Pastor Jamie Robinson: Hello, 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 joining me today is Pastor Kyle Bushre, who preached this past Sunday the sermon The Practice of Sin, based on 1 John 3: 4-10 in our current series, walk in the light. Kyle, how are you doing?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I’m doing well, Jamie.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: You’re back in your regular figurative seat.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s right. I’m back in the preacher seat.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: You switched it up last week with Brian. You changed roles. How was that?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I thought that was fun. I, uh, it’s fun. I used to do, uh, as a, in my younger days, I was a reporter for a TV station. I think I mentioned that on the pod here before, but, um, I like to interview. So I enjoy interviewing people. I like drawing out information from folks. Um, and getting to know, uh, you know, more about what they think. So that was fun for me. I actually, in some ways, I’m more naturally in the interviewer chair than instead of the interviewee. So.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Well, you seem to handle both well. You didn’t, you weren’t too harsh on him.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: No, no, I try not to be. We try to keep this fun, so.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Well, speaking of fun, uh, you haven’t really given me a fun, particularly fun sermon to discuss today. I mean, there’s no, uh, there’s no pickles in this one. There’s no funny stories.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: No, sorry about that. That is correct.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: I seem to get these ones. I think my first one I did was The Brutal Cross, which was, um… If you haven’t listened to that, it’s worth going back, I think, and listening to that one. That’s a deep, challenging sermon. This is another deep, thought provoking, challenging sermon this week. So, um, I guess I’ve got no funny stories, nothing to pick up on.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: No, that’s okay though. That’s okay.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: No coffee, no lemonade.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. There was no, there was no lightheartedness about this passage really in any way. In some ways it’s the most, it might be the most challenging portion of 1 John. I could be I could be overstating that. But it is one of the passages I’d say of the Bible, but certainly of 1 John that is so, um… The challenges are so spiritually weighty and real. And, uh, the consequences of getting this wrong is, uh, from a biblical perspective are eternal. So there’s just a very weighty, eternal, uh, aspect to this passage that I just don’t think that there’s anything light to talk about in there. You know, when I try to put sermons together, I try very hard to keep the tone. And I think really good sermons are done that way. You keep the tone of the passage. You don’t make what’s light heavy. You don’t make what’s heavy light. Uh, the goal of a preacher, the goal of any pastor who’s preaching a sermon should be to communicate what was said by the author to the original audience as applied to us today, and for us to turn it into something other than that, I think is actually, uh, taking away from, uh, learning the Bible. I mean, we talk about, we want to learn the Bible. If you want to learn the Bible, you need to read the Bible in the tone that the author meant it. And so there’s a, there’s a place and I have to be careful because I do have a tendency toward humor. It’s something I enjoy. It’s something I like to do. It’s something I enjoy hearing from others. Uh, and so I have to be careful with, uh, clever comedy and remain, uh, so entrenched in the passage itself that I don’t convey something in a way that the Bible did not, or that the author didn’t mean to convey it.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yes. Yeah. As always, if you haven’t listened to the sermon, we recommend you go back and listen to it and then come back to this. It’s just a great way to, uh, this is a deeper dive into the sermon here. Um, this passage. Yeah. I mean, big picture I guess, you know, John is, um, he’s doing a few things in this passage really, isn’t he? He’s kind of sorting people into… You know, last week we had the children of God. Um, this week he uses that phrase that you brought out. He uses children of the world or children of the devil is the phrase that he uses. So there’s kind of this sorting going on. He’s warning Christians to be on the lookout and to recognize those who are of the world. Not to be misled by them, not to be deceived by them, you know, don’t fall for their false teaching. Recognize the bad fruit in their lives. Um, but there’s also this challenge for the children of God. Don’t practice sin. Don’t, don’t allow patterns of sin to become regular features of your life. Um, and I think on top of that, also, it’s serving as a wake up call to those who think they are Christian?
