“When will God separate the wheat from the tares?”

Steve Brown:
When will God separate the wheat from the tares? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us, but there is a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author, Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good.

Pete Alwinson:
Good.

Steve Brown:
Are you a wheat or a tare?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, my heart confirms that I’m part of the wheat family.

Steve Brown:
Me too, but there’s some weeds going around occasionally. That’s Pete Alwinson and you ought to check out ForgeTruth.com. And if you live in central Florida, there are three different locations for a meeting with men, that is honest and authentic and the life changing. And if you’d like to be a part of that, check it out on ForgeTruth.com and you can get the locations and the time and you’ll rise up and call me blessed for telling you about it. Pete, as you know, comes in and we answer questions on Fridays. And we love your questions. You can pick up the phone and dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE. And often we put your question with your voice on the air. Or you can write to

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or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. And if you can help us, do. And I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in the giving of it. By the way, I don’t know if I’ve told you recently, but you can give on your phone. Text Key Life at 28950, that’s 28950 and just follow the instruction. Pete, lead us in prayer and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray. Father, thank you as we come to the end of this week that we can come into your presence, just for a minute. Thank you for your availability, 24, 7, 365. Father, sometimes we feel so alone, sometimes wondering what the next step is going to be. It seems like often we’re overwhelmed with fear and fear inducing messages. And, so we just come to you and we thank you that you are high and holy and lifted up and yet very close to us, that you’re a good and mighty and caring and loving. You’ve got a plan. Your graceful and you are merciful toward us. And we have a lot of issues Lord. And so, we come to you and we give you those issues, people, relationships that we need to be restored with and problems that need to be solved, bills that they really do need to get paid, jobs and transitions that need to be made. So, we commit ourselves to you and we ask that Lord Jesus, you would continue your great work in us and do that through our teachers and preachers too, our priests and those that will lead us this week-end. Be amazing in how you communicate yourself to us. We give you honor and praise for this Q&A time now. In Jesus’ strong name, we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Alright Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
Do you think that God could be starting to separate the tares from the wheat in the church? I know it’s in the judgment seat that they’ll separate the wheat from the tares, but I don’t know if that’s true, what this pastor said, that he thinks it’s starting in the church. I thought that was only at the judgment seat.

Steve Brown:
I kind of agree with you, dear. I think you, when you start separating the wheat from the tares before, what was essentially from Jesus, an eschatological comment, not one for the present. When you start doing that and being the judge of who is wheat and who is weeds, or who are weeds. I think you get into some pretty dangerous territory. There are times when that separation takes place through church discipline. And it’s one of the signs of a true church, but far less than a lot of people would think. You know, we talk a lot about discipline, but the Scripture speaks very little of it, in terms of institutional discipline. But in that sense, it’s kind of happening. It can happen in the present, but Jesus’ statement I believe was eschatological.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah absolutely, really at that end times. Where’s the verse that talks about judgment beginning in the house of God? That may be what that pastor was talking about, I don’t know?

Steve Brown:
He may have.

Pete Alwinson:
And, the other thought that comes to me as this picture in Revelation of Jesus, walking among his churches, the candlesticks, you know, and there’s a sense in which he is always seeking to bring about the peace and purity of his church.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
So, in that sense, perhaps, but churches have gone through a really, a major upheaval, I think in the last two years, in particular.

Steve Brown:
You know, and maybe that’s what he’s referring to is, you know, we have over 4,000 pastors on our mailing list. So we get, we spend a lot of time listening to pastors and talking to them. And, there’s been a really scary time with this pandemic. And a lot of pastors say their folks are not coming back. And, I generally have a stock answer for that. We’re getting down to the muscle. I mean, this is a good thing that happened, not a bad thing. We’re too big and bloated and fat already. And, so if God sent the pandemic. And, he’s using it. And he uses everything and is in charge of everything. Maybe one of the reasons is what that pastor was referring to, that we’re getting down to the muscle.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it may well be, you know, really there’s been an upheaval sociologically, politically, churches thought that they were united, found themselves incredibly divided. Not only on COVID, but what COVID and the practices illustrated about other issues politically within our culture.

