Introduction: The Scandal of Thirst
Before we open God’s Word, I want you to imagine the land where Jeremiah lived. It was a dry, sun-scorched land. Water was not a convenience you got from a tap; water was life itself. A family’s wealth, their survival, depended on access to a well, a stream, or a spring. In a place like that, the most valuable discovery was not gold or silver, but a fountain—a spring of "living water," as they called it. "Living water" meant it was fresh, moving, and pure, bubbling up cool and clear from the depths of the earth. It was a source that never ran dry. To have a fountain was to have life, security, and refreshment.
Here in our own beloved Philippines, we understand thirst. We know the feeling of the humid air on a hot afternoon, the longing for something cool and refreshing to truly satisfy us.
Now, hold that feeling of desperate thirst in your mind. Because God, speaking through a weeping prophet named Jeremiah, uses this powerful image to describe a spiritual scandal. He looks at His own beloved people and declares, with a voice full of holy astonishment and heartbreak, that they have committed not one, but two great evils. These are not just minor mistakes; they are fundamental betrayals against their own souls and against their God. And as we will see, they are the same two evils that tempt humanity in every generation, including our own.
I. The First Evil: Forsaking the Fountain of Living Waters
The first evil God names is this: "they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters."
1. Notice the incredible claim God makes about Himself
He doesn't say, "I have a fountain," or "I can lead you to a fountain." He says, "I AM the fountain." He is the very source. All true life, all genuine joy, all lasting peace, all unshakable hope, and all satisfying love originates in the very being and character of God. He is an inexhaustible, self-sustaining, life-giving spring. David understood this when he wrote in Psalm 36:9, "For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light."
2. So why would anyone walk away from such a source?
God Himself asks this question with the raw pain of a jilted lover in Jeremiah 2:5: "Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?"
Can you hear the heartbreak in that? God is pleading, "Tell me what I did wrong. Was I not faithful? Did My love fail? Did My provision run dry? Point to the flaw in Me that made you leave." The devastating truth is, they couldn't. There was no fault in God. They left the All-Sufficient One to chase after vanity—a word that literally means "emptiness" or "a puff of smoke." And the tragic result was that in chasing emptiness, they became empty themselves.
3.This forsaking is rarely a single, dramatic event
It is most often a slow, quiet drift. It happens when the first thing we reach for in the morning is our phone instead of the hand of our Father. It happens when our daily decisions are guided more by our bank account than by the Bible. It happens when we face a crisis and our first instinct is to panic and call a friend, rather than to pray and call on our God. We don't erect a golden calf in our living rooms, but we quietly turn our backs on the Fountain, one sip at a time from other sources.
II. The Second Evil: Hewing Out Broken Cisterns
When a person turns away from the Fountain, they do not stop being thirsty. The craving of the human soul for meaning, for purpose, for satisfaction, is relentless. This leads directly to the second evil: "and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."
Now, a cistern is very different from a fountain. A fountain is a natural source. A cistern is a man-made container. It’s a hole carved into rock to collect rainwater. It has no life in itself.
1. Notice the verb God uses: they "hewed" them out. This is hard, sweaty, back-breaking labor. This tells us that sin and idolatry are not passive. They take immense effort. The amount of energy we expend trying to find happiness apart from God is staggering. We work punishing hours for a promotion, hoping it will make us feel valuable. We pour our emotional energy into relationships, demanding they give us a sense of completeness that they cannot. We meticulously construct a perfect image on social media, hoping the approval of others will fill us. We are all digging, hewing, and laboring.
2. But God adds the most tragic detail of all
These cisterns we work so hard to create are broken. They are cracked. All that effort, all that sweat, all that work is ultimately for nothing. Why? Because the things of this world were never designed to hold the living water of ultimate satisfaction.
The cistern of Wealth is broken. Money can leak away overnight, and even when you have it, it can't buy peace of mind.
The cistern of Career Success is broken. A position can be lost, a company can downsize, and your identity can be shattered with it.
The cistern of Human Love is broken. We love people, and we should, but if we make a person our God, we put a weight on them they cannot bear. They are cracked vessels, just like us.
The cistern of Religion can even be a broken cistern. We can do all the right things—attend church, read the Bible, serve—but if we are doing it in our own strength to earn God's favor, we have replaced a relationship with the Fountain with a religious system we have built for ourselves.
3. In Jeremiah 2:25, the people cry out in a moment of tragic honesty
They say, "There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go." This is the voice of addiction. It’s the voice of someone who knows what they are chasing is empty, but they feel powerless to stop. This is the tragic end of digging broken cisterns: exhaustion and bondage.
III. The Call to Return to the Fountain
But this chapter, this message, is not meant to leave us in despair. It’s meant to break our hearts so that we will turn back to the One whose heart is broken for us. God's judgment here is a severe mercy, intended to wake us up from our foolish and exhausting labor.
1. Listen to the tenderness at the start of the chapter, in Jeremiah 2:2: "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness..." God doesn't just remember their sin; He remembers their first love. He remembers the bond they shared. His call to return is not the call of an angry tyrant, but the plea of a faithful husband longing for His bride to come home.
2. The entire Bible is this call to return
And it finds its ultimate expression in the person of Jesus Christ.
a. One day, Jesus sat by a well—a physical cistern
He spoke to a Samaritan woman. A woman whose life was a story of one broken cistern after another in her relationships. He looked at her with love, not condemnation, and said, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:13-14).
b. Jesus was saying
"I am the Fountain of Living Waters that Jeremiah spoke of. Stop your digging. Stop returning to these empty wells. Come to Me."
On the cross, Jesus Himself cried out, "I thirst," taking upon Himself the spiritual dehydration and emptiness caused by our sin, so that He could offer us the water of life freely.
Conclusion
So, I ask you today, where are you drinking from? What cisterns have you been working so hard to hew out in your own life? What are you trusting in to give you life, hope, and security? Is it your job? Your family? Your savings? Your own goodness?
Be honest with yourself. Are you tired? Are you thirsty?
The good news is that you don't have to dig anymore. You don't have to keep trying to patch the cracks in your broken cisterns. The invitation of God stands today. The Fountain is still flowing. It has never run dry. Repentance is simply the act of dropping our tools, turning our backs on our worthless, man-made cisterns, and running with joy back to the Fountain.
Let us heed the call of the Spirit and the Bride, who say "Come!" Let anyone who is thirsty, come. And let anyone who wishes, take the water of life freely. Amen.
