Pastor Brian Martin: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Calvary Callback, a podcast where we take a deeper dive into the weekly sermon at Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m your host, Brian Martin, and I’m here today with Kyle Bushre, who preached a sermon titled God’s Testimony, looking at 1 John 5: 6-12 in our ongoing series, walk in the light. Kyle, you’re back.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I’m back.

Pastor Brian Martin: I mean, I was almost gonna quote another Detroit guy. Guess who’s back? Back again. And anybody who wants to give me a hard time for quoting that right now, it’s only because we both had misspent youths. Okay. So so if you know what that reference is and you’re like, that shouldn’t be on a church. That’s only because you know it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh that’s true. That’s a good point, actually. But, you know.

Pastor Brian Martin: I was thinking about your Detroit roots that you’re finally back.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: So I am finally back. It does. I was, as I was telling you before the show, uh, I had sort of forgotten we have a podcast. It was only your email to me that changed the time that we’re recording today that I was like, oh, that’s right. That’s something we do. I forgot we do that.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s the thing we do. Yeah. I mean, there’s been a lot of people in that chair. And quite a few people in this one too, quite frankly  and so, um, yeah. And a lot of first timers and it’s been great.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: But yeah, what a fun thing. What a fun thing we do.

Pastor Brian Martin: It is fun. Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while I look around and go, we get paid for this. You know, like this is one of those things. Sometimes I’m like, this is too fun too. Yeah. Anyway, so we hope all of you listeners are having fun too. Yeah. So you’ve been away. And one of the things you did while you were away is I know you were teaching at Camp Barakel, something you’ve done for many years.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yep. Since 2015. So this is my 11th summer there.

Pastor Brian Martin: Amazing. Yep. Interesting to see. I’m sure how the camp changes and all that kind of stuff.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, yes. Yeah. The camp has changed quite a bit. And especially in the last year or so. Um, they’ve had some, some leadership transformation, but camp is still camp. Still, one of the great things about camp, the one reason I love it so much is because it’s so gospel centered. It’s not a, it’s not centered on fun. It’s very fun, but it’s not centered on fun. It’s a missions organization. They want to see kids know Jesus and…

Pastor Brian Martin: Fun is a strategy, not a goal.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Exactly, exactly. And a way to worship fun is, a way to worship. It’s not even like it’s not a bait and switch or anything. It’s yeah, we want you to glorify God in all that you do. And the fun that we have at camp, you know, ziplining and swimming and all that stuff. But at the same time, we, we also recognize that this is a time to get away and spend some time really thinking about what does the Bible teach? And they bring in teachers that are going to do that sort of work. Yeah. Right. So I’ve always, uh, I’ve always loved Camp Barakel. You know, everybody has their camp that’s mine. And, uh, I just, I enjoy it. And even though I’m increasingly finding myself challenged to teach kids, middle school kids especially, I got I had six seventh and eighth graders this year, which I gotta tell you is a stretch for me. It really puts me outside of.. I have to really think through how am I going to say the things I’m going to say in a way that’s going to be received by and understood by a younger person, right? So it’s a good challenge.

Pastor Brian Martin: I actually really love middle school ministry. Oh, yeah. And there’s two main reasons why. Um, one’s sort of funny and one’s more serious. But the, the serious one is that I was just saying this to somebody this morning. I think middle school is the last preventative ministry. What I mean is like elementary school, middle school. But once they get to high school, now it’s reactive ministry in the sense of stuff has already happened and now we’re trying to deal with that. Right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, I see, I see.

Pastor Brian Martin: Whereas if we get them early enough and we can teach them the ways of the Lord before their making bigger decisions that have bigger impact. It’s so important in that sense. And I sort of have this personal philosophy that, like middle schoolers sort of have to learn everything again, that they’ve ever been taught. There’s almost this reset of the brain that happens, I think, sort of through puberty and stuff. And so that’s part of the other reason it’s sort of preventative. The other reason is because like, this has kind of been the joke among youth pastors for a long time, but it’s like middle schoolers are always wondering if they’re cool enough to hang out with you, you know, like as a youth pastor, whereas in high school, they’re wondering if you’re cool enough to hang out with them, you know what I mean?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Like the script gets flipped there.

