Pastor Jamie Robinson: Hi everyone. 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. My name is Jamie Robinson, and I’m your host this week. And I’m here today with Pastor Kyle Bushre, who preached this past Sunday a sermon titled “The Brutal Cross”. Looking at Luke 18:31 to 34 in our current sermon series, “Salvation has Come”. Kyle, how are you doing today?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Doing great. Thanks, Jamie. It’s, uh, it’s interesting that we’re two episodes in. We’ve already replaced the host.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I know Brian is missing. Missing in action already.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: He’s gone. Yeah, yeah. So? So we’re gonna. I think this is going to be a fun thing about this. This program is that we’re going to rotate a lot. I won’t be the one that preaches every week. Uh, I might even end up in the host chair every once in a while, uh, to, to talk to the person who did, did preach that week. So, uh, this is a great, uh, ministry for our church. I think in that way it’s not, it’s not, it’s not a show about what Kyle said this week. It’s a show about what are we talking about as a church? And I love that, that bit of it.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Right. Yes. Yeah. And it’d be great to have different perspectives. Kyle. Um, Brian did a great. Did you hear the siren then?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah, there was a siren.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yes, there was a siren. Then. It’s a Wednesday morning.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: They’re testing the the tornado.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, is that what it is?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: That’s what it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Is. Okay, so all of our listeners. It’s okay. It’s fine. Calm down. You’re okay.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Now. Brian. Brian did a great job last week. So it’s big shoes to fill already, but okay, well, let’s let’s dive in to to the sermon this week.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Um, not an easy one this week.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: This was not an easy listen. I will say that and I’m sure it wasn’t necessarily an easy one to, to prepare for either. Um, I mean, your sermon text was relatively short. You had four verses to, to preach on, but you clearly did a lot of research for this one. You had Old Testament prophecy in there. You had insights into Roman history and culture. You had medical journals, human anatomy. Um, yes. Did this feel like a different type of, sermon to prepare for.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes, this was definitely a different kind of sermon for me. Uh, usually what I’m doing is I’m walking through a passage and I’m just pulling out observations and the facts as they’re there. I’m trying to figure out what is Luke trying to communicate to, to the listener, to the reader. And that’s, that’s my message. That’s what I want to communicate. You don’t need my opinions on these things. Uh, this was different for a couple of reasons. One, I felt like it was a good opportunity to get into some of this history, which I did not, uh, later when these things that I’m describing actually take place, those passages will have their purpose. Luke will have reasons for describing all the details there and those details I want to walk through here. Jesus is giving us a summary of what’s going to happen and what I what I realized was, as he’s saying these things to these guys there, it’s coming into their ears. As he said earlier in Luke nine, it’s sinking into their ears in a way that it does not sink into our ears because we don’t have that history.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: We don’t we don’t consistently remember what crucifixion meant in that day where these guys were living it. These guys would have seen it happening. And so I thought, well, instead of going into all the detail later when we have larger passages, let’s take this sort of short passage and let’s infuse it with the context, the historical context of how these disciples would have heard this and why it would have bewildered them and why they would have, you know, earlier in Luke nine, been scared to ask any questions about it. What what is it about suffering and crucifixion and flogging and those things, those terms that would have prevented them from wanting to talk about these things? Uh, set aside entirely the fact that God didn’t open their minds to understand these things at that point, right? They certainly still would have understood what crucifixion is. They would have understood what flogging is and it would have would have scared them. So yeah, it was definitely different, different kind of sermon for me. Um, but I think that, uh, yeah, it felt like a really appropriate place to dive deep.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Were you learning new things as you, as you dived into to the Roman culture to understand a little bit more about the, the methods of crucifixion? Did you learn new things as you, as you opened up?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, absolutely. The, uh, the article that I read from the 80s, which I guess was partially written by your friend. Uh, well, tell me the name again. His.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, somebody I. Yep. Somebody I knew from, uh, from, from Rochester here a few years ago, a guy called Bill Edwards was part of that, uh, that paper that was written.