We’re in a Yahoo Group along with many wonderful Christian authors, including Marilyn Rockett, author of the very practical and encouraging Homeschooling at the Speed of Life. I was just poking around in my archive of saved emails (looking for something that I couldn’t find!) and I noticed an email to the Group from Marilyn that so impacted me at the time (way back in March) that I saved it to re-visit. Well, the Lord brought it to my attention today, so I thought–might as well post it to the blog!
Marilyn shared a link to a sermon on Youth by Paul Washer, but its content is relevant (and convicting) to all who call themselves Christians. The sermon can be heard via this link, or you can view the transcription in .PDF here. Otherwise, read the more powerful points pasted below.
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I want you to know that the greatest heresy in the American evangelical and protestant church is that, if you pray and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart, He will definitely come in. You will not find that in any place in Scripture. You will not find that anywhere in Baptist history until about 50 years ago. What you need to know is that salvation is by faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ. And faith alone in Jesus Christ is preceded and followed by repentance . . . a turning away from sin, a hatred for the things that God hates and a love for the things that God loves, a growing in holiness and a desire not to be like Britney Spears, not to be like the world, and not to be like the great majority of American Christians, but to be like Jesus Christ! [The audiencethen erupts in applause].
I don’t know why you’re clapping. I’m talking about you. I didn’t come here to get amens. I didn’t come here to be applauded. I’m talking about you.
People so many times come up to me and say, “Oh, I’d love to follow you into Romania”; “I’d love to follow you into the Ukraine”; “I’d love to preach where you preached and planted churches in Peru in the jungle.”
And I tell them, “No, you wouldn’t.”
They say, “Yes, I would.”
I say, “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d be excommunicated from the church down there.”
What we need to see . . . I’m not trying to be hard for the sake of being hard. Do you realize how much love it takes to stand before 5,000 people and tell them that American Christianity is almost totally wrong? Do you knowwhat it’s going to cost me to never be asked back again to something like this? To be unpopular? Do you know why you do it? You don’t do it because you get paid well. You don’t do it because men love you. You do it because you love men and because, more than that, you want to honor God.
I want to tell you something. We’re going to go into Scripture, and I want you to look at it as it really is. It’s not comparing yourself with others who call themselves Christians. Compare yourself to the Scripture. When someone, a young person, comes to a pastor or a youth minister and says,“I’m not sure whether or not I’m saved,” the youth minister will usually throw out a cliché: “Well, was there ever a time in your life when you prayed and asked Jesus to come into your heart?”
“Well, yes.”
“Were you sincere?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I think so.”
“Well, you need to tell Satan to stop bothering you. Did you write it in the back of your book…the back of your Bible like the evangelist told you when you got saved, write down the date so that any time you doubted you could point him to the Bible?”
What superstition has overcome our denomination? Do you know what the Bible tells Christians to do? Examine yourself. Test yourself in light of Scripture to see if you are in the faith. Test yourself to see if you’re a Christian.”. . . . .
Now, we as Southern Baptists preach that you’re supposed to go through that one and only gate which is Jesus Christ. But we as Southern Baptists have forgotten something. And I want youth ministers and pastors and everyone to listen to me, parents, we have forgotten a very important teaching in the Gospel. It says that, not only the gate is narrow, it says the path is narrow. What we basically do is lead someone to Christ, lead someone in a prayer and then they spend the rest of their life living just like the world, and if you deny me on this, I can bring the statistics to prove you wrong. Gallup poll, Barnard [sic; Barna] polls, every kind of poll you can possibly look at,when it questions the morality of the church in America against the morality of those who claim to be lost in America, the polls find no difference. Now that is statistics. It has nothing to do with religious interpretation. Those are statistics.
Book after book is being churned out by theologian and philosopher and sociologist alike. What has happened to the church? We find out that abortion in the church is just as prevalent as outside in the world. We find that divorce is just as prevalent. We find that immorality . . . you know as well as I do, there are youth here right now who are practicing immoralityand yet worshiping God in the same breath. You know there are youth here that are doing drugs and yet coming to youth group. You know, watching and doing things that are not appropriate for a Christian, and yet they’re coming to the youth group, believing themselves satisfied, believing themselves saved, and no one is saying anything except this: They’re carnal Christians. They’re really Christians; they’re just carnal. That was a doctrine that started in a Baptist seminary, that is not a Southern Baptist seminary, several decades ago. It is not biblical and it is not historical. My dear friend, there is no such thing as a carnal Christian.. . . . .