Pastor Brian Martin: It really does.

Pastor Brian Martin: But like, there’s nothing cliché to a middle schooler.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: No. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: You can use any, any, like, um, you know, illustration or story you want because they’ve never heard it before probably. Yeah. You know, and so there’s certain things about it that are really fun. Yeah. But, you know, it has its challenges too.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: The biggest challenge for me when I teach young people like that is I know right up front that the first chapel on Monday night, they are not going to be connected to me at all. It’s going to be tough.

Pastor Brian Martin: They’ve got their guard up.

Yeah. They’re there. They don’t know each other. They don’t know me. They don’t. Many of them don’t go to church. They don’t understand what chapel is. Uh, and so I’m up there and I’m trying to connect with them and they, they just don’t know where I’m coming from. And by the end of the week, the beauty is by the end of the week, they love me. They just oh, they just so glad to get to know me and talk to me and send me little notes and all this. So it’s like this whole, uh, you could, you could see this whole arc of relationship that takes place from Monday to Friday in one week with these kids, once they, once they attach to you. Yeah. That’s fun.

Pastor Brian Martin: It is fun. Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. Have we ever talked about, um, bird murmurations related to middle school social….?

Uh, no.

Okay. So, do you know what a bird murmuration is?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I do not.

Pastor Brian Martin: So you’ve seen one before, but you maybe didn’t know what it was called. So if you see, like, a flock of starlings in the sky and you know, they kind of make these beautiful, like, geometric ripples through the sky, you know what I’m talking about? Like kind of that phenomenon. Yep. There’s a few other birds that do it, but starlings are the ones I think of. And scientists have actually learned that what the reason they look so almost in sync, like a dance almost, or like these sort of geometric shapes is because every bird sees the seven data points, the seven other birds around them, and they respond to all seven of those data points. So when one starts to tilt their wing, then the next one does, and the next one does, and it creates this ripple effect.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Okay.

Pastor Brian Martin: I think that is an incredible metaphor for all middle school social interactions.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I think I see this.

Pastor Brian Martin: Do you see what I’m saying?  So like, you know, like somebody tells a joke and the kid, you know, there’s a middle schooler in the room and they’re looking around and they’re like, is this funny? Is this funny? Yes. We’re laughing. Yes. Okay. We’re laughing.

Pastor Brian Martin: But you don’t decide to laugh yourself. You have to look at the data points around you. Yeah. And so everything so over time, when you’re teaching them all week, They’ve learned, okay, it’s okay to laugh here. Okay. It’s okay to enjoy this because we’re all enjoying it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, that is that is very insightful because that is exactly what is happening.

Pastor Brian Martin: I’m telling you.

I didn’t, I’d never thought of it that way before, but.

Pastor Brian Martin: And I don’t mean that to be pejorative either. I mean, I love middle schoolers and, and I have a couple in my house, you know, and like, um, it’s, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just where they are. Yeah. You know.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And, and to a degree, we all take social cues.

Pastor Brian Martin: Absolutely. You know, we all do it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. To a degree. But you’re right. At that level, you very much want to make sure that your social cues are correct because you do not want to stand out. That’s the last thing you want as a middle schooler.

Pastor Brian Martin: Isn’t that funny? Wow. We really we really hit that hard. Yeah, I love it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: What are we doing?

