Well, we now get over 1,200 emails a month from listeners. Thank you for those emails and please keep them coming into us. And of course, we got a few emails related to the Nashville statement, which was a public document that you signed, Pastor John, and it was on human sexuality.

But we actually only got 10 emails about that statement in total. Interesting. And most of those emails were sympathetic. By far, the most articulate pushback that we got came from a listener named Amy in this email. "Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast. I'm sure you're aware of the criticism surrounding the Nashville statement released back in August, both from outside of the church, but also from within the evangelical world too.

It created quite a stir. I know of faithful Orthodox Reformed church planters and pastors working in larger metropolitan contexts, who find this statement unhelpful, even as the document contains affirmations and denials that are completely true, biblical, and agreeable to them. It seems to be a matter of two related questions.

Number one, is hot topic orthodoxy announced and affirmed in the wide open public realm appropriate in a casting pearls before swine kind of a way? And number two, is it helpful or harmful for outreach to draw public lines in the sand over ideology, which at worst is seen to be politically motivated by the world, or is at least something that adds a new wall of separation between the Christians in a local church from the liberal unbelieving neighbors they are trying to reach within a neighborhood, first through relationship building?

I hope this makes sense. Do either questions concern you?" Maybe just a response to each of her two questions. And the second one, really, I hear two questions in the second, so maybe three things to respond to, even though there's so much more that could be said, and I'll just mention that at the end maybe.

But she's asked her two questions, I'll try to be faithful to those two questions, rather than talking about things I would like to talk about as well. There's so many criticisms, so many things need to be said. Yes, the questions do concern me, because all questions that relate to serious dissensions among brothers and sisters concern me.

So first, I don't think Jesus' statement in Matthew 7:6, "Do not give dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before pigs or swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you." I don't think that verse was intended by Jesus to limit the public preaching of the whole counsel of God.

So think with me about that for just a minute. What is the best pearl we have? The best pearl that we have is the preaching of the gospel of Christ crucified. Christ crucified for sinners, risen from the dead, received by faith for the forgiveness of sins, for the hope of eternal life and power to walk in holiness.

It's the rock-solid core of gospel preaching. That's the sweetest pearl, the most beautiful pearl that we have to offer the world. And what the New Testament makes clear is that every time that precious pearl is preached, it will be both believed and reviled. It is the aroma, Paul says, from life to life, so believed, and death to death.

People hate it, and they die because they hate it. It brings out sheep-like faith, and it brings out swine-like trampling. Both effects happen when Jesus preached the pearl and when Paul preached the pearl, and both effects happen when we preach the pearl. The pearl will always be found as precious by some and utterly offensive by others.

So since that's always the case, and since Jesus and Paul acted that way in spite of the fact that that's the case, I don't think Jesus meant that we shouldn't put precious pearls before the public where they might be trampled, which they always will be. Some will pick them up and love them and die for them, and others will stomp on them.

Here's what I think Jesus meant. I think an example of what he meant is found in Matthew 21, 27, where Jesus was asked, "By what authority do you do these things?" And Jesus didn't like their attitude. They were very devious, and so he asked them a question, "By whose authority was John the Baptist's baptism?" and so on.

And they're so devious that they conspire together to lie and say they don't know, when in fact they do know. They know what they think, and they're just politicking with Jesus. And Jesus refuses to answer them in Matthew 21, 27. "I won't talk to you. I don't talk to that kind of people." He wouldn't give them the pearl.

He wouldn't cast the pearl before these rascals because he saw that they had just revealed how devious their whole conversation was in dealing with him. That's all they meant to do was trample. They weren't eager to hear the truth at all. They're trying to trap him. So behind Amy's question, however, I think is the question, "Is the Christian vision of covenant-keeping marriage between a man and a woman and Christ-dependent chastity among homosexuals or heterosexuals, people who have same-sex attraction and people who don't, is that vision of covenant-keeping marriage between a man and a woman and Christ-dependent chastity outside marriage, is that a beautiful pearl that should be held up for the world to know and possibly by grace admire?" With the implication that distortions of the pearl and attacks on the pearl are inevitable, just like they have always been.

And I think the Christian vision of creation as male and female and marriage as a covenant-keeping lifelong bond between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, and courageous Christ-exalting chastity outside marriage, or in marriage for that matter, are a beautiful pearl that should be set on a pedestal before the world, even knowing that today many in the world hate this pearl, mock this pearl, do everything they can to trample on and shatter this pearl.

But that leads to the second question that Amy has, because they really are all linked together. Her language inclines me to think that she may not have the same view of this pearl that I do. I don't know. She wonders whether lines should be drawn in the sand over, quote, "ideology," which at worst is seen as politically motivated by the world.

Now I'm not sure what she means by the word "ideology." It sounds like a category of thinking which is not part of important Christian pearls, Christian revelation that the world needs, and not part of a beautiful pearl. So I'm not sure what she would include in "ideology." The fact that the world will see public statements, public articles or blogs, public preaching, which all preaching is, the fact that the world will see all the statements, all the articles, all the preaching about human sexuality today as politically motivated, which it will, surely cannot be the criterion of the faithfulness of our preaching or our article writing or our public statements.

