The NXR Podcast - August 11, 2022


QUESTIONS - Does Jesus’ Parable About Wheat & Tares Contradict Excommunication？


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

180.17479

Word count

2,309

Sentence count

140

Harmful content

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pastor Joel answers the question, "Do we cast out false teachers or do we listen to the angel who will separate the wheat and tares when the harvest comes?" (Ps. 2 Timothy 1:18).

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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00:00:21.760 Question, do we cast out false teachers or do we listen to Jesus when he says not to worry
00:00:26.660 about separating the wheat and tares, that his angel will do it when the harvest comes.
00:00:33.220 Thanks, Pastor Joel. All right. Great question. Okay. So with the parable of the wheat and the
00:00:38.500 tares, a couple of things. One, fantastic parable, but there's a lot. And Jesus begins to explain
00:00:46.320 the analogies and illustrations in this parable. But the angels are the ones who are going to
00:00:55.040 separate. He says, this is representative of the angels. And the barn is representative of heaven
00:01:02.520 and the father's house and the fire represents God's judgment and wrath and hell, these kinds
00:01:09.080 of things. But one thing that I think we should take note of is in the parable, it begins with
00:01:14.340 the idea, Jesus sets the scene with an enemy coming in, coming in in the middle of the night
00:01:21.740 and sowing bad seed in the field. And the tares are simply the harvest of that bad seed.
00:01:32.040 So the tares is the harvest of that bad seed. My point is this, in the case of Creflo Dollar,
00:01:40.160 I think that he would have more in common with the enemy coming in, in the middle of the night,
00:01:45.460 sowing the bad seed than a tear that is the result of the bad seed. Now, I understand that
00:01:52.660 in the truest sense, we could say that the enemy, I think Jesus gets to this, the enemy who sows the
00:01:59.600 bad seed is the devil. And so in that sense, Creflo Dollar is, he is a tear himself that is
00:02:07.700 the product of the father of all lies, the false teacher of all false teachers, the devil himself. 0.50
00:02:15.460 Um, there's, there's truth in that, but there's also something to be said for the fact that
00:02:20.960 Creflo Dollar is, although a tare himself, he is no mere tare, right? We could also say, you know,
00:02:27.980 Jesus is going to separate on the, on the last day, the sheep and the goats. Okay. Uh, the goats
00:02:32.960 are those who are unregenerate. They're unbelievers. They're going to be separated. Jesus 1.00
00:02:38.000 says, I'm going to put them on, on my left and, and they're going to go to judgment. All right.
00:02:44.260 Well, every false teacher is a goat, but every false teacher also is a wolf. 0.99
00:02:50.100 So they're a goat, yes, but not a mere goat. 0.99
00:02:52.800 They're a wolf goat, if that makes sense.
00:02:56.020 And so I think Creflo Dollar, I think that there is another category besides merely a
00:03:00.180 tear. 0.96
00:03:00.520 In a true objective theological sense, yes, he is a goat. 0.91
00:03:03.680 Yes, he is a tear, but he's also a wolf. 0.95
00:03:05.920 And I think he's also one of the bad servants, the wicked servants who sowed the bad seed.
00:03:10.980 He's not just a tear, the result of the bad seed,
00:03:13.280 but he is a sower of that bad seed
00:03:15.460 on an extremely high level, okay?
00:03:18.980 So all that being said,
00:03:20.160 I think there's a different category.
00:03:21.620 But here's the easiest way to answer the question.
00:03:23.540 The easiest way to answer the question is to say this.
00:03:26.400 Even if he wasn't a false teacher
00:03:28.460 and he was just someone who was deceived
00:03:30.100 and a false convert,
00:03:32.200 not a false teacher, but a false convert.
00:03:33.960 Even if he wasn't a wolf, 0.83
00:03:35.080 but he was just, he wasn't a wolf goat, 0.92
00:03:36.660 he was just a goat goat, right?
00:03:38.740 Even if all that was the case, 0.99
00:03:40.180 you could still kick them out of the church. Why? Because Paul in the New Testament talks about
00:03:48.500 kicking people out of the church and not just Hymenaeus and Alexander, not just leaders,
00:03:53.520 right? Who had gone apostate, right? First Timothy chapter one, verse 18 through 20,
00:03:58.480 I've handed Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan that they might be taught not to blaspheme
00:04:03.420 any longer for the destruction of their flesh, that their soul may be saved. So Paul talks about
00:04:09.600 handing over leaders, guys who are false teachers, wolves, but he also in 1 Corinthians 5 talks