But if you profess to have gone through the narrow gate, but yet you live in the broad way, just like all the other people in your high school, just like all the other people who are carnal and wicked, the Bible wants you to know that you should be terribly, terribly afraid because you know not God. I fear men who have spent most of their life telling other men that they are saved. I fear you if you’ve done that. You don’t tell men they are saved; you tell men how to be saved. God tells them they are saved. What we have forgotten to believe is that salvation is a supernatural work of God, and those who have genuinely been converted, regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit is going to be a new creature. The Bible says, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. So we find out here in Scripture that there is a narrow gate and a narrow way.. . . . .
What is the sign that someone has become a genuine Christian? I wish that we would start teaching this again. What happened to our theology? What happened to our doctrine? What happened to our teaching? It went right out the window. No one wants to study doctrine anymore. They just want to listen to songs and read the back of Christian tee shirts. What happened to truth? Truth tells you this. The evidence––the way that you can have assurance that you are genuinely a born-again Christian––is that you do, as a style of life, the will of the Father. You say, “Oh, you’re talking about works.” No, I’m not. I’m talking about evidence of faith, and it goes like this. Your profession of faith is no proof that you’re born again because everybody in this whole countryprofesses faith in Jesus Christ. Barna tells us that 65 to 70 percent of all Americans are saved, born-again Christians. The most Godless country on the face of the earth. Kill 4,000 babies a day but, bless God, 70 percent of us are born again.
How do you know that the faith you have is not false? A style of life that is concerned about doing the will of the Father, that practices the will of the Father, and when you disobey the will of the Father, the Holy Spirit comes and reprimands you either personally through the written Word of God or through a brother or sister in Christ, and God puts you back on the path again. If you’re agenuine Christian, you cannot escape Him.. . . . .
I want you to know something. God is not a derelict father. If you can play around in sin, if you can love the world and love the things of the world, if you can always be involved in the world and doing things of the world, if your heroes are worldly people, if you want to look like them and act likethem, if you practice the same things they practice, oh my dear friend, listen to my voice. There’s a good chance you know not God, and you do not belong to him.. . . . .
You say the most important thing on the face of the earth is to know Jesus Christ. That is not true. The most important thing on the face of the earth is that Jesus Christ knows you. I’m not going to get into the White House tomorrow because I walk up to the gate and tell everybody I know George Bush, but they will let me in if George Bush comes out and says, “I know Paul Washer.”. . . . .
There are two ways. There’s a narrow way and a broad way. Which one are you on? There are two types of trees. There is a good tree that bears good fruit, and it’s going to Heaven. There’s a bad tree and you know it’s bad because it bears bad fruit, and it’s going to hell. It’s going to be cut down and thrown into the fire. There are those who profess Jesus is Lord and they do the will of the Father who is in heaven, and there are those who profess Jesus Christ is Lord and they do not do the will of the Father who is in heaven, and they go to hell––not because of a lack of works, but because of a lack of faith demonstrated by the fact that they had no works.. . . . .
We talk so much about being radical Christians. Radical Christians are not people who jump at concerts. Radical Christians are not people who wear Christian tee shirts. Radical Christians are those who bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Radical Christians are those who reverence and honor their parents even when they feel like their parents are wrong. Radical Christians are those who do not––now listen to me. This is going to make you mad, and I’m talking to boys and girls. Radical Christians are those who do not dress sensually in order to show off their bodies. If your clothing is a frame for your face, God is pleased with your clothing. If your clothing is a frame for your body, it’s sensual and God hates what you’re doing. Everybody wants to talk about a prophet, but no one wants to listen to one. I’m talking about Christianity. I have spent my life in jungles. I have spent my life freezing in the Andes Mountains. I have seen people die. A little boy, Andrew Myman [phonetic], the Muslims shot him five times throughthe stomach and left him on a sidewalk simply because he cried out, “I am so afraid but I cannot deny Jesus Christ. Please don’t kill me, but I will not deny Him.” And he died in a pool of blood. And you talk about being a radical Christian because you wear a tee shirt, because you go to a conference. I’m talking about holiness. I’m talking about Godliness.
I wish––you know what a move of God would be in this place? If all of you came under conviction, if I myself came under conviction of the Holy Spirit, we fell down on our faces and wept because we watch the things that God hates, because we wear the things that God hates, because we act like the world, look like the world, smell like the world, because we do the very things, and we know not that we do these things, because we do not know the Word of God. Because, even though we claim as a denomination that the Scripture is the infallible Word of God, basically all we get is illustrations, stories, and quaint little novels. Oh, that God will glow on this place, that we would turn away from our sin, that we would renounce the things that are displeasing to God, and, then, that we would run to Him and we would relish Him and we would love Him.
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Amen!!