“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
Jeremiah spoke the words of the Lord, telling Israel that they were like cracked cisterns. The water collected in cracked cisterns is often foul tasting and full of worms. This pictures the people’s disobedience and idolatry. Instead of loving and worshiping their God—their “fountain of living water”—they turned to worthless idols, in effect digging their own leaky cisterns.
How do we know if we, like the people of Israel, are guilty of preferring the cracked cistern over the fountain? It all begins when we deliberately ignore the word of God in order to do what we want to do. When what we want to do becomes more important to us than what God wants us to do, we’ll end up with a foul taste in our mouth. D. L. Moody said about the Bible: “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.”
To forsake and forget the Lord and his word is an “evil, bitter thing” (Jeremiah 2:19)—as bitter as the foul waters of so-called satisfaction from the cisterns we have dug for ourselves. Are you dis-obeying God—drinking out of a cracked cistern? Turn back to God and his fountain of living water; you’ll find it on the long road of obedience. Start by responding to God’s invitation to heal your wayward heart (Jeremiah 3:22), and admit that disobedience is a sin, not just a shortcoming (Jeremiah 3:25). It’s a long road, but God gives refreshment along the way. It’s worth the journey.
For Further Study: Jeremiah 2:1-13
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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