“My people have forsaken me, the spring of Living Water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

The high school soccer trophies on the bedroom shelf. The honors cords draped over the college diploma. The plaque honoring excellence at work. They all hold some measure of success, offer some sense of security: Look what I did. We pour ourselves into our activities, our education, our career, believing that one success will lead to another. But those goals are elusive; the finish line keeps moving; satisfaction is never quite complete. 

God, through Jeremiah, accused the Israelites of running after everything but Him. God doesn’t speak in terms of trophies or plaques, but of cisterns: “My people have forsaken me, the spring of Living Water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (2:13). Cisterns were often dug into the ground to hold water. That collected water would never taste as good as spring water. Furthermore, the inevitable cracks would never be visible, rendering the vessel useless even as the user thought otherwise. 

So, too, when we place our affections and find our security and worth in relationships, in money, or in job success rather than in God above all, those cisterns start to crack under the pressure. While those bank accounts, the marriage, that job where we worked so hard to get ahead are good cisterns in themselves, they are not meant to be our source of security, worth, or happiness. They will crack under the pressure of having to mean everything to us, and we may not even notice until they leave us without any satisfaction. Like the Israelites, have we “exchanged God’s Glory for worthless idols” (2:11)?

God issues a serious warning about filling one cistern after another. “Why go to Egypt and drink from the Nile? And why go to Assyria and drink water from the Euphrates? Have you not brought judgment on yourselves by forsaking the Lord who led you in the way?” (2:18,17). It’s not just that our cisterns of worldly activities and associations, worthwhile but yet so pathetic in comparison to drawing on the Living Water of God, can crack and disappoint us. It’s that we are courting very real danger in pursuing them instead of God. “Consider [these consequences] then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me,” declares the Almighty (2:19). Gulp. 

What are your cisterns? Certainly, they satisfy for a while, but then what? God is the only One who will never leave us thirsty for contentment, joy, and security.  Despite all the cisterns we have filled, their “water” simply cannot taste as good as the Living Water or produce lasting worth or meaning. With the woman at the well, let us ask Jesus: “Sir, give me this water so that I will not get thirsty and have to keep coming here [i.e., all our cisterns] to draw water“ (John 4:14).