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Profess maybe to be Christian. They go to church. They meet with other believers. But there’s deep seated, unrepentant sin patterns in their life that they’re just not dealing with. They may have completely glossed over them. They may not even recognize they have those. And so there’s, there’s quite a bit going on here in this passage. There’s quite a bit for us to dig into. Um, how did you approach this sermon pastorally, knowing that, as you said, you’ve got to handle it, right? You’ve got to handle the weight, right. You’ve probably got those two types of people in mind. You’ve got the, the regular faithful believers who are of course, struggling with sin, as we all do. Um, but they are recognizing sin in their life and they’re dealing with it in an appropriate way. Um, but then you’ve also got other people listening potentially who they’re probably not even Christians. They may think they are, but they’re not. And this is a, this is the, the challenge for the Word of God to speak into their life. How were you pastorally aware of those two groups?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Of course, that is the approach. I was aware of both groups. Um, I would say that there is more in that second group than a lot of people understand. And, and it’s because the group that says I can put on the mask of Christianity and I can come and participate. I know all the language. I know what to do. I know when to stand up and sit down. I know what to say to people. Um, you know, in coffee connection. I know how to act. I know how to sing these songs. I’ve sung them before. And I put on this sort of religious mask, this Christian evangelical mask, and I do all the things that I’m supposed to do. And I’m applauded for it. And I feel good about it. And then I go away and I take off the mask. And I live a very different life. That I think is very prevalent in the evangelical church today. I’ve come across a lot of it. Sometimes it gets exposed, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it just gets alluded to when I talk to spouses, men or women who are frustrated with their spouse who, uh… You know, they look me in the eye and they say he’s a different guy. She’s a different girl when she’s not here. And I’m aware of that happening at a much larger rate. I think pastors, generally speaking, are more aware of where their people are at spiritually than…
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Naturally people open up. They want prayer. They want to talk through these kind of things.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah. So you and I both know that, that there are, you know, lots of marriages that are on the rocks. Lots of people struggling in lots of ways. We pray about these things as a pastoral staff every week here at Calvary. Uh, and so yeah, I approach a passage like this saying, all right, thank you. First of all, thank you, God, that you gave us a passage like this that speaks to this issue of a secret masked life behind the scenes. A practice of sin that is ongoing and an unrepentant state that acts… And thank you, Lord, for not pandering to that person, but saying just very plainly, you do not know Jesus. You don’t know him. You may.. You have never seen him or known him, if that is the practice of your life today. So regardless, I think how I put it in Sunday was regardless of your testimony, regardless of your past testimony, whether you prayed a prayer, how long you’ve been in church, whatever it is, uh, that group of people needs to recognize where they truly are at spiritually. And that was, that was a tough thing for me this week to think about that group. I love those people. I love that group. I want to see them transformed by Christ. In some ways, they are the hardest to reach because they’re so filled with, uh, confidence that their participation in church things means they know Jesus.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Right. And on the flip side, you don’t want to discourage or drive into a pit of despair those genuine Christians who, you know, we’re all struggling with sin every single day and we’re all aware of it. And so for the true Christian who is dealing with that, you don’t want the sermon to be like this heavy anvil that comes down on top and completely loads them and they walk away thinking, yeah, oh my goodness, I don’t even know Christ.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, the last thing I want for any of our people who really genuinely love Jesus is to come to me going, oh, I sinned last week. Does that mean my salvation is gone? No no no no, no, no, he’s not talking about that. He’s not talking about the repentance cycle of every Christian who struggles with… You know, even those who find themselves back in sins that they genuinely, genuinely struggle against. Uh, that is that is not who he’s talking about. This is a pattern. This is the person who just goes through the motions, but truly is making a practice of sin in such a way that they’re not repentant. They don’t uh, there’s no conviction in their hearts. If anything, they’ve hardened themselves against all conviction.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: The heart is sealed. It’s seared.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And they don’t… and anybody that brings it up to them, anybody brings this pattern of sin up to them they get angry, upset. And, uh, and it’s hard. It’s genuinely hard sometimes to figure out if a person has made a practice of sin or whether a person is truly a follower of Jesus and is just struggling with sin. And I do think that the evidence is for that… You know, I would just ask you, well what do you do with it? What are you doing with it? Are you fighting? Are you struggling? Are you battling? Are you putting your all into killing this sin?
