Pastor Brian Martin: Welcome back 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 Paths of Light and Darkness, looking at 1 John 1:5-10. And here’s the deal. If you’re listening, this is actually part two of our discussion. I know it’s.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: A brave new world.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s a brave new world. So we just felt like there was a lot to cover today. I told Kyle off, off air. That makes us sound fancier than we are.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, we’re not that fancy.

Pastor Brian Martin: But I just said, man, this was a steak dinner. This one we needed to cut it into to some smaller bites because there’s just a lot of interesting things. So if you’re listening, we just recommend probably listen to the last one first or the previous one. Uh, the part one. And now we just want to round it out with a few additional questions. So,we ended our, the last podcast, talking about the regenerate heart and what that looks like. And so I think one of the ways that helps us get to this place of further sanctification and further moving deeper into the light, as it were, gets addressed directly here in the passage with confession of sin. So verse nine talks about it specifically. And so I just thought you could maybe give some practical guidance and advice on that. So it’s probably like a three part question to whom should we confess our sins? That’s the first part.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: And then what are some good guidelines for confessing to one another, assuming that that’s part of it? Yeah. Both to sort of be most effective. Not that the goal is effective, but like, what’s a good way to go about that, I guess is what I’m saying. And what are some necessary guardrails for confessing sin too, because I think there’s probably some of those. So who do we confess to? What’s the best way to go about it in practice? And what are some necessary guardrails for.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, this is a difficult one because, uh, Who? What? It starts out easy enough. The first person you have to confess your sin to. It might surprise you is yourself. And what I mean is, you need to, as I said yesterday, own it. You need to recognize and own that you have sinned. You have to say to yourself, I’m in. I’m in a position of having sinned before God. I’m not going to justify it. I’m not going to. You know, that little inner lawyer isn’t going to win the battle on this one. I have sinned.

Pastor Brian Martin: I deserve this. Yeah, right. Nonsense. We tell ourselves.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Exactly, exactly. I’m the exception in this case. Right? Everybody’s always so exceptional. You’re not exceptional. You’re. You’re a sinner like everybody else. And the thing you just did, you got to own. And if someone sinned against you, but you send back to them, then you own that part of it. And we just got to own our sins. We have to say, I’m the one that messed up here. I’m the one that have sinned. And then once you once you own it, now you go for the Lord. The first. The first place you go in confession is before the Lord and in prayer, and you simply confess to the Lord, I have done this and not just. I have done this thing. And it was bad and it was wrong. And I’m really sorry about it, but I have sinned against you, God, I my, my sin as, as, as David puts it right in the Psalms when he’s writing about his confession, he says, “before you, and you only. Lord, have I sinned”. Now, of course, he’s sinned against a lot of other people, but principally what he’s saying is my, my sin ultimately, and first and foremost is an affront to a holy God, right? And so when, when, when I confess and, you know, in the Old Testament, when they would confess in sackcloth and ashes, right, they would weep and sackcloth and ashes, they would mourn their sin before the Lord.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Right? That’s a worship act. It’s a worship act before the Lord to confess and, and to, and to, to, to own it. And then, of course, in that moment, to be able to once again remember and rejoice fully in the Christ who took the cross to pay for that sin and every sin before it, and every sin that’s going to come after it, and to rehearse the gospel before God and and once again, rejoice in a God who is so deeply merciful and forgiving to sinners who are weak like us. Uh, that is, that is a, that is a massive big step in the in the act of confession. Own your sin first, go before God. And once again, uh, grasp on to and triumph in the fact that Jesus has died for that sin. And then and this is the harder part, I don’t know why it’s the harder part. Maybe it’s not so hard once you’ve done the first two well, but you got to go to others. And I would say the first person that you need to confess your sin before, let me back up. Scripture says we’re supposed to confess our sins to one another, right? Right. People don’t like that. Um, they’d rather just talk to God and then put up a good front to everybody else because we’re. What are we worried about? Things like reputation.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: We’re worried about how people will think of us. We’re worried about the consequences of certain sins, ramifications, maybe punishments. Uh, how will this alter how people act toward me? That sort of thing? Well, I would say it is something of a failure of at least the Western church. Um, maybe I might even say of the evangelical church, I don’t know, uh, that we have, that we have gotten to this place where the church has become a place where I have to put up a good front. That is not that’s not what a church is. A church is a lot of broken people on a journey in the light together, helping one another overcome our sins. And so we should be able to. If we’re entirely resting in the saving grace of God, if we’re there’s no part of us that is resting in our own goodness that we. Are entirely standing on the foundation of Jesus righteousness, not my own righteousness. His identity is my identity. I don’t have to build my reputation, uh, on my goodness, because I’m trusting in his goodness. If that is true, then confession should flow. Because obviously I’m a sinner. I need to confess my sins to other people because that’s the way that they become people who can pray for me, who can love me. They shouldn’t be judging me. They shouldn’t come alongside and condemn me in a sinful way.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Uh, they should exhort me. They should. If I need a hard thing said to me, I need to hear a hard thing. And honestly, I lose out on getting the biblical exhortation I need if I’m unwilling to be honest about the sin right before other people. So we need to confess to one another. The question is who? That’s that’s really that’s the tough thing. Like, who do you confess to? You know, if, uh, you know, I’ve seen pastors or I’ve heard of pastors, I guess I haven’t really seen it too much, but I’ve heard of pastors. I guess I have seen one who sort of used the pulpit as their personal confessional every week, and they’d just get up there and they just start talking about how wretched they are and how they sinned. And here’s my inner thought life and my sinful ways, and it really is inappropriate. It’s an inappropriate way of addressing it. There are ways of addressing sins and confessing sins to one another that are fruitful and helpful, and there are ways of doing it that are inappropriate. And, um, it’s very difficult for me to just tell you blanket, here’s how you do that. I would say this, the first person you probably should confess to is the person you’ve hurt. So if someone, if someone else is the victim of your sin, you need to go to that person and confess your sin.

