Gary Hamrick - Broken Cisterns (01/22/2026)
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God called Jeremiah from before he was even formed in the womb to be a prophet to the nations, despite the young man’s sense of inadequacy, assuring him of His presence and equipping him with His words. Drawing from Jeremiah 1 and especially chapter 2:13, the preacher emphasized that the people’s greatest sins were forsaking God, the true spring of living water, and turning instead to broken cisterns of their own making that could never satisfy. In the end, only Jesus Christ can truly quench the deepest thirst of the human soul, offering living water that brings eternal satisfaction and life.
Introduction and Scripture Reading
We’re starting a new book study today out of Jeremiah. We’re going to be in chapter one, chapter one of Jeremiah. We have a few Bibles. If you see someone walking near you with a Bible, ask them for a Bible, and one of the ushers will give you one if they have one. Jeremiah chapter one is found on page 533 in those church Bibles. Jeremiah 1.
While you’re turning there, just to let you know, as we get into this new book study together, that Jeremiah starts his book by giving us a little background on himself, including his calling and appointment by God as a prophet to the nation of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel. So I’m going to read here from chapter 1, verses 1 through 10, and then we’ll unpack this a little bit and also look a little bit into chapter 2 this morning.
So let me read from chapter 1, starting at verse 1: «The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.
The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ” and now Jeremiah is quoting what the Lord said to him: „Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.“ „Ah, Sovereign Lord, ” I said, „I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.“ But the Lord said to me, „Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you, ” declares the Lord.
Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, „Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.“
Comments on Jeremiah’s Calling
Now, before we pray, I just want to make a couple of comments quickly from these opening verses, and then we’ll pray, and then we’ll actually go into chapter 2 and see something else I want to point out this morning. But first, a couple of things I think are worth noting from these opening verses.
One is God’s calling of Jeremiah. I love how God just stoops down and picks this guy Jeremiah to be God’s mouthpiece for his generation. And I want you to notice in verse 5 of what we just read that God says to him, „Before I formed you in the womb… before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.“ Notice with me, please, that God chose Jeremiah even before Jeremiah was conceived.
Now, you know, look—those who are pro-abortion will say to you that life begins at birth. Those of us who are pro-life would say that life begins at conception. But I want you to notice with me that God goes even further back than that. And just to clarify, people are not, you know, first these little chubby babies playing harps on clouds in heaven, and then God sends us to earth when we’re born. It doesn’t work like that, alright? That’s a figment of artists' renditions of things.
But what the Bible does say is that, based on God’s foreknowledge, he knows us, he loves us, and he has a purpose for us even before we’re conceived. That’s how God goes back even further than conception, if you notice this with me. Which means, to me—you know, I’m proud to be pro-life, but I think it’d be more biblical, more accurate, to say we should be pre-pro-life. We should love life so much, in the way that God does, that he values and esteems life that he knows even before we are conceived. That’s how much value God places on human life.
The second thing I want to quickly point out from these opening verses is Jeremiah’s feeling of inadequacy for the task. You know, God has called him: „I want you to be the prophet for the nation of Judah. I want you to speak for me.“ And he feels very inadequate for the task. In verse 6 he says, „Ah, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.“ Ladies believe that Jeremiah may be as young as 22 years of age, and more likely he’s 17 years of age when God calls him to be a prophet for the nation of Judah.
So anybody at that age should feel inadequate for the task and a little underqualified. But God always knows what he’s doing, and God always looks at the heart, and he selects people that are not necessarily able people but they are available people. Because, listen to me on this: God is most glorified when he uses people who are often less qualified, because then God is most exalted.
You know, if people steal the glory because they’re so polished and they’re so put together, then it doesn’t often testify as greatly to the character and nature of God as when someone who is just kind of inadequate, not really qualified—God is most glorified often through those he uses who are least qualified. And it is a reminder to us: you are never too young, and you are never too old, to be used by God. He just wants available people, ordinary people, to do his extraordinary work for the kingdom.