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah, I did look it up. And by the way, he was one of the co-authors of the article I read. I was, I was unaware of that at the time, but that was, that was pretty cool. I did learn more about the, the medical side of the cross, but interestingly, I had heard a lot of that before. You know, I’ve been a Christian now for over 20 years and 20, 26 years at this point. And, uh, I’ve heard lots of sermons that go into the details about Jesus death and what crucifixion does to your body. And, you know, it’s very moving. And I wanted to convey that because I know there’s always going to be a certain percentage of any crowd, any gathering of the church that has not heard these things or has forgotten these things, and that really had them impact how they see the cross. But what really struck me this week, what I what I learned that I didn’t know before was I really had an opportunity to dive into, uh, the Roman testimonies on crucifixion in general. I hadn’t spent a lot of time looking at what Cicero said or what Seneca said, what Josephus had to say about crucifixion and what I was struck by was how barbaric they saw it. And their people designed it.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Right. So. So what struck me was this wasn’t just a way. They did a way. They did execution then. And it seems barbaric to us. They designed it to be the worst thing that they could think of. They designed it to be so shameful, so painful, so utterly barbaric that the contemporaries of the time, the people carrying it out, didn’t want to even think about it. Uh, that that struck me. Uh, when people talk sometimes about the crucifixion or crucifixion in general being one of the worst ways to die. I always think, yes, it sounds terrible. It’s awful. I’ve heard of it. Uh, I’ve heard the details of it. Uh, but do we just think it’s the worst way to die? Because we because we’re we’re in the 21st century, and that just sounds awful. No, it was the worst way to die. Designed to be so by the first century. People carrying it out. That’s what really struck me this week.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: You took us back to the Old Testament. Rightly so. How important is it to keep those Old Testament prophecies in view when we’re looking at the cross and the events of the cross in the New Testament?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, I think it’s important. I think it’s pretty important. I think you can understand what Jesus has done just based on what Jesus said he was doing and what the New Testament writers said about what he did. Right. You read first Peter two and you hear Peter, Jesus Apostle, talking about the crucifixion and how it now has become an example for us, so we can learn from the New Testament alone what the impact was of, of the crucifixion on Christianity, on theology, that that it has to be at the center of our theology. Substitution, atonement, penal substitutionary atonement, uh, Is the center and everything we believe about who Jesus is and what he’s done in the world, and the mission of the church and all that works its way out from the center of the cross. The New Testament, I think, is very clear on that. And yet it’s very clear from the gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are very Jewish in their culture. It’s very important to them to make sure that that what they experienced in Christ was tied to everything that was said before in their scriptures. They saw Jesus as the outworking in every capacity of his ministry, as the outworking of their promised Messiah. Uh. I believe that though the first century apostles before the resurrection did not do a very good job or had difficulty tying, uh, the Davidic king, uh, promises to the suffering servant promises I think that Jesus, uh, it’s clear to me that in the way that Jesus taught that he wanted them to make that tie.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And so when he’s describing what’s going to happen to him, he wants them to hearken back to Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, and understand that he’s the fulfillment of those things. Now, they didn’t really understand that until after the resurrection. And then you have Peter again, first Peter two, quoting Isaiah. He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. He’s quoting it. He he realizes it now. He gets it now. Um, but, uh, they in that way, in their witness, even though you can fully understand the cross from the New Testament, the way they talk about the cross, the Old Testament brings it to life. And, and I am very moved, uh, by looking at a fulfillment of the Old Testament to such detail. It gives me a lot of confidence in my Bible that it’s historically reliable. So yeah, I think, I think those ties to the Old Testament are vital for our full understanding of what Jesus has done for us.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, yeah. They really help bring to life and help us understand. Put the cross into the context of history, into God’s plan. The foreshadowing, the event itself. And then as we look back on it, we’re able to understand fully. Yes. You mentioned, um, substitutionary atonement and, uh, there’s some progressive forms of Christianity, Christianity out there that have huge difficulty accepting the brutality of the, of the cross as God’s plan for, for salvation. They deny that doctrine of substitutionary atonement that Jesus died in our place to, to satisfy the wrath of God, taking the punishment that we deserve upon himself. Probably most famously, British author Steve Chalk famously referred to to that as as cosmic child abuse.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes, cosmic child abuse. Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: What would you say to someone who is struggling to come to terms with the idea that this was this was God’s plan all along?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing I would say is if we’re going to be honest about what the Bible says, we need to read the Bible for what it says, not what other people say about it and force their, uh, their feelings on it. I really think that when you use a phrase like cosmic child abuse, you are, uh, taking the sensitivities of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our modern ways. We’d like to think and you’re and you’re sort of reading that onto the Bible. Uh, anytime you read something onto the Bible, you do what’s called eisegesis. You read true. You read facts or your your opinions into the Bible. You’re going to skew what it’s saying. So there is no sense in, uh, all of Scripture that what Jesus received on the cross was any kind of abuse other than, uh, human abuse that he was. There was a miss. It was a false trial was a sham trial. He was not a He was not convicted for his sins. He went to the cross willingly, but he wasn’t convicted for his sins. He was. If there’s abuse in there, it’s abuse unlawfully at the hands of humanity. Jesus willingly went into that human abuse. Now it was the Lord’s plan to crush him. As we read both in Isaiah and in the Gospels and in the writings of the New Testament writings, it was the Lord’s plan that this happened.