Aqueducts and Cracked Pits

For my people have done two evil things: They have forsaken me – the fountain of living water, and they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! – Jeremiah 2:13

Hmm. When I started reading the verse above, I got an ominous feel about what was to come. This is God condemning Judah for their sins and His scorning them saying that they have done evil in his sight. There are two horrible things about which God is very concerned. The first falls in line with the tone of intro, “They have forsaken me.” Sounds like typical Old Testament rebuke so far. Before describing these two things, in verse 12, God says that these things made the heavens “shrink back in horror and dismay.” We are talking really really really bad stuff. So first we have that they have forsaken God, but then comes the part that makes one eyebrow go up and the other go down in confusion. God is angry and all of heaven is in shock and awe that the people of God have built cisterns with cracks in them.

A cistern is essentially a hole in the ground that was used for collecting rain water. If the cistern develops cracks, it can no longer hold the rain water it was designed to hold and the water seeps back into the ground. So God is furious over their civil engineering and plumbing skills? My eyebrows are still cocked.

Clearly it is not the case that all of Heaven is disappointed that they can’t build a proper rain barrel. Note in this passage that God refers to himself as the “fountain of living water.” (Aside: Remember when Jesus claimed this same thing to the woman at the well? She would have understood this to be Jesus claiming to be God.) The cistern that God is referring to is the set of religious systems that Israelites had built up to try to contain and retain God. They try to store up their God so they’ll have Him when they need Him. God is disappointed in this because with a fountain of living water that doesn’t run out – why do you need a cistern? And a broken one at that?

God doesn’t want us to build systems of religion up to try to store up and contain God. He wants us to be more like an aqueduct, a mechanism for carrying God to those far from the spring. Our temptation is to hold God close and not want to let Him go because we’re afraid it’s not going to rain again for a long time and how will we be refreshed in that case? God promises that this fountain will never run out, we don’t have to fear an end to God’s supply. We can give of our time, our money, our resources and he is powerful to replenish us. We act better as conduits of God’s Spirit than as a retention system. We are broken jars of clay (2 Cor 4:7).

God, thank you for Your unending supply. Help us to carry You to those far from You. Let Your Spirit flow through us today. Amen