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. I’m here today with Pastor Kyle Bushre, who preached this past Sunday a sermon entitled Christ Our Advocate. Looking at 1 John 2:1-6, in our current series, Walk In The Light. Kyle, Good morning.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Good morning. How are you? Excited to talk on the podcast today. Yeah
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Good. Comes around quick!
Pastor Kyle Bushre: It does. It does. But it’s kind of fun. It’s, uh, sort of a long ongoing conversation I get to have around preaching and around this, book that we’re looking at. So it’s, uh, in that way, it’s helpful to me too.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Good, good. Well, I think this is just going to be a one parter. I know last week you and Brian decided to, uh, enlarge your borders and go for a second episode. I think we can fit everything into one. We’ll see. Maybe not.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Fantastic.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So 1 John 2: 1-6, this kind of in the first part we got some kind of courtroom terminology going on here. I just wondered, I mean, do you like courtroom dramas? Are you a John Grisham fan?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You know, I am. I used to read all of his books. I enjoyed him a lot. Um, I don’t have really time. I don’t have I have two kids, you know what that’s like? So I don’t have space to be reading books anymore. Um, but I do like it. And I really liked, uh, did you ever watch Law and Order? No. I guess it’s still on. Oh, yeah. It is. Uh, it was back in the 2000. My wife and I would watch Law and Order like three four to our shame, four episodes in a row.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Binging.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, that was that was binging back when it was just on TV, though. So you had to watch all the commercials and it was like, it took a long time. But yeah, no, I, I do enjoy it.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: No, I used to read quite a lot of John Grisham back in the day. Yeah. And, uh, a few of those kind of, uh, courtroom movies as well were good. I watched one a couple of years ago called juror number two, which was fascinating.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Um, and of course you played I mean, you played a lawyer.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: You played an advocate.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s right.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. That was, uh, that was a thrill of my life. To be able to to be in a show like that, that felt like when I was in that show, it felt like I was, I had I felt like I had a huge weight of responsibility on me because it’s such an iconic character. And I felt like I was stepping out of the pages of every ninth graders American Lit class. So it was, uh, yeah. But that was fun. It was, it was interesting to be able to think through the, to think through the, uh, all the machinations of, of the legal system and how to make an argument. Um, that’s always been inspiring to me. I think if, uh, if I hadn’t gone into ministry, I might have found my way into law.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Interesting. Yeah yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Actually, I did it. In fact, I was when I was at Michigan State University. You mentioned John Grisham. He wrote a book called A Time to Kill. That movie was made of that. And when I was studying acting at Michigan State, uh, the final monologue, the lawyer monologue of that movie I wrote out, I watched it over and over again, wrote the whole thing out, and used it as a monologue in one of my classes at Michigan State. Uh, just because I enjoyed, I just enjoyed the courtroom so much and the law so much. Yeah. So, and it’s fun to bring those two worlds together.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Well, we got this theme in this first part of this, uh, this passage here about Christ, our advocates, um, you know, John’s reminding us that he’s urging us not to sin, but knowing that also we are going to sin, but reminding us that we have an advocate in Christ. Parakletos would be the kind of the Greek word there. Um, so I mean, just delve a little bit into what that means. I know you did this on Sunday. This is the main part of the sermon. But what does that mean for us having an advocate in Christ?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, I think what it is, I think for me, what this means is I do not have to stand before God and justify myself. I think that’s one of the most important parts of the gospel to grasp, and one of the most difficult to, um, to hand off. I really do think this is one of the hardest things when people think about their relationship with God or God in general, or from wherever you’re coming from, the idea that you stand before God, guilty and unable to argue for yourself is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome to even receiving the gospel. So trusting in Jesus means I don’t get to defend myself before God. I don’t get to come with my excuses because that’s what we do with each other, right? We always have an excuse. We always have a reason why we were better than we were. You misunderstood me. You don’t understand me. Uh, you know, you didn’t hear what I said. You didn’t follow my argument. You didn’t, you know whatever it is, we do this with each other because we want to justify ourselves all the time. And a lot of people just take that right before God and they go, well, that’s that’s how I approach God. God, you know who I really am. God, you know, deep down, I’m really not like this. Uh, you know, basically I’m a good person, you know, like that sort of relationship is not present within the gospel.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Isn’t it interesting how, uh, if any of us found ourselves in a real courtroom situation, we’d immediately want a lawyer. We’d want somebody to represent us. We don’t know all the terms. Very, very few people would self represent. And yet in eternity, in the biggest courtroom of all that we’re ever going to face, many people think, no, I think I can, I can defend myself. I can justify myself here.