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2 Peter 2:18
18 For [gar] when they speak [phtheggomai] great swelling [huperogkos] words of vanity [mataiotes], they allure [deleazo] through [en] the lusts [epithumia] of the flesh [sarx], through much wantonness [aselgeia], those that were clean [ontos] escaped [apopheugo] from them who live [anastrepho] in [en] error [plane]. KJV-Interlinear
18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, NASB
The word for swelling, ‘huperogkos,’ means great magnitude, grand, superb, sublime, inflated, exaggerated, tumid (swollen or disproportionate), pompous, pretentious.
These are words that sound good to the hearer, but are in fact deceitful and lies. They are intended to gain the hearers trust and support.
They speak to the things that the hearer wants to hear. They speak in ambiguous phrases that can be interpreted into any meaning that the hearer wants.
They hit home to those who are in turmoil and therefore susceptible to their enticements.
An example from history. Back in the 1920’s, Hitler did not gain an audience because Germany was in a state of recovery after World War I. Hitler was in fact an ignored voice. But then world events took a turn for the worse.
The economy in the United States hit a snag and the bottom fell out in 1929 through 1932. This hardship dominoed throughout the rest of the world. Germany was hit hard since it had not fully recovered. And unemployment skyrocketed. Hitler now had a listening audience, beginning in the early 1930’s. He spoke eloquent and passionate words and the masses followed to their ultimate doom.
People do not have to be caught up in a massive worldwide depression, hard times can come in all shapes and sizes. Even in prosperous times, the arrogance of people can turn them toward promising but empty words.
Now Peters point here is not the words per se, but the threat they have for hearers who lack doctrine.
Those who are new to doctrine are the ones that are at risk. They ‘barely escape,’ as Peter puts it.
When you advance in your spiritual life, doctrine serves as a protection, a wall of fire, as it were, for the believer, against the threats of the world.
The wall of fire symbol came from the time of the Exodus when the Israelites were trapped, with their backs to the Red Sea, by the advancing Egyptian army. God put down a wall of fire, an impenetrable wall through which nothing and no one could penetrate.
Pharaoh should have got that final message, just as Balaam’s talking donkey should have given him a clue as to what the real truth of life was.
However, people who lack doctrine, lack orientation to truth, and certainly they lack orientation to life. They cannot read the signs of the times. They cannot interpret the signs of their own actions.
Those who live in error, are all the world, that would cause you to stray away from your spiritual life.
God has a plan for your life. That plan is to make you independent from the chains of this world, to relieve you from the crutches placed upon you by the world, to cut away the chains of this world that load the heavy burdens for life upon you.
The world has a plan for your life. That plan is to impress you with the enticements of your own desires (fleshy desires), which run the entire range of lascivious lusts to ascetic philosophies. The ‘world’ is a term that represents the policies of Satan. Satan’s policies are all evil. Evil is the policy of everything that is opposite truth, and therefore consists of only lies. The world’s policies are to make sure you fail, by means of your own choices of the enticements from the world.
Unbelievers are at risk because they lack truth. Believers just starting out, are at great risk, because they do not yet have the spiritual muscle with which to fight off the temptations of the world.
There is the world and all of its enticements and propaganda on the one hand just hammering you day in and day out, and on the other hand there is doctrine which is only available to those who seek it out, if you care to seek it out.
The enticements of the world include everything from diet enticements, to social enticements, to political enticements, to do-gooder enticements, to entertainment enticements, to any topic you can think of. And all of these make up the realm of fleshy desires, personal opinion, public opinion, and so forth.
Without doctrine, you can see why people can be overwhelmed by life.
But with doctrine, and you can only experience this when you have grown up a bit in your spiritual life, but with doctrine you can cut through all of the rhetoric and fog and deceptions of life. You are more apt to be on your guard, more apt to be alert, more apt to discern and understand the risks that life really pushes on you, and avoid them all.
Without doctrine, of course all of this seems like nonsense, and all to do about nothing. And that attitude will continue so long as life coasts along without too many bumps. But when the bumps do finally occur, then of course it is someone else's fault.
One thing that you really need to learn is that God is the sovereign of this universe, Psa. 103:19.
Nothing happens in life or in history that God does not allow to happen. That does not mean that He condones events, but that He simply allows man to make his choices and allows man to fall on his face from time to time.
There is no one greater than God, Psa. 82:6, 24:10.
God gives to you all that you have and can take it all away in an instant, 1 Sam 2:6-7.
The nations are like a speck of dust, Isa. 40:15. What does that make you?
The plans of man are no better than foolishness, and the person who ignores God, Christ, doctrine, and truth is the most foolish of all.
Don’t let that be you.