Pastor Brian Martin: If you lied to somebody.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Absolutely.

Pastor Brian Martin: Whatever.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: You yelled at them, you expressed anger in a in a sinful way toward them, Whatever it is violated your marriage in some way. You got to confess your sin. You know, I’ve I’ve. I’ve heard of church leaders who would say to a man who has cheated on his wife, you know, as long as you confess that before God, you don’t have to confess that to her. That’s, uh, that’s foolishness. That is that is hiding, uh, fire in a marriage. That’s like trying to just trying to close the door, try to sweep it under the rug. You will destroy your marriage if you go that way. Right. But there are certain foolish people within the church who would say, you don’t have to confess to the person you hurt. You need to confess to the person you hurt. We’re told to. Now, you might need to, you know, help get a speck out of their eye as well in the process of doing that. But you got to get the log out of your own eye first, right? So we have to confess to the people we hurt. I would say we need to have trusted people within the church that we can confess to. Just in general, because we know they love us and we’re walking through life with us. This is where I would say a small group is invaluable, what we call a shepherding community here at Calvary. Having a shepherding community is a group of people that you can be honest with. It should be anyway. You shouldn’t be putting up a front with your with your shepherding community. You should be able to go to them and say, I’m really struggling with this. I’m having a difficult time and they should be able to come around you and love you and walk with you and take you out to coffee and get to know more about the situation and help you come up with ways of addressing it. There should be accountability in that sense. Confession brings accountability. So that’s the who. And then you said what what were the other parts of this?

Pastor Brian Martin: Well, some guardrails like because and I think you just got into it to a degree, but like, you know, the pulpit example is a good example. I that’s just not the right place.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s not the right place.

Pastor Brian Martin: There might be a time and a place for it, But generally speaking, it’s not the right place. I mean, if you’ve done something against the church publicly, then probably it’s a good time. But other than that.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: There’s no doubt there are passages that need to stand before the congregation and confess their sins. This is just I’m I’m saying that, you know, on a week to week preaching situation, I will talk about my own sin. In fact, I think I mentioned it in general yesterday, but I would talk about sin specifically from the pulpit if it were illustrative, if it was helpful, right in the context of that sermon to be able to do that. And I have done that before. I just don’t think it should be used that way all the time, because it’s just not the appropriate way of, of preaching. You know, um, guardrails, boy, you know, there are people that are just not trustworthy with your sin. Yeah. There are people who talk who their sin is that they gossip and slander other people. Yeah. You’re going to have that’s probably not a person you’re going to confess your sin to unless you’ve hurt that person, right? Unless that’s the person that’s, that’s involved in this. Yeah. But you do need to build relationship over time. You know, you and I have always we’ve talked about the struggle of multiplying, shepherding communities. And one of the things that’s the most important in shepherding community multiplication is determining how long it takes for the people in that group to be close enough. Yeah. To be honest with one another. Yeah. And then, you know, if you put an arbitrary end to the, you know, a year or two years, you’re never going to get close enough to anybody to confess to. So, um, so you do need some spiritual intimacy there that, that, that, uh, makes it a, a safe place for you to be able to confess.