So with that little introduction, let’s pray, and then we’ll look further into our text here this morning. Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for your word. As we open up the book of Jeremiah, I pray that today and over the next several weeks we would, Lord, just be stretched and encouraged and challenged. We just thank you that you love us and that you would give us your word to reveal yourself to us, even in our generation. Lord, we pray that you would take an ancient book and reveal its timeless truth to our hearts today as we study through the book of Jeremiah, starting here in chapters 1 and 2.
I thank you, Lord, for all those who are here and those who are watching online. We commit our Bible study to you that you’d be glorified. In Jesus' name we pray, and everyone said amen.
Background on Jeremiah and His Ministry
So last week we finished the book of Isaiah. That’s what we do here at Cornerstone: we go straight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And when we go from the end of Isaiah to the first chapter of Jeremiah, we’ve advanced about 60 years. Isaiah has now been dead about 60 years. Tradition says—rabbinic tradition says—that Isaiah was sawn in two by King Manasseh, who didn’t want to hear any more of his prophecies. So a Jewish king of Judah, Manasseh—tradition says had Isaiah sawn in two. Isaiah has been dead now for 60 years, and Jeremiah is now the new prophet on the scene here that God has called and raised up to preach to the people of Judah.
Jeremiah picks up right where Isaiah left off. The problem is that the Jewish people are now in an even worse state spiritually than they were in the days of Isaiah, because they did not heed the words of Isaiah. And so time after time after time, prophet after prophet after prophet, the people of God are turning away from God, turning to themselves, turning to idols, false gods. So they’re really in a more spiritually worse-off place under the ministry of Jeremiah than they were in Isaiah’s time.
Jeremiah’s name in Hebrew is Yirme’yahu. That’s how you pronounce it: Yirme’yahu. In Hebrew it translates „God throws.“ Okay, literally what he’s telling us through his name is that through Jeremiah, God’s about to throw down, because the people are about to receive his judgment in the form of the Babylonian Empire.
Now this is prophecy, but we have the advantage of history now, looking back, to see the words of Jeremiah came to pass. God will bring the Babylonians from the north, and they will besiege Jerusalem, they will destroy the temple, and they will exile thousands of Jewish people off to Babylon, which is today in modern Iraq, right along the Tigris River, the Euphrates River—in between Tigris and Euphrates.
And God will use the Babylonians to spank his kids, and he’s going to put them on a 70-year timeout in Babylon. Okay, that’s the way God works with us sometimes. I mean, if you’re drifting from the Lord, if you’re not walking with him, if you’re being unfaithful to him—God always loves us enough never to allow us to remain as we are. And Hebrews tells us that no discipline seems pleasant at the time, only painful, but produces a harvest of righteousness for those who have been trained by it.
And so God will at times discipline us because he loves us, because as a loving father he knows always what’s best for us. When we start to stray, he’s going to give us a little spanking and put us on a little timeout. That’s what he did with the Jewish people. He brings the Babylonians from the north, and Jeremiah sees this before it happens.
Jeremiah’s ministry spans from about 626 BC until at least through the siege of Jerusalem, which is 586 BC—so it’s more than 40 years, give or take. And 40 years in advance of the Babylonians coming, Jeremiah’s warning them. He’s a tough prophet. He is tough with them, but he’s also very tender, and he’s going to say the tough truth with tender tears. And therefore Jeremiah will be known as the weeping prophet.
In fact, you don’t need to turn there, but further in Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 1, Jeremiah says, „Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.“ I mean, he is feeling for his people, so he’s weeping constantly through this letter. Often in Scripture you read in the Gospels Jesus is likened unto Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, because of the compassion that Jesus had for the people that he ministered to.
So this is that Jeremiah. He’s tough with the truth, but he’s tender in saying the truth, and he’s tearful—he’s crying, he’s weeping for his people. He’s like, „Don’t you guys get it? Judgment is coming. Why don’t you turn to the Lord? Turn to the Lord before it’s too late.“ But unfortunately it falls on deaf ears. And more than falling on deaf ears, when the people hear what he says, they’re offended by it, and so they become enraged towards Jeremiah because he’s speaking the truth and he’s warning them.
