(upbeat music) Good Monday, it's a big week for us in the podcast with two hot topics on the table. I'll put them back to back because they're related to one another. Both are very relevant for this season in church life where social media plays a large role in our culture, or at least it seems like it plays a large role in our culture.

Thursday, we're gonna look at how to best speak of cultural sins or how to not speak of cultural sins. Paul tells us some things are so wicked, they are too shameful even to speak of. He says that in Ephesians 5, 12. So what cultural sins should we not even talk about?

And what does Paul mean here in this text? And why does it matter for us today? That's next time on Thursday. But today we look at the sick love of controversy or the unhealthy craving for controversy as Paul calls it in 1 Timothy 6, 4. The question is from a podcast listener named Brett.

Pastor John, hello, we live in an age of controversy and that controversy loving spirit has come into the church. The apostle Paul clearly warns us against people in the church who have a diseased or unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

That's 1 Timothy 6, verses four to five. I'm wondering if you can lay out principles for what this diseased craving for controversy looks like in the church today. - I'll try to do that in just a moment. I'm gonna lay out some principles to try to avoid what Paul's denouncing in these verses.

But first, let me say a word about what Brett calls our age of controversy. He's right, of course, but we probably shouldn't forget that even in our own country, the bygone centuries have been just as, if not more given to vitriolic language in controversy. And the reason I say that is just 'cause it's on my front burner because I'm reading biographies.

In the last, say, six months, I've read biographies of John Marshall, first Supreme Court Justice, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and what you can't help but notice in these really detailed, excellent scholarly biographies is how outrageous the defamation of character was in the political writings of that time.

I mean, the language is every bit as vitriolic and lewd as the language we might be appalled at today. So that's the first thing to say is that the age of controversy is not new. What gives this age, our present age, a new flavor is first how ubiquitous social media is so that we have immediate access to as much vitriol as we would like, and second, the excesses of sexual sin in our day are in American history unprecedented and outrageous, like so-called gay marriage and so-called transgenderism and so-called healthcare as we cut our babies in pieces.

And the reason I put the term so-called in front of those phrases is because they don't really exist and we should not even dignify them as Christians with language that gives the impression they do exist. I get really worked up about this. Some of my good friends have caved on the language issue.

There's no such thing as a marriage between two men or two women. It does not exist. There's no such thing as a man becoming a woman or a woman becoming a man. It does not happen. There's no such thing as healthcare, which consists in killing unborn children. Those are simply not realities.

Naming them marriage, transgender, healthcare does not make them what they aren't. And these are just some of the kinds of sins that are rampant in our day, not to mention the love of money that has probably sent more people to hell than all the sexual sins combined and racial sins and nationalistic and ethnocentric sins and epidemics of the misuse of drugs and on and on and on for our age.

So every local church, I am getting to the issue of controversy in the church. I'm getting there. Every local church needs to affirm its biblical stance over against these sins. For example, at our church, Bethlehem Baptist Church, the elders labored long and hard in recent years over two extended statements regarding race and regarding sexuality.

And in my judgment, they produced two very helpful documents, which our church and our school, Bethlehem College and Seminary, happily embraced as where we stand. In other words, the leadership of the church shouldn't leave their people wondering, where does the church stand in regard to these controversial things in our day?

But now comes the rub that Brett is talking about. Within our churches, even the clearest and the most forthright churches that have driven a stake in the ground, people have different dispositions and different instincts and different personalities, which incline them in different directions concerning how frequently and how fervently and how forcefully and how harshly and how crudely cultural issues should be talked about, should be foregrounded inside and outside the church.

Some of these differences are quite manageable, and we just need to have forbearance and patience and forgiveness in order to get along with each other in love. But Paul, in these verses, in 1 Timothy 6, says there's a limit. There's a limit to how you talk about these things.

