SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
05/02/2004
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-2
It Involves a False Experience
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter
2:21-22
Message of the
verses: “21 For it would be better
for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to
turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22 It has happened to
them according to the true proverb, "A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,"
and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire’ (NASB).” “21 It
would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know
it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. 22 They
prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit. And another says,
“A washed pig returns to the mud’ (NLT).”
We ended up our last SD on this subject by this quote
from Dr. Wiersbe “But their experience, like their promises, was false.” He is saying that they never were truly born
from above. I have mentioned in a number
of my SD’s that when I came to know the Lord in January of 1974 that I was
listening to some end times tapes by Hal Lindsey and that the person who owned
those tapes was a high school friend of mine.
He and his wife were, what seemed to me at the time a genuine born-again
experience as I look back on it now, but a few years later they both said that
quote “we are not into that now.” He
knew what it meant to be born-again, but rejected it. Years later we meet for lunch as he was home
for a class reunion and he said something to me that kind of goes along with
what we are studying here in 2 Peter.
Now I grew up close to him and went to the same school and we hang
around for years after we got out of school so I know him well. He told me that his mother had died a year
before he came back home and that his mother was afraid to die as she did not
know where she would end up. He told her
not to worry about it that all would be okay after she died. I am no one’s judge, God does that, but in my
opinion, for what it is worth, I think that he may have been giving her some
false hope as he once knew the truth of salvation, but gave it all up. These false teachers once knew the truth of
the way of salvation, but rejected it and began to tell others of the false
experience that they had which would only give their converts a false hope as
it came from a false experience.
Dr. Wiersbe points out that it is likely the same group
of people that Peter writes this second letter to as he did the first and Peter
gave them the doctrinal foundation clearly to them in that first letter. In 1 Peter 1:3 and 22-25 he emphasized the
new birth. Then he reminded those he
wrote to that they were “partakers of the divine nature in 2 Peter 1:4. In his first letter (1 Peter 2:25; 5:1-4) he
described the believers as sheep. This
is the same image that Jesus used in John 21:15-17.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes that “There is no indication that the
false teachers had ever experienced the new birth. They had knowledge
of salvation and could use the language of the church, but they lacked that
true saving experience with the Lord. At
one time they had even received the Word of God (2 Peter 2:21), but then they
turned away from it. They never trusted Christ and became His
sheep.
“Instead of being sheep, they were pigs and dogs—and keep
in mind that the dogs in that day were not pampered pets! The Jews called the Gentiles ‘dogs’ because a
dog was nothing but a filthy scavenger who lived on garbage! It was hardly a title of respect and
endearment!
9/29/2017 11:03 AM
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