00:04:18.940 about somebody who's simply a member in the Corinthian church who had committed a high-handed
00:04:24.140 sin, somebody who had committed a sin that is not even heard of among the Gentiles. He was sleeping
00:04:30.800 with his father's wife, his stepmom, and everybody in the Corinthian church knew about it, and they
00:04:35.600 were bragging. Rather than being disgusted, he said, you should be revolting and you should
00:04:42.060 remove him. Expel the immoral brother, purge the immoral brother from your midst. This is a sin 0.99
00:04:48.600 that's not even heard of among the pagans. And you guys are proud? And why were they proud? Well,
00:04:53.560 they were proud for the same reason that American evangelicals are proud. They weren't proud that
00:04:57.620 he was sleeping with his stepmom. They were proud that in the midst of his egregious sin,
00:05:02.100 how gracious the church at Corinth was. That's what they were being prideful about. They were
00:05:07.320 being prideful about, look at how gracious we are. Even with these types of sins, we don't
00:05:15.700 discipline. We don't judge. Only God can judge. We don't judge. We've just welcomed him in. And
00:05:21.140 Paul says, that's dumb. You're bragging about doing something that's wrong. No, you should judge. 1.00
00:05:29.480 You should judge.
00:05:30.600 And Paul says, as an apostle,
00:05:31.640 I've already cast judgment on the man.
00:05:33.960 Now you judge him also.
00:05:35.520 Follow with my judgment and remove him.
00:05:38.760 And this is not a false teacher.
00:05:40.320 This is not Creflo Dollar.
00:05:41.420 This is just Joe Blow, just a member,
00:05:45.780 sitting on the third pew from the back in the sanctuary
00:05:48.940 who happens to be sleeping with his stepmom
00:05:51.580 and he needs to be removed.
00:05:53.480 And it's not just high-handed sin,
00:05:55.400 although that's first and foremost.
00:05:57.800 But we see the category in Matthew chapter 18 by the Lord Jesus himself, where he talks
00:06:02.580 to the disciples about the keys to the kingdom.
00:06:05.340 Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
00:06:07.220 Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
00:06:09.900 He says this, he gives us a roadmap for church discipline.
00:06:14.280 If your brother sins against you, go to him privately, one-on-one, and confront your brother,
00:06:20.440 correct him.
00:06:21.620 And if he listens to you, you've won your brother over.
00:06:23.740 but if he does not listen, then bring one or two others along with you so that the testimony may be
00:06:28.740 established in the presence of two or three witnesses. And if he does not listen to them,
00:06:33.140 then tell it to the church, the whole congregation. And if he does not listen to the church,
00:06:39.760 then hand him over. Treat him as a tax selector or a Gentile, which means, you know, what do you do 0.99
00:06:46.800 with tax electors and Gentiles? Well, you preach the gospel to them, you evangelize them, but you 0.97
00:06:50.440 don't receive them as a brother. You don't receive them as a brother. A tax collector or a Gentile
00:06:56.220 means an outsider. The language that Jesus is using there is no longer treat him as an insider,
00:07:02.180 as a brother in Christ, but rather an outsider. That doesn't mean that you can't preach the gospel
00:07:06.720 to him, and that doesn't mean that the Lord won't bring him back. But for now, you're not giving him
00:07:13.740 a false assurance of a salvation that he very well may not have. And again, this is just the
00:07:21.260 basic practice of excommunication, which would be the final end step of church discipline, this
00:07:27.340 longer process for someone who's impenitent, no matter how much correction, no matter how much
00:07:32.540 confrontation, no matter who approaches them, they refuse to acknowledge their sin, to confess
00:07:37.420 their sin and repent of it. For somebody who is impenitent like this, Jesus says there's a long
00:07:42.220 process. It's not just a one and done. It's a multiple step process of confrontation and
00:07:47.220 correction and prayer and all these things. But if they double down, double down, double down,
00:07:53.000 dig their heels in the sand, refuse to repent, eventually the final step in church discipline
00:08:00.000 is removal. They're removal from the church. So whatever Jesus is saying, in conclusion,
00:08:06.680 Whatever Jesus is saying about the wheat and the tares and waiting to let the Lord separate them at the final day so that in removing the tares, we don't also accidentally harm the wheat.
00:08:18.800 Whatever the Lord is saying there, it cannot be contradicting what he is saying in Matthew 18.
00:08:25.260 And in Matthew 18, the Lord tells us that there are times and there are individuals that we should remove.