And so what we’ll read through Jeremiah is, as a result of their anger towards him for the truth that he speaks, he will be often beaten, he will be imprisoned, he will be thrown in a pit, he will be considered a traitor by his own countrymen—all because he’s only trying to say the truth. They will mistreat him and oppose him. He will suffer greatly.
In fact, so much so that God warns him in Jeremiah 16, verse 2—he says to Jeremiah (Jeremiah again is sometime somewhere between 17 to 22)—God says to him, „Do not get married and have kids.“ He tells Jeremiah specifically, „I don’t want you to even get married and have kids because I don’t want you to bring a wife and children into the calamity that I’m about to bring upon the people of Judah.“
God tells Jeremiah in advance, „My wrath, my judgment is coming. I don’t even want you to get married. I don’t want you to bring a wife and kids into this scene.“ So he’s personally feeling this and living it out, and he’s warning the people, he’s weeping, and all they’re doing is beating him, throwing him in a pit—which is probably a cistern—and imprisoning him, mistreating him, maligning him, ostracizing him, and doing everything they can to avoid what he has to say. And when they hear what he has to say, they do everything they can to hurt him in the process.
And unfortunately, Jeremiah will live long enough to see his own words come to pass. He will live long enough to see the Babylonians come, besiege Jerusalem, destroy the temple of God, and exile thousands of Jews back to Babylon—among them, by the way, Daniel and his friends. In 606 BC Daniel and his friends are taken in the first wave of the exiles that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, takes of Jews from Jerusalem back to Babylon. And Daniel will die in Babylon; he’ll live out the rest of his life there. That’s the scene. You get the feeling of like what’s going on here.
The Two Main Sins of the People
Now the big question becomes: why is God so ticked? What’s he so angry about? Okay, God’s a righteous judge. Don’t get this impression that God’s just always mad, you know, and God is just wanting to hurt you. Okay, God is patient. God is patient, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance. Okay, but his patience has a limit, and we can only test the patience of God so long, and then we will receive what we deserve.
And thankfully, because Jesus came and died on a cross, we don’t have to ultimately receive what we deserve. With faith in Christ, we don’t have to ultimately receive what we deserve. We all deserve punishment. We all deserve hell. We all deserve the wrath of God. But because of what Christ did for us and stood in the gap between a perfect God and sinful humanity, we can put our faith in what Christ did for us when he assumed the penalty that was intended for us, and by his stripes we could be healed. We can be forgiven, and we don’t have to suffer the consequences that we rightfully deserve. That’s a good and a gracious God.
But God and his patience can be tested only for so long. And the people have thrown off the prophets: „We don’t care what the prophets are saying. We don’t care what the word of the Lord is. We don’t care about the judgment. We don’t believe judgment’s coming.“ And so they turned away from the Lord, and their sins are enumerated.
There’s two main sins that God says all your sins fall into—two main sins. And it’s in chapter 2, verse 13. If you’ll turn in your Bibles there, there’s Jeremiah 2, verse 13. I want you to see with me that God kind of summarizes their sins into two main sins. And Jeremiah 2, verse 13—this is what God’s indictment is against the Jewish people, which is true for all of us. So I want you to put yourself in this story now.
Here we go: in verse 13 of chapter 2, „My people have committed two sins: one, they have forsaken me—this is God speaking—they have forsaken me, the spring of living water; and two, they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.“ Okay, that’s God’s indictment. So all the sins of the people can be boiled down to two things. I’m going to put on the screens for you these two things.
Forsaking the Spring of Living Water
Here’s the first one: that they have forsaken God, the spring of living water. Now we need to understand the richness of the meaning here—what is God actually saying that they’ve done? So we need to first grasp „living water.“ Water specifically—everybody understands that water is a precious commodity, especially if you’re living in an arid climate like the Middle East. You need water. All of us need water, but especially in this environment. A freshwater source is vital to the survival of any people, which is why most major cities, ancient and modern, have been built on a freshwater source nearby.
Consider some of the major cities in the world like London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Moscow, Dubai, Amsterdam—these are all major cities that are built right along fresh water, because everybody understands you gotta have a fresh water source in order to survive. But Jerusalem is unique in that sense: it’s not built by any freshwater source. Now today they irrigate the water in from the north, from the Galilee, but back in this day the only water sources that sustained the city of Jerusalem were two springs. That’s it.
