A few weeks ago, as the hot weather season got into full swing, I remembered something I had not done to prepare for the season. Last summer we had bought a big plastic garbage container and had set it outside, next to the air conditioner compressor, and I had run the exhaust hose into it in order to catch all the water that had been condensed by the air conditioning system. If you have a central air conditioning system, or even if you depend on window units, you know that when they run, especially in our humid Washington summers, they take a tremendous amount of water out of the air. And it has to go somewhere, usually dripping down your wall someplace, or, in the case of my system, just flowing out allover the patio.
And so we said last summer, let’s collect this water. It will not only save a mess on the patio, it will also allow us to recycle the water and use it to water vegetables and flowers in the garden. And so last summer the hose, the garbage can, and water collection.
Well, once the air conditioning season was over, I just forgot all about it and I did nothing to empty the can or clean it out. I just left it there. And of course this year we did not think about it and we just let the air conditioner run until one Monday morning I thought about it and went to inspect.
When I lifted the lid on that water storage can, well, words fail me to describe what I saw. It was the most awesome, sickening, slimy, gummy, smelly, obnoxious, malodorous mess you can imagine. Green here, orange there, a kind of crust floating on top, a few dead bugs and something that looked as though if I weren’t careful it might wake up and do beastly things. It was horrible. Just horrible.
And so of course I began to dip this stuff out. Don’t tell my wife that I poured it on the tomatoes, because I don’t much like tomatoes anyway and I figured that however bad this stuff may be it can’t make tomatoes any worse than they already are, and I gradually got all the slimy water out and away.
But then I made another mistake. I didn’t put the hose back in the can. I emptied the can of its old accumulation, but I did not arrange to put any new water in it. Just left the hose out on the ground. And when I went back the next Monday, behold, what did my eyes find? No, I’ll change that; what did my nose find? An awesome, sickening, slimy, gummy, smelly, obnoxious, malodorous mess, now dry. Still green her, orange there, still the dead bugs and the sleeping monster from the lagoon, but now all dry and caked. Hardly an improvement.
The solution is obvious, of course. Clean out the can, put the hose back in, and every few days dip out some water. Keep it coming in and keep it going out, and all is beautiful, fresh, clear, clean, and helpful. Input, output, and refreshment.
From which I discern three very important principles. They apply not only to water storage; they apply to you and me as well.
The three principles:
First, if your cistern, your water storage can, has no output, it gets
messy and slimy.
Second, if your cistern has no input, it dries up, and is still messy and slimy too.
And third, when your cistern has both input and output it is sweet to be around and it makes for a whole lot of refreshment.
Or, as the book of Deuteronomy puts it, "When the Lord your God brings you into the land which he promised, to give you houses full of all good things which you did not fill and cisterns hewn out which you did not hew and vineyards which you did not plant, when you eat and are full, take heed lest you forget the Lord."
And, as the writer of Deuteronomy insists in that same passage, "Those things which I command you shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them and you shall bind them on yourselves and you shall write them on your doorposts, lest you forget the Lord your God."
Let me take these principles one by one and see what the lessons of the cisterns really are for us. The Lord your God will give you cisterns hewn out which you did not hew … let these things be on your heart … and teach them diligently lest you forget the Lord your God.
I
First, if your cistern has no output, it gets messy and slimy. You shall teach diligently lest you forget the Lord your God.
Any authentic teacher will tell you that the best way to learn anything is to prepare to teach it to someone else. Any piece of information I have to explain to someone else is a piece of information I will learn pretty carefully and even in the process of teaching it I will learn some more. That’s obvious.
Our faith is like that. The most effective way for me to know the Christian faith is to share it with someone else. The most practical, probing way for me to understand my relationship with Christ is to attempt to lead and teach someone else into such a relationship.
What happens, of course, is that if I do not try to teach anyone or share with anyone, my faith gets sloppy and my theology gets messy. In fact, my whole relationship to God gets to be a taken-for-granted kind of thing, and before long, I forget. As the saying goes, I forget more than I ever knew. Unless I am about the business of sharing out of the reservoirs of faith and knowledge that my savior has provided me, I will grow stale and stagnant.
Let me drop the metaphor for a moment and be very plain. I hear folks saying to me, "We come to this church to be fed. We come here to get something, we want nourishment that will carry us through the week." And I accept that, I affirm that. I acknowledge the responsibility to provide input.
