Lesson 28: Diligence to His path
Read 2 Peter 2:1-22- https://www.bible.com/bible/59/2pe.2
17 These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.
18 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.
19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
20 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.
21 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.
22 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.”
We must be diligent to keep ourselves going along Jesus’ path with Him. In our last lesson we read about facing temptation, especially the temptation of using our own understanding of Scripture to tell others what Jesus has said. Our verses today continue with this thought, and explain where such error will lead us.
Peter gives us some word-pictures of people who want to follow their own understanding of God’s words. A waterless spring will give no one the promised refreshment they seek in a dry desert. Mists driven by a storm – moisture the wind itself steals from the ground – will not provide moisture for crops.
Peter continues in the next verses with other descriptions. In Verse 18 he says they are walking in only sensual feelings of the flesh – while God wants us to walk by faith (Hebrews 11:6). They think they are finding freedom from God’s laws – and all they are truly finding is slavery to sin.
Only Jesus can set us free from slavery to sin. Only following Him, by our own choice, can keep us free. When we choose to go our own way, even as believers, we again make ourselves slaves to sin – and this slavery can be worse than it was before we were saved. (See Jesus’ story about the man with demons in Matthew 12:43-45.) Although we who have received Him cannot lose our salvation, there are wonderful rewards we stand to lose if we make ourselves slaves to sin again.
Whether we are listening to someone else teaching this way or we begin to believe it in our own minds, when we leave His path of Truth we get in trouble spiritually. Whether we choose to believe what we can understand rather than God’s Truth or we follow someone else in their deception, we place ourselves into great danger of attack from the evil one. We must diligently walk God’s path, following Him as closely as we can. Only then will we remain free in His wonderful liberty.
*Search your own heart for signs you have wanted to follow your own way rather than Jesus’. Repent, confess, and ask Him to enable you to follow Him more closely.