One is an unnamed spring in the Bible that filled the Pool of Bethesda in the northern part of the city, and one was a spring named in the Bible called the Gihon spring. They were completely dependent on the source of these springs for water. So you have to kind of transport yourself and begin to think—we have such a luxury now: you just go to your sink and turn on the tap water, and so we take it for granted, and we have water, you know, anywhere we want water—go buy bottled water, just turn on the faucet, you got water. Not in those days, friends, okay? They didn’t have the luxury of that convenience. So water was scarce, and water was necessary for their survival.
Now kind of get the picture here of what God is saying, because the indictment is: you have neglected the source of your sustenance. Okay, he’s like—God is saying metaphorically here, „I am living water, and you need me as much as you need water for your very survival.“ We understand this medically. The person’s health, weather conditions, and physical activity all factor into the dehydration rate of an individual, but generally speaking, medical science has proven that the adult human being can survive without water only two days to one week. That’s it.
And the reason is because our body is majority made up of water. Sixty percent of the human body is water. Sixty percent. And when you look at different organs in particular, the heart and the brain are 73 percent water—sloshes around up there, doesn’t it, from time to time? 73 percent. Your lungs: 83 percent water. Okay, the human body is majority water. So we need water for our very survival.
Dr. Randall Packer, a biologist at GW University, wrote for Scientific American—he said, quote: „In a very hot environment, an adult can lose between 1 and 1 and a half quarts of sweat an hour, ” he said. „A child left in a hot car or an athlete exercising hard in hot weather can dehydrate, overheat, and die in a period of a few hours.“ End quote. So that’s why we need to stay hydrated. Every cell in your body is dependent on water.
Get the analogy here: God is saying, in effect, the concept here in this verse is that we should be as dependent on God as the human body is dependent on water. God is the source of life, he is the author of life, and he is the sustainer of life. And we should need him like we need water. But unfortunately, a lot of people don’t see their need for God. They’re spiritually dehydrated. They don’t see their need for God.
This is the case for the people of Judah in Jeremiah’s day. They didn’t see their need for God. They said, „We’re fine. We don’t need God. We’re going to turn to other gods—gods that can’t help them, gods that can’t save them, gods that can’t provide for them or protect them.“ I mean, the futility of the whole thing is just, you know, it’s mind-boggling. But they’re like, „We’re going to forsake the true and living God, and we’re going to worship these false gods. We’re going to make gods out of our hands, and we’re going to worship little idols, and we’re going to turn to other gods.“
By the way, that just simply expresses the innate need in every human being to worship something greater than oneself—that they would turn to these idols and they would turn to these little manufactured things, but they would forsake the true and living God, the spring of living water, for the sake of worshiping these false gods. They would forsake him.
Now in your Bible, circle the word „forsake“ or highlight it. It is a Hebrew word azab, and it means to disregard, turn away from, let go, or desert. They had deserted God. They had let go of God, and they had turned to these false gods. And without him, the spring of living water, they will surely—like us—die without him.
Jesus said in Revelation 21:6, „To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.“ There’s this constant analogy in the Bible about God like water and our very survival dependent upon having him in our lives. But unfortunately, the people of Jeremiah’s day—not too unlike people of our day, maybe some of you here today—you have forsaken the Lord, the source of your very survival.
Digging Broken Cisterns
And notice in the verse here, it’s not just that they had forsaken God—that’s bad enough, the spring of living water—but they had replaced him with their own hand-dug cisterns. So that’s the second indictment against them: they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Now again, this is metaphorical. He’s trying to communicate the spiritual condition of the people. They forsaken God—he’s the source of living water, he’s the sustenance, the giver of life and the sustainer of life—and they’ve turned instead and they’ve manufactured for themselves cisterns. And God says, but on top of that, these are broken cisterns—can’t even hold water.
Now a cistern is basically an underground water tank that they would literally dig out of bedrock. And in Israel today, archaeologists have discovered more than 50 ancient cisterns just around the city of Jerusalem. Here’s actually a picture of an ancient one that they have discovered in Israel. Okay, and these are just holes in the ground. They would hand-chisel these and dig these out of bedrock.
