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 Jamie Robinson, who preached a sermon titled Mutual Indwelling looking at 1 John 4: 13-17. All right. I just said that in a very American way. Chapter four, verses 13 through 17. I feel like there’s a British way to say that slightly differently. How, when you do like biblical references, don’t you sometimes like because I’ve heard some Brits say like one John.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: One John,Yes.

Pastor Brian Martin: And then but and then how do the verses get said? Does everybody say it the way I just said it or I feel like I’ve heard…

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, the verses would be as you said, but quite often one John, one Timothy. I’ve had to make sure when I, yeah, when I talk about verses, when I preach, like I want to be consistent with you guys because this is where I live now.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Which is great. My favorite one that, you know, because we have a handful of Brits, of course, across our church. My favorite one is the way that you say the name of the book that is the largest, um, like Old Testament prophet.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Isaiah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Not Isaiah, not Isaiah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Last time I preached, which was about a year ago, I had to be really intentional actually up front. I had to say, look, I’m not going to say Philistines. I’m going to say Philistines. Because if I if I try with Philistines, I know I’m just going to default back to Philistines at some point.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s funny. Yeah. Oh, man. Language stuff is so fun for me.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: We are. What do they say? Two nations divided by a common language?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. I suppose, I suppose. And interestingly, language is actually usually the thing that unifies a country. Right. Like in China, for example, there’s tons of spoken languages within the country of China, but it’s the written language that sort of makes them a country. That’s one of the things that sort of defines the borders of what we now think of as China, but that’s wow, we really got off to a very, uh, unexpected start, right? Right there. We’re talking.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: It was always going to come back to the English language. Let’s be honest.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. Well, um, we were just talking before we turned on the mics here. And in my mind, I feel like, you know, I’ve heard Jamie on the podcast multiple times here and, and he was just mentioning that this is the first time in that chair, like the, the interviewee.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Mhm.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah. Because you’re usually my first call for a sub when I have to be away.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: So yeah, every time you head to the beach, every time you had to Hawaii, Florida, Malibu…

Right.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: You call me up and you say, hey, I need you to step in. And I gladly do it, while you’re sipping your cocktails.

Pastor Brian Martin: I think the actual places I’ve been are Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Rochester, Minnesota. I think those are the only places I’ve actually been when you’ve covered. So if only…

Pastor Jamie Robinson: You have, you’ve been doing noble things and work related things.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah. Some of those. Oh, goodness. Well, first of all, um, I’m gonna give you a little bit of a hard time about something you said in the sermon, because when you made that little joke at the beginning about like you and Kate having like, a ginger haired baby with a beard. The picture in my mind was just disturbing, man. Like, it was like your wife’s long hair and like your scruffy beard on the body of a baby. And it was just. It was the stuff of nightmares, man.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I’m sorry for putting that image in your mind.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and, you know, you’re both, you know, beautiful people. Don’t get me wrong. I just, you know.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Just not merged.

Pastor Brian Martin: Not merged together. Like you need to be your own people.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, yeah, that was, that was kind of the point I was trying to bring out in a way.