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. And is your conscience aware of it? Every time it happens. Do you feel that inside, that pang? I heard it once described, the pattern of sin in a believer’s life is almost like a helix, like a DNA helix. You know, it spirals, but it’s, it’s going up. And so that spiral speaks to there are regular patterns that we seem to come around to regularly. But every time we come around to it, we’re a little bit higher up. You know, we’re a little closer to sanctification. Um, the sin is perhaps having less of an impact. We’re dealing with it quicker. We’re more aware of it. Others are speaking into our life. And so it’s not like the sin just disappears forever, but it’s this kind of helix shaped that’s onwards and upwards. And each time we come around to it, we’re through the power of the spirit are dealing with it.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And it’s, and you can tell that how far up you are on your helix over time because… I think about the way I used to think about my sin ten, 15, 20 years ago and how I think about my sin now and how I deal with it now. And I think, wow, Lord, I’m, it was hard to measure from week to week or month to month or year to year. But decade to decade, wow, I can really see a transformed, uh, hatred in my heart for this sin. Uh, and in some ways, uh, I’m more sensitive. It’s weird. Christian life is weird in that sense. In some ways, I’m more sensitive to sins in my life now that I wasn’t sensitive to before. I didn’t think was a big deal 15 years ago. But now I see as something repulsive to me in myself. And, and so, so there’s this weird thing where in some ways I am more able to deal and more equipped to destroy and kill sin in my life that was a set pattern for me many, many years ago. It’s no longer a pattern for me, and yet now I’ve exposed more sins in myself, more failures in myself. I should say the Holy Spirit has unveiled more failures in myself that need to be dealt with that I knew were there, but I didn’t care about 15 years ago.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So now you’re aware of them?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, and now I go, oh my goodness, I am like that. I do struggle in these areas of my life. I do sound like that when I speak, you know.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: You really do. Yes.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. So you know what I’m saying. Uh, so yeah, it’s, uh that’s… And if you’re in that path, like, if that’s what’s happening in you, you’re growing in Christ. That’s, that’s growth in Jesus. You know him, you’ve seen him. He’s working in you. Uh, and I want to, in that sense, I want to encourage the Christian.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: It can be an encouragement. It’s still a great, um, wake up I think. It’s a really, like this is, and you drew this out in the sermon, it is a battle. It is a struggle. Um, I was reminded when you were preaching actually of, um, the Puritan John Owen who wrote a work called On the Mortification of Sin, which in full transparency, I haven’t read the whole thing.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah well who has.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: I’ve read abridged and shortened versions in language I can, I know I’m English, but the English he wrote in was it’s pretty tough.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You’re supposed to know all that.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: I know, I know. But it was such a good work, such an amazing work. And he bases it all on Romans 8:13 which says, if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And he goes into what does it mean to mortify. You put to death sin in your life. And he really draws out, it’s a work of the spirit in us. Um, but we don’t just sit back and let it happen. We just don’t give in and give up. And oh, God’s going to do what he’s going to do. He says, no, you need to take take charge of this. You need to work with the spirit in this. And he lays out all these different ways that the spirit will work in us to change our understanding, to change our will, our conscience, our affections. You know, all these ways that the spirit, and we we have to work in tandem. It’s not something that we just sit back and, and hope that God will do in us.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, I just looked it up real quick because I thought it was John Owen who said this, but he’s, in that work, the mortification of sin, he says, be killing sin or it will be killing you. And it’s, it is you either choke it out or it chokes you out. You know, it either takes you down or you take it down. And that’s all by the power of the spirit. But yeah, we’ve got to be attacking it. And if you’re in the posture of attacking your sin, even if you’re failing, right? Okay, even if you’re at a place where you feel like, I do attack my sin and I feel like I just fail. Keep going, keep going, keep attacking the sin. Get more accountability in your life. Bring in more software into your life, whatever it is, whatever is necessary, get the tools you need. But keep attacking it, because that is the work of the spirit at work in you. And if you give in, if you collapse in it, it will kill you. And if you and if you surrender to it, that’s what, that’s where John picks up here. John says, anybody that just surrenders to their sin and goes, you know what, i’m just going to do this because I want to do it. That is a sign you have never known or seen Jesus. And now we’ve got a different conversation to have. We got to talk about the gospel.