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And this is where people are getting this idea that it was some sort of child abuse, that the God the Father abused God the Son. But if you have a, I think, a proper understanding of the Trinity, this is not this is not a subordinate to God the Father who’s being punished. This is God. God himself becomes both the willing party and the receiver of his own wrath on the cross. This is God taking our place on the cross. That’s a better understanding. That’s a that’s a fuller understanding of the Trinity. Now economically within the Trinity, the father, the son and the spirit all have different roles within what took place on the cross. That is true. But their one God. And so I don’t, uh, this is not, um, abuse in the way that we think of abuse. Um, and the Bible simply doesn’t present it that way. So I think it’s, uh, intellectually dishonest to just throw a phrase like cosmic child abuse on top of what happened to Jesus on the cross and, and say, that’s what the Bible teaches. That is not what the Bible teaches. That is not the message of the cross at all.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: So yeah, yeah, that could really undo the power of the gospel, the power of the gospel message taking that view.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And if you remove penal substitutionary atonement, okay. Which is sort of the, the very center of what God has done, that Jesus died for our sins. If you remove that, you have a very hard time explaining the cross at all. In my opinion, You can talk about Jesus triumphing over his enemies. Christus Victor view. You could talk about him setting an example for us. A moral example of being willing to die for your friends or that sort of thing. And these all have some some impact, some there are there are some implications of this from the cross, for sure. I mean, Jesus does triumph over Satan. He does crush Satan’s head on the cross, but remove penal substitutionary atonement. You’d have a very hard time describing what he did for us. How does this impact us in any way? Hmm. What happens to our sins if you remove penal substitutionary atonement? We still have them. There’s no sense in which they’re gone. And then you can’t really. You really can’t describe or explain how if the wages of sin is death and I still have my sin, how is my eternity not an eternal death? This is explained over and over and over again, all throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament for that matter. If you just look at the sacrificial system, right? It’s explained that the sacrifice took it for me. The sacrifice took it for me. Jesus says, I am the Lamb. He’s the sacrifice. He’s taking it for me. Pull that away. Who takes away my sins? I think I do, I think I take my sins into eternity, right? So I think Christianity just falls apart if you remove the center.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Jesus, uh, suffering on the cross, I mean, it surpasses anything that we could possibly imagine. I think, um, it’s not just the physical pain that he endured, which would have been horrendous. But in addition to that, the torment within, you know, being separated from the father, having the father turn his face away as he is, he bore our sins for us, being separated from from the Godhead in that way. Um, so we’re never going to endure suffering to that level. But we all have, or we all will at some point endure suffering in life. Um. What comfort could there be? What hope could there be for someone who is currently in a season of suffering? What could they find? What can they draw from seeing and hearing about Christ’s suffering on the cross for us?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s a great question. You know, Scripture says that Jesus endured this world the way we endure it, right? He was tempted in every way we are without but without sin. He suffered the way we suffer. We see that in the cross, right? Ultimately, in the cross, he suffered in other ways throughout his life. But the cross is the ultimate suffering that Jesus took on. So he understands us. He, God was willing to endure the suffering of his own creation so that he would understand us. This is what Hebrews talks about that he would, um, he he, he gets what we go through, uh, physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, and so I think when a person is suffering, uh, what they want is for God to understand God. Do you understand how hard this is? Uh, God, you’re taking me through a really difficult season of my life, and I just don’t know how to get through this pain. Lord, do you do you know if you’re praying. Lord, do you know what I’m going through? The answer is yes.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Um.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: The answer is yes in a way that it wouldn’t be for any, any totally transcendent God, any God that was entirely above his creation, that had no interaction with it. Um, you know, he can he can sympathize with us because he’s endured suffering, true suffering in this world. And the other thing I would say to the person that’s suffering is when you have Jesus, you have the you have the Christ who overcame suffering in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world when I’m attached to Jesus. I am, uh, I am attached to a God. I am in Christ. I am in, uh, the family of a God who, uh, endured and overcame. And the promise is the, the spiritual promise to me, the down payment of the Holy Spirit to me, according to Ephesians chapter one, is that my inheritance is forever with this Jesus who has overcome. And so I think when a person is suffering, uh, the best thing they can do is lean into Christ, lean into the promises of Scripture, not pull away, not not point a finger at God and say, you don’t understand what you’re doing to me. He fully understands what he’s allowing to come into your life. And I think there’s great comfort in that. And ultimately there’s hope in that that you can’t find anywhere else.