Jeremiah 2:13 “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!
John 7:37-39 On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” (When he said “living water,” he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory.)
John 4:13-14 Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
In Jeremiah chapter 2, the prophet Jeremiah is proclaiming the Lord’s case against His people. His people had strayed away from God. They were doing their own thing and living their own lives without regard to God and His goodness. They had angered God, and He chose the prophet Jeremiah to make His case to the people. In verse 13 of this chapter, Jeremiah shares that the people have done two evil things in the eyes of God. The people abandoned God. They abandoned the fountain of living water. The second thing they did was that they dug for themselves and filled cracked cisterns that could not hold water. We see throughout the Bible scriptures that the living water is a reference to Christ. Just as we require water to live, we require the Living Water for eternal life.
There are multiple references in the Old Testament of thirsting after God. Two thirds of the human body is water. Water is an absolute necessity to live. When we haven’t had enough to drink, our mouths get parched and dry, and we crave water. We need it to survive. The same thing happens in our spiritual life. We need the Living Water to survive. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need Christ, and when we distance ourselves from the Living Water, we end up with a pot full of mud. We get bogged down in the daily drudgery of life. Rather than filling up with the Living Water, we end up wallowing in a puddle of mud!
God proclaimed in Jeremiah that the people had abandoned the Living Water. They had the opportunity to walk right up to the well and fill their pots with fresh clean water. They had every opportunity to walk with God, quench their spiritual thirst with the Living Water that was so freely flowing. However, they abandoned God. Instead, they dug down below the free flowing well of Living Water and tried to fill their cisterns or clay pots with their own water source, but their pots were cracked…much like their lives, and the water leaked right out of the pots. Their pots were full of mud, but there was no Living Water.
I think that this is what is happening in today’s society. Christ is still offering the Living Water. It is flowing abundantly. It is the “fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” Our hearts crave this Living Water. We can’t survive without it, yet we try to do things on our own. We try to dig our own wells in life. We try to find our own sources of joy and happiness, and we try to fill our pots with things we hold dear. BUT…our pots are cracked, and in the end, the pots are just filled with nothing but mud. There is no true joy. There is no true happiness to be found in our pots. No, my friend, we can only find true joy and happiness from the river of Living Water.
Are you feeling thirsty today? Why don’t you go fill up at the spring of Living Water that flows eternally. Fill up with the Spirit. Get up, get dressed, and get to church! Choose the fresh, bubbling spring of Living Water that gives eternal life rather than an old mudhole that leaves you dirty and still thirsty at the end of the day.
Inspirations from the Funny Farm 