1. A Life built on Cisterns that Fail
In Jeremiah we read, My people have committed two sins; They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cistern, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
(Jer.2:12 -13 )
Israel forsook God and, they dug their own cisterns. Not only was the nation of Israel guilty of these two evils, human beings today are equally guilty when they forsake their creator God.
When God created man, he enjoyed a beautiful communion with God. There was perfect fellowship between God and man and if not for disobedience, man would not have had to experience, sin or pain or fear or death. Tragically, man decided to disobey God. God’s command was clear:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die.
(Genesis 2:17).
Thinking that he could become like God, man disobeyed God’s command and thus brought alienation and separation from God.
Since Adam, till today we see mankind going their own way and doing what they please. Man has abandoned God and embarked on a road of hopelessness.
Man in search of happiness, peace and satisfaction has been busy digging up his own cistern of money, pleasure, fame, power, etc only to discover that they are “broken cisterns that cannot hold water”, and that the cravings of the human heart cannot be quenched by any or all of these.
What man desperately needs is “the spring of living water”; to come to the Great Fountain and receive the gift of the water of life:
Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come to the waters, and he that hath no money: come ye, buy and eat.
(Isaiah 55:1)
2. A Life built on a Well that Fills
But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
(John 4:14).
Here we see Jesus, with a Samaritan woman who came to draw water. Jesus requested a drink from her and aroused in her a sense of her deep spiritual need. A. B. Simpson describes it this way. “With unspeakable tenderness and delicacy, He lays His hand first upon her aching heart, and then upon the dark secret of her sin. When He has awakened her interest, her longing and her guilty conscience, then, with divine simplicity, He reveals Himself to her as her Saviour, as well as the searcher of her heart…”
Notice 3 things in verse 14:
The source of it: “that I shall give him.” Jesus Christ is the only source of this life-giving water. No church, institution, government or anyone else can give us God’s forgiving love and reconcile us back to Him.
The secret of it: “drinketh”. The living water that Jesus offers must be received individually by each one of us. But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God. (John 1;12)
The scope of it: “But whosoever” This satisfying, fulfilling and realistic life is open to anyone who will receive it!
3. A Life built on Rivers that Flow (and flood)
In Luke 7, on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, priests carried water in golden vessels as a memorial of God’s faithfulness in providing water to the Israelites from the time God called them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
In the midst of this feast, Jesus stands and cried out, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.
(John 7: 37 & 38)
The second largest river in Australia is the Murrumbidgee river, an important river of the Murray Darling System which rises in the Snowy mountains and flows for 1609 kilometres. The power and force of this mighty rushing river has literally carried away several best swimmers to their death. These great bodies of water, flowing and rushing together in a mighty force causes them to overflow onto the banks causing great floods.
This is a picture of the type of living that Jesus is presenting. An overflowing life with no limits. In short, abundant life:
I am come that they may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
(John 10:10)
Is your life overflowing with the abundant presence of the Holy Spirit?
What sort of life am I living? Is my life:
Like a broken cistern that fails. An empty life without reality!
Like a well that fills. A well of spiritual water that satisfies the thirst of every human being.
Like a river that floods. Like an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit- life with floodtide living.
Davidson James