April 6, 2023: 2 Peter 2:17 - Wells Without Water, Clouds Carried by a Tempest

“These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” - 2 Peter 2:17

For 34 years of my life, I lived in a desert, eight years as a teenager with my family and 26 as a married mother. When my family first moved to New Mexico, we came from beautiful Santa Barbara, California, where water was definitely more abundant than it was in New Mexico. My grandparents had also moved from Santa Barbara to New Mexico about a year prior to us. We all lived out in the country, off of a dry, dusty, and bumpy dirt road. I remember when my grandfather decided he wanted to hire someone to drill a well so that he could have water off of his own land instead of getting it through the county’s water system. I remember that big machine that was used to drill the well. My grandparents didn’t have a lot of money, and they were hoping that they wouldn’t have to drill too deep before they hit water. I remember going out and looking at the well that had been dug. Each time they drilled, there was no water. They went a little deeper, and no water. I can’t tell you how far they drilled, but eventually, they said they had to stop. That well was a dry well. They were so disappointed and had spent all that money and time for nothing. They capped the well, and that was the end of it.

In New Mexico where we lived, we only had an average eight inches of rainfall a year. I have also lived in Florida, and we received eight inches in a week or two sometimes; it was quite different than living in a desert! Most years in New Mexico were dry, but then again, it is a desert. I remember getting excited when I would see storm clouds. I would hope that it would rain and refresh our dry and parched land. When it did rain, it didn’t take a lot to make New Mexico beautiful. The wildflowers would come out with just a little bit of rain, and everything would smell fresh and clean. I remember the smell of the land right after a good, cleansing rain shower. The trees in the neighborhood just soaked it in, and even the birds seemed to chirp and sing a little louder. Most of the time, however, we did not receive our average rainfall and sometimes we were in drought mode. There were several summers when we were in extreme fire danger, with just the slightest spark lighting whole forests on fire. The storm clouds when they came, the dark clouds, were tempting us, giving us hope of cleansing water but instead, they would bring the wind with them, which further dried things up, leaving us more barren than before they came.

The same is true for false teachers, as Peter the apostle describes in this chapter of his second epistle. False teachers claim to preach and teach the word of God, but like the dry well and the storm clouds that delivered no water and no rain that provided nothing beneficial, they leave their congregations dry and thirsty and even more barren than they were before. What good is a pastor and teacher if they were to say to those who came to listen to them to tell them the word of God something like, “Just keep doing what you’re doing, God loves you as you are. You don’t need to accept Him as your Savior because all roads lead to heaven. He knows that your sin is accepted by society and it’s okay, you’re okay”? These types of words are being preached and taught in many churches today; they are puffing people up, making them feel comfortable in their sin so that they have no reason to believe that they are dead in their sins and need to turn to Jesus to be forgiven and let Him change them from the inside out, to change their hearts so that they are offended by their sin and begin a process of turning away from it. The words of false teachers do nothing but destroy people, and that is exactly what Satan wants. He says, “Continue in your sin,” whereas Jesus tells us, as He told the woman caught in the sin of adultery, “…go and sin no more.” (John 8:11). Jesus knows that we are incapable of not sinning as long as we are in this world in our fleshly bodies. However, he wants us to stop returning to a lifestyle that causes us to sin and to actively fight against it instead of giving into that temptation. Sadly, this is the complete opposite of what is being taught by many false teachers in the pulpits today. Instead of giving people the living water they need through the truth of God, they are tempting people with the lies of Satan that will eventually lead them into the fire, for eternity.

Jesus is the living water that we all need to forgive us of all our sins and restore and refresh us, and anyone who believes in Him will receive that living water:

“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14)

“On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38)

As Peter wrote, these false teachers who are deceiving many will spend their eternity in darkness, in hell, that God Himself has reserved for them because they rejected the truth of God for the lie of Satan.

As Paul said in the Scripture passage below, I pray that both unbelievers and believers alike who are listening to false teachers will take heed to his words of warning:

“…that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.” (Ephesians 4:14)

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:17-24) ✝️