God calls the prophet Jeremiah. He calls him to speak to His people.
God tells him He is offended by them.
Jeremiah 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.”
Their first sin is they had forsaken God. They were not looking to Him, worshipping Him, nor in relationship with Him. They were not finding life from Him.
Their second sin was that they decided to dig their own “cisterns.” They made false gods with their own hands and worshipped them instead. They looked for water from their broken cisterns. False gods, which were simply nothing at all. They were broken cisterns that could not hold any water: life, hope, or truth.
He compares it to a wife chasing after other lovers and, when distressed, returning to her husband.
Jeremiah 2:27
They have turned their backs to me
and not their faces;
yet when they are in trouble, they say,
‘Come and save us!’
God desires a relationship with us. He, Himself, is life, living water. He is eternal, without end. Yet, we go and build another cistern, well. We look for life and hope from someplace else.
God created us and provided salvation and forgiveness for us through His Son. He wants us to come to Him, to stay in relationship with Him. To drink from Him. To get life and hope from Him.
We don’t have to make our own cistern or well. We can be in a relationship with Him. We don’t need to come up empty again and again, trying to draw water from our broken way of thinking and our false gods.
Instead, we can drink from Him.
I am reminded of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well.
John 4:13-14
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
Let’s come to a well that never runs dry. Let’s place our hope and trust in God. For He alone is God.
