“WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING?”
Pastor Don Nelson
Two large classes are placed in front of you. One is brimming with sparkling pure, crystal clear water from a fresh-flowing spring. The other is filled with contaminant -laden, visibly dirty water from a stagnant cistern. Which will you drink?
The answer is obvious. Only a fool would gulp down the cistern water!
Hear the Word of the LORD in Jeremiah 2:13: “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.”
He is not talking about tangible H2O that we swallow into our bodies. At issue here is spiritual water, the invisible, intangible “stuff” with which we hydrate our souls.
As the unique source of real, abundant life and its blessings, the Living God is “the spring of living water,” yet many of Jeremiah’s listeners were seeking spiritual hydration elsewhere. Gracious God was ready and eager to satisfy their deepest needs; instead, they were digging cisterns (so to speak) and lapping up the scummy drops of spiritual seepage and run-off that collected there. That is called idolatry.
Their efforts were doomed to tragic futility. Idols are “worthless” (Jeremiah 2:5). The Hebrew word translated “worthless” has the sense of empty, futile, unsubstantial, senseless, and transitory.
Idols are empty of substance and life. They die with their makers, and it is futile to appeal to them for help or guidance. It is senseless to worship, trust, or serve them.
Not only so, human beings take on (to varying degrees) the character of the deity they worship (e.g., serve a god of sensuality, and you become a sensualist). Since idols are worthless and vain, their followers condemn themselves to a worthless, vain existence. As the LORD laments in Jeremiah 2:5, “They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.”
Sometimes idolatry is blatant. The “cistern” is a natural feature, a physical statue or image, or a primitive superstition. Such idols are unlikely to deceive us.
However, idolatry is often subtle. The “cistern” is money, possessions, comfort, pleasure, status, power (social/political/economic/military), counterfeit religion, or the self. These idols have less trouble worming their way into our hearts.
Either way, every idol is a “cistern” into which people pour their trust and hope. Idolatry is, in essence, reliance upon the meager, polluted waters that collect in these tanks rather than the living water that God gives in such abundance.
None of us would willingly drink fetid, foul water from a physical cistern if fresh, good spring water was available. So why drink from spiritual cisterns when “the spring of living water” is at hand? May we all receive the blessings of real, abundant life!