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 going to

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're too shameful even to speak of. He says that

in Ephesians 512. 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 1st 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 possible 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 1st Timothy 6, verses 4 to 5. 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 need to lay out some principles to

try to avoid what Paul's denouncing in these verses. But first, let me say 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 because 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

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