Pastor Brian Martin: We should probably talk about the passage.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, right.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right right, right. Remember, we do a podcast.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I forgot about that. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Oh my goodness. So, uh. All right. So where do we want to begin here? Um, you mentioned one thing that I thought was really interesting. In the sermon, you said that God made us with reason. So it makes sense that there would be facts included with the gospel. Yeah. So what are some of the facts that help you confident to have confidence in your belief? And you were you also talked about, you know, that Hindu family that you had had over for dinner? And, um, you know, that it seemed like theirs was faith for faith’s sake, to a degree. And I don’t mean that rudely necessarily, but, um, so yeah, what are, what are some facts that help give you confidence in your faith?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. So early on, when I was in college, uh, a couple of years before I became a Christian, so I was probably 18 years old or so. I remember going to a sort of a conference, a very small gathering of people on campus at a chapel. And the guy there was giving what I know now to be, uh, sort of one of those presentations where they talk about the historicity of the cross and reasons to believe in an empty tomb and, you know, uh, Roman execution styles and eyewitness accounts and all those sorts of things and that was a category I’d never really thought about faith in before. I’d grown up going to church, but I hadn’t thought about these things being true. Okay. It didn’t didn’t occur to me. It didn’t didn’t really resonate with me. And I still wasn’t a Christian at this point. It would be two and a half years before I would become one. But I can remember this. It was sort of an early kind of a drawing thing. I sort of stumbled into this conference and learned these things, and I remember even talking to others about it and saying, did you know that there’s good reasons to believe, uh, in the in the historical evidence of the resurrection? And, uh, you know, it just, it just never struck me before. And I would say it’s those sorts of arguments, those, those sorts of arguments do not comprise my faith. I don’t I don’t believe in the resurrection because of these external evidences. I believe it because well, now I know based on what Scripture is saying, the Lord has opened the eyes of my heart.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: He has made me know him. He has introduced himself to me. He has regenerated my dead soul, uh, so that I can be adopted in his family. And so now I see these evidences as helpful to understanding, uh, the gospel as a moment in history, which I think is, uh, is a really important, uh, way, a really important way of understanding what the Bible is. I didn’t think about it as eyewitness documents, uh, carefully compiled, but the Bible itself testifies to this. Luke, when he says, uh, when he puts his gospel together, he says, I want to, I want you to have certainty about the things that you believe. So I went to the eyewitnesses to make sure that my story about Jesus is accurate. Yeah. That’s the approach of scriptures. Uh, some of those facts that really, uh, help me? I think one of the, I don’t know, one of the most compelling arguments that I’ve heard is simply the details about what happened to the apostles for believing and preaching these things, right? They were perfectly fine in their fisherman roles or their tax collecting role or their whatever. Fill in the blank. What they did for a job they didn’t they didn’t, uh, get into, uh, preaching the gospel because it bettered their life. It made it far worse. They died for preaching the gospel. They died for preaching a risen Christ. Who would die to preach a message they know not to be true? Right.

Pastor Brian Martin: They certainly believed it was true.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: They certainly believed it was true. And and so I look at that and I say, wow, that is compelling. It is not the basis of my faith, but it is compelling reason to believe, I believe. Uh, and just, uh, just the, the Gospels themselves, when you work through the different eyewitness accounts and you look at, um, you know, a lot of people go, oh, there’s tensions in here historically. Actually, if you look at those so-called tensions, you actually find a lot of unintended coincidences between the Gospels that are only there because of the accuracy of the stories they’re telling. So, in fact, there’s a whole book on those unintended coincidences that I’ve been reading, and it’s fascinating to see, uh, that stuff. So those are the sorts of things that they build up, they help me in my understanding of my faith. They certainly aren’t the foundation for it, though.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, I’ve thought about it before as like those kinds of facts I think are almost like, um, like, uh, have you seen those things on trucks, on semi trucks where there’s like the little fins kind of underneath the, the, the back of the truck, um, or the covers on the wheels. Anyway, I had a friend who worked for a trucking company and was involved in some of these developments, and they’ve only been on trucks for about 15 years. And they help with like aerodynamics.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, I see.

Pastor Brian Martin: They save all this gas money like this, you know, $50 piece of fiberglass saves. You know, the saves. This company, Schneider Trucking, which is the largest trucking company in North America, saved them like $6 million.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh my goodness.