Such accusations of being politically motivated will always be the case. There will always be people who twist what you say to have connotations and implications that you don't want them to have and you didn't intend. That's exactly the way people treated the preaching of Jesus. Remember when they said that he's going to tear down the temple?

That's pretty political. Well, he didn't. They're twisting his words, right? They're not finding a legitimate complaint. In other words, he was accused of speaking with political motivation, and this conflict was not marginal. It was public, and it got him killed. It got him killed. And yet, he said the very controversial words he knew would get him in that kind of trouble.

And it was the same with Paul's preaching, according to 2 Peter 3, where people are twisting, they're just twisting what Paul has to say. It will always be the case. If someone thinks that there's a way to preach and write and make statements and do anything else in public that presents the pearls of biblical truth without encountering in the social media and other ways a thousand angry critics, they're just naive.

It cannot be done. Let me say this as strongly as I know how. The day is long gone in America where it is possible to be publicly faithful as a Christian to the truth of God and not be excoriated. I'm going to read again. The day is long gone in America where it is possible to be publicly faithful as a Christian to the truth of the Bible and not be excoriated.

Jesus said, "You will be hated by all nations, and you can pick any part of the biblical truth you want, and it will be true." The second part of Amy's second question wonders whether the Nashville statement "adds a new wall of separation between the Christians in a local church and the liberal unbelieving neighbors that they are trying to reach." And my answer to that is, no, I don't think anything has been added—there's a key word—added to what separates Bible-believing people from non-Bible-believing people.

Of course the Nashville statement makes explicit the difference between what the world regards as a pearl and what Bible-believers regard as a pearl—indeed, what most of the world has regarded as a pearl for the entire history of humankind. And I would just appeal—this is really a personal appeal, and take it for what it's worth, I hope folks who are resistant to the Nashville statement for various reasons will at least listen carefully.

I would just appeal to those whose method of evangelism, or being missional as we say today, includes the effort to conceal offensive biblical things about the pearl of the Christian life, that those folks may not only be missing golden opportunities for biblical witness precisely because offensive things are out in the public, but they may also be abandoning the way Jesus and the apostles did their public ministry.

Let me say a word about each of those concerns that I have. Might it not be God's design that at school, or in the office, or at the gym, when people are fuming about the Nashville statement or anything like it, you insightfully—this is God's design—it could be God's design that you insightfully and creatively and courageously and joyfully show them, start where they are in their fuming, and show them that these true statements, which Amy says are true, these true statements in fact are beautiful.

This is a beautiful pearl. The real challenge is not to make Jesus look beautiful by hiding some of his cherished convictions. The real challenge is to trace all his views, including his most offensive ones, back to the beautiful root of his person and up to the beautiful flower of his glory and his purposes for all of mankind.

That's the challenge we may be missing by huffing and puffing about how controversial things are. And we really must ask ourselves—this is a broader concern I have that seems to be between the lines here—we really must ask ourselves whether Jesus and the apostles did their missional evangelistic work in a way that beautiful but controversial teachings were concealed.

Crowds were listening to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Crowds, crowds of people, hearing him, no doubt, for the first time, many of them. Not a select group, a little in-house group that can handle hard things. And he said that being angry is like murder and it'll send you to hell.

And he said lust is like adultery and it'll send you to hell. Those are his words. Those are the strongest words in the Bible about hell. He said the gate is narrow that leads to life and few there be that find it. He said the tree that doesn't bear fruit is going to get cut down and thrown into the fire.

And he was saying this to people who were, "Whoa, who is this? Who is this talking like that?" They're all incredibly offensive words spoken to the crowds. When people wanted to follow Jesus, he told them, "You sure? Can you build this tower? Can you defeat this army? Can you live without a home?" He told them to count the cost.

He didn't try to make it. He didn't hide anything. He didn't try to conceal the cost. And when Paul preached to Felix, Felix said, "You're out of your mind!" And Paul didn't say, "Wow, I must have blown it. My evangelistic missional strategy has just made me useless." He said, "I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus.

I am speaking the truth in rational words, and you know I am." Oh my, there is just so much more to say in regard to the Nashville Statement. Things that need to be said about Donald Trump and the moral compromise of evangelicals who minimized his unrepentant lechery, things that need to be said about a rampant divorce culture in and outside the church, things that need to be said about evangelical contrition for aiding and abetting the collapse of sexual immorality, and on and on.

And I've already gone on way too long for a podcast like this, so what I just wanted to do is take Amy's two questions and try to be faithful to them. Maybe we can do more later. Amen. There are loads of ethical connections to the Nashville Statement and to popular sexual trends and beliefs within evangelicalism today, and much more needs to be said.

Thank you, Pastor John, for at least saying this. And thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your week. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive, and even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that relate to cultural hot topics and how the church best engages in those conversations in public, like this very good question today from Amy.

You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well Jesus is our ransom. Amen to that. Christ gave himself as a ransom for all, scripture says. But who did he ransom? Who got paid off by his shed blood? This question is super important and is far too often answered wrongly.

It's going to be a good one. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. Amen.