Pastor Brian Martin: I liked it a lot. It was very funny. And and also instructive. It wasn’t just funny to be funny. You were making a very good point. I appreciated it. So, um, I’m feeling for the guys here that are on this back bit of this series because and you mentioned this well, at the beginning of your sermon, like there’s a lot of repetition here, right? John’s using all this repetition for a reason. And I think you explained that well, but just let’s, let’s expand on that a little bit. I just said that like I was from Minnesota. Expand on that a little bit. That’s right. That’s where I live now. Um, so why might the writer of First John be using that for good? Like he, I don’t think this was an accident. Right. Nothing in Scripture is an accident. Obviously, it’s God ordained, but why is he doing that? Why is he giving us this deep repetition in both language and theme throughout the letter?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Right. It’s a good question, because he could have laid everything out very logically, I think, and just put everything in a very compelling argument. And there are books of the Bible that do that. They have a very logical procession to them. Romans, for example, might be one. They’re laying out the case very clearly moving through. But with this letter it is very circular. These themes keep coming back around and around and around. I think a good case might be memorization. That he’s written this letter to, to a church to be read out in a church. Back then it would have been primarily audible. The letter would have been written and people would hear it. And I think this style, this kind of repetitive style, really drills things home in a different way. I think it connects the themes as well together, the themes of light and love, of obedience, of abiding, those kind of themes. They interlock when they come round again with each pass. And it helps when we’re preaching through this week by week, as we are for so many weeks, because we think, oh, I’ve heard this before. And then you start to think, no, actually I haven’t understood it quite at this level this time. Each time he revisits, he’s digging a little bit deeper. Um, it interconnects the themes together as well. Like it interconnects. You can’t, you can’t disentangle love from obedience or light from darkness or abiding from love. All these themes, they just, he’s woven them together in such a way that we can’t now pull out one string and think, oh yeah, we know about obedience. Like No, obedience is fully connected to love and light and abiding, and abiding is fully connected to these other things.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. He does some deconstructive work in some of these parallels, right? Light is this, it’s not this, love is this, it’s not this. And that’s part of how he’s going deeper and deeper into trying to help the listeners of the original letter or the readers or however you would say it, understand it more and more. It’s funny what triggered in my mind there when you were just saying that is it reminds me of, um, my freshman year of college, you know, it was first time I was away from home kind of a thing. I had never appreciated my parents more than after talking with, you know, meeting all these new people and learning about them and learning about their families. And I just was like, my parents are awesome. Partially because I’m comparing them to my friends stories and the, you know, this friend who has a terrible relationship with his dad, or this friend whose parents have been divorced for since he was six, you know, and just the struggles that he had and all these. And it’s like, there’s this piece of when we have to compare things that we can go and do a deeper understanding by comparing. And that’s part of what what he’s doing, I think with the repetition is, okay, look, you know what light is, but like, but have you considered it this way?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: You know what love is, but have you considered it this way? And there’s some interesting thematic things going on there.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. And it’s just that ever deepening kind of sense that when we revisit these things, he’s coming at it from a slightly different angle. He’s bringing in some things he didn’t bring in last time. He is building that case I think. It was steer clear from false teaching, walk in the light. He’s building that. But each time it’s a little bit deeper and different and he’s connecting different things together. But yeah, preaching it, it can be a bit of a challenge. When I, when I got this passage and I looked through it and when I heard Kyle preach on abiding all those weeks ago, I was thinking, okay, what? Okay, where do I go now with, with abiding because it’s coming up again. Yeah. In other words, what’s different? What can I pull out? What’s the, what’s what’s John getting to when he’s, when he’s talking about it in this context at this part.

Pastor Brian Martin: Which is one of the best things about Scripture, is that it can always take the weight of further consideration and further scrutiny and further… Right. I mean, it just it can you can always go deeper into it, which is one of the reasons it’s so life giving and why it’s, you know, we never stop being consumers of the word or we never should be, no matter how long we live, no matter how long we’ve been walking with the Lord, we just need to keep interfacing with His word. Because there’s more. There’s more for us there.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. I mean, we were both part of this. The preaching lab, the training group that Kyle been working with us to, to kind of give us some insights, some training, some tips on how to approach preaching like this. And I remember him saying, you know, with these with these passages where you maybe have three, four, five verses, they’re quite narrow. Um, but he likened it to a sandbox or as we say in England, sand pit.

Pastor Brian Martin: Ah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: There we go.