Pastor Brian Martin: In one year because. Right. So like the little fiberglass fin doesn’t make the truck go, but it just helps it go a little, a little more efficiently. It helps it go a little faster or whatever. Yeah. Um, anyway, I, I’ve thought of that before.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I mean, that’s this idea that some people have of faith being a faith. Faith is I’ve heard it defined as believing something you cannot prove. Uh, believing something that that has no evidence. No, no, no, no. Faith can be well founded in evidence. Yeah, it absolutely can be. Uh, it is not the only reason to believe, but there are reasons to believe. Christianity is a reasonable religion, and it’s because it’s founded in historical, uh, claims. Without the, without the historicity of what takes place in the Bible you don’t have Christianity, in a way that’s not true of other worldviews and other religions.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And there’s some, um, there’s some element of, I don’t want to say like capital F faith, but a version of faith you have to have sort of going backwards to, right? Like, so we don’t have as much historical evidence for the Old Testament as we do for the new in terms of number of copies and things like that. And yet if you take the chain links back, it’s, but Jesus affirms all of these teachings and whatever. So we have a, you know, links that get us to Jesus and then links that go back from there. And so we can have confidence on confidence because Jesus said it, for example, right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So, um, you also mentioned something, uh, as you got started in this passage is that it’s, it’s a, it’s an odd passage in certain ways, right? I mean, it’s not, uh, there are certain things that are more straightforward than, than what this is because it’s working with imagery and metaphor, if we could call it that. I think we could. So why shouldn’t people be discouraged if they don’t understand a particular passage of Scripture when they come across it in their in their reading? Like there is I think sometimes we get intimidated or worried like, oh, I’ve been a Christian X number of years. I should know this by now. But I don’t think that’s the way we should approach it. So. So give us some counsel there. Why shouldn’t we be discouraged when we don’t understand something?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: We have to remember that that the earliest documents or the youngest, I should say the youngest documents we have in what is comprised, what comprises the Bible, are 2000 years old. Right, right. They come from the time of Jesus. So the culture, the way you write, the way you communicate a point is going to be different in that culture. In that language, the way language is structured, it’s going to be different. Imagery is going to hit one culture differently than another culture, right? So we have to recognize that because of that, there’s going to be some barrier to entry in our understanding of how to, to, to interpret what we’re seeing. We should just know that going in. So yes, the Bible can be read by all. Hopefully if it’s in your in your language, right. There are languages that don’t have it yet. That’s why we work to get it in their language. Yeah. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy to understand at every turn. And I just think we should have that idea going in. Just, just, just know you’re going to come across some things that are going to be difficult. Um, and that will get easier as you become a Bible reader and a Bible thinker, you start to think in biblical categories. You start to see I mentioned blood, right? Blood and water are the two, the two images in the, in the in the passage that that are difficult. This is he who came by water and blood. Okay. Blood imagery I know points me to the cross. But what does it mean to come by blood. What is it talking about? Jesus entry into the world.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: What’s it talking about? How is John phrasing this here? That’s. It’s awkward for the way we would make the same point. Yeah. And yet with a little work, we can bridge the gap. We can use, uh, good Bible study tools, what are called hermeneutics to get our a, a method of interpretation that will get us to an understanding of what John is saying there. It’s just going to take a little bit more work. And yeah, you’re going to come across some passages that are going to take more work. They just are. And, um, and that’s okay. And I don’t think anybody should be intimidated by that. That’s why I wanted to be sure to admit, when I was standing on stage this week that I, as a guy who’s been studying the Bible at great depth for a long period of time, even I come to a passage like this and say, okay, I stand on the on the shoulders of giants. What have other people, what is the history of the thought on this passage? And then you look at these other giants and they don’t all agree with each other. And you go, okay, I’m in good company here. I feel very confident in my inability to, you know, land on this first, first read through. So let me wrestle with this, just like the men and women who’ve gone before me and, and work toward an understanding here. And I think everybody should approach the Bible that way. Be encouraged if you don’t fully understand every part of the Bible. Uh, that’s everybody. That’s everybody.

