When our girls were young, we moved to a new church with an old parsonage in the country. Shortly after moving in I noticed a large metal plate on the floor of the aging double-car garage. Being the naturally curious person I am, I took the screws out of the plate and slid it to the side. It exposed a three foot square hole in the concrete floor, and when I stuck my head down the hole I saw that under the entire floor of the garage someone had built a cistern. It wasn’t any water I wanted to drink, because it smelled and was filled with all kinds of things. The drainpipes from the garage roof had, at one time, ran into the cistern. It was kind of spooky down there, but it used to be someone’s only source of water.
Most of you who are older have seen cisterns or actually used them. We recently had to fill in an old broken cistern under the church parking lot because it was creating a sink hole. A house used to sit where our parking lot now is and the cistern supplied the family’s water. Before city water and pipelines, it was common for people to try and catch rainwater from their roofs and collect it in cisterns. But there are problems with cisterns. First, if it doesn’t rain you have no water. Second, even if you have enough water, the cistern may leak. Cisterns were especially important in Israel during Jeremiah’s day. Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of them. The land was arid and the rains were infrequent. The people in those days would dig their cisterns, line them with bricks and plaster them to hold the water, but they would often break and were not able to hold the water. If you were able to collect a little water it was important that you did not lose it because of a broken cistern. But even then the water was stagnant and the supply was inadequate.
In the passage that we have read together today, Jeremiah says, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). He is painting a picture on the minds of the people to whom he is talking. He uses a familiar metaphor and mixes it with the ridiculous. He is painting the familiar picture of cisterns, but the absurd part of the picture is people relying on old, broken cisterns which they have made, while right beside their cistern there is a continuous spring of living water. It was a laughable scene: people trying to fill broken cisterns, and scooping out the little bit of stagnant water in the bottom, while refusing to drink from the fresh spring water which was flowing right next to them.
But the farcical picture drove home the point of Jeremiah. It was a picture of the people of Israel. When they laughed at Jeremiah’s metaphor they were laughing at themselves, because they had rejected the true God who was called “the spring of living water,” and relied on their own efforts to satisfy the deep longings of their lives. They had wandered from the One the psalmist called “the fountain of life,” and gone after other gods (Psalm 36:9). They had tried to find satisfaction in various sins and other futile attempts to fill their lives. But their attempts were like trying to fill broken cisterns. Whatever they did accumulate became stagnant, and they were not able to hold on to much of what they found. They were constantly running after life, but it was running through their fingers. They were trying to accumulate things, but they had nothing of real value. There was a stench and an emptiness inside, but they were unwilling to turn to the true God whose supply of life was endless and effervescent. They were not sure they could trust the Lord to satisfy their thirst.
The first truth that I see in this passage from Jeremiah is: We all are thirsty. In other words, there are legitimate deep thirsts and longings in our lives that are placed there by God. We long for our lives to have meaning. We are searching for a legitimate purpose in which we can invest our lives. We are looking for love and intimacy. We pursue joy and happiness. We desire peace. We yearn for freedom. All of these longings are a part of what makes us human. We are created in the likeness of God, and these are the things that he wants for us as well. He has made us with these hungers and thirsts, but the question is how will we fulfill these longings. It is not a sin to be thirsty, but satisfying that thirst in misdirected ways may be. It is not a sin to desire love, but how you decide to meet your need for love may be. It is not a sin to want meaning and purpose in your life, but when your life’s central purpose and meaning does not line up with God’s will for you, it is wrong. It is not a sin to desire freedom, unless you are wanting to be free from God and all moral restraints. It is not a sin to want to be happy, but trying to meet your longing for happiness outside the will of God is not only wrong, it is destructive. It is like drinking smelly, stagnant, diseased water at the bottom of a broken cistern.
How do Christians respond to these thirsts in life? First of all, we recognize that these thirsts come from God. He is our Maker. He has created us and all the longings which we feel. We understand that these are legitimate longings. But, secondly, we understand that God has designed a way for these longings to be met in the best way possible. That is why we do not forsake the “Spring of Living Water” for broken cisterns of our own. We have needs, but we seek to satisfy those needs God’s way rather than our own way. We understand that we are inadequate to meet these needs. We might be able to build a cistern, but it will be inadequate and we cannot begin to create a spring of living water. We know that God is the source of our supply, and our best attempts to satisfy our needs in our own way results in failure.