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Exactly. Exactly as if somehow, as if somehow we had entire knowledge of ourselves and could in total recall. And if we did, if we really were honest, we know we wouldn’t have an argument. The very defense we have for each other, for ourselves when we’re talking to somebody else, often relies on our ability to recall what happened and their inability to recall what happened. And God has comprehensive knowledge. There’s no fooling him.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: There’s no hiding.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: No, he’s not, he’s not rifling, you know, rifling through his papers, trying to find all the information about you so to see if what your argument before him is matches up with the reality of the past. He’s got comprehensive knowledge. He knows you better than you. So this idea that we would ever stand before God and defend ourselves on our own merits is, uh, it’s pretty wild to think that we could even do that, but people do.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: People do.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So this term advocates, parakletos. I mean, it’s used elsewhere in the New Testament. It’s used as a term to describe part of the role of the Holy Spirit being a helper, being a comforter, being an advocate. Um, is there any difference in the Holy Spirit’s role versus Christ’s role as being an advocate?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. In the Advocate, I would have to study that probably a little bit more to be able to know the nuances of how that, how parakletos is used in those, those different passages but the idea is the same. And the idea is the spirit always points us to Christ. Right. So it’s not as if Jesus has an entirely different ministry than the Holy Spirit. The spirit is sent by Christ to point us back to Jesus. So in that sense, the advocacy work of Christ is the advocacy work of the Holy Spirit, in that we are connected to Christ through the Holy Spirit. It’s metaphysical, it’s spiritual. It’s difficult probably for us to parse out what, uh, the spirit and the son do in the advocacy work, but clearly they work together in that sense. Um, I am reminded as I think about the spirit specifically, um, that, for instance one of the things that the Holy Spirit does for us is pray when we don’t have the words. So when we, we go before God and we just don’t know what to say. It says that the spirit will actually give words to our groanings and our longings and our, our deepest hurts. And, um, and so even our silence in that sense speaks because the spirit speaks for us. Um, when you have that relationship with God through Christ, you can be confident that even when you don’t have the words, the spirit has the words. And so I think that gets at part of it. But like I said, it would be, you know, I’m sure they’ve written books on the advocacy work of the spirit.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: But the nature of God is the same in the Spirit and in Christ. And so we know if God is advocating us here and now through the spirit, he is certainly going to be doing that.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. In the final judgment.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And there’s a sense in which the Spirit gives us comfort as he reminds us of Christ. So in a sense, while Jesus pleads before the father, advocates before the father on our behalf, because of his propitiation, because of what he’s done for us, and that covers us, the Spirit reminds us and points us to Jesus. So in that sense, it’s almost the mediator work is between my own mind and heart and remembering what Jesus has done. So it kind of all works together, the advocacy of connecting us to the Father. But certainly mysterious. I wish I could, Boy, you know you almost wish you had another book of the Bible that discussed all of the ways that the Trinity worked together. But we don’t really have that.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: John uses this term, uh, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. And you touched on this in the sermon. You kind of pulled it out and said, it’s the only place, I think, in the New Testament where this term is used. Why? Why do you think that is? Why do you think the righteousness of Christ is so key in this particular verse, in this passage?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. I think the reason that he, uh, it’s because of the next thing he says. It’s because he says He is the propitiation for our sins, for our sins. So if you understand a propitiation as a sacrifice that must be, uh, pure and pleasing to God. Right. I think Old Testament, if you know your Old Testament, you know that, uh, those animals, you had to find the unblemished animals. You had to bring your best before the Lord. That was part of it. Not because those animals were actually perfect, because they symbolized perfection. And so they pointed to an actual perfect sacrifice. And that’s what we have in Jesus. So when John says, Jesus Christ, the righteous, he’s saying Jesus Christ, the perfect. Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice, who can be that propitiation. Were it not for his righteousness, his righteous standing before God, he could not fulfill that role. He would have to die for his own sins. But he doesn’t die for his own sins. He dies for ours, which is the beautiful gospel piece of that verse is that he is the propitiation for our sins. And then not only ours, but for the whole world. So yeah, I think that is the reason for highlighting his righteousness there. It is unique though, that in that he sort of tacks on, The Righteous, to the end of Jesus’ name in a way that you just don’t find anywhere else in scripture. And every once in a while you will find a name like that, a way of referring to God that is unique to that particular passage. We have a few examples of that throughout the scriptures.
