Fountains and Cisterns: The Worst Trade in History Text: Jeremiah 2:9-13
Introduction: A Thirsty World
Every man is born thirsty. We enter this world with a deep, unquenchable craving for meaning, for satisfaction, for life itself. And so we spend our days digging. Our culture is a landscape littered with the frantic, dusty work of men hewing out cisterns for themselves, hoping to catch a little bit of rainwater to slake the thirst. Some dig for political power. Others dig for financial security. Many dig for sexual gratification, or for the approval of others, or for the quiet comforts of a respectable life. The sweat is real, the labor is hard, and the project is all-consuming.
But what if, in the middle of all this dusty, back-breaking work, you were told that just over the rise there was a gushing, artesian spring of pure, cold, life-giving water, offered freely to all who would come? What kind of fool would hear that news, wipe the sweat from his brow, and then turn back to his pathetic, muddy hole with his broken shovel? What kind of insanity is that?
This is precisely the charge that God, through the prophet Jeremiah, levels against His people. This is not a gentle suggestion. It is a formal, legal indictment. It is a covenant lawsuit filed in the high court of heaven, with the cosmos itself called to the witness stand. And the charge is twofold: cosmic treason and breathtaking stupidity. God's people had forsaken the one true source of all life and satisfaction, and in His place, they had devoted themselves to the exhausting, pointless labor of digging broken cisterns. This passage is God's diagnosis of the human condition, and it is as relevant in our day of sophisticated, secular cisterns as it was in the day of carved, wooden idols.
The Text
"Therefore I will yet contend with you," declares Yahweh, "And with your sons' sons I will contend. For cross to the coastlands of Kittim and see, And send to Kedar and perceive closely And see if there has been such a thing as this! Has a nation changed gods Though they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory For that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this, And be horribly afraid, be very devastated," declares Yahweh. "For My people have done two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water."
(Jeremiah 2:9-13 LSB)
A Multi-Generational Lawsuit (v. 9)
The indictment begins with God as the divine prosecutor, bringing His case against His covenant people.
"Therefore I will yet contend with you," declares Yahweh, "And with your sons' sons I will contend." (Jeremiah 2:9)
The word "contend" here is a legal term. This is a courtroom scene. God is not just vaguely displeased; He is bringing a formal charge against Israel for breach of covenant. This is not a spat between equals; it is the Creator lodging a complaint against the creature. And notice the scope of this lawsuit. It extends not only to the present generation but to their "sons' sons."
This is a crucial lesson for our radically individualistic age. We like to think that our choices, particularly our spiritual choices, are private affairs. But God thinks in covenantal and generational terms. Apostasy is a cancer that metastasizes through family lines. The broken cisterns you dig today are the dry, dusty inheritance you will leave to your children and grandchildren tomorrow. When a father forsakes the fountain of living waters for the muddy puddle of pornography or the cracked cistern of careerism, he is teaching his sons to be thirsty, and he is teaching them where to dig in vain. This is a solemn warning. The lawsuit of God is a class-action suit against rebellious generations.
The Scandal of Pagan Faithfulness (v. 10-11)
To highlight the sheer absurdity of Israel's sin, God tells them to conduct a survey of the pagan nations.
"For cross to the coastlands of Kittim and see, And send to Kedar and perceive closely And see if there has been such a thing as this! Has a nation changed gods Though they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory For that which does not profit." (Jeremiah 2:10-11)
Kittim is to the west, representing the maritime nations of the Mediterranean. Kedar is to the east, representing the nomadic tribes of the Arabian desert. God says, "Go look anywhere, from one end of the known world to the other. Look at the most sophisticated and the most primitive cultures. And see if you can find a precedent for this." What is the crime? "Has a nation changed gods?"
This is a staggering indictment. God points out that even the pagans, who worship idols that are "not gods" at all, lifeless blocks of wood and stone, demonstrate more loyalty to their worthless deities than Israel shows to the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth. The pagans cling stubbornly to their lies, while God's people casually abandon the truth. This is not a compliment to paganism; it is the deepest possible insult to Israel's infidelity.
