Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Reading through the 31 chapters of Proverbs each month can give us an understanding of how to serve God.

Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 2:1-22 ESV

Proverbs 26

¹¹Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool who repeats his folly.

Proverbs 26:11 states the principle that as the dog acts according to its nature, so the fool will act the part of a fool because that is his nature. There is no self-improvement for a fool. Folly is his history; folly is to be expected from him today and for the future.

This same principle of the primacy of nature is used by Peter to illustrate the useless practice, content, and result of those who preach a false gospel. (II Peter 2:22) “And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.”

In II Peter 2:18 “they entice by sensual passions of the flesh”. A fair reading reveals that their foolish message and methods have no spiritual content. They entice natural appetites but never convict the nature by the Spirit.

II Peter 2:19 continues the revelation of the false teacher’s false gospel by stating what has begun as sensual enticement is completed with a lying promise. ¹⁹They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. But how is this practiced today? When it is communicated that the Gospel is aided by or it is by extension necessary to have rock concerts, rodeos, circuses, Easter Egg hunts, basketball courts or any natural or sensual enticement folly is the source and vain is it’s result.

To have a gospel that is motivated by sensuality is to have a message that is wedded to the methods used to promote it. And thus - to have a message that is no better than the methods that support it.

The fruit of this practice will always, as the dog or sow, return to it nature.