Three Warnings of Empty Cisterns
Jeremiah 2:4-13
All Scripture Marked NLT: Tyndale House Publishers. (2004). Holy Bible : New Living Translation. "Text edition"--Spine. (2nd ed.). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.
All Scripture Marked “The Message”: Peterson, E. H. (2002). The Message : The Bible in contemporary language. Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress.
Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father and Holy God;
We ask today that you will speak to us this morning. We all need to hear a word from you.
You are the God of great wonders!
You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations. (Ps 77:14, NLT)
Help us to see the wisdom of worshiping you and hearing from you. Teach us to take your Holy Word and apply it to every area of our life.
And teach us;
… not hide these truths from our children;
(teach us) to tell the next generation
about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about his power and his mighty wonders. (Ps 78:4, NLT).
So, Lord, you speak move me out of the way. So that you may receive all of the glory and the honor. In Jesus name I pray, AMEN.
Thursday night, Monica and I were driving to Idar-Oberstein for the first time to attend a Chaplain’s dinner. We were already late and in a confused in a new town.
One my first lap around the city, I missed the restaurant. And the road, I thought I was one was a one way street. Then, as we drove a little more, this one way street divided into two lanes—both going the same way. Which I thought was very nice, because I was able to get around the car in front of me.
All was going well until we made it to the stop light. The right lane, I noticed, had a stop light. The left lane didn’t. And to top it off, the signs were all pointing the wrong way. The people in the other lane began giving us dirty looks and some were honking their horns.
It was clear then, that we were definitely in the wrong lane.
Many times in our lives, we are given warning signs that warn of danger. We see them and ignore them. But many times these warning signs could save us from going down the wrong road.
You may be sitting here fully understanding that you could be going down the wrong road. You have seen warning signs that your life may not be pleasing to God. And you want this to change.
This morning we are looking at a passage from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. We read this passage a few minutes ago, as the Old Testament Reading.
So with your Bibles, please turn to Jeremiah 2:4-13, which is found on page______ in the blue Bibles in the pew in front of you.
I’ll be reading from the New Living Translation, which is slightly different from the New International Version in the pews.
This passage gives us some warning signs, taken from the proclamation of the Lord through Jeremiah to the Israelites.
Verse 13 reads:
13 “For my people have done two evil things:
They have abandoned me—
the fountain of living water.
And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns
that can hold no water at all!
God is angry with the Israelite people because they have abandoned Him and put their faith in beliefs that hold no water at all.
And we as Americans, as Christian of the 21st century, run into the same dangers and the same traps...and we must pay attention, lest we be destroyed. Everyday, I see the results of people putting their trust in Cisterns that hold no water at all.
Marriages crumble. Children going astray. Careers falling apart. All because they trust in the empty cisterns that hold no water.
Just as the Israelites were.
In this passage, Jeremiah is voicing the prophecy of Israel’s future defeat and exile to Babylon. He expresses this prophecy as a call God’s people to repentance. (Willmington, H. L. (1997). Willmington’s Bible handbook (381). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.)
God wanted His people to turn from their sin and follow Him. That is what repentance is—going down the wrong road and turning around to go down the right road.
He was showing the Israelite people the warning signs of destruction. And in the same way, we need to be reminded that God’s law has not changed and that we need to repent of our sin and turn to him.
The Lord’s first warning was to
I. Beware of the Broken Cistern of Humanism
Jeremiah 2:5-6
5 This is what the Lord says:
“What did your ancestors find wrong with me
that led them to stray so far from me?
They worshiped worthless idols,
only to become worthless themselves.
6 They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord
who brought us safely out of Egypt
and led us through the barren wilderness—
a land of deserts and pits,
a land of drought and death,
where no one lives or even travels?’ (Jer. 2:5-6, NLT)
The Israelites had become very comfortable in their ability to function. They began to trust in their own skills and gifts and riches to see them through storm after storm.
They began to forget that it was the Lord that brought them out of Egypt, through harsh deserts and being pursued by a powerful army. They had forgotten that it was God who gave them the land flowing with Milk and Honey.
Soon, they began to take the credit for all that God had done.
This is humanism. Humanism is defined as “A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth.” (http://www.answers.com)
Humanism in this degree is no different from plagiarism—“to steal and pass off as one’s own : use without crediting the source”.
(Merriam-Webster, I. (1996, c1993). Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Includes index. (10th ed.). Springfield, Mass., U.S.A.: Merriam-Webster.)
When we begin to take credit in our lives what God has done is no different from stealing a best seller and putting our own name on it.
One of the most popular military historians was a man named Stephen Ambrose. He wrote the popular books titled Band of Brothers and D-Day. His works continue to inspire soldiers, leaders, and civilian alike. In 2002, Ambrose was found to have plagiarized material in one of his books, The Wild Blue. A subsequent investigation by Forbes found similar cases of plagiarism involving entire passages in at least six books and found a similar pattern of plagiarism going all the way back to his doctoral thesis. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Ambrose)
While his work was popular and motivating, his name will always be associated with plagiarism.
What is your name associated with? Are you known for making your own way, when God has provided everything for you? Or are you known as a man or woman that gives credit where credit is due?
Jeremiah reminds us that we need to repent of trusting in the cistern of humanism.
That is his first warning.