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, that’s so powerful, so powerful, and hopefully an encouragement to those who are walking through seasons of trial right now. No doubt at the end of your sermon, you took us to First Peter chapter two, where he lays out the case that because Christ bore our sins in himself, because he set us free from the power of sin, we are called to follow Christ’s example. You summarize by saying that our lives should be cross-shaped. They should be cruciform. Yes. Just unpack a little bit for us. What does a cross-shaped life look like in our Western civilization, in our society today? What does what does that look like at work? At home?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, we have a really tough time with this because we don’t tend to see our lives as, as shaped by the cross. Willing to go wherever God would take us, willing to suffer anything God brings into our lives for the sake of the mission of the church, for the sake of the gospel spread across the world. Uh, we tend to just sort of live our lives in the same pursuit of comfort and happiness that everybody else pursues. And to a degree, there’s nothing wrong with that because no one wants to suffer. No one, No one should pursue suffering and want a bad life. I think what’s clear, though, in what Jesus said is that as I as I said before, he said, in this world you will have trouble following Jesus is going to bring some trouble into your life, right? You’re not going to be able to just make all the choices the way you want to make them live your life however you want to live. You’re following Jesus means submitting everything in your life to the Lord and saying, do with me what you will. Take me where you want me to go. Whatever suffering you bring into my life, I will endure it for your glory. Uh, I, I, I will not, uh, self-medicate with the comforts of the world. I’m going to, uh, I’m going to live in such a way that I’m obedient to you. Even when I’m, when I’m happy and when I’m terrified or when I’m scared or I’m when I’m sad.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Um. I’m not going to set down my obedience to you. And that looks different in a lot of different contexts. It almost seems almost a little bit soft to say to describe the ways that is lived out here, as opposed to, say, the Iranian church is living it out right now, right? And in places where the gospel is still illegal, which is many, many places around the world where it is not easy when you know, when if you’re in sub-Saharan Africa and, uh, radical jihadists are coming to your town and you can die for simply being a Christian. Hundreds of people were killed in the Congo just a couple of months ago. For going attending a Christian wedding, what does it mean to suffer? Well, for the sake of the gospel in that context, as opposed to my 9 to 5 cushy, middle class, very comfortable lifestyle? It’s it, it matters in both, both contexts, right? But it certainly looks different. So. So your question is how does it look? How does that look for us today? What does a cruciform life look like in our context? I really do think it is a call to radical sacrifice that no one is making us do, right. So it’s going to affect, for instance, and this is classic, of course, but it’s going to affect how we see money and what we’ve been given by God.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Are we giving in a, in a radical, uh, by radical, I mean down to our root, uh, gospel shaped sort of way to the point where we’re giving in such a way that it’s clear that this money is not our idol. Um, as we talked about actually in the first, first podcast, first episode, uh, it is it going to look like, um, being willing to love our enemies right now. Um, here in the Minnesota context, we’ve had a lot of call for, uh, need for loving people who are different than us. And I just mean that in every seems like in every everything that happens right now, there’s a political uprising. People choose sides. And now the new way we, uh, talk to one another is by shouting each other down and being angry and upset all the time about everything that’s happening. Uh, we’re called to something different. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to listen and love and care. Even with people we don’t fully agree with. People who are not like us. We’re called to be patient and kind. All those, uh, spiritual fruits, right? We have to reject in our culture, we have to reject this sort of, uh, cultural ethos of attacking each other all the time because that’s not what a cruciform life would look like. It would look like dying for the other person.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Radical self-sacrifice, putting the other above yourself.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And we’re just not we’re just not good at that yet. So, so a cruciform life today is I mean, I think the way you make it is you simply look at Christ, you understand what he’s done. You run every thought, every activity, every choice you make, as well as you can through prayer, through the lens of the gospel. And then you live out a self sacrificial life for the good of others and for the glory of God. That’s how I would put it.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: That’s great. Well, Kyle, thank you so much. Thank you. It was a tough, tough topic, tough sermon to, to, to listen to and to prepare, but so crucial to to our Christian faith. So, so crucial to understand really is the heart of the gospel.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Appreciate it. Jamie.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us on the Calvary Callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you and whether you’re part of our Calvary family, or if you’re just 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. I’m Jamie Robinson, and we’ll see you next time on the callback.