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: That’s right. They’re putting themselves above God’s law. Yeah. And again, you drew this out really well. You’re kind of elevating your own passions and desires above God’s law and God’s design. Yeah. I love the quote, John Owen in that work, he says, he doth not so work our mortification in us as to not keep it still an act of our obedience. The Holy Ghost works in us and upon us, as we are fit to be wrought in and upon. That is so that as to preserve our own liberty and our own free obedience. So what he’s saying is that God doesn’t override our will. He’s not overriding us and changing our minds. He’s working in tandem with us through the power of the spirit to change our desires and our wills to not want to sin and work that through. But it’s, it’s a work that’s done in tandem.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. It, if you, the more you grow in this, the more you grow in the killing of your sin, your desires change. And then when you can say, when you say, well, what do you want to do? What I want is holiness. You know, it’s not what you want when you’re not a Christian. You want pleasure. You want to fulfill your desires. When you become a Christian, you still want to pleasure and to fulfill your desires, but you want them to be in alignment with holiness because the holiness of God is your joy. It is your pleasure. It is the happiness you’re desiring. We as a staff are right now reading, uh, John Piper’s Desiring God, and he talks about that. He says, look, I didn’t, uh, you know, I thought the Christian, I’m paraphrasing John Piper now here, but he says, I didn’t I used to think that the Christian life was trying to get rid of my pleasures and go after only the things of God that would not align with my will, not align with my happiness and my joy. And he said he realized actually, transformation in Christ means eventually my joy and happiness and pleasure and my will and everything will be found in God. He says, as he puts it, I want to glut myself on God. That’s where I find my happiness. And, uh, that’s the Christian pursuit, is that to have my mind and heart so transformed that my happiness and joy and everything in my will wants to align with the will of God, because that is my purpose for being.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of leads into the next thing I was going to ask, you know, we may have heard at some time, you know, Christians say or we may have even said this ourselves. You know, Christianity isn’t a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s not a list of rules. Um, and yet there are laws and regulations and there is a way that we should be living. Um. Yeah. What would you say to, to a believer who says that. You know, Christians, it’s not, you don’t have to follow any laws or rules you know, you just believe in Christ.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, well, I would simply point them to Paul talking about the law of Christ. That’s the phrase he uses. Uh, Jesus says not a jot or a tittle, not a single bit of the law passes away. But so you go, well, does that mean we got to follow all of the mosaic Law? No. We have to follow all of the Mosaic law as fulfilled in Jesus. So the law is good because it shows us a mirror of who we are. And so we listen to Jesus, so the law as filtered through Christ and what he did. So that’s why we don’t sacrifice animals anymore. Jesus is our sacrifice, right? So that part of the law is not, that pointed to Jesus. And all of it points to Jesus. So then we listen to Jesus. Jesus, what does it mean to be obedient to you? Because with that, in that way, we fulfill God’s law. And he talks about walking in grace, walking in holiness. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Are we going to be perfect? No, but it is the pursuit. It is our goal. We don’t set a lower goal just because we can’t achieve it. Jesus says, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. And then he talks about things like lust and he talks about, um, the use of money. He talks about not worrying about the future. And he talks, you know, all these different things that he describes and calls us to deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus. These are commands.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: So if we’re going to talk about a law of Christ, we have plenty of laws, plenty of… Of course, a law is simply a direction. It’s something you must do. And Jesus has plenty of things that we must do. So anybody that would say, who would move into kind of, this sort of what they call antinomian or no law position and say, well, because of grace, there is no rule that we have to keep. I go, no uh, that is much a fallacy as the person who says, uh, the Bible is just simply a bunch of rules and if we follow them all, God will accept us. You misunderstand grace. Grace, God’s grace brings us into a relationship with it as a father son relationship. And I, I listen to my father. I listen to my human father. I listen to my heavenly Father, I, I follow after my master. I, Paul says, I have become a slave to Christ. That word there, right, we use, usually it’s a bonded servant or something like that in the way we translate it, but it’s talking about I now listen to my Lord and master. That’s what Lord means. He’s the Lord of my life. And so, yeah, there’s, the idea that somehow Christianity doesn’t have obedience and guidance and direction within it and, uh, is, is a false, but also, I would say to that person and all of it is for your good. Do you want to flourish and grow and have joy in life? Then live under the obedient reign of your King Jesus.