And cisterns were usually pear-shaped, so they were more narrow at the top of the ground where the opening was about two to three feet, and then it kind of pear-shaped would be bigger underneath the ground—so smaller at the surface, smaller at the opening at ground level—so they could then cover it with like stone or something to keep animals or debris from falling into the cistern. But these would be holding tanks for water.
Now typically—I hope—the holding tank, a cistern like this, is about 15 to 20 feet deep. They could hold anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred gallons of water, depending on if it was a private cistern or for a community. Okay, when we go to Israel and we visit Masada—we go to Masada, which is this mountain retreat center that King Herod the Great had built for himself in the middle of the desert down by the Dead Sea—there’s no water. I mean, the closest water source is miles away in En Gedi. So it’s just this desert.
So Herod, ingenious, in part of the mountain he carved out cisterns—12 cisterns, and all that they’ve discovered—that capture the winter flash floods there in the desert. Still happens today. Last time we were there in Israel, it had washed out part of the road during the winter season. So flash floods come. Herod captured the flash floods into these cisterns. They discovered that the systems at Masada—the cisterns—could contain as much as three hundred thousand gallons of water. That’s almost the equivalent of an Olympic swimming pool.
So they had these elaborate or very small cisterns, depending on what the need was. But this is the way they would capture water, and then they would go into the cistern and they would line the cistern on the interior with lime plaster in order to make it more waterproof. But what happened often is that the plaster would crack, or there would be a fissure in the bedrock, and so all this water would end up seeping out.
So now get the whole concept here of what God is saying. He’s saying, listen: you have forsaken me, the source of living water, the spring of living water, and you’ve turned to these cisterns—and they’re broken at that. So people would fill these cisterns or capture rainwater in order to have like holding tanks of water, but they’re not even comparable to the source of living water.
So now understand the parallel here—understand what God is trying to communicate here. These cisterns—the whole idea here, digging out your own cisterns, oh and they’re broken at that—he’s saying, listen: you’re expending a lot of effort and energy on something that will never quench your thirst or satisfy you, because they have a hole in the bottom. And he says this is the way your life is. You’re living your lives in such a way that you’re trying to find satisfaction apart from me.
This is God—I’m summarizing—he’s saying you’re trying to find fulfillment, satisfaction apart from me, only to realize it’s empty. It’s like a broken cistern that can’t contain water, can’t hold water. You can’t be quenched. You can’t be satisfied, because all the water you’re putting into the cistern—it’s leaking. What an exercise in futility.
So he’s saying to them, look at the comparison. Now let me point something else out here historically, because it plays into all of this. When we talk about living water—if you’ve been a Christian for very long, or if you’ve been coming to church for very long, you know that there are references in the Bible to God as living water, right? Like you have here in Jeremiah 2:13. But we’ve kind of over-spiritualized that. We think, okay, living water—picture of Jesus, picture of the Lord.
Back in those days, they used the term „living water“ for water that naturally bubbled up from the ground. And so they understood the difference between a cistern and living water. You see, the cisterns here—these would become stagnant: algae, bacteria. Okay, so not the greatest source of water, but it’ll do if it’s a matter of survival. But if you have your choice, you can either be drinking out of a dirty hole in the ground, or you can be drinking living water that bubbles up out of the ground.
Now you see the contrast here. God is saying this is who I am: living water that bubbles up out of the ground. This is always sweet, this is always refreshing, this is always a wonderful natural source of water. It was the best drinking water. It was the best fresh water. So God is saying, like, would you like this or this? You want to drink muddy water out of a hole? Because that’s the way your life is without me—and by the way, you find that it’s empty anyway because it’s cracked. Or you can have me, the source of living water.
This is like—it’s like for us: do you want tap water out of the sewer treatment plant, or do you want Perrier? You know, that’s what I’m thinking right now. It’s delicious. It’s not even comparable. And so this is the concept that God is saying here to the people. He’s like, listen: I’m the source of your survival and your refreshing, and you know I will quench every thirst, the deepest longing of your heart. But unfortunately you’ve been drinking out of broken cisterns, because without me you will never be quenched. You’ll never be satisfied in your soul.