There is a love of controversy that needs to be rebuked and, if necessary, removed. Here's what he says. This is 1 Timothy 6, 4 and 5. The person he's concerned about is, quote, "puffed up with conceit and understands nothing." He has an unhealthy, literally sick, he has a sick craving for controversy and for quarrels about words or word fights, which produce envy, strife, slander, evil suspicions or conjectures about other people, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

Now, what I think will be useful as a diagnostic tool, first for ourselves, are we guilty of this? Lest we fall into this. And a diagnostic tool for others is to take these traits that he just described of this controversy-loving person and state the positive alternatives. And in that way, we can have something to pray toward as well as something to run away from, and we may be able to see the problems of others and ourselves more clearly.

So let me do that just briefly. Seems to me there are six traits of this lover of controversy that we can name and strive to avoid. One, pride. He's puffed up with conceit, Paul says. The positive alternative, of course, is humility, or more specifically, a readiness to confess our limitations of knowledge and our willingness to go on learning.

If a person comes off as cocky and acting like he has infallibility, never makes any mistakes, you know you're going to have a problem. We need to cultivate in the church the profound belief that a person can be rock solid, unwavering on matters of clear biblical truth and justice and purity while maintaining a humble demeanor.

There are people, a lot of people, it seems today, who don't believe that. They think the only way to be a person of backbone is to be brash. I don't think that's true. Number two, the second trait of this lover of controversy is ignorance. Paul says he doesn't understand anything.

Now, I take that to mean that when our heart is infected with this sickness of the love of controversy and with pride, even the facts that we get right will be skewed in a damaging direction so that it can be said, we really don't understand anything. We don't get anything right.

We turn everything in a harmful direction. Third, Paul says this person has a kind of sickness, the ESV translate unhealthy, craving for controversy and word fights. There are people who have a morbid need to fight, a need to fight in order to feel significant, to feel justified, to feel safe.

We need discernment to recognize this kind of person. One way is to test whether there is as much praising and thanking and rejoicing as there is criticizing and complaining. Does the person love to see the beauties of God and Christ and salvation and heaven and speak of them with joy and marveling?

Or does his need for a fight hinder all of that? If so, he's not well. He's just not spiritually well. He needs help. Fourth, this person stirs up envy. This can happen in different ways, but one way is that lovers of controversy like to show off their verbal prowess, clever put downs, shrewd analyses of other person's stupidity, ready wit, and a nimble use of culturally hip allusions.

All of this, with a view to showing off, tends to make other immature people wish they could do that. That's called envy. Fifth, this controversy-loving person is careless with the truth. Paul says he uses slander, evil suspicions or conjectures. This usually means he's ready to believe evil of others with very little evidence.

His anger at a viewpoint, which may be totally justified, causes a bias that is so strong it ceases to need truth, but only needs to show the insanity of the viewpoint. In the process, holding one right position can easily be used to justify saying other things that are not true.

We need to love the truth through and through with great earnestness. And then finally, sixth, Paul says that this lover of controversy imagines that godliness is a means of gain. In other words, deep down, he loves money, which Paul says later is the root of all evil. Which I take to mean the heart that values this world, what money can buy, over Christ, is the kind of heart from which all evils come.

It is. Money is just the lever that such a heart pulls in order to get what they really want, which is not supremely Christ. So I think if we mainly seek to be the opposite of this lover of controversy, in these six ways, we will probably be in a good position both to recognize the error when we see it and in a good position to avoid it ourselves.

- Yeah, amen. Is there as much praising and thanking and rejoicing as there is criticizing and complaining? Such a great litmus test on our tongues. And this reminds me of Ephesians chapter five, verse four, a text that we have talked about many times on this podcast. Paul wants us to clean up the crudeness of our tongues with thanksgiving.

Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for joining us today. If you want to ask Pastor John, email us your question by going to our online home at askpastorjohn.com. Well, speaking of a culture of sin and speaking of Ephesians five, specifically in verse 12, Paul tells us that there are some things in this world that are so wicked, so shameful, that we Christians shouldn't even speak about them.

So what cultural sins are so shameful, we are not even to talk about them? That's next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Thursday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)