Pastor Brian Martin: And I think there is part of that, too. Like I’ve said before, I, the Christian life is designed to be impossible.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Okay.

Pastor Brian Martin: All right. I think in two ways. One, because we need to rely on God fully. Sure. So it’s not of our own strength.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right. For sure.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: But I think there’s a secondary reason, which is we need each other. Right.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: So impossible on our own.

Pastor Brian Martin: Impossible on our own. Yeah. Like we need we need the, you know, the, the fellowship of all believers to in one way of speaking or we need to rely on our church family. And it’s all, you know, it’s the body working together, the different parts, the different members that have that have different skills and stuff. And I feel like that’s the same principle that we need to take with approaching the scriptures too. That, you know, we have to we have to do it together. And it can’t be just of our own understanding. And that’s actually, I think, freeing. Yeah. You know, like, it’s not, it’s not just the weight of my own intelligence or my own study. We have tools, commentaries, etc. and people have gone before us. We’ve thought about these things. It’s not like nobody studied this until the year 2000 or whatever. Like, you know, that’s nonsense. We’ve been studying this for a long time.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Um, yeah, if you if you are studying the Bible, you’re reading the Bible and you’ve come up with an entirely novel, an entirely new interpretation of what’s there. Yeah. You are probably not correct. Uh, we need to turn to some people who’ve walked before us and go, okay, where, what is the history of interpretation on this passage? What is, where have people taken this like the, the even the argument style that I put forward in this sermon, uh, as I took people through, my reasoning was given to me. I followed the pattern that a lot of people follow. I used my own tools, but then not my own understanding to to, uh, and conclusions to whittle our way to the best, what I believe to be the best understanding of what it’s referring to when it says he came by water. That that’s a reference to the baptism. I didn’t come up with that. That’s just the one I agree with the most based on my my personal study.

Pastor Brian Martin: And knew what I’m sure you mean there is not new to you because maybe the tradition you grew up in taught it differently…

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Or sure yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: ..But just like new in the history of Christian.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. If you’ve come up with something new in the history of Christianity, uh.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s where the alarm bells should go off.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I would think. Yeah, I would think that would be the case.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: We’ve probably both read some books in the last 20 years that have tried to do that.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh boy, people love that. You can sell a lot of books if you can come up with something entirely new. Especially especially if it tickles the ears of the people in that particular culture. That’s what you want.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s right.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s that’s where all the cash is found.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s right. So, okay, you touched on it just a couple minutes ago there as we were talking about that last one. But and, and I say this a little tongue in cheek, but also seriously, because I’ve gone through this in my own mind before when I’m studying or reading or whatever. So how do you feel about disagreeing with guys like Augustine or Luther? Like you’ve got these, you’ve got these giants and sometimes you’re like, ah, I don’t think they’re right about that.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Like walk, walk through kind of your mental process there. Because on one hand, it’s like, how arrogant am I that I think I’m smarter than Luther, you know what I mean? Like, but that’s not really what it is. And Luther can’t be an expert on everything, right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Correct.

Pastor Brian Martin: So what, what’s your thought process with that?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, well, I mean, the truth is, you know, they disagreed with each other, right.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s a key point.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Those those church fathers, those reformers, those Puritans, those, you know, name the group in in the history of the church, they didn’t agree with each other. So if I end up not agreeing with one of them and or with, you know, and I side with, say, a modern writer, uh, and their interpretation as opposed to one of those guys, you know, I, I think, uh, I just am engaging in what the church has done for 2000 years and that is wrestling through, uh, interpreting the Bible. Um, it is a little weird, uh, to, you know, I love John Calvin. I love his writings. I love his work. It is weird to, to go, John, i think you missed it on that one. Yeah. Um, I’m sure he’s not, uh, he’s not too upset about my not agreeing with him. And he’s probably thinking a lot more about, uh, worshiping Jesus in eternity than caring about what Kyle Bushre might think of his views someday. Um, so I’m not too concerned about that. You know, I think if, um. Yeah, I don’t think there’s an arrogance to that. I don’t, I think you..

