Read with Me
2 Peter 2:17-19 (HCSB)
These people are springs without water, mists driven by a whirlwind. The gloom of darkness has been reserved for them. For by uttering boastful, empty words, they seduce, with fleshly desires and debauchery, people who have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.
Listen with Me
Peter continues his diatribe against the false prophets and false teachers who were even then dragging believers away from the true faith and placing them on the wide road that leads to destruction. Peter gives no allowance to these men because their actions and their teachings are not just confusing people or making them question what they have been taught. Their false teachings are destroying eternal souls by leading them away from the true faith to the path that leads to eternal perdition.
Peter points to the empty promises that these false prophets and teachers give, promises that they cannot deliver on. Peter likens them to a spring without water that lures the thirsty traveler but ultimately disappoints, because it cannot deliver the water it promises. He likens them to mists driven by a storm that promises refreshing rain, but which passes by quickly, leaving the land parched.
These teachers make grandiose promises of abundant life and prosperity, while they themselves live lives of spiritual poverty and carry death in their own hearts. They boast of being able to provide spiritual power while they themselves are powerless, because in their arrogance and self-sufficiency they have cut themselves off from the true source of power. They promise spiritual freedom, the ability to live without submitting to the “old laws”, while they themselves are slaves of sin and depravity that ravages their own hearts, because a person is a slave to whatever has mastered him, and everyone who disregards God’s law and sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34) and is a pretender who has not known Jesus nor seen him (1 John 3:6).
Peter notes that the easiest prey for these false teachers are new believers, those who are just escaping from the clutches of sin, who have only recently been freed from their old lives of depravity. In these new believers, the old desires are still active and can exert a powerful pull on them to turn them back to their filth and their prior depravities (Proverbs 26:11). Thus, these new believers must be carefully shepherded, surrounded by mature believers who can strengthen them, and who can warn them away from those who would use those old desires to draw them away from their first love, and their devotion to Jesus.
Pray with Me
Father, I think that we are so worried about judging others that we sometimes allow the wolves who succeed in infiltrating the flock to ravage the lambs, and to cause wide spiritual destruction before they either move on or are finally confronted and ousted after causing great damage. But Peter clearly did not hesitate to call out those who were false teachers and obstacles to the faith, nor did Paul (Acts 13:9-11). And Jesus Himself clearly warned about these false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15), and told His followers to not tolerate them. Lord, give us all eyes to see clearly and to discern rightly where there is danger to Your flock, and then to act boldly and decisively in Your power to drive it away what it does come. Amen.