Yeah. And it shows us it’s not, he’s just not a random lawyer type figure pleading for leniency, pleading to let us off. But he’s there because of what he is, who he is and what he has done.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: He is both the lawyer and the evidence. So, you know, you get a lawyer. A lawyer stands up for you and brings evidence. Jesus brings himself. So he pleads on our behalf because he himself is the one who took the place of our sins. So he is, He serves in both roles in the same verse, which is pretty cool.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: And it’s perfect evidence. It’s flawless. It’s 100%.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s right. You don’t have to, you don’t have to try this evidence on. This is not O.J. Simpson’s glove or anything like that, right? This is uh, this is…
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Uh, there’s no question.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: There’s no question on this one. Exactly.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So you talked a bit about the mechanics of confession. Um, and I know last week you and Brian covered a lot of things about confession. You reminded us it’s important that we confess. Confess to ourselves, confess to one another, to the one that we’ve wronged, to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. So there’s different contexts for confession. I just wondered briefly, uh, being worship pastor here at Calvary, what I’m keen to know what your thoughts are on confession in a worship service, in a corporate worship setting.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Great question.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: We don’t do a whole lot of that here. We do some occasionally, I try and weave it in now and again. But, and obviously there’s some church traditions that really weave confession in every single week as part of a liturgical approach to worship. What are your thoughts on public corporate confession?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Jamie. I think you should confess all your sins every week.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: From the mic.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: In detail. Yeah.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Lead the way.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I do think, I along with you, I agree. I do think it actually is something of a missing piece within our worship. I don’t know why that is. There’s probably great historians out there who have traced the evolution of worship in the church community, um, throughout the centuries. I do know that in a higher liturgical settings, a time of confession, I think it’s usually quiet confession. I don’t think it’s usually…
Pastor Jamie Robinson: It’s not turn to the person next to you.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. I mean, obviously that would be an inappropriate way of doing public confession. However, I do think, uh, that there is a, there should be times when maybe not every week, but times when we spend some time in quiet, contemplative confession. And I wouldn’t say we were entirely without that here at Calvary, because we do that every month when we have our communion, we spend some time talking about confession of sin. And so there is some quiet moments. I know that’s what I do when I take communion. I go before the Lord. And part of my prayer is a time of confession. But, uh, you know, I don’t know. It is hard because you can go the wrong way. I think we talked about it a little bit about this last week with Brian, where for some guys, they’re so keen on standing on the grace of God and so keen on being an example to the flock of confession that they use the pulpit for personal, detailed confession. And it is, um, quite uncomfortable and I would say quite inappropriate in some ways. I mean, I won’t go into the details because I think it’s even inappropriate for a podcast, but I had, I listened to a pastor one time who was struggling with lust in his life, and this was just on a Sunday morning. This wasn’t a men’s ministry or anything. This was a Sunday morning. Men and women, children, everybody in there. And he just went into great detail about not just the fact that he struggled with lust, but the way in which he struggled with lust and the things that came up in his mind. And I thought, this is not good.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So maybe helpful in a small group setting, with people who are struggling. But ..in a public wider setting…
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, even in a… you know I would have thought what he said was even probably inappropriate for a public men’s ministry thing. There’s just, you just have to weigh those sorts of things out. But I will say this, that sort of confession needs to happen. It needs to happen in some setting, with accountability, people around you. But to your question in the worship. Um, I do think that there is, as there has been a movement away from talking about sin in the church, certainly there’s been a movement away from confession of sin.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yes. Yeah. I think those two are linked together in many ways. And, um, absolutely part of the flow of worship, I believe, you know, having starting with praise and adoration, moving to some kind of confession and assurance of pardon to follow that. But of course, we don’t always do that liturgically. Oftentimes it’ll be in a song. It’ll be embedded in the themes and verses of a song. You take a song like His Mercy is more…
