Sermons

          God has given every one of us with natural strengths and weaknesses.  And our conversion to Christ is meant to begin our redemption and re-formation.  There is a momentary aspect to it and there is a progressive aspect of it as well.  If our emphasis is on the moment, we often miss the progressive.  God is intent on redeeming us or buying back (you remember the Green Stamps?) our lives from where we had gotten to on our own (our fallenness) to what He had created us for in the first place, His glory!  I am quite conscious of that in my own life.  I’ve told you some of my story before….                                                 

The challenge is our teachability, can I be taught or stated another way, am I willing to be re-formed from what I have been?  Peter’s warning to his audience is in regarding the false teachers who had known the truth even in their experience but had come to reject the truth of Christ and His way.  They had come to resist the redemption that Christ offered, preferring to not change, to not be transformed but to continue a self-centered path submitting only to their depraved self-centered living.  Let’s hear again Peter’s message.

          “These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.  For them the gloom of utter darkness has be reserved.  For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.  They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption.  For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.  For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.  For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.  What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

          Let’s think our way through this.  Peter gives us very descriptive metaphors, “as teachers without true knowledge, they are springs without water.”  Only those who are truly in Christ are in the position to offer others living water.  Then he says, “Mists driven by a storm” are gone before any real rain can fall to revitalize the earth.  All of these are to say – emptiness is what the false has to offer no matter how it sounds, no matter how much emotion is part of their expression.                                                                                                                   

What is particularly galling is that the false teachers prey on “soft targets.”  Those who are either new converts or those whose roots are shallow.  When converts to Christ lack understanding and lack of knowledge of the Word they become soft targets.  When false teachers mouth boastful words, full of high-sounding verbosity are without substance.  In the text “to entice” means to lure with bait, so by appealing to the lustful desires (money, sex, or power) they influence.                                                                                                                                 

Peter’s description of false teachers is that they make boastful claims that promise freedom in the moral sphere.  This anti-law orientation or heresy, both Peter and Paul had to combat in various churches.  True Christian liberty involves moral restraint.  In the words of our mentor, “False liberty leads to being slaves of depravity, that is, slavery to one’s own passions and the lack of accountability.”  True liberty from the death grip of depravity comes through divine power, the result of knowing God in Christ and walking in His ways.                       

The false teachers demonstrated that there is more than one kind of knowing.  We can know in our heads, and we can also come to know in our hearts.  Returning to old patterns of life indicates head knowledge versus heart knowledge.  Therefore, they are worse off at the end than they we at the beginning.  In the first place they were simply ignorant, but now they are in rebellion.                                                                                                                             

Once to have known the way of righteousness and then reject it, means that these men (the false teachers) are sinning against the light.  The error of the false teachers is not only to have rejected the Apostle’s teachings for themselves, but to have perverted it, content, and then criminally misleading others by their own twisted versions of the way.  Peter’s point is that to repudiate the sacred commands is something simply evil.                                           

Misunderstanding of truth is when nature remains unaffected by occasional good behavior.  In my story if I were to have continued in simply acting in a loving way from time to time, I would not have become a loving person.  Peter’s point is that the transformation of the inner person is the hallmark of a true Christian.  He uses the well-known proverb about dogs and pigs.  It is important to remember that for Jews dogs and pigs were both unclean animals and symbols of pagan immorality.  Natural habits prevail.  I’m reminded of Larry Crabb’s book, Inside Out.  As Jesus said, Matt. 23:25-27, the problem is on the inside.  When the inside is transformed the outside will take care of itself.                                                                                                         

What then do we learn?  To begin with, false teachers are spiritual examples of emptiness.  They sound full and overflowing in their confidence and assertiveness but instead they are empty and dry.  Their future is the worst!  The deception preys on the weakness of the human soul.  The ugliness of false teachers is leading astray those who are spiritually vulnerable.  We need to see that often the promise of spiritual freedom comes from those who live in slavery to themselves.                                                                                                                       

Here’s a tough one for us but the condition of false teachers is worse than those who are ignorant.  To know the truth and then to turn from it is the worst.  Ignorance is one thing, but deception is quite another.  The only reason one turns from the truth is the passions of the flesh like power, influence, or filling one’s own cup of emptiness.  When our being or the way we are is controlled by our false self, the one tainted and even controlled by our natural fallenness we remain less than what we were created for – the glory of God.                                                

So, what then is Peter’s warning to us today?  There have always been false teachers in the church of Jesus Christ because it is important to the evil one to disrupt, distort, and deceive the redeemed ones to a place of spiritual impotence.  When the corruption of truth takes place the witness of the redeemed is neutered.  Without spiritual vitality the “follower of Jesus” becomes a dry spring – just a hole in the ground.