Welcome back to the podcast. This week we're looking at controversy. We opened the week looking at the sick love of controversy in A.B.J. 1949. On Monday, we looked at this disease called craving for controversy as Paul calls it in first time of the 6.4.

Today, we look at how to best speak of a culture's sins when we must do so. Such work is complicated by the fact that Paul seems to tell us there are some sins in a culture that are simply too wicked and too shameful to even speak of them.

That's according to Ephesians 5-12, at least on the surface of it. So what shameful sins should Christians not even speak about?

The question is from a listener named Dan. Pastor John, hello to you. I'm an elder at my church and I was thinking about how sin is to be addressed by Christian preachers both pastorally to the congregation and then calling out the sins of culture.

What advice would you give preachers on how to avoid merely complaining or going off on angry rants about cultural sins and how to wisely identify and call for repentance from sins inside the church?

So what cultural sins do we expose and speak out against? What cultural sins do we ignore or refrain from talking about because of their vulgarity?

And how do you think preachers in local churches will best balance addressing the sins of culture and the sins in the pew?

This is an important question because the sinfulness of contemporary society is today more outlandish than it has been for hundreds of years in America and more in your face because of the ubiquity of social media and online streaming and advertising.

Those two facts outlandish in ubiquity are a strong temptation for a pastor to vent his anger and frustration at the degeneration of the world so that the pulpit runs the risk of becoming not a place mainly of exaltation over the glories of God in Christ,

but a place of irritation and condemnation of the insanity that is going on out there in the world.

A pastor can feel that things are so bad that if he does not linger over the latest grossness of evil, it will look like he's going soft on sin.

So it's good for us to think about how to speak of sins in the world and sins in the church and yet sound the dominant note of amazement at the glories of the grace of God in Christ.

So that's what people walk away from on Sunday morning or walk away with on Sunday morning, namely we are amazed here at the beauty and the glory of the grace of God in Christ.

There is surely a reason why Paul said to the Philippians who were threatened by legalistic dogs who wanted to be a pastor and a priest.

He wanted to ravage their faith, according to chapter three, and by quote, enemies of the cross of Christ, whose quote end is destruction, whose God is their belly, who glory in their shame.

There's a reason why Paul said precisely to this in battle church surrounded by so much belly, God debauchery.

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

We are not to be consumed emotionally or attentively with the latest drag queen strutting among the four-year-olds or the latest butchery to the genitals of eight-year-olds.

There is a fitting, groaning and tears over the wickedness of these things, but if it consumes us, we have lost our bearings and need to go back to Christ.

Think of this. He said, Paul said, rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice. He said that seven verses after saying, I tell you with tears they walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

That's amazing. Let's take Ephesians 5, 3 to 12 as an example of how Paul deals with sins outside and inside the church in his preaching. Here's what he says. This is Ephesians 5, 3.

Sexual immorality and all impurity, and he had a lot of gross stuff in that word. Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as his proper among saints.

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