Pastor Brian Martin: I didn’t, I didn’t know that.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Sand pit. Um, you’ve got your sandbox there and you can, you can go deep in that sandbox. And that’s what I tried to do really with this sermon.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. I mean, as somebody who was just receiving it, it certainly didn’t feel like it was… It hadn’t felt like, it didn’t feel like I had already heard this sermon before, you know, and there was new things to unearth and yeah, fantastic. Good stuff. So, um, part of the passage, of course, brought the Holy Spirit into the conversation. And I mean, not that he was ever not in the conversation, but still, um, but in the text explicitly. And, and so that that’s a really helpful piece. Um, I was reflecting on, you know, Francis Chan I think did a great service to evangelicalism when he wrote his book, whatever it was that probably 15 years ago, Forgotten God, something like that. And that title is so apt because I think, you know, I’ve talked to people before, hey, you know, where are you at with your faith journey, etc.. And, you know, I’ve heard people say things like, oh yeah, me and Jesus are tight, you know? Or oh yeah, I’m just trying to get closer to Jesus and God. And, you know, there’s the third one, right? You know, like it’s the Trinitarian nature of God. So why do you think sort of collectively in, in at least American Christendom, we generally tend to de-emphasize the spirit.  Why do you think we do that?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Mhm. It’s a good question, for sure. I wonder if it’s something to do with the Spirit’s work in us. It really is quite invisible. It’s that work that goes on in us and it goes on over a long period of time. I mean, the Spirit’s work in us happens across a lifetime. It’s not just instant work. It’s the work of illumination, of conviction, of, of a change of heart, a change of attitude. On the whole that’s, that’s taking months and years to work out. And we don’t typically see it I don’t think.  If we stop and think about it, we see it. If we look back, we can see it. Maybe we’ve seen it in the lives of those around us as well, as they’ve been developing in Christ and growing in Christ. But it’s not flashy, it’s not quick. So I think that could be one reason, perhaps. Yeah. You know, it’s just this work that goes on behind the scenes underneath, away from things that we can see. Um, the spirit and I tried to draw this out on Sunday, the spirit doesn’t point to himself as well. He’s really not about making much of himself. Spirit’s work is to to illuminate Christ and  to allow us to see Christ in new and fresh ways. And I think that that’s when, when the third person of the Trinity is not pointing to himself, we can we can forget sometimes. Yeah. It doesn’t mean to say he’s not working.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great point. I think too. Yeah. I think the invisible nature, there’s maybe another application of that too. Just as you were saying that, it made me think this. Like, I also don’t actually know how the spirit is working in your heart. You know, even though we’re friends, even though we work together, like I don’t actually know, I can point to the work of Jesus and know how that’s a part of your faith story, my faith story, that sort of external in that sense. Right? And, and I can see the power of God throughout Scripture and throughout history and even in my own life. But what the Spirit’s doing in you, I can’t see really either. And you can see it in effect at times.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: You can see the fruit.

Pastor Brian Martin: We can see the fruit, you know, of course, and or the, the change. You know, I remember years and years ago at my home church, my friend John was a drug addict. And I saw him come back from rehab and I saw him across the room and I was like, he got saved. I could see it. I could see it in his face. It was the craziest thing. And then I talked to him and it was true. Um, and I’ve only that’s only happened to me a couple of times in my life that I’ve been able to see it like that. But, you know, so sometimes you can see the effect of it, but it is invisible in that way too. Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I think also as well, we have very, uh, obvious, relatable concepts of father and son because we’re human and because that’s the way God has created us to be. We have father, we okay, we may not all have a great father image, but we all know what a father is and what he does. Yeah, we all know what a son is and what a son generally does. We understand the relationship between father and son. Mhm. Um, when it comes to spirits…

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah it’s more elusive.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: It’s really elusive. We do, and we understand about spirits and maybe ghosts and the ethereal side of life, whatever the supernatural. But it’s so hard. You can’t put your finger on it. You can’t. You can’t see. I’ve got a relatable, uh, material thing that I can look at and relate to. And so we get the father, we get the son, spirit can be a little bit more elusive.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. I think there’s maybe some denominational wrinkles to this too, right? Because I think in evangelicalism, there’s probably two major streams, which is sort of the more intellectual side and the more charismatic side. And I don’t mean to say that charismatics are not intellectuals. I mean more of the lens you’re looking through sort of. And so sometimes I worry in our tradition where we tend to be pretty stitched up, you know. We tend to be. And and there’s some, I think, fear of the misuse of the so-called, you know, gifts of the spirit, uh, and some of those things that, you know, you know, obviously within our stream, there’s also Cessationists who would say, you know, those gifts of the spirit were for another time and not now. And, um, not that that’s where all of us at Calvary land or anything, but I’m just saying those things are there. So there’s almost this like..

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Pushback.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, it’s, it’s a little throwing the baby out with the bathwater I would say.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, I agree.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And I would say, because we’re in the tradition we’re in, I think we should encourage one another to be sensitive to the spirit, to remember that the spirit is an equal part of the Trinity, uh, all of those kinds of things. But I think, I think we get scared of it partially because of its mystery. Mhm. You know?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And I grew up in a very charismatic..

Pastor Brian Martin: Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, yeah. I mean, my whole, uh, first, I don’t know, ten, 12 years, 14 years of life, uh, were in very charismatic churches back in the UK.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And so going to church for me was, was going in at nine 9 or 930 in the morning. Church might finish by noon if we’re lucky. And there would be people falling down on the floor in the spirit. There’d be all sorts of different things happening.