Pastor Brian Martin: Well, and I think, you know, like you’re pumping gas and the guy across the way, that’s not the right time. You know, I mean.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s a personal experience. No, no. Okay. Exactly. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: I’m just saying.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, exactly.

Pastor Brian Martin: Not not everything is everybody’s business. Correct. And that needs to be weighed out against. Well, I never confess my sin. Like those are the two extreme ends of it and it. Yeah. So it’s important to have trusted community in. And whether that’s to be clear, whether that is, you know, we have a not formal formal, but a formal structure of shepherding communities. And, and I agree, it’s a great place to do that. It’s not the only place you can do that. Having a trusted friend fits the bill. You know, who’s also a believer, obviously.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Um, yeah, I know people who throw confessions up on Facebook and I think, what are you doing here? Is this really the right forum for this? You know, you got to choose. You got to be careful how you choose the way. Because remember confession, this is maybe this is a helpful guideline. Confession is supposed to be redemptive in the sense that when I confess, the idea is I’m going to confess my sin to a trusted church community in such a way that they’re going to be able to build me up and, uh, help me overcome If I’m doing that in a in a forum or in a, you know, in some kind of a relationship where that’s not going to happen, that’s probably the wrong way to confess your sin, right? That’s probably the wrong way. Yeah. And you also, here’s another example. You know, I’ve been in, you probably have experienced this too. When you’re in a situation, say like, some type of a conference situation and the speaker clearly doesn’t know the audience well enough. And,  you know, doesn’t sort of age appropriately speak or like there’s things I would say at a men’s conference that I would not say to our church as a whole. Yes. Right. Because these are all men and we understand what we’re going through. And so I would, I might say something there and use phrasing that I wouldn’t if I were speaking to the youth group. Right. Certainly not.

Pastor Brian Martin: That it goes the other way to maybe for different reasons, but.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: No doubt.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, there’s, there’s phrases I can use at youth group that I wouldn’t use for the overall church.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Exactly

Pastor Brian Martin: Because, I get some sideways glances, you know, like, what does that mean?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah. So we just got it. Yeah. You got to weigh it out. But remember, it’s redemptive. So confess in ways that you know, will help you to overcome the sin you’re talking about.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So sticking with that idea of sin, super fun.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, it’s great.

Pastor Brian Martin: Light topic, but an important one. Sure. Um, people rarely say that they never sin. That gets talked about in the passage, but I think there’s a further implication there. You know, it does happen sometimes. Like I had a dear friend whose grandmother was like nearing death and was like, well, I, you know, I don’t sin, so I don’t have anything to confess. And she was like, grandma. Yeah. Like, you might not be in heaven if that’s how you feel about this.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And famously, I mean, famously, but you’ve I think I’ve used it as a sermon illustration before, but I had a pastor friend who said he had gotten to a point in his life where he had no sin in his life. And I suggested maybe pride. Yeah. Right. You know, it’s like you’re not you’re not there yet, man.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right. So you don’t hear it often, but that’s not the only application here. Clearly. So what are some ways that people say, I don’t sin without saying I don’t sin? Like, what are some, you know, culturally coded language things or just circumstances that are really people saying, I don’t actually have sin? Or what’s evidence of that?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, I think this crops up the most in our culture anyway. Not maybe so much in the church, because if you’re coming to church, you know, you’re messed up. You know you need Jesus. We don’t talk this way. But I would say this is, um, of course, John here is addressing guys that have gone out from the church and they’re teaching false doctrine. So where do you find false doctrine? You find it in our culture for the most part. And so our culture’s approach to sin is to say sin is no longer a category that it’s made up, right. That it’s used. I mean, I was in forums this week relative. Yeah. I was trying to get the, you know, secular, uh, secular attitude about sin today. So I was looking at some different sites and reading some different articles. And, um, there is a, there’s a strain of folks out there that just think, um, sin is this thing that was made up by the church to create power over people, right? Instead of just identifying evil in our world and saying, this is clearly wrong. No, no, no, no. We created a category of sin because apparently we’ve made up a god, and therefore we’ve made up the category of sin so that we can keep power over people and we can control their lives in some way. I’m like, wow. That skips some pretty obvious anthropology. The how humanity is made up and what is really going on inside of us. So there are some people who think that.