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yes.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s where you get it.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: And like in desiring God, you make God your ultimate joy and the source of all your joy and pleasure. You know, he, he is far greater than any possible sin, any, any deviation that we could fall into finding joy in him is going to be, I think, a really, um, sure way of being able to steer around sin and keeping our eyes fixed on him. What are you… what do you think uh, as we finish up here, what do you think of the role of community? You know, we, um, we have groups here. We have shepherding groups, we have small groups. We have our church community. Um, what’s the role that community can play in helping us um, either, um, stop falling into the trap of habitual sin or even bringing out this in loving, you know, in love, um, helping point this out in someone’s life. It’s a, it’s a fine line, isn’t it? Because I mean, you’ve got to be open to, to, to receiving this.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, that’s what I was about to say. I think you say, what is the role of community? I would say it plays alongside of the conviction and guidance of the Holy Spirit, who uses God’s Word to show us who we are so we can see ourselves plainly. God also gives us this church community around us to help us in seeing ourselves plainly, and that only works if you embrace the church community as that community. If you understand that that church community around you is designed by God to be yet another tool to guide you into holiness. And sometimes that means they need to have a hard conversation with you and point out patterns of sinful behavior that you don’t yet see. You don’t, you don’t, you’re blind to it. You don’t, you don’t have the angle on it. Right. You know, sometimes, um, you know, I like to tell this story of the time my, my friend was trying to push me out of a, a snowy parking lot. Right. And I was trying to back out and, and my wheels were spinning and stuck. And he was standing in front of the car and he was pushing on it and he was trying to get my, uh, get this car out of the space for me. And I kept kind of turning my wheel back and forth, back and forth, trying to get grip. And he was out there trying to direct me. He was pointing which direction I needed to turn the wheel, but I wasn’t really noticing what he was doing, and my wheels just kept spinning. And then he waved to stop and he said, look, I’m going to show you which way to turn the wheel so that we can get out of this. And I said, oh, I should probably be looking at you then, right?
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Because he’s the guy outside the car.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He’s got an angle on these wheels that I don’t have. I’m just just blindly turning the wheel, trying to get myself out. I’m just getting more and more stuck. And so I started watching him and he started and he’d push and he’d point. And I turned the wheel and slowly I would gain grip. And eventually I was unstuck from this parking space. And I think if I didn’t have those eyes out there looking, I wouldn’t have known how to get out of this mess I was in. And I want, I think it’s really important for, for folks who love Jesus, who are in the church, to have the kind of humility to be able to say, I don’t always know which way I need to go on this. I don’t know how stuck I actually am.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. Yeah. Give me some insight. Give me some direction. Yeah. Tell me what you’re seeing, my blind spot that I can’t see.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Be willing, church, be willing to look at the person who’s trying to help you out and say, you know what, they’re probably not out for my bad. They’re not trying to judge me. They’re not they’re not trying to hurt me. They’re trying to help me. And they can see things in me that I’m having difficulty seeing because I’m constantly assessing myself as doing pretty well. That’s generally how people see themselves. Yeah, I’m doing pretty well on this. You know, and then if they, they really fall into a into a pit, they finally go, oh, I need some help. Well, we all need help. And we kind of all need it all the time. And so, uh, before you get to the place where you yourself are so incredibly stuck that you can’t possibly, uh, go forward on your own and you finally hit bottom, listen to the people around you who love you, who love Jesus, who are trying to help you make small corrections along the way. And that’s where being part of a genuine Christian community can be so helpful.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: Yeah. And it takes time. It takes trust. You know, meeting together regularly, getting to know one another regularly. It’s so important. Yeah, yeah. Well, as always, thank you, Kyle. We appreciate your, uh, the way that you preach these tough passages here at Calvary, the way that you dig into this, and it’s edifying for all of us here at the church to be able to hear this. It’s, uh, it’s, uh, it’s a good thing to be reminded of. And hopefully you’ve been blessed listening to this and listening to the sermon.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Thanks, Jamie.
Pastor Jamie Robinson: So yeah. Well, here we go. Here’s the outro. Thanks for joining us on the Calvary Callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you, whether you’re a 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. And we’ll see you next time on the Callback.