We got to get this, friends, because there are a lot of people in our world—and some of you might even be here today—who’ve tried everything without God, only to realize how empty it is, how empty it is.
The Woman at the Well
I think one of the best stories that illustrates this in the Bible is found in John chapter 4. You don’t need to turn there, but I’m going to summarize the events. It’s one of my favorite stories for many reasons.
But in John chapter 4, Jesus has an encounter with a Samaritan woman. Many of you are familiar with the story. Here’s how it goes: you know, Jesus was fully God and fully man, but that humanity aspect of his being—he got tired, and he got thirsty, and he got hungry. So on one occasion he sends his disciples into town: „You guys go on into town and buy some happy meals, 'cause I just need to sit here by the well for a little bit.“ So they go off into town to buy some burgers and chicken—as long as it’s kosher, it’s all good. And so there’s a KFC, there’s a Burger King, and they’re piling up food, and they’re going to bring it back to Jesus.
But Jesus wants to be alone right here at this moment. He sits by the well at Sychar, because—see—Jesus knows there’s a divine appointment, and his Father has arranged a divine appointment with a woman who has no idea that she’s about to encounter the living Lord. But as he’s sitting there by the well of Sychar, all alone—disciples have gone into town—here comes this Samaritan woman with a jar to gather water out of the well.
Now it was the middle of the day, the Bible says, which was very unusual for a woman to come to gather water at the well in the middle of the day. Typically, women would come together in the cool of the morning or in the evening to gather water. It was kind of like an outing together with the ladies. It’d be like, you know, „Get some water? Yeah, let’s get some water.“ So they would go get some water together, and it was a thing that they would do. By the way, ladies—I mean, the guys were home eating Twinkies, and the ladies were hauling the water jugs. You’ve come a long way, baby.
But anyway, so here the ladies typically would come as a group: „Let’s get some water.“ But this dear lady is coming by herself in the middle of the day. Here’s why: she has a past and she has a present, and all the other ladies in town know, and they don’t have anything to do with her. And she’s too embarrassed and ashamed to gather water with the rest of the ladies. So she comes all by herself in the middle of the day, and there Jesus is.
And he starts a conversation with her. He asks her if she has a ladle or a cup or something to draw water out from the well. Now this startles her. It was not typical for Jews to have conversation with Samaritans, and vice versa, because back in the day there was long-standing hostility, animosity, and prejudice between Samaritans and Jews. And of course not with Jesus—he has no problem talking to anybody. But she’s a bit startled, like, „Oh, you’re a Jew, you’re talking to me? I’m a Samaritan. You’re asking me if I have a—you know…“
And I read—and I could be wrong, I might have to apologize to her one day—I read a little sass in the story. She’s a little sassy. She’s like, „Oh, you Jews don’t normally talk to us Samaritans, but now you don’t have a cup and I do, and you want to get water, huh?“ And Jesus says, „Oh, woman, if you only knew who you’re talking to, I would give you living water. I would give you something far better than what I’m asking for.“
And she engages in small talk with him. She starts talking about Samaritan theology and Jewish theology—where you guys worship, where we worship. And Jesus just cuts through all of that, and he gets right to the heart of the matter with this particular woman. And he says to her in the middle of all this theological discussion she wants to engage him in—he says to her, „Why don’t you go call your husband? Why don’t you go tell your husband to come here?“
See, he knows what her situation is. He discerns, with the wisdom of who he is, what her situation is. He says, „Why don’t you go call your husband?“ And he surgically—like a fine surgeon with a scalpel—is about to lay her heart wide open. He’s about ready to do some heart surgery here. And he says, „Why don’t you go call your husband?“ And she says, „I don’t have a husband.“
And he, with the discernment of the embodiment of wisdom that he is, looks at her and he says, „I know. I know you don’t have a husband, because the fact of the matter is you’ve been married five times, and the guy you’re living with right now is not your husband, is he?“ You see, he was touching on what her issue was—that she’d been drinking out of a broken cistern all her adult life.