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I was just thinking that. So I was just thinking His Mercy Is More.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: I mean, it’s in there and we sing it and we know it. And so it is there. But yeah, I agree. Having regular confession in corporate worship, I think it just fosters that. Um, we get used to doing it. We get used to this as part of the Christian life, to admit that we are sinners, to admit that we fail, but we can come to…. We don’t confess into a vacuum. We don’t confess into an empty space, hoping somebody might respond. We confess to a God who we know, He is in response to us.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: We have a God who will hear me sing aloud, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love”. I can sing that as worship to God because he knows my frailty. He knows that I struggle. And he knows that what I’m singing about, even in my confession of my frailty, is my desire not to be frail and my desire to to come clean and say, God, I… This is part of walking in the light with you, is for me to just say this to you and once again put down my hope in Jesus. I trust in Jesus and Jesus alone for my salvation. He’s the one who’s righteous. His righteousness covers me. That is all part of worship even though it’s hard to say stuff like that, um, to God or to each other. It’s part of worship. And so yeah, I think you’re right. It’s got to be, it’s got to have a place within the worship community.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Another hit, I mean one of my probably all time favorite Christian song of any era is Before the Throne. And I’m actually going to use this on Sunday. We’re going to start with this hymn. Uh, you know verse one, ‘before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great high priest whose name is love. Whoever lives and pleads for me’. You know just that advocate, christ the advocate is right there in, in the first verse. In the second verse, when Satan tempts me to despair. You know, Satan the accuser. That’s another courtroom analogy there. The one who’s trying to accuse us…
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Prosecutor.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Um, ‘it tells us of the guilt within, and upward we look and see him there, who made an end to all my sin’. That’s Christ. And then verse three, ‘behold him there, the risen Lamb, my perfect, spotless righteousness’. It’s such a key theme I think having this view of Christ as our advocate, as the one when we’re weak, when we confess, when we don’t know where to turn, He’s there interceding, praying for us.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Those lyrics that you just mentioned there with the beginning of the song, I have a strong and perfect plea. Right? I have a plea. A great high priest, priest whose name is love and ever lives and pleads for me. My plea is his plea. I don’t…My strong plea… Here’s my biggest, here’s my best argument God, for me: Whatever Jesus says on my behalf, Jesus speaking for me because of what He’s done, it’s entirely Him, that’s the only plea I have. I don’t argue anything else. Such a good, such a good song.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. We had this, um, he moves on as we go through, you know, into verse two and further into this passage, he talks about the sins of the propitiation, sins of the whole world. And again, you tease this out and you made a distinction which I think is important. It’s important we get that the right way round. That’s correct, isn’t it? I mean, we can’t we can’t get that verse the wrong way round, because that radically alters the shape of Christianity.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, if you think what he’s saying there is that Jesus is already right now has propitiated, has, has been the sacrifice and has taken away God’s wrath and anger over the sins of every person around the entire world who has ever lived past, throughout the past and in every country, in every place, then what are we even reading this for? Why would he even say anything about our current sins? They’re already paid for without us doing anything at all. That is not his argument. Um, certainly not his argument. In fact, the whole point of the letter is to make sure that these folks that he’s writing to do not fall into the trap of thinking that they can have a relationship with God apart from Christ. So he’s making a, an argument for, uh, not that all sin is already covered without any confession, without even knowledge of Jesus, that it’s already been paid for by Jesus. He’s not making that argument. He’s saying, everybody in the whole world must come to an understanding of what Jesus has done for them to have this relationship with God.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. And that’s part of our role as Christians is to let people know about that, to tell people, to show them that.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah, there’s a missions, uh, this is a missions statement he’s making here. Um, he wants to, uh, and in this sense, he’s not, he’s not saying this here in order to propel these folks into missions. I believe it does that. I think we should, um, this should propel us into missions. That’s actually not John’s reasoning for putting it here. John is saying it here so that we and all the readers understand that anybody who would tell us that there’s another way in, another way to have a relationship with God, those people are misled. Those people are lying, either knowingly lying or they simply do not know the gospel. They’re walking in darkness. And so if somebody … In that way this is a discernment that he’s offering. Discern. Is this person’s gospel, is this person’s message to you, a message pointing you to Jesus so that you can have a relationship with God? Great, then they’re showing you the light. But if they’re not giving you that, if they’re offering you some other way to have a relationship with God, they’re actually leading you toward the darkness. And that would be true for everybody in the whole world.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Continuing that, that theme, I mean, verse four, ‘whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him’. How easy is it for us to spot a liar, somebody who professes Christ and yet doesn’t obey his commandments. How much should we be on the lookout? I mean, it’s one thing to look at big teachers or preachers or influencers, whoever it might be. Um, but how much should we be on the lookout in our own church context? Should we even be on the lookout? Is it down to us to discern that? Um, and then what do you do if you, if you have some, a brother or a sister who seems to be living this way, they’re inconsistent with what they profess and how they live, how should we lovingly come alongside them?