I saw this video in 2006 and it changed my life. The sermon is very convicting. The main point is that we aren’t supposed to compare ourselves to others and say, “I’m a Christian because I act like all of the other Christians.” We need to compare ourselves to the Bible to find out what it says about Christians. Many today don’t know about regeneration and sanctification. For many people faith is just an agreement in their mind that Jesus died for their sins. So many consider themselves saved, but they live in sin. The Bible says that God gives believers new hearts with new desires. We are new creatures. I watched this today for the first time in quite a while. The video below is an interview with Paul Washer talking about the background of the sermon. Please take the time to listen to it if you have never heard it before.

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“Self salvation is the goal of much of our preaching,” complains United Methodist Bishop William Willimon and he says in this respect, “we are heirs of Charles G. Finney who thought that conversion was not a miracle, but a purely philosophical result of the right use of constituted means. We have forgotten,” says Willimon, “that there was once a time when evangelists were forced to defend their new measures for revivals; that there was once a time when preachers had to defend their preoccupation with the listener response to their Calvinist detractors who thought the Gospel was more important to listeners. I am here arguing that revivals are miraculous, that the Gospel is so odd, so against the grain of our natural inclinations, and the infatuations of our culture that nothing less than a miracle is required in order for there to be a true hearing. My position is therefore, closer to that of Calvinist Jonathan Edwards than to the position of Charles Finney. Nevertheless,” Willimon continues, “the homiletical future, alas, lay with Finney rather than Edwards. Leading to the Evangelical Church marketing guru George Barna who writes, ‘Jesus was a communication specialist. He communicated his message in diverse ways and with results that would be a credit to modern advertising and marketing agencies. He promoted his product in the most efficient way possible by communicating with the hot prospects. He understood his product thoroughly, developed an unparalleled distribution system, advanced a method of promotion that has penetrated every continent and offered his product at a price that is within the grasp of every consumer.’ Alas,” adds Willimon, “most evangelistic preaching I know about is an effort to drag people even deeper into their subjectivity rather than an attempt to rescue them from it. Our real need whether we feel it or not,” he says, “is that we systematically distort and ignore the truth. That’s why we need an external word. So in a sense we don’t discover the Gospel, it discovers us. You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Willimon concludes, “the story is euangelion ‘good news’ because it is not about me it’s about grace. Yet it’s also ‘news’ because it is not common knowledge, not what nine out of ten average Americans already know. Gospel doesn’t come naturally, it comes as Jesus.”