03/02/23 WHEN "SHEEP" ACT LIKE PIGS

03/02/23 WHEN "SHEEP" ACT LIKE PIGS

Sometimes the "sheep" don't really want to be rescued. A video showing a Russian farm boy pull a sheep from a ditch, only to have the sheep run freely for a short distance and then jump back into the ditch has some humor, but the reality of parishioners being rescued from sin, then jumping back into sin's ditch is super tragic. The pastor loves the self destructive sheep, but no matter how many times he tries to rescue them, they run back to the ditch like a pig in a pigsty.

2 Peter 2:20-22
20 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

Some people pretend to be Christians, though they have never been saved, while other people have gotten saved, but their refusal to make total surrender and be purified by the infilling of the Holy Spirit allows the carnal mind to hold them captive, resulting in departing from the living God.

Hebrews 3:7-15
7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.