Disregard for God’s Gracious Promise

Not only is drinking out of a cistern to satisfy our soul thirst shocking because it disregard of God’s infinite position and because it is a disregard of God’s eternal purpose, but here is the final reason.

3. It is a disregard for God’s gracious promise.

Even though it is not explicit there is a promise in Jeremiah 2:13. The promise is of satisfaction. Though we don’t deserve it, though all of us have hewn our own cisterns and tried to suck life out of dirt, God beckons us to come and drink deeply from the fountain of His pleasures. The implication in verse 13 is that if we would only drink we would obtain delight and satisfaction. Water from the fountain of living waters is available to quench our thirst!

It is astonishing that we can have it! The fountain is not days off in the distance. God has not hidden or obscured it. It doesn’t require epic journeys or heroic feats to have this water. He has generously promised it to us if we will but turn to Him — the fountain of living waters. So, “Drink!” “Be satisfied!”

This call to drink is in other passages as well. For example,

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. Isaiah 41:17-18

Note that God is personally interested and involved in providing for the thirsty who seek Him.

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live. Isaiah 55:1-3

But perhaps the most well known and specific of these promises comes from Jesus Himself.

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:7-14

This is a gracious promise indeed, and what a mockery it is to seek life by sucking from the dust and disregarding His promise.

Where we drink from is of universal, eternal, and divine interest. Where you seek satisfaction and happiness either regards God appropriately or it disregards Him infinitely. When we drink from other sources than God Himself, that is a disregard for His infinite position, His eternal purpose, and His gracious promise.

Drinking from a cistern is a sin of infinite proportions because it makes God appear only as glorious as the proportion of our affections for Him. Failing to love Him with all of our hearts and souls and minds and strength relegates Him to a lower position. Our weak affections make it look like He is not worthy or lovely which couldn’t be further from reality. This is a great insult and a bold-faced scorning of God which He doesn’t take lightly. His wrath is coming on those who, though they know about God, do not honor Him as God or give Him thanks (Romans 1:21).