Pastor Brian Martin: Just there doesn’t have to be.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: You just recognize that these are just guys too. These are just men and women in the church in the history who, who did the best they had. Used what God gave them, their intellect. And, and largely, I hold their views very highly. Uh, Martin Luther a an Augustine, uh, those, those sorts or modern guys today, a Keller, uh, a Piper, you know, these, these sorts of, um, Don Carson, these guys are worthy of listening to. We should absolutely hear what they have to say. But at the end of the day, nobody has 100% right. And, um, and, uh, you know, I, I think it’s, it’s fine. And I don’t, I, this is really doesn’t impact me at all when I disagree.

Pastor Brian Martin: And I actually think it’s important because it’s been my observation… So I grew up in a in a deeply Catholic area. Green Bay, Wisconsin’s very, very Catholic. And, um, and so I grew up a lot around that thinking. And, and so then when I started to understand, as I got older, like the different, you know, some of the differences, one of the criticisms that I heard people sort of lob at the Catholic Church is like, none of the individuals do thinking for themselves, you know, in that sense, like they just outsource their theology to somebody else. And I think that’s a fair critique, to be honest. I, you know, because you have generations of Catholics who never crack open their own Bibles and don’t, you know, um, by and large, obviously broad strokes here, but but I think the longer I was in, you know, the evangelical tradition, the more I’ve realized, yeah a lot of evangelicals do that too.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: They just, they just pick, they just pick who they want to listen to. So, you know, they’re just like, well, whatever MacArthur says, you know, whatever, you know, insert any name. I’m not picking on MacArthur. I’m just saying. Yeah. And it’s like, you know, we got to be careful about that too, because, you know, any of those people you read enough to trust, yeah, they have a ton of great things to say, but it doesn’t mean they’re right about everything. You know, I’ve said that about like, N.T. Wright is another guy, one of our greatest living scholars. He has done a lot of great work, but there’s a few subjects on which I think he’s out to lunch, you know. Yep. Wayne Grudem was a guy who disappointed me deeply a few years back with. He’s been so consistent about so many things. And then one subject came up and I’m just like, what are you doing, man? Yep. And I think, you know, it’s humbling for us too, as teachers of the word, that we’re just a guy too. And we’re going to be wrong about some stuff. And so we can be, we can be gracious to those writers and thinkers, but we also shouldn’t just take them hook, line and sinker.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s absolutely right. And here’s the truth. The truth is some thinkers are really, really good in some areas and not others, right? So yes, some, some are incredible, uh, exegetes, they’re so good at at at translation and understanding what’s there on the page. And yet, um, not so great in counseling stuff. And then you turn to Paul Tripp. And Paul Tripp is fantastic when it comes to counseling stuff. So I’m going to listen to what he has to say because he’s, he’s got his, uh, you know, he’s got a pulse. He’s got really, he’s got his finger on the pulse of how to apply this and this scripture and counseling situation. So I’m going to draw the best from all the different sources that are available to me within the body of Christ and learn from all of it and still make my own errors and, and be okay with that because I’m just a man too.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yep. Absolutely true. So you made another claim that I thought was really interesting. Um, on Sunday, uh, I’m not going to, I don’t have it exactly as a quote, but the idea was, um, God being trustworthy because he never lies and he never gets facts wrong. And I had never quite thought of it that way before. Like, I know that God is trustworthy, just sort of inherently, but I had never quite thought of it that way. Like that’s how we assess trustworthiness with people. Do they tell me the truth? Do they speak out of facts? You know, um, a news reporter who’s just reporting on speculation, we’re like, well, that guy’s not worth anything. You know, to me as a professional now. Yep. Um, so, so I guess the question is, how do we in, in evangelism, how do we make a good case for God’s good character and his inherent trustworthiness? Like, how do we approach um, I feel like that should be a part of our outreach and evangelism is, is elevating the trustworthiness of God. But how would we do that? I don’t know that I have an answer to this question. So I’m hoping you do. Because the question I’m like, I don’t know what my answer would be.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: So so yeah, so when I’m, when I’m sharing the gospel with somebody who doesn’t believe in the gospel, who doesn’t, I am standing on an authority of Scripture that they don’t hold as an authority. So I can say, here is the character of God. And if they say, how do you know that? I will point to the Bible. And I will say, because I believe God has communicated to us about his character, not just his moral goodness, but his power, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, his, um, you know, his sovereignty over all things. I believe these things because I believe that God has communicated these things through His Word. That person may simply say, well, I don’t believe that that is God’s word. So I think God is different than that. I might say, and I tried to do this on Sunday. I tried to speak to the skeptic. Hopefully I got through to some who would be more skeptical. Yeah. And I’d say, okay, well then what do you think God is like? And they would say, well, I think God is like this, this and this. Yeah. And I would simply say to them, how do you know that?