Steve Brown:
So true. And so, you know, I, never saw putting another body in the pew as my goal in life, when I was a pastor. And in fact, often rejoiced, when people left. I used to save from the pulpit, there wasn’t anything wrong with my church, I couldn’t fix with a few funerals. And everybody would laugh because they thought I was making a joke, but I think God does in that sense. And, you know, when we started answering this question, I didn’t think about all these things, but you know, maybe your pastor’s right, still that’s an eschatological statement.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s why you address that first because you were seeking to put that in a Biblical context and that’s the right thing to do. We can’t take that one out of context.

Steve Brown:
No. Interesting discussion. Go ahead.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, you know, we as pastors have to continue to seek to lead our church in the peace of purity of it.

Steve Brown:
Of course.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, there it is.

Steve Brown:
But it’s hard sometimes to know what that includes and you’ve gotta be so very careful. Discipline by the way, we have a tendency to say that the weeds or the tares are the people that really sin bad. And that the wheat would be the pure ones who don’t sin as much. And I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s the measurement. I think the measurement is something else all together, besides our goodness or lack of goodness. And discipline should take place in the church, not for sin, but a lack of repentance.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That is so important because there are some churches that discipline when you said no. I mean the first step is confession, confrontation and then confession. Right? Yeah. And if there’s a repentance, then you forgive 70 times 70, right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. You really do. And that should be the main thrust and discipline should be with that goal in mind, a goal of loving and kindness, community and family that cuts slack for each other.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. True restoration.

Steve Brown:
We do. Do you know, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it cause that’s not the question, but Christians do have a canceled culture. Don’t they?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Elaborate.

Steve Brown:
There’s certain people, well, there’s certain people, if they sin too much, then we rule them out of the fellowship. And it becomes kind of a canceled culture, that’s not altogether different than the one that the world has. And we have to be very careful. That old statement that the members of the church are the people, you have to be unqualified to be a member of the church. And if we forget that, we get into trouble.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you’re right. You’re right.

Steve Brown:
This is similar. How much involvement should we have with unbelievers?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. And I think, you know, we are here for them in a very real sense. We’re here for God. We’re here for each other in the body. But we are also clearly called to be used as the conduit of grace to other people. So we’ve gotta be involved with them.

Steve Brown:
You know, Paul dealt with that very issue to the Corinthians. The Corinthians had misunderstood something that he wrote. When Titus came back and told Paul and he wrote the response to it, he said, I did not mean that you’re not to associate with unbelievers, because of what you said, we’re there for them.

Pete Alwinson:
It was those people that had claimed to be Christian and those were the ones that were playing a game spiritually. Don’t hang out with them until they’re repentant. And that goes back to the discipline thing.

Steve Brown:
But he said, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying because of what we were just talking about. You know what’s hard? What’s hard is to be friends with, to hang out with, to care about and love people who are not believers and yet not being able to walk the places where they walk or to do the things they do are to be the people that they are. It’s really, you know, I’m thinking of my barbershop. I had a barber, his name was Tom and he’s in heaven now, by the way, he became a Christian. And I love that story, but he used to tell me dirty stories. And, he would do it to shock me. And, you know, I never knew how to deal with that. I mean, I wanted to be Tom’s friend and sometimes the stories were funny and you don’t want to laugh cause you don’t want to betray Christ or you don’t want to assume that, well, you get that picture. So, it’s sometimes hard.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. It really is. You know, to be close, close friends with unbelievers is difficult. We really don’t have a lot in common with them

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
in a deep level, but we have to be involved. We have to be loving.

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
We have to care.

Steve Brown:
Oh man, but it’s hard sometimes.

Pete Alwinson:
And listen too.

Steve Brown:
And the Bible is clear about that. I had an elder that told me one time, I was the only pastor he ever knew that didn’t want to even know his neighbors. Guys, we’re out of here. Thanks for joining us, by the way. That’s a high and holy compliment. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.