Pastor Brian Martin: I don’t remember this about your background.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And I just thought that was totally normal. And that was what I grew up in. Wasn’t until later on when I kind of moved away from that more charismatic side of church expression and found myself in a more reformed kind of church expression. But yeah, so that was normal to me. But I agree, yeah, we, we perhaps have, we’ve, we’ve in some streams of Christianity, we’ve moved too much the other way. The spirit is, is hardly ever mentioned. He’s hardly ever put into a service. Um, you know, a lot of our songs that we sing focus either on God. So they mention God, they, they quite often mention the father and the son, but songs that mention the spirit are either these kind of atmospheric songs, you know, come and change the atmosphere type songs.

Pastor Brian Martin: I was just thinking that exact song right now.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, yeah. Or they’re very vague. So I’m trying to find songs that we can sing that are Trinitarian. You know, a hymn like Holy, Holy, Holy is such a great hymn because it’s Trinitarian. It mentions father, son and spirit and trying to find songs that are specific about not only the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit does, but the interconnection, the role the spirit plays in our salvation alongside the role of the son and the father as well.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Helping to bring those those into view because there’s not that many songs out there that do that well.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s fascinating because I, I’m, I’ve been a worship leader too, you know, over the years and been involved in song selection. I don’t think I’ve ever used Trinitarian consideration as a standard of inclusion. That’s really interesting that that’s something you actively do. I appreciate that. I think that’s that’s really interesting. Yeah. And it’s interesting that what you’re saying too is they’re not that easy to find.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: No, no they’re not. They’re, I think they are more these days, i think a lot more hymn writers and songwriters are being intentional with that, which is great.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Well, you know, the default would be let’s just sing about God in a generic way, you know? Yeah. We could probably think of tons of choruses that just mention God, God, God, but they don’t really drill into Jesus or the spirit and how they interact and the roles they play together.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a that’s very interesting. We could do a whole podcast on that, I think. Yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I mean, there’s also the, the idea that the spirit, if you include the Holy Spirit in your worship services, suddenly things are going to get chaotic. They’re going to get unplanned, spontaneous. The spirit is going to take us down this, you know, we’ll forget all our planning and we’ll just go with the spirit. That’s another very common way that many churches talk about the spirit. I don’t personally believe that. I think you can have very well planned worship services where the Holy Spirit is very present and moving and working in our hearts, but it doesn’t mean that things are going to get chaotic, that things are suddenly going to go off track.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And yeah, they’re often thought of that way, but they don’t they don’t need to. Well, it’s actually a great segue into the next question I wanted to ask, which is so you, you, you joked a little bit about this, and I’ve done the same thing. Like it’s really hard to talk about the Trinity without committing heresy. You know, it’s accidental heresy. As soon as you try to use a metaphor, you’re probably going to be, you know, running into partialism or, you know, modalism or whatever. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s a YouTube video you should definitely watch.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Are you thinking of Patrick?

Pastor Brian Martin: Oh, Patrick.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I nearly referenced Patrick. And I didn’t in the end because I thought it might resonate with five people out there. But maybe there’s more who have seen it.

Pastor Brian Martin: Oh, it’s definitely more than five. But anyway, listener, if you’re interested in a hilarious but really great explanation of the Trinity, uh….

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And some ginger hair as well.

Pastor Brian Martin: And some ginger hair, uh, channel called Lutheran Satire has, uh, it’s called Patrick Explains the Trinity I think. You can search that and your day will be blessed by it. Um, in any case. So what would you say helped you understand the Trinity correctly? You know, what are what are some things you’ve learned about this that, you know, maybe were corrections in your own heart and mind, even if that was years ago. Um, what’s helped you understand the Trinity well?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Definitely, for sure starting out with just learning about what, what some of those heresies are like modalism and like arianism. And there’s a whole bunch of other ones. Just becoming aware of incorrect ways to, to refer to the Trinity, to talk about the Trinity. That really helped me to understand, okay, these are some helpful ways to talk about father, son, and spirit. And these are some really misleading ways to, to talk about father, son and spirit. Um, I would also say the book that I referenced, Michael Reeves book, Delighting in the Trinity for me was such a helpful book. It’s a short book. It’s I think it’s under 200 pages. I think it’s, it’s really well written. He’s got great examples and historical figures alongside like in sidebars and break outs in the book. He really breaks down the Trinity so well. And that for me was a foundational book in understanding at a deeper level interaction between father, son, and spirit, and then just listening to good teaching, good, good preachers who, who again, really clearly bring out the role of the Holy Spirit, the role of the son, the role of the father, especially in salvation, how those three persons of the Trinity are working in our salvation.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Mm. Yeah. There’s, um, the thing about the Trinity is it’s one of those, I think one of the reasons it’s tricky is we introduce that concept to children early. And so it seems and feels familiar, but then you really have to work out what that actually means.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yes.

