Like Animals

The Book of 2nd Peter is all about warnings. Warnings to us in this life, about our life. We all understand warnings. We understand that warnings may not feel great in the moment, but warnings are for our good and for our betterment. Some warnings we get in this life are for our physical safety. Think about traffic signals. The modern day traffic lights don’t go from green to red or red to green instantly. There is a warning light in between. In between red and green there is a warning light, that we know as the yellow light. It warns you that a change is coming so you can stay safe. Imagine, if there were no railroad crossing warnings. That every time you crossed the tracks you just had to risk it. That would be crazy. Instead, a warning comes to us to protect us from physical injury when the crossing arms go down, so we know what is coming. 

Peter in this book is warning us about false teachers. He is warning us of the dangers of following those who may say they have the truth, but in fact they do not know the truth. What they say and what they teach is not leading us closer to Jesus, but further away from him. In 2nd Peter 2:12-22 that you are looking at today, Peter goes one step further and he describes exactly what these false prophets look like. Go back and read some of the descriptions he uses. They are like “unreasoning animals”, “creatures of instinct”, and “like animals they too will perish.” That is not a way that you would like to be described. It is not a positive statement about who they are. Why is Peter doing this? He’s doing this to warn the people he wrote the letter to, but also to warn us to be thoughtful and wise about who we follow and who we are listening to in order to guide our life.

This is not just something for those people back then, but it is something for us now as well. This impacts each of our lives. Our lives are all listening and following someone. Most likely it is not a named person in your life that is a false teacher. It is more likely to be something in this culture that is lying to us by promising freedom, but only leading us to slavery. We live in a world that is defined by success, sex, greed, and our identity is often shaped and lead by those cultural norms. We want to look like this, or talk like this, or have this, but in reality none of those things will satisfy our hearts. They are false teachers that do not lead us to the ultimate satisfaction in Jesus, but leave us empty and always wanting more. 

What do the ideas or people that you are following / learning from look like? How do they behave? Does it match up with Scripture? Is it godly, or is it driven by their desires like animals? 

What about you? Do you know God and a lot about him or do you know him in a way that you are faithful to him? What does your life look like? Does it look like the false teachers or does it look like a guy like Peter? Who wasn’t perfect by any means but he was faithful, constantly coming back to God with his sin?