We know that God loves us and wants our lives to be fulfilling. That is why Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). God is not holding back on us. He is not trying to frustrate our God-given inclinations and desires; he is trying to show us how to meet those needs in the best possible way. He gave us those needs. He designed life, and he knows best how life was meant to be lived. Meet those needs his way and you experience fulfillment and freedom. Meet those needs your way and experience frustration and failure. If you have needs then you need to look to God to fulfill those needs. He wants the best for you.
But, thirdly, the Christian understands that our needs can never be fully met in an imperfect world. In Christian theology we talk about a “fallen world.” It means that ever since Adam’s failure in the Garden of Eden, sin has entered the world. The world “fell” away from God and his original plan and design. It is an imperfect world and nothing we can do will make it perfect. The promise of the Bible is that there is a perfect world which is coming. The Bible says, “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). We wait with hope and great anticipation for the deepest longings in our lives to be fulfilled perfectly in the kingdom of God which is yet to come in its completeness. We don’t place unrealistic and unreasonable demands on this world. We are people of faith and hope. We accept the fact that this is an imperfect world, and we are looking for something more that is to come. The Bible says, “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:25). Are you waiting patiently, or are you demanding that your needs be met here and now?
But the second truth which we see in this passage in Jeremiah is: Many people are busy digging cisterns. We are not so different from the people of Jeremiah’s day. The one thing that is different is that we have more things available to us with which we try to satisfy the deep longings and thirsts of our lives. We pile up possessions and seek for pleasure. We treat ourselves; entertain and amuse ourselves. We are still playing the absurd game of trying to build our own cisterns while the streams of God are flowing right next to us. God is calling out to us inviting us to come, but we don’t want to hear what God is telling us. I have noticed that people are afraid of silence. The radios in some cars are so loud it is too loud for me, and my windows are up and I am three cars away. The vibrations from the music are jarring my bones and it is not even my radio. I guess the goal is not to be able to hear yourself think.
We enjoyed the last part of our vacation at my sister’s cottage on the lake. One of our family members asked if my sister had a television there. We said that we were grateful that she did not. They said, “Well, do you have the radio on”? “No,” we said, “no radio.” “Well, did you listen to CD’s?” “No,” we replied, “no CD’s.” “Well then, what did you listen to?” We said, “Birds, wind in the trees, rain falling, water lapping on the shore — things like that. We did some hiking, rode in a boat a few times, swam in the lake, but mostly we were just quiet and read a lot.” It was inconceivable to this person how we could do that. But when you are at peace with yourself, and at peace with God, it is not hard at all. You hear things that you would not otherwise hear and think things that you would not otherwise think. But today’s world is filled with noise so that we can’t hear God.
We also try to forget how empty our lives are by peering at other people’s lives. The new voyeurism in America concerns me, with banal shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” at the top of the ratings. I even tried to watch one of those shows one night and was bored stupid within five minutes, trying to listen to their inane conversations about their petty grievances and shallow existence. There are even places on the Internet where people are on the camera 24/7, and you can see what they are doing at any point in the day or night. We live virtual lives and think we are really living. We are trying to fill up the cistern with something, anything, but it is all fantasy and life is leaking out faster than we can fill it.
What is it in us that makes us prefer to do things our way rather than accept God’s way? Why do we insist on building broken cisterns rather than drinking from the spring of living water that will never run dry? Why do we run from one thing to another, never finding satisfaction, but never running to God? The word is rebellion. We may be ruining our lives, but at least no one is telling us what to do — including God. It does not matter that his way is the path of life and fulfillment, we see it as interference.
There is an interesting story in the New Testament that takes place around a well. Jesus was sitting at a well when a Samaritan woman came to draw water there. He looked at her and said, “Will you give me a drink?” Now, in that culture, it was inappropriate for a man to speak to a woman in public. It was even more unacceptable for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan. When she questioned him, he said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). The story is ironic because Jesus begins by asking for a drink, because he has no way of getting water from the well, and then he says that if she knew who he was, she would ask him for a drink. But Jesus knew that this particular woman had tried to satisfy her thirst for life in all the wrong ways. She was living with a man who was not her husband, and she had had five husbands before him. The point of the story is that Jesus was not talking about water, he was talking about life. He said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). Jesus was inviting her to come to him as the source of the water of life. Her pathetic efforts to make life work had done nothing but disappoint her and break her. She had ruined her life and the lives of others as well. Her life was indeed a broken cistern. She was alienated from her community, her family and herself. All the life had leaked out of her and she was desperate and hopeless. And then, Jesus came into her life. He was offering her more than water; he was offering her life in all its fullness. When that life began flowing through her it became a bubbling stream, and she could not keep quiet about what God had done for her. She began telling all her friends and neighbors so that many others began to drink of real life.
