Peter says, "In actual fact, all these things that they are propagating, all these things that they are promising are empty, boastful words, and will lead people into ultimate disillusionment and bondage". Notice the way that he doesn't mince words to describe these people who will teach you fulfillment is to be found in that which is ultimately empty. He calls them in verse 17, "springs without water and mists driven by a storm."

Remember that this was written in the Middle East, this letter of Peter's, for people living in the Middle East. If you've had an experience of the Middle East, you know that water is at a premium — isn't at exactly a premium around here right now. So it's hard for us to imagine living in that which basically desert and water is the absolute thing that you crave for and long for and guard. Try to imagine somebody living out there. They've been on a long journey; their water supply is gone; they're under the blazing heat; they're in a baking barren desert. One thought is captivating their minds. What is it? WATER! WATER! But they know where the nearest spring is, and eventually they stagger to the nearest spring and find it is a spring without water. There's your picture! Great boastful, empty words, promising fulfillment, promising life, people looking for fulfillment, looking for life, looking for meaning, chasing after these things, discovering them to be "wells without water, mists driven by the wind." There's a terrible bondage there.

You can live in the land of the free and the home of the brave and be in sheer bondage to error and be utterly in bondage to emptiness. It's happening all the time!

Jeremiah tells us, in Chapter two of his great book, that God's people have committed two fundamental sins. The first one is that they have forsaken the Lord. The second sin is that they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves cisterns, which cannot hold water (Jer. 2:13). Two sins — one is to turn away from the One who is the source of life and meaning and fulfillment, and the second sin is to put in His place substitutes which can't satisfy, cisterns which cannot hold water. Peter picks up on the picture, and he says this: "The days in which you are living are replete with false teachers who will lead you into the bondage of error, and who will lead you into the bondage of emptiness, for they will promise what they cannot deliver.

The third thing that we notice is that these teachers will lead us into bondage by enticing us into that which can never satisfy. You will notice that he talks here about two fundamental things: He talks about sinful human nature, and in verse 20, he talks about something which he calls "the corruption of the world." Two big problems here: The sinful human nature and the corruption of the world. Here is the human condition: there is us something that is fundamentally corrupt. There is around us in the environment in which we live something else that is fundamentally corrupt. We have a sinful human nature, and we live in a world that is fundamentally corrupt.