See, she thought she would find satisfaction in a relationship. And when that one didn’t turn out to satisfy, she tried another one. And that one didn’t satisfy her, so she tried another one. And basically she was in this situation where she just thought, „If this guy would just love me, then I’ll feel complete and satisfied.“ Okay, he doesn’t. „If this guy would just love me, then I’ll feel good.“ But he doesn’t either. „If this guy would…“ You see what she’s doing here.
And so what Jesus is trying to drill down on in her heart is to help her to recognize that until you drink from the living water, until you know me and have a relationship with me, there ain’t another man on the planet that’s going to be able to love you enough. See, because her satisfaction was in the wrong place. It was misplaced desire to fill a need in her heart that only really, ultimately, Jesus can fill. Until she got that right, there wasn’t another man on the planet who could ever love her enough.
See, she was drinking from a cistern that was broken. It was polluted. It wasn’t enough. It would never quench her, never satisfy her. And so Jesus then turns to her in John 4, verse 14, and he says, „Whoever drinks the water I give him—the relationship I have—if you take of my water, you will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.“
And she came to that well that day with an unsatisfied soul, and she left, for the first time having an encounter with the Lord Jesus, completely satisfied in terms of the deepest longings of her heart—like she had never been satisfied before. And friends, listen: this is who Jesus is.
You know, if it’s not multiple relationships to try to find satisfaction, it could be other things—the people who, you know, they turn to: maybe money will bring me satisfaction, maybe success will bring me satisfaction, you know, maybe sexual encounters will bring me satisfaction, you know, maybe if I just get stoned enough, then, you know, I can be numb enough to my world, and then I’ll be satisfied, I’ll be able to manage life.
And, you know, people go in search of all kinds of things to try to find fulfillment, to satisfy the deepest longings of their soul, only to end up singing like the Rolling Stones: „I can’t get no satisfaction. I try and I try and I try and I try.“ I gotta get rid of Mick Jagger in spandex in my head now. Anyway, you get the idea. It’s just this idea that some people are trying so many things in life only to realize it doesn’t satisfy. „I’ve tried and I’ve tried…“ Yeah, because you haven’t really found the living water.
And the source of living water is Jesus—and knowing him and surrendering your life to him and letting him fill you up and satisfy you and quench the deepest longing of your soul. Stop drinking from a broken cistern and turn to the living water of the Lord Jesus Christ, and find that he will satisfy the deepest longing of your soul in a way that nothing else and no one else can.
In Revelation 7:16 and 17 the Lord says, „Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. For Jesus, the Lamb at the center of the throne, will be their shepherd, and he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.“ That’s the hope we have in Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen.
Closing Prayer and Invitation
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the reminder that you are the source of life, the sustenance of life. We need you like we need water. But some of us have turned away from you—we’ve forsaken you—and we’ve tried other things, only to find out they’re just broken cisterns.
So Lord, I pray for those who are here today who don’t know you in a personal way. They’ve tried a lot of different things, only to come up empty. Today, Lord, let them leave here like the woman at the well left—feeling forgiven and finally satisfied, feeling finally whole, that the deepest longing of her soul was finally quenched.
So many thirsty people, Lord, drinking from broken cisterns. I pray today you would reveal your loving grace to their hearts. They would receive you and be quenched in knowing you.
I’m going to pause in my prayer. With your heads bowed, I just want to invite you—if you don’t know Christ as your Savior—invite him into your heart today. You can have the same encounter with him that the woman at the well had 2,000 years ago. All you need to do is invite him into your heart, ask him to be your Savior, surrender your life to him.
You can just pray a prayer like this right where you’re seated. I’ll go slowly. You can pray this prayer with me. Just pray this—just say:
Lord Jesus, I’m tired of being on empty, trying to find satisfaction in different things, different people. And today I turn to you. I surrender to you, Lord. I confess that I’m a sinner like everyone else. Forgive me of my sins. Come into my life and quench the deepest longing of my soul. I need you, Lord, more than I need anything else—just like water for survival. I need you, Lord. So come into my heart and my life. I surrender to you now as Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name, Amen.