Pastor Brian Martin: And those same people think that you thinking anything different is sinful, but they don’t use that word.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: No, not that word. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s remarkable.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: You know, and the truth is they all still believe in sin. Yeah. They all believe in it. The this intellectual exercise that people will do where they’ll, you know, say that the category is not real. That all goes away when they’re wronged. That all goes away. You know, as soon as planes crash into buildings. And we look at another culture, the the idea that all of our morality is culturally developed and, and is simply a human construction made by a society. All that goes out the window, right? Because, well, is it wrong that they did that? Is it wrong that they crashed those planes into those buildings because the people who did that don’t think it’s wrong, right? So are they right in their own mind?

Pastor Brian Martin: Exactly. Yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: They’re not right in their own mind. Correct. They’re actually objectively wrong. And, and so those people who play with these categories and think, oh, I think there’s really no sin in the world. And it’s all just, you know, what is love is love. And whatever we do is fine. And however we want to live. And I’ve, you know, I do what’s best for me, and I think it’s just being good to people and all that kind of stuff. All that goes away when we have to say, is it wrong that a hundred Congolese Christians were murdered at a at a wedding? Was that wrong for that to happen, for people to come crashing in and hurt those people and kill them? And people go, well, you know, it was they thought it was wrong. Like they do all this dance around the actual answer, which is, yeah, it’s it’s evil. It’s evil. It’s evil. There’s an actual category called evil. Exactly. And therefore, thereby there must be a standard by which we would judge that. And it is not a human made standard. It is a law written on our hearts. And if you know the gospel, you know where that law came from. That’s what that’s the beauty of special. The special revelation of the Bible is that it matches up with the general revelation of our world. Precisely. Yeah. And it gives us it makes it makes the sense of the world around us. And so yeah, I, uh, I think, I think we need to have this, keep these, this in front of us, this understanding of an objective evil in the world and then invite people into an understanding of the gospel that explains the very thing that they know to be true.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Uh, I’m going to get the Keller quote wrong, but he said something along the lines of, uh, you’re more wretched than you ever knew, but you’re more loved than you can ever imagine.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s a very good paraphrase. Yeah, it’s very close to what he said. Yeah. Yeah. He’s right. You’re you’re. Yeah, you’re very, very sinful. But you’re very, very loved. Yeah. And that’s the beauty of the gospel. Right.