But as long as you and I are all input and no output, we will be on our way to becoming stagnant. As long as we bottle up inside ourselves all the inspiration and instruction and hoping and thinking that is done here, we are on the way to becoming stagnant and messy. You and I must find ways to share what we know; as scripture says, to teach diligently. Teach these things diligently to our children and to others whose pathways we intersect. Teach and share diligently. I know there is someone in your life who needs what you know. I know also that you would know it better if you were to try to communicate it. It might be a neighbor, it might be a friend, it may be a family member, a classmate, a co-worker. But there is someone you need to teach, lest you forget and lest you become a stagnant, smelly pond.
II
But now do not overlook the second principle I discovered, that if your cistern has no input, it dries up, and more than that, it is still messy and slimy. Do not overlook this clear and obvious reality, that if there is no input, there can be no output; and more, soon you will dry up and you will not be cleansed.
"Hear, 0 Israel, these words which I command you shall be upon your heart … and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way … you shall know these things … and you shall receive cisterns which you did not hew."
You and I are sitting on top of a cistern, a reservoir of knowledge that is truly remarkable; but too many of us are not dipping into it at all. The refreshing waters of truth are here, they are right here on this corner, but we do not, many of us, receive them. They are a cistern which we did not hew out, they are a gift, but somehow many of us are forgetting about these resources.
I think about our efforts in Christian education. Still, after many efforts to reach more persons, our Sunday School remains only about half of our worship attendance. That suggests to me that we are failing to take in from the cisterns hewn here by these who have gone before us; but when we fail to receive input, we will go dry.
I know what it means to put together a Wednesday evening Bible study and to have a bare handful demonstrate interest in it. Please hear me; I am trying very hard not to get defensive, not to be judgmental, and yet there are a lot of scraps of evidence that suggest we simply are not making learning a priority. It is a cistern we did not hew, it is given to us, but too many of us are forgetting and we are about to go dry.
I think about many other opportunities for learning that are being offered: about the Lay Institute for Equipping, LIFE, that we experimented with a few weeks ago. We were ecstatic that thirty or so people came, but it should have been, could have been seven times thirty. If we were to hear the commands of our God and were to talk of his ways and bind them in front of us and write them on our doorposts, great God, what a cistern of knowledge is right here, which we did not hew, and we are forgetting.
III
So, not only is it true that the cistern which has no output gets messy and slimy; it is also true that the cistern which has no input gets messy and slimy and dry. And not only is it true that the Christian who has no witness gets sloppy and messy and forgetful; it is also true that the Christian who receives no training goes dry.
But do you know, do you truly know, that the cistern which has both input and output is sweet to be around and does a great job of refreshing? And do you see, truly see, that the Christian who both receives God’s truths and who shares them with others is a cistern of refreshment?
It’s often pointed out that in the land of Israel, at the either end of the Jordan River, there are two bodies of water; the Dead Sea at its southern end, the Sea of Galilee at is start in the north. The Dead Sea is a salty, unpleasant lake, and the reason is that it has input from the Jordan, but no outlet, no output. At the other extreme, the Sea of Galilee both receives and gives, it has both input and output, and it is a lake of sweet, clear, refreshing waters.
The Christian who takes the time to receive as a cistern was intended, and who shares what he has with others, will be a refreshment in the Kingdom of our God. Otherwise he runs the risk of getting messy and slimy or going dry. "But you shall take these words to your heart and you shall talk of them as you sit in your house." And more than that, you shall teach them diligently, "as the Lord your God brings you to a land filled with cisterns you did not hew, lest you forget."
I have a book on my shelves with the intriguing title, "There’s Algae in the Baptismal Pool". It’s a book about the kinds of unhealthy situations into which ministers put themselves. But the title reminds me to turn for a special closing word to those who have been to this cistern of refreshment today. Here is a cistern of water you did not hew, but here you have received your own refreshment from your savior. And yet, as wonderful as that is, as powerful as it is to cleanse you now, it is always possible that algae may grown in the baptismal pool. If you do not share the faith you have found with others, you, like far too many of the rest of us will grow stale. You are beginning to learn, to receive from Christ. But don’t just take it in and never share it, and do not just stop taking it in at this stage. Let it flow through you; you yourselves are cisterns. Like all of us there is always the danger of becoming a stagnant or even a dried up pond. But choose instead to become a channel, receiving and giving input and output.
"Is your life a channel of blessing, Is the love of God flowing through you? Are you telling the love of the savior? Are you ready his service to do?"