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. How hard is it to spot was the first thing you asked. And I would say it’s very hard to spot. I think it is. I, you know, I talked a little bit about this in counseling situations, trying to figure out where a person is at spiritually. Let me just try to find the starting point for someone who’s struggling. I don’t know how much they know of Christ. I don’t know, I don’t know if they’re relying on Jesus, but just really struggling in this area or if they’re struggling, but they, they, uh, they don’t have Jesus at all. And they really aren’t looking for gospel solutions to things. So in a counseling situation, it’s very difficult to spot. In a false teacher sense, which is kind of what you’re asking here, you know, how much on the lookout should we be for this? I think pretty high alert. How many warnings do we have in the New Testament about false teachers? They’re all over the place. This whole book is one. Um, you know Paul talks about watching out for the dogs, right? Those ravenous wolves coming after us. Um, Jeremiah in the Old Testament talked about false prophets. Uh, there’s a whole lot of people that would like to say, here’s what God has to say to us today, who do not speak for God.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And, uh, sometimes it’s as clear as that. And when it is as clear as that, when someone just simply shares something that’s supposedly from God, that is clearly not the gospel and is not pointing to Christ at all, it’s actually easier to spot. Uh, but it’s harder when someone does know the gospel but does not live the gospel. And that’s really what John’s talking about here. You can parrot the gospel. You can, assume it. You can, uh, describe it, you know, but you don’t actually live for Jesus. And so, you know, what do you say? What do we do in that situation? I think that’s where we as a church, have to be watching out for each other. That’s a part of the care ministry of a church to actually care enough about the people who call this church home, who call Calvary home, to when we see as they say, if you see something, say something, Uh, to ask and probe and care enough to take a side and say, I see this going on in your life. You profess Jesus, but you’ve got, you’re walking in darkness. You’re off on a different path, and you don’t seem to care. Let’s talk about that.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. It’s the importance of, of community, of fellowship, of groups, whatever groups we might be a part of, shepherding groups. Of church membership, of having permission to speak into these things in a deeper way.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. We talk, when we talk about shepherding here, we talk about the functions of know, feed, lead, and protect and shepherding. By the way, I get that from my my mentor, Tim Whitmer, who was a great professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. But in his writings, it’s fantastic how he’s isolated those different functions. But that first one, know, is so important. And for a lot of folks, they don’t want to be known. Even in the church, they want to be seen. They want to have some level of friendship, but they don’t really want to be known because if you were really known, if people really knew you, then they could speak into your life and they would see things you don’t want them to see. But as Christians, we should want that. If you don’t want that as a follower of Jesus, you don’t want somebody to be able to truly know you and see you and speak into your life and say hard things to you. You’re missing a big part of what it means to be the church. Uh, and I get it. People get burned by this. You know, the gossip. We talk all the time around here about, uh, you know, we don’t want gossip to spread like cancer in a church. And, and so it’s hard to trust people sometimes. And I get all of that. Uh, but that needs to be overcome in the life of a Christian.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: And even just starting with 1 or 2 trusted people. You know, this passage today has given us such encouragement that when we do confess, when we have that posture of being open and honest with God, with a couple of trusted people, um, he’s faithful. He’s good. He’s going to advocate for us. He’s going to… As we abide in him, he’s going to be for us, not against us.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And if we have the right culture of confession, I mean, let’s speak to the other side of this. We talk about we should be confessing to one another. Great. You know what we also should do? We should also be good listeners. Be good listeners who are rooted in the gospel, who do not jump to judgment quickly, who do not share people’s information with, you know, around, so that it becomes a place where you don’t feel confident, that you can’t even trust people. We have to build the culture of confession. And that requires both the courage to confess your sin, but also the skill set to know how to handle other people’s confession in a gracious and loving way. And certainly in a peer to peer, I’m with you, I’m a sinner too, kind of way of listening, not a how dare you or oh my goodness, did you hear what so and so did? Or wow, that’s really terrible that you did that kind of. Yeah, you react that way to somebody’s confession. That’s going to be the last time that happens.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Certainly lots that we can do here as a church community to encourage one another, to stand alongside one another. So I think we’ll leave it there, Kyle.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: All right. Sounds good.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: That was great. Thank you so much. And, uh, I appreciate all your insight. And this is such a great letter to be going into every week over the summer, I think. So thank you. 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 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. We’ll see you next time on the Callback.