Where the Wild Ferns Grew

596.  "Where the Wild Ferns Grew"    August 30, 2012
2 Peter 2-Part 6
These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest: to whom the mists of darkness is sreserved for ever.  2 Peter 2:17

LET IT GLOW

There was a small spring that flowed down the hill emptying into creek on my grandfather's farm. How I know that, I can't say. Perhaps my sister took me on one of her excurisons with her neighborhood girlfriends.. Anyway, I knew it existed, and how to get to it. Forty years ago, my soon-to-be husband and I went looking for it and found it. The spring was secluded, far away from the traveled dirt road. We trecked through our own Eden, where wild ferns grew, along with jack-in-the-pulpits and wild flowers,  making a beautiful bed of greenery. (No encounter with snakes, though.) Natural rocks and dead leaves were on the hill that we climbed to see the spring. What a scenery of God's creation! A place that only a few knew about. (My guy even carved our initials in a heart on one of the trees.) We haven't been back to that serene place, but I can visit it in my mind. I wonder if the spring is still flowing.

You may wonder why I thought about that secluded spring whenever the word spring is not mentioned in our key verse. Peter used the word wells, pege in the Greek, which actually refers to a fountain, a spring. (Thayer's Lexicon)
Now you know where I am coming from.

Either one, wells or springs, are quite worthless without water, aren't they? Why take your bucket to a well or spring for water if it is dried up?

Peter gives us three illustrations of the emptiness of these false teachers' promises:
1. Wells without water (verse 17a)
2. Clouds that are carried with a tempest (verse 17b)
3. The mist of darkness (verses 17c-18)

This word well, meaning spring, is the same one Jesus used when He ministered to the Samaritan woman in John 4:14 and that John used to describe the satisfaction the saints will experience for all of eternity in Revelation 7:17 and 21:6. If a person drank from Jacob's well, they would thirst again, but if they drank from Jesus' well, they will never thirst. This water produces a well that keeps on bubbling into everlsting life. We are invited to take of the water of life freely through the redemption of Christ.

People try to satisfy this thirst in various ways and end up living on substitutes. Only Jesus Christ, our Living Water, can give inner peace and satisfaction. False teachers had nothing to offer so they could not make such a promise.
They may promise spiritual refreshment, but were all show with no substance.  (MacArthur)

Friend, have you drank from the Spring of Living Water? It is free to us.

LET IT GROW

The second illustration of the emptiness of the false teachers' promises is that of clouds that are carried with a tempest. A tempest is a whirlwind. This windstorm is without rain, cloouds that are unprofitable.

The third illustration is that of a mist of darkness. Mist means blackness, gloom, so "the blackness of the darkness" would be an accurate translation. (Wiersbe) These false prophets lead people into the light, but they themselves end up in the darkest part of the darkness, hell.

Am I on the lookout for false prophets?

LET IT GO

Beware of empty promises. Check out the Bible.

Ask God for wisdom and discernment.