His second warning is to
2. Beware of the Broken Cistern of Materialism
Jeremiah 2:7
7 “And when I brought you into a fruitful land
to enjoy its bounty and goodness,
you defiled my land and
corrupted the possession I had promised you. (Jer. 2:7, NLT)
Eugene Peterson in his translation The Message translates the verse this way:
7 “I brought you to a garden land
where you could eat lush fruit.
But you barged in and polluted my land,
trashed and defiled my dear land. (Jer. 2:7, The Message)
God tells the Israelites that they barged in and polluted, trashed, and defiled the land given to them.
They took something that was a precious gift and exploited it. Using every bit of the land, gorging on the fruits and corrupted its purity—defiled the land.
This is materialism:
a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress.
(Merriam-Webster, I. (1996, c1993). Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Includes index. (10th ed.). Springfield, Mass., U.S.A.: Merriam-Webster.)
And our lives are consumed by materialism. We must have Wal-Mart in our towns, so we can get everything we want. Better yet, we must have a Best Buy, Lowes, Books-A-Million and a mall, just in case.
Our environment is continually polluted by the material wishes of people. Obesity in America, while not only caused by overeating, remains at the highest growth rate in history.
Consumer debt is 2 trillion dollars in America, representing our desire to place our highest values, not on God, not on our families, not on our nation, but on our own desire to gain more possessions.
God has given us many gifts. We should beware of the materialism that is so prevalent in our age. We should stand up to the temptation to buy simply because we can.
With the Combined Federal Campaign approaching in the next several months, how much more can you give to others than to keep for yourself?
Christians need to be a giving people because they don’t trust in possessions to keep them happy—we trust in God to fulfill all of our needs.
We deserve nothing of the blessings he has given us, except through his grace. When we live with this principle, we are seeking God and his glory to make us who he wants us to be, rather than the image that world would have us to create.
We are to beware of the broken cistern of Materialism.
And finally, we are to
3. Beware of the Broken Cistern of Idolatry
Jeremiah 2:7
11Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones,
even though they are not gods at all?
Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God*
for worthless idols! (Jer. 2:11, NLT)
As God speaks his message through the prophet Jeremiah, God clearly shows His horror that His people have exchanged Him for worthless gods.
Many times when this is preached, preachers will lump materialism and idolatry in one basket. And there is some argument for that, materialism can be a form of idol worship.
But, in today’s pluralistic and ever mystical culture, I must address the fact that true idolatry exists. True idolatry is "the worship of a created object either made by human hands or created by God". (http://www.answers.com) We don’t often want to admit it. We may not want to address it, for the desire not to offend—but idolatry exists. And it exists in our churches and in our homes.
We see the worship of Angels, the worship of Crystals, the worship of statues. We see these idols all over the country, in many of our churches. We see them as novelties or provide spiritual assistance.
We see them in the Christian sections of books stores and even in some Christian books stores themselves.
Why would a Christian turn to these for strength? It is written right here…they are worthless idols.
In the shops in Iraq, many times you will find a framed display of Iraqi money with Sadam Hussein’s picture on the front. Sometime’s these displays run up to 20 dollars or more, I would suspect. But they are worthless.
Yes, there are collectors out there that would like to have them. But, as money—they are worthless.
Why would you give your 20 dollars to purchase some worthless bills from a government that no longer exists.
The same is true of false gods.
When looking at all of the objects that are marketed today for spiritual assistance, we must all look to the Bible.
Adrian Rogers said that “the Bible is a Him book—it is all about Him.” And this is true the Bible is all about Jesus. Everything in there points to Christ—and so should anything that you gain for spiritual assistance.
Angels point to Christ—so don’t worship the angels. Worship the Christ. Crystals point to themselves. Statues point to themselves. Worship the Christ and Him only.
We must beware to the cisterns that are empty and worthless. The cisterns of idolatry, of materialism, and of humanism. We must fill ourselves with living water.
Some of you may remember that the Bible talks about “living water” somewhere else in the Bible. Specifically, in the story of the woman at the well found in John 4:9-30
Jesus approaches a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Verse 9:
9 The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans.* She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?”
10 Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”
(John 4:9-10, NLT)
Jesus is the living water. In John 4:14, he says;
14 But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” (John 4:14, NLT)
So it is time that we do away the cisterns of humanism, materialism, and idolatry and it exchange them for cisterns filled with living water.
We do this by accepting Christ and turning our lives over to Him.
For some of you, you have never done this. You have never had the opportunity to accept this living water in your life.
The truth is all of us are sinners. Sin is anything that you think, or say, or do that makes God unhappy. All of us have done that.
The payment for this sin is death and it must be paid.
Jesus took this payment of death, by dieing on the cross. We must accept this payment and give credit where credit is due. By accepting this payment, we can have this eternal life and this living water and we will never be thirsty again.
You can accept that payment in your seat today, and I’ll be happy to share more about it with you personally after the service.
For others of you, you have accepted this living water to be the payment for your sin, but have grown away from dipping into the well. You may have been dipping in the broken Cisterns to find the answers that you’ve been looking for, and have come back dry.
It is time for you today to repent of this sin. It is time to place your complete trust in Christ—and Him alone.
Let Us Pray.
Dear Gracious Heavenly Father;
We come before you today, humbled and broken. We have been wrong in our trust in ourselves, wrong in our trust in possessions, and wrong in our worship of other gods. We confess that to you this morning.
We ask that you will change our hearts in a way that gives us total dependence on you. Teach us to be children of God, that seek to give our all for you.
And lead us to give you all of the glory and the honor.
In Jesus Name we pray…A-men.