And what did they trade away? "My people have changed their glory." The glory of Israel was not their temple, their law, or their history. The glory of Israel was Yahweh Himself, dwelling in their midst. They had the infinite, all-sufficient, glorious God as their own, and they traded Him. For what? "For that which does not profit." They made the worst deal in the history of the universe. They traded an infinite treasure for a pile of worthless junk. It is the same deal every sinner makes. We trade the glory of the immortal God for a cheap, fleeting, created thing that cannot satisfy and will ultimately be destroyed.
Cosmic Horror (v. 12)
This sin is so unnatural, so perverse, that God calls upon the inanimate creation to react with shock and horror.
"Be appalled, O heavens, at this, And be horribly afraid, be very devastated," declares Yahweh. (Jeremiah 2:12)
This is not mere poetic hyperbole. It reveals the fabric of a God-centered reality. Our sin is never a private matter. It is an act of rebellion against the cosmic order. When the creature who was made to worship the Creator turns to worship the creation, it is a foul distortion of reality, a glitch in the matrix of the universe. The heavens, which declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1), are here summoned to be appalled when men exchange that glory for a lie. The sun, moon, and stars, which obey God's commands without fail, are called to shudder at the sight of God's own image-bearers spitting in His face. This tells us that our idolatry is not a small thing. It is a crime of cosmic proportions.
The Two Great Evils (v. 13)
Finally, God summarizes the entire case, boiling the lawsuit down to two essential charges.
"For My people have done two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:13)
Here is the spiritual diagnosis of fallen man. Every sin you have ever committed is a variation on this theme. The first evil is one of rejection: "They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters." God is the source of all life, all joy, all goodness, all satisfaction. He is not a stagnant pool; He is a fountain, a spring, constantly gushing forth with life. To turn away from Him is to turn away from life itself. It is the ultimate act of suicidal folly.
But man cannot live in a vacuum. If you forsake the true God, you will inevitably invent a false one. This is the second evil, an act of pathetic invention: "To hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." Notice the verb: "hew." This is hard work. Sin is exhausting. It takes a great deal of effort to maintain your idols, to prop up your self-righteousness, to chase after your lusts. And what is the result of all this labor? A broken cistern. It is a man-made substitute that is, by its very nature, flawed from the start. It cannot hold water. It cannot deliver on its promises. The cistern of materialism promises happiness but delivers anxiety. The cistern of sexual freedom promises fulfillment but delivers emptiness and disease. The cistern of political utopianism promises salvation but delivers tyranny and bloodshed. Every idol is a broken cistern that will leave you thirsty, exhausted, and covered in mud.
The Fountain Offered Anew
This indictment in the mouth of Jeremiah is a severe mercy. It is a diagnosis given so that we might seek the cure. And the cure is not to try harder to fix our broken cisterns, or to dig a new and improved one. The cure is to abandon the entire worthless project and return to the Fountain.
This is precisely what the Lord Jesus Christ offers. Centuries after Jeremiah, He stood in the temple during a feast and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37-38). To the Samaritan woman at the well, a woman who had been hewing one broken cistern of relational idolatry after another, He offered "living water," a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:10, 14).
Jesus is the Fountain of living waters in the flesh. He came to die for a world of treasonous, foolish cistern-hewers. On the cross, He endured the ultimate thirst, crying out "I thirst," so that we who believe in Him might never thirst again. The gospel is the good news that God has not closed the Fountain. He has opened it wider than ever before through the shed blood of His Son.
The call of God to us today is the same as it was through Jeremiah. It is a call to repentance. And repentance is simply this: it is admitting that your cistern is broken. It is throwing down your shovel. It is turning your back on the dusty, barren work of self-salvation and running, with the desperation of a man dying of thirst, back to the Fountain. It is to forsake your pathetic, man-made idols and to drink freely from the grace of God offered to us in Jesus Christ.