Pastor Brian Martin: Where did you get your information?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Where’s your, where’s your, is it just a hunch? Is it just what you want God to be like. I believe I’m standing on firmer ground by pointing to the 2000 year old tested, tried and true scriptures that communicate who Jesus is and who the the true character of God. I think that that is a better argument than. You just have a hunch that God is like this or that. Um.

Pastor Brian Martin: You know what I, you know, what I get on that sometimes is I can’t believe God could be a God that, um, do you know what I mean? Which is such an interesting place to argue from because it’s like, well, do you believe there’s people like that? Like, do you think there’s people who would murder, you know, because I’ve heard that argument like, God’s a heartless because he’s a monster, because he wiped out a group of people or whatever the argument comes from. But it’s like, well, that’s, that’s quite a double standard. Yeah. Which I think is interesting.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, I think people do hold their own views very highly. Usually they don’t question their own their own understanding. They don’t question. They don’t even ask to know why it is i believe what I believe. They just say, this is what I believe. And you say, well, why do you believe that? Have you really ever thought about where your beliefs are coming from? Uh, and again, um, it’s easy, as I said on Sunday, anybody can deny an argument. Anybody can say, well, I just don’t believe that. I just don’t, I just don’t think that’s true. Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. What is it that you believe and why do you think that is true? Yeah. Okay, so let’s start there. That’s probably where I would start with somebody who’s… And then and then I might say, you know, if somebody said, well, I don’t think God is all good, one of the things I might say to them is, what would God’s motive, what what God’s motivation be to lie to you? What, what, why, why do you think God wouldn’t be trustworthy? Why would you speculate in a God that would, uh, work to fool you. Do you have reason to believe that God would be that way? Because I look around creation and I see a lot of brokenness, but I see a lot of design too. I see. I could see how all of this could be perfect and without sin. I can see that. I know that it’s not. I can see how it’s very, very broken by sin. But I can also see how something really, really good got broken by something.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: So if the original design was good and then something intervened that broke it, why would I assume that, uh, that the, that the creator God is out is, is more about the brokenness and trying to mislead. And why would he create any of this at all if that’s who he is? Again, I’m arguing sort of in an abstract way and trying to do it without referring to the authority of Scripture. But that’s how I might do it with a non-believer. Yeah. It’s simply just put it back on them and say, what would God gain? What would a Creator God gain from being an untrustworthy God? Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t come up with an argument for that. So. But it’s hard. It’s hard. I will say it is hard. It is hard to to argue or to make an argument, not argue and fight, but like make an argument. Right. Um, apart from the authority of scripture. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: So yeah, well, we put a lot of hope in that, you know, we put a lot of trust in, in the scriptures because where else would we get it from? But, uh, you know, other than the Holy Spirit, which those things work in tandem, of course, but yeah, yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And I might say to that same person, just real briefly, I might say to that same person, um, we could speculate all day about who God is and what his character is, but wouldn’t he have to communicate something to us about himself in order for us to know anything of substance about him? Wouldn’t we have to assume that he’s communicated something.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: For us to have, uh, this information? And then I would simply say, I have pretty good reason to believe that he’s communicated through his word. And then I would start to make a case for the Bible at that point. Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s a good point. Well, let’s put an exclamation point on on the analysis of this passage in this way. So verse 12, I’m just going to read. Whoever, whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Mhm. So someone listening to this, we’re curious about what it means to have this son. What does that mean? And how can they have it if they don’t have it?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. To have the son in this passage means that you have if you go back up in the verses, you have believed in the testimony. Right? Right. You have this testimony in you. That’s that’s that’s actually how it’s put. Uh, you have the testimony. You’ve, you’ve received it into your heart and into your mind. And so what you’re saying is, I have heard that Jesus is the Son of God who has come and has died for me, and I received that testimony as true. I acknowledge it, and I then receive by acknowledging that what I’m saying is, I trust that Jesus died for me on the cross. And in that sense, I have the son. It’s it’s a, it’s a weird way of saying it. Um, but, uh, we, we have it, we, we have been included in the plan that God had for redeemed the world through the Son of God, Jesus Christ on the cross. I am part of that now. I have received him. And this is why this, this spiritual union that we have with Jesus is described over and over again throughout the New Testament. But Paul probably, uh, gives us the best little two word phrase for this, uh, when he says over and over and over again that he is in Christ, that we are in Christ, meaning everything that Christ has done, We are in him.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: We are we. We were. We were with Him in his death, and we are now with Him in His resurrection. That’s why we get baptized. We. We go under the water. We come back up. We. We unite with. We are showing a spiritual union with Jesus and his death, burial and resurrection. We have the son and that we have this spiritual union with him. Um, and if you don’t have that, then you don’t have the eternal life that, that, that, that leads to. Yeah. You, when we put our faith in Jesus, we enter into eternity at that moment, like you and I right now, we are living eternal life. There will be a physical death because everything’s rotting around us and we’re going to pass away, right? But the, the eternal life that we have, our, our alive souls are just going to continue right on into eternity with Jesus. And the same is true of those who do not have the son. Their dead souls will continue on into eternity. Not attached to Christ.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Not with the Son. So I would say to you right now, if you don’t have the Son, there is nothing, nothing stopping you from just repenting of the sin that is dragging you away from God. Yeah. And, and has your life and you’ve seen the product of it. Let’s just be honest, listener. You, you’ve seen the product of your sin breaking things around you. You can be rid of that. What you do is you just come before the Lord and you say, I am a sinner and I need your grace, and I receive the Son. I receive the gift of your grace, gracious forgiveness, because Jesus bought it for me with his blood on the cross. And when you do that, you now have, you are you, you’re born again. That’s the way Jesus put it. It’s so radical a transformation that it’s like you were born one time, but now you’re actually a brand new person in this world. You’re filled with the spirit. You’re united to the son, and you will be with him for eternity. And now you get to be part of the mission of going and sharing that truth with everybody else. There’s nothing better than that.

Pastor Brian Martin: Nothing better. And what you said at the end yesterday, nothing holds up like the gospel because it’s true. That’s right. Yeah. So. Well, that’s a I think that’s a beautiful sentiment to end on, Kyle. So thanks so much for your time today and for coming back into the chair. And thanks to all of you for joining us on the Calvary Callback. Boy, I guess I’m out of practice. We hope this time was an encouragement to you. And whether you’re a part of our Calvary family, or if you are listening from somewhere else in the world, we invite you to join us in our mission to pursue passion for Christ and compassion for people. For Kyle Bushre, I’m Brian Martin, we’ll catch you next time on the Callback.