The Fountain And The Broken Cisterns

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.