Pastor Brian Martin: In practice, as you grow your theology, You know, obviously everybody’s story is different. But, um.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And because as we’ve just acknowledged, it can be difficult to talk about, difficult to get right. So yeah, it’s a bit like revelation. Maybe we just want to steer a little bit clear because we don’t fully understand, fully know. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Um, or the spirit talking about the spirit. I mean, these things that are mysterious and we’re like, yeah, but what if I get it wrong and well, okay. And, and I actually really do understand that, but at the same time, it’s pretty seminal understanding.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: It’s foundational. So foundational.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. It’s huge. So, um, you know, I think if we find ourselves in a place where… It’s not, there are parts of who God is that it’s okay that they’re mysterious, but there’s other things that are knowable and wisdom is probably discerning between, you know, which ones which, you know, which elements of faith are okay to be mysterious to a degree and which ones we really should land on because it affects our understanding of who God is. Trinitarian nature is pretty important. Yeah, it’s near the top of the list, you know? Um, yeah.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Especially with love, especially as, as John is bringing out in this particular passage, the idea of love. Like, where does love come from? How is love grounded? And then how do we abide in that love? And how is that love abiding in us? The Trinity, I think is, is so key. And that’s why I think why he brought out, you know, he’s very relational in his language, always talking about the father and the son and children in this letter of first John and then bringing the spirit in, it’s kind of like, oh, here we see all three members of the Trinity at work. What’s going on here?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah. And these, this is actually helpful passage for certain, you know, friends in the community who might want to knock on your door and tell you that there isn’t a trinity. Um, this passage like this might be helpful in those conversations.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Definitely a go to. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Could be. So, um, you mentioned a conversation you became aware of where a skeptic asked this question- what was God doing before he made creation? So how would you answer that question?

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, I think I would struggle for sure because.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s a hard question.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, we don’t know. We don’t know.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. He didn’t tell me. I don’t know.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: No he didn’t lay it out. Um, but I tried to make this this point on Sunday in the sermon, we, we do know things about God and we because, we know the Trinity exists and we know the nature of God in that respect. What we can know for absolute certainty is that God was in relationship with himself.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And it was a, it is a perfect relationship. There’s no error or fault in that. There’s nothing lacking in that relationship. It’s not like God was there before thinking hmm, there’s the three of us here, you know, which already is probably introducing some heresy there. I don’t know how God speaks within himself, but, you know, um, you know, there’s three of us here and we could do with something else to do or to amuse ourselves. You know, he’s he’s totally self-sufficient. He needs nothing. He lacks nothing. So we we know that he’s going to be perfectly content and happy within himself. And that that’s when your mind starts getting blown, because that’s when you start really dwelling on the fact that God is just there in himself, delighting in himself, fully content, fully happy in himself, with no need. But then creation comes as a kind of explosion or an eruption of like an outpouring of… He’s delighting in himself so much, he wants to then display that and share that with with others, including us.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s such an interesting point too, because if you go, especially to some ancient religion traditions, they needed worshippers to be powerful. Mhm. God doesn’t need that. Our God does not need that. He is fully sufficient, fully powerful. He’s all those things. He doesn’t need our worship. He requires it, but he doesn’t need it. Like he requires it of us, but he doesn’t require it himself.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And only because he knows he is the best thing out there. It’s not a selfish requirement. He knows he is the ultimate good. He is the ultimate satisfying entity. And so he’s he’s requiring worship because he knows it’s the best for us.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been, I had this conversation recently. Worship is about God, but it’s for us in the sense that he doesn’t need it. So he commands us to do it for our good. To your exact point. And that’s…

