The following excerpt is taken from John Piper's recent sermon, "The Plundering of Your Property and the Power of Hope," preached at Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia on January 18th. The sermon was based on Hebrews chapter 10 verses 32 to 36. Here's what John Piper said. "The church in America, as I at age 69 have watched her now for a long time, is slowly awakening from the distortion of about 350 years of dominance and prosperity in America." Let me say that sentence again.

Paradigm determining for me. "The church in America," and I'm just thinking right across the board, no particular denomination, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox. "The church in America today is slowly awakening from the distortion of about 350 years," namely the length of our country, "of dominance," distortion of dominance, "and prosperity." What I mean by dominance is that in most American history, most of American history until recently, being a Christian has been viewed as normal, good, patriotic, culturally acceptable, even beneficial.

And what I mean by prosperous, 350 years of prosperous, is that by and large, being a Christian has generally resulted in things going well for you, especially in the South. I grew up three hours from here in Greenville, South Carolina. I'm a Southerner by birth. I grew up in the horrors of some of the stuff I'm going to be talking about in a minute.

We're Christian in the South. We're Americans. And what I mean by distortion, the distortion of 350 years of dominance and prosperity, is that this 350-year history of our dominance and prosperity has created a massively, deeply unbiblical mindset, namely of at-homeness in the world. Hasn't been good for us. We are suffering from it, prosperous though we be.

So we're dominant culturally and prosperous materially, and we've come to feel at home. It's our land, our culture, and the assumption is that it will go well for us here. This is our place. It's the way we do things, the way we think about things. We are Christian here, and we very much enjoy being thought well of for that, and we expect things to go well.

And poverty and sickness and suffering and death are the worst things that can happen, and there isn't anything much worse. We expect this Christian land to be wealthy, us to be wealthy, us to be healthy, ease, upbeat, success-oriented, and we've developed a form of Christianity to support those expectations, ingrained expectations.

To be a Christian is to be accepted. To be a Christian is to be comfortable. To be a Christian is to be secure and to be prosperous. And that form of Christianity has focused mainly on how we feel and the needs, whether our needs are getting met. And then we sell this, we offer this to people, "Come and life will go better for you." By and large, in America for 300 years, the call to be a Christian has not been the call to be an alien.

By and large, it hasn't been the call to be a sojourner or an exile or to be out of step. It's the call to be a respected citizen in the community. And we get angry, really angry. Watch it. Watch it. It's still true. We're only slowly awakening from this.

People get angry. If you treat my Christianity as though it's not the norm, my views of things as not the norm, I get angry. You're taking away my culture. You're taking away my land, my history. I'm getting mad at you because I've developed a Christianity with assumptions that assume dominance and prosperity and normal and fitting in.

This is our way here. You don't like it, go somewhere else. There's enough truth in that to give it some traction, right? If you live like a Christian, if you don't get drunk every weekend, probably you'll be more successful in life, right? You keep your job. Your marriage will probably go better if you don't come home drunk every Sunday night.

I mean, that's true. And the Bible says don't get drunk. And so if you do what the Bible says, life goes better. The Bible says work hard. You know, if you don't work, don't eat. So if you work hard, then you're probably going to prosper in your business a little more.

So be a Christian obviously brings success. There's just enough truth in this that it gets traction. The problem is it's just totally out of proportion. We have come to take all those relatively minor spin-offs of devotion to Jesus and elevated them above the massive real pleasures of knowing him, loving him, and dying and being with him forever.

Everything's out of proportion in typical American Christianity. This text fills me, it has for so many years, with a longing not to be a domesticated, comfort-seeking, entertainment-addicted, prosperity-loving, security-craving, approval-desiring Christian. I don't want to be that. It's abominable to me to be that. I don't want to waste my life just fitting in so low.

I want to be set free from this distortion. I want to be biblical. I want to have real spiritual, otherworldly power on my life. I want to have stunningly countercultural, otherworldly hope driving this engine. Wow, that clip was from John Piper's recent sermon, "The Plundering of Your Property and the Power of Hope," preached at Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia on January 18th.

The full message is on our site, and we have over 1,200 messages like this one from John Piper in our archive at desiringgod.org. And on Wednesdays, we like to dip into the archive and pull out a classic quote for the podcast. I welcome your suggestions. If you have a favorite John Piper sermon clip, whether it's from an old message or from a more recent message, please email us the name of the sermon and, if possible, the timestamp of when and where the clip occurs in the audio.

If we post your clip, of course, we will give you credit. Please put the word "clip" in a subject line of an email and send it to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Tomorrow, we will look at a question from a podcast listener who wants to know if the first sin committed by Adam and Eve undermines Christian hedonism.

I'm your host Tony Rankia. I'll see you tomorrow. ♪ ♪