Pascal said, “Human beings are peculiar in that they pursue ends they know will bring them no satisfaction, gorge themselves with food that cannot nourish and with pleasures that cannot please.” There are many people like that today. They settle for pretend relationships. They look for intimacy in pornography. They seek thrills vicariously. They try to escape reality. Instead of living water they search for a drug to anesthetize them. They protect themselves from really feeling. They avoid thinking. They live in fear. But they seem to be more afraid of God than they are of living an empty life. Whether they are poor or affluent, they are broken cisterns. Or as the Bible describes them, “They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted — twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 1:12-13). They have what C. S. Lewis called, “incommunicable and unappeasable want.”
What makes it so tragic is that it is all so unnecessary. The third truth that I see in this passage from Jeremiah is: We have a choice to make. We can go on trying to supply the desires of our lives, or we can come to God to have our deepest longings met. We can try to make our lives work by our own effort, or we can ask God for his presence to fill our lives. We can do it our way or God’s way. We can follow our plan or God’s plan. But understand this: either way there is a cost. Jesus said, “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). If you want eternal riches it will cost you everything you have. But which is worse: giving up everything here to get everything there, or giving up everything there to get something you want here?
What will happen when you stand before God? What excuse will you offer when you have the final audit of your life? How will you explain to God that you were so busy doing trivial things that you never became involved in eternal things? How will you explain that you were so busy repairing and refilling your broken cistern that you never took advantage of the fountain of life he was offering? Some of you will have to explain why you never committed your life to anything. Others of you will have to explain why you were committed to a hundred things that weren’t important. C. S. Lewis said, “The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.” It cannot be just one of the many things on your list. It IS the list or it is nothing.
As your pastor I fear for those of you who have never made a real commitment that is 100% for God. Your life is hectic, and it even looks full, but you are losing it. You are trying to be a casual Christian and it is not working. You can say all the right things, but down deep something is terribly wrong. What will happen at the end when God asks you what you did with your life, and you have to say that you spent all your resources on yourself? There will be unsurpassable embarrassment and monumental regret. “What was I thinking?” you will say to yourself. “How could I have wasted my life? With all that God had given me, and with all that he was offering me, how could I have treated God’s purpose for my life as though it was unimportant? How could I have majored on the minors and minored on the majors?” That is the ultimate cost of not living for God — coming to the end of life and knowing you have missed the meaning of life. Consider carefully the cost of living for God, but consider also the cost of a life wasted without God. Turn your life around by saying with the Psalmist: “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). Jesus continues to call to us: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).
Rodney J. Buchanan
August 20, 2000
BROKEN CISTERNS
Jeremiah 2:1-13
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
The truths expressed by Jeremiah are:
1. We all are _______________________________________.
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).
How do Christians handle this? They recognize that:
1. These thirsts ______________________________ ________________________________________ .
2. God has designed _________________________
________________________________________ .
3. Our needs ________________________________
________________________________________ .
2. Many people are ________________________________.
“They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted — twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 1:12-13).
Pascal said, “Human beings are peculiar in that they pursue ends they know will bring them no satisfaction, gorge themselves with food that cannot nourish and with pleasures that cannot please.”
3. We have ________________________________________.
Jesus said, “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Aug 20, 2000)
1. Read Jeremiah 17:13. Why did Jeremiah use this imagery to describe God? What was he trying to say?
2. Is it wrong to have deep longings in life?
3. In Revelation 21:6 and other places God seems to want us to be thirsty. Why is this? Compare this with Matthew 5:6.
4. Read Psalm 63:1 and 42:1-2. Is this the sentiment of most of the people you know? Why or why not?
5. Review the way Christians handle the problem of life thirsts under point one. How do people without a relationship with God handle these things differently?
6. Read Hebrews 11:37-40. Do God’s people always find satisfaction in this world? What is the promise we have?
7. What are some of the ways you see people trying to fill the void in their lives today?
8. Read John 4:4-26. What was really going on in this conversation between Jesus and the woman?
9. Read Luke 14:33. What did Jesus mean by this statement?
10. What are the costs of completely surrendering to God? What are the costs of not surrendering to him?