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s a humbling reality. But it’s also a beautiful reality. You know, that it’s like, and I think especially if you have a, you know, I certainly have this perspective, like in as probably a fifth grader or sixth grader, I was like, oh, worship is so boring. You know, like, I would, I would literally, and I find a way to get up in the middle of the sermon every single week, you know, growing up in church and I’d go get a drink of water or go to the bathroom or whatever, because it was just like, oh, this is so boring. But that’s just an immature perspective, you know? And I wasn’t saved yet at that point either. And that was part of it, I’m sure. But, um, in any case, it’s just, uh.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah, there’s so much, there’s so much depth. And again, you know, we need to let these kind of things fuel our worship. If we let these thoughts and these passages inject into our worship, how can it be boring when we’re worshiping our God like this, of this nature and this, you know, the way that he’s drawn us into that relationship?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, absolutely.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: And I was going to get all philosophical as well about time, but I don’t think that’s helpful. But this idea of what was God doing before creation? Well, he’s outside of time. So for us to even understand what the before looks like is so hard. I once read it’s a bit like trying to ask the question, what’s north of the North Pole? It’s like, you can’t, us in time, we’re not going to be able to fully understand what it’s like for God who is out of time.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s an interesting metaphor. Yeah, that’s got my hamster wheel going. So you, we’ll end with this. You you made a reference, you know, to your belief that certainly Jesus is himself God. I mean, that’s part of the Trinitarian nature of God. So why do you personally believe that Jesus was, in fact, God? Give me your best argument.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Mhm. I ultimately, I believe, I believe if that makes sense. I think, I believe because I believe the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to see to see that truth. There was a time growing up in church when I was younger, certainly between the ages of 14 to 18, I really walked away from the church and stepped away. I didn’t want much to do with church.  I’d never stopped believing in that sense at that time that God existed or that Jesus existed. But what I did is suppress the truth, pushed it down. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to dwell on it, and I certainly didn’t want to desire God in any way. And it was only age 18 when I believe God’s Spirit opened my eyes for the first. I’d heard the gospel a hundred times, maybe more. But at that point, when I heard the gospel for the hundred and first or whatever it was, time, suddenly it became real to me, and I believed it in a fresh and different way that I hadn’t seen it before. I became aware of my own sin. I became aware of my own sinful nature and my own self-obsessed nature, and suddenly Jesus became way more real.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: I knew that I needed a Savior, and so I think that’s that’s the main reason why I believe. I mean, there are good apologetic cases out there. If you look just just for believing in God himself, there’s really good reasons to believe. You look at the fine tuning nature of of creation of the universe. Um, you look at the fact that we needed a timeless, spaceless, immaterial cause for everything to come into being. And I believe God is, is, is, is the perfect answer to to that. He is timeless. He is spaceless. He’s immaterial. He’s all powerful. He can bring these things things easily into being. So there’s those apologetic reasons and that just gets you to believing in God. And then you’ve got to move down and you’ve got to look at Jesus’s claims. Is this man Jesus? Were his claims about himself true and real? Either he, either he was telling the truth, he was a lunatic, or he was a liar. One of those three. I believe his claims about himself make perfect sense. I see the case laid out. I believe the scriptures. But I only think I believe that because the Holy Spirit has allowed me to see and believe that.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah, that’s well said. That’s well said. There’s so much there, isn’t there? It’s just ah, I just wish more people I loved believed that Jesus was real. You know.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Well, we just have to pray, you know, we, we, we do have to be able to give a defense of our faith. We have to be able to explain it clearly and well. For sure we have to. It does help. I’m a big fan of apologetics. I think that plays a role, definitely. But ultimately, we’re never going to argue somebody into the kingdom. We’re never going to persuade them apart from the work of God’s Spirit opening their eyes, unblocking their ears, allowing them to see and desire and treasure Jesus. And we’ve got to pray for that. We’ve got to be praying for them as as you know, when I brought out on Sunday the the testimony of the person who’d been in church for so many years, um, God is doing it. He’s, he’s doing it regularly. Like we can have faith he is opening people’s eyes and ears. Um, not that this individual became a Christian. They didn’t become a Christian recently, but some a new profound clarity came to them about their assurance they can have, the confidence they can have. And definitely we’re seeing people coming to faith in Christ and we’ve just got to trust God, believe, be praying for them. And be clear. Let’s herald the gospel. Let’s live the gospel out, and let’s be praying for that to become clear in their life.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Amen. Well, thanks for joining us, Jamie, here on the podcast and thanks for preaching this weekend. Really appreciate that.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: It was a pleasure, thank you.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, absolutely. And before I hit this little button here, I should acknowledge, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this on the pod that Jamie wrote and produced this music that you hear at the beginning and at the end.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: That’s true. I did come up with it in about two hours. Yeah, maybe i’ll…

Pastor Brian Martin: Robinson original.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Maybe we’ll have to change it next season.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, maybe. But I like it. It’s got it’s got a good vibe to it. So with that.

Pastor Jamie Robinson: Thanks, Brian.

Pastor Brian Martin: Thanks, Jamie. And thanks for all of you for joining us on the Calvary Callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you and whether you are 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. For Jamie Robinson, I’m Brian Martin. We’ll catch you next time on the Callback.