920 | American history, most of American history until recently, being a Christian has been
00:01:35.680 | viewed as normal, good, patriotic, culturally acceptable, even beneficial.
00:01:48.960 | And what I mean by prosperous, 350 years of prosperous, is that by and large,
00:01:57.880 | being a Christian has generally resulted in things going well for you,
00:02:04.120 | especially in the South. I grew up three hours from here in Greenville,
00:02:08.040 | South Carolina. I'm a Southerner by birth. I grew up in the horrors of some of the
00:02:13.840 | stuff I'm going to be talking about in a minute. We're Christian in the South.
00:02:22.760 | We're Americans. And what I mean by distortion, the distortion of 350 years
00:02:31.800 | of dominance and prosperity, is that this 350-year history of our dominance and
00:02:39.320 | prosperity has created a massively, deeply unbiblical mindset,
00:02:45.840 | namely of at-homeness in the world. Hasn't been good for us.
00:02:57.520 | We are suffering from it, prosperous though we be. So we're dominant culturally
00:03:08.680 | and prosperous materially, and we've come to feel at home.
00:03:14.960 | It's our land, our culture, and the assumption is that it will go well
00:03:20.560 | for us here. This is our place. It's the way we do things,
00:03:26.720 | the way we think about things. We are Christian here, and we very much enjoy
00:03:35.080 | being thought well of for that, and we expect things to go well.
00:03:42.920 | And poverty and sickness and suffering and death are the worst things that can
00:03:49.760 | happen, and there isn't anything much worse. We expect this Christian land to
00:03:57.480 | be wealthy, us to be wealthy, us to be healthy, ease, upbeat,
00:04:02.600 | success-oriented, and we've developed a form of Christianity to support those
00:04:08.000 | expectations, ingrained expectations. To be a Christian is to be accepted.
00:04:15.720 | To be a Christian is to be comfortable. To be a Christian is to be secure and to
00:04:19.960 | be prosperous. And that form of Christianity has focused mainly on how we
00:04:27.480 | feel and the needs, whether our needs are getting met.
00:04:30.320 | And then we sell this, we offer this to people, "Come and life will go better
00:04:36.680 | for you." By and large, in America for 300 years,
00:04:41.440 | the call to be a Christian has not been the call to be an alien.
00:04:45.800 | By and large, it hasn't been the call to be a sojourner or an exile or to be
00:04:50.880 | out of step. It's the call to be a respected citizen in the community.
00:04:55.920 | And we get angry, really angry. Watch it. Watch it. It's still true.
00:04:59.680 | We're only slowly awakening from this. People get angry.
00:05:04.320 | If you treat my Christianity as though it's not the norm, my views of things
00:05:11.120 | as not the norm, I get angry. You're taking away my culture.
00:05:15.360 | You're taking away my land, my history. I'm getting mad at you because I've
00:05:21.920 | developed a Christianity with assumptions that assume dominance and prosperity and
00:05:28.000 | normal and fitting in. This is our way here. You don't like it,
00:05:31.960 | go somewhere else.
00:05:38.160 | There's enough truth in that to give it some traction, right?
00:05:43.160 | If you live like a Christian, if you don't get drunk every weekend,
00:05:48.640 | probably you'll be more successful in life, right? You keep your job.
00:05:54.240 | Your marriage will probably go better if you don't come home drunk every Sunday
00:05:58.680 | night. I mean, that's true. And the Bible says don't get drunk.
00:06:02.800 | And so if you do what the Bible says, life goes better.
00:06:05.920 | The Bible says work hard. You know, if you don't work, don't eat.
00:06:09.360 | So if you work hard, then you're probably going to prosper
00:06:12.280 | in your business a little more. So be a Christian obviously brings
00:06:15.680 | success. There's just enough truth in this that it gets traction.
00:06:20.240 | The problem is it's just totally out of proportion.
00:06:24.560 | We have come to take all those relatively minor spin-offs of devotion to Jesus and
00:06:33.240 | elevated them above the massive real pleasures of knowing him, loving him,
00:06:39.920 | and dying and being with him forever. Everything's out of proportion
00:06:46.120 | in typical American Christianity. This text fills me, it has for so many years,
00:06:57.800 | with a longing not to be a domesticated, comfort-seeking,
00:07:04.920 | entertainment-addicted, prosperity-loving, security-craving,
00:07:11.120 | approval-desiring Christian. I don't want to be that.
00:07:18.760 | It's abominable to me to be that. I don't want to waste my life just
00:07:23.360 | fitting in so low. I want to be set free from this distortion.
00:07:31.080 | I want to be biblical. I want to have real spiritual,
00:07:37.480 | otherworldly power on my life. I want to have stunningly
00:07:46.040 | countercultural, otherworldly hope driving this engine.
00:07:52.240 | Wow, that clip was from John Piper's recent sermon,
00:07:55.240 | "The Plundering of Your Property and the Power of Hope," preached at Passion City
00:07:58.800 | Church in Atlanta, Georgia on January 18th. The full message is on our site,
00:08:03.640 | and we have over 1,200 messages like this one from John Piper in our archive
00:08:07.880 | at desiringgod.org. And on Wednesdays, we like to dip into the archive and pull
00:08:12.320 | out a classic quote for the podcast. I welcome your suggestions.
00:08:15.840 | If you have a favorite John Piper sermon clip, whether it's from an old message or
00:08:20.160 | from a more recent message, please email us the name of the sermon and, if
00:08:24.160 | possible, the timestamp of when and where the clip occurs in the audio.
00:08:29.080 | If we post your clip, of course, we will give you credit. Please put the word "clip"
00:08:33.040 | in a subject line of an email and send it to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:39.280 | Tomorrow, we will look at a question from a podcast listener who wants to know if
00:08:43.000 | the first sin committed by Adam and Eve undermines Christian hedonism.
00:08:48.120 | I'm your host Tony Rankia. I'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:51.560 | ♪ [music] ♪
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