00:08:31.640 and not just goat wolves, but even just goat goats, not just false teachers, but false converts, 0.57
00:08:42.860 false converts. And we see the principle in Matthew 18, we see the case study in 1 Corinthians 0.57
00:08:47.640 chapter five, and we see the principle actually work and bring about repentance in 2 Corinthians
00:08:55.480 chapter two, where the man that Paul says they should remove in 1 Corinthians chapter five,
00:09:00.100 in 2 Corinthians chapter two, most commentators say it's the same man. Paul says, welcome him
00:09:05.220 back in. He's had godly sorrow. He has repented. And I don't want him to be overly sorrowful.
00:09:11.180 Welcome him back in to the church. So I guess what I would say is, I think what Jesus is getting at
00:09:19.660 with the wheat and the tares is he's saying, we don't speculate. We don't guess, right? There's
00:09:27.360 a lot of times. I've had people say, pastor, pastor, this person is a false convert. I don't
00:09:32.580 think that they're a true convert. I don't think that they should be a member in the church.
00:09:36.860 And what I'll respond with is, give me something that is external, outward, visible, witnessable.
00:09:45.800 It's the same as under the old covenant, right? With the law of Moses. You can't just say,
00:09:49.940 oh, this person did such and such. I saw him do it. Great. Did anybody else see him do it?
00:09:54.440 because we need two or three witnesses here.
00:09:57.600 We need two or three witnesses.
00:09:59.200 It has to be established.
00:10:01.900 The testimony has it, and that's the same language.
00:10:03.980 It's following the law of Moses that Jesus uses in Matthew 18
00:10:07.100 with his pattern for church discipline,
00:10:10.420 his process for removing an impenitent saint.
00:10:13.760 And so what Jesus is getting at with the wheat and the tares,
00:10:16.060 I think what he's saying is we don't just go in guessing
00:10:20.460 because wheat and tares, right?
00:10:21.780 The whole point that people get at is they look somewhat similar, right?
00:10:25.820 And you may be pulling up a tear that is actually wheat, right?
00:10:30.660 And even if that's not the case, because I've heard debates against that and I'm not exactly
00:10:33.960 sure, but even if you know that this is a tear, you could be pulling it up in such a
00:10:38.900 way that in pulling up the tear, it damages the wheat, right?
00:10:43.680 And so whatever Jesus is saying there cannot be contradicting what he's saying in Matthew
00:10:47.340 18.
00:10:47.760 And I think the way you reconcile these two things that seemingly are contradicting,
00:10:51.680 I think the way you reconcile them is you look at what Jesus says with church discipline and what
00:10:55.600 Paul did in 1 Corinthians 5, and you say, the difference is that it's few and far between.
00:11:02.500 It's the exception, not the norm, right? I mean, look at all the corrections Paul has for the
00:11:07.220 Corinthian church. I mean, it's just correction, rebuke after rebuke after rebuke. The whole
00:11:12.200 Corinthian church is immature, but Paul's not saying kick out half the church, because I'm
00:11:17.540 pretty sure half of the church, you know, and any meaning money, but this one, this one, this one,
00:11:21.460 duck, duck, duck, goose. That's not how Paul does it. He doesn't just say all of you are radically
00:11:25.720 immature. Therefore, I think about half of you are probably tears. And let's go ahead and
00:11:29.500 excommunicate half of you. No, he says, okay, but this guy, I know for sure. The dude sleeping with
00:11:37.080 his step-mom who's boasting about it. And you guys are boasting about it too. Yeah, that dude,
00:11:41.140 he's got to go. And that's what Jesus is doing in Matthew 18. So I think with the wheat and the
00:11:45.460 tears, what it means is we don't just go into a church and start cleaning house based off of a
00:11:50.320 hunch, right? No, it's outward. It's witnessable. It's proven. There's two to three independent
00:11:55.920 lines of testimony. The person is given time. There's patience, right? You correct them. They
00:12:01.160 don't respond. You correct them again with two or three. They don't respond. You correct them with
00:12:05.040 the whole church. And if he does not listen to the church's correction, then, right? So it's slow.
00:12:10.380 it's witnessable it has multiple lines of evidence it's typically high-handed sin and in those cases
00:12:18.980 you remove them because in those cases we know that's a tear okay that's what i got thank you
00:12:25.660 guys so much for tuning in i hope it's been helpful and um we'll join you again next monday
00:12:31.020 lord willing god bless thanks so much for listening but real quick before you go do us a small favor
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