Pastor Brian Martin: And, and the gospel is bigger than any sin. That’s right. That you could commit. And that’s that’s pretty remarkable. Mhm. That’s pretty great. I was thinking too, as you were speaking there, you mentioned a few weeks ago moralistic therapeutic deism, which is something it’s a worldview concept that, that we teach in my launch class, actually, we talked about that a little bit. And that’s an interesting competing definition of sin. Again, not that they would call it that. And not that anybody calls themselves an MTD, but it’s a thing because, and why it’s so alluring and confusing, I think is because a sin in that worldview is anything that offends somebody else, right? Right. Like it’s offending somebody. So murder is offensive. So we agree that that’s wrong. But there are other things that we would say like, no, this is objectively wrong. And even if it offends you, I don’t care. You know, like, I mean, I care, but like, it doesn’t matter that it offends you. It’s still objectively true. Yeah. And they won’t ever admit to that, you know, so there’s an interesting tension there that I just don’t understand.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Anybody that would say that we both agree. You and I agree that murder is wrong and therefore it is wrong. It just doesn’t understand how culturally bound that would be. Right. Go to go to another country. I won’t name any, but go to another country where it is okay to beat your wife. It’s expected. That is the way life works. Is it wrong? Because there’s a whole bunch of people that would get together and agree that it’s totally fine and totally right. In fact, it’s the right way to lead your family. Is it wrong? It’s ridiculous. Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Or multiple nations throughout history, that child sacrifice was the norm. Absolutely. It just yeah, it. Anyway, praise God that we have God and that there is actually a moral standard to stand on. And that that’s so helpful. Yeah. It’s so helpful. Well, I’m just going to end with this. It’s probably less of a question and more of a comment, but, um, right near the end of the sermon on Sunday, you shared the drowning metaphor. You know, just that the context and I think I’m just going to make a commentary and if you have any to make as well, like I just want to say that, you know, if you didn’t catch that because you were not paying attention in service or you haven’t watched or, you know, you couldn’t make a service and you’re somehow listening to this, but you haven’t watched the service yet. Go back and watch that because I think the, the depth of that idea, um, was, was really profound. And so, um, maybe just you want to just explain what the metaphor was, just maybe just repeat it again, just so that people, because I just think it bears a little bit of reflection for all of us.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. I mean, the idea was this basically what I said was this, you know, if I’m walking down the street and someone comes up behind me and puts me in a headlock and drags me backward and throws me on the ground and and starts pummeling my chest, I’m going to sue that guy for abuse and assault. How dare you do this to me? Uh! I’m being assaulted. How can anybody is wrong. Maybe he doesn’t think. Maybe he doesn’t think it’s wrong. So it’s not. Interesting point. No, but. But it’s wrong, right? It’s wrong. I’m being assaulted. But if you do the same thing to me while I’m drowning, then you just saved my life. And the only difference there is the water. The difference between those two situations is that I am drowning. And my point was, why don’t more people accept Jesus because they don’t know they’re drowning? They don’t understand the problem. They don’t understand the problem of sin. And I am a firm believer. Maybe to maybe I err on the other side. Maybe I err too far in this direction. I am a firm believer that we should talk a whole lot more about sin than we do, because then the gospel shines brighter. Yeah, if the darkness is really, really dark, then the light is really, really bright. Yep. Back to our original, what we talked about in the in the first half of this week’s podcast, you know, we don’t really, we have gradations of light and darkness, dim light, bright light and focused lights, different kinds of lights.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And so we don’t really know what dark is. The Bible presents sin as something that is trying to kill us. Sin is crouching at the door. The Lord said to Cain. Its desire is for you, meaning its desires to destroy you. This is Genesis chapter four. Its desire is for you. You must overcome it. You must destroy it before it destroys you. Yeah. Be killing your sin or it will be killing you. Spurgeon said its. We’re in a. We’re in a fight for our lives against this thing that is trying to kill us. Yeah, and I think that more people would be open to a salvation that might even hurt, that might have to drag me backward, throw me down, and pummel my chest if they understood that they’re this close to drowning in sin. Yeah. And that, that it’s got its hooks in them. Yeah. They’re being pushed under the waves of sin and they don’t see it. And so I that’s why I think it’s important that we take great pains. As a church to explain this well as well as we can to not, you know, sort of go, uh, sin is really not that big a deal.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And let’s just talk about mistakes, the mistakes we make in life. No, these are sins. These are affronts to God that are trying to kill us. That’s what sin is. Okay. Yeah. A mistake is when I go the wrong way down a one way street. That’s a mistake. A sin is when I spit in the face of God, right? And if I get that, oh my goodness, the gospel, the gospel just becomes so much brighter if I’m drowning in that. Who’s going to drag me out if I’m drowning in that? Who’s going to pound on my chest? Who’s going to save me? Jesus did right. Jesus saved me, and I’m alive because of him and I. And I think that’s the way to present the gospel in a way that is truly compelling to people. And I think the more our society collapses in on itself with untruth and with pain and with anxiety and with anger toward other people, I think more people are starting to wake up to the realization that they’re drowning. And I do, I do think that’s why there’s an influx of young people coming back into the church. Yeah. Because they’re drowning in it and they need truth. Mhm. So it’s not a fun thing, but it’s a good thing.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And listeners, if you haven’t seen some of that recent data, it’s pretty interesting. Younger generation is coming back into the church, which is exciting and especially young men, which is fascinating.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It is fascinating.

Pastor Brian Martin: And I would say we’re seeing that here at Calvary, too. Absolutely. We’re we’re in line with those national trends. And that’s interesting. So well, Kyle, thanks for your time and thoughts and thanks for sticking with us listeners for two, two whole podcasts on this one, but these are good reminders to us about our sin. And I guess, you know, maybe to extend that metaphor even a little further, if we’re in the pool and we see somebody drowning, what can we do about it? You know.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Jump in.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we’re not the ones who save, I guess, to try to be theologically accurate in the metaphor. But maybe we can point, which means we pray, which means we share the gospel, whatever our role can be. But if we’re in the pool and we see somebody drowning, we do nothing. That’s not the right response. Right.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Right. Go save them.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s right. So all right. Well, with that, thanks for joining us on the Calvary Call back this special part two episode. We hope this time was an encouragement to you. And whether you are a part of our Calvary family, or if you’re listening from somewhere else in the world, we invite you to join us. Join us. Excuse me 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 Calvary Callback.