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‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful,’ declares the Lord.
My wife Heather and I met in Russia. Well, not really but it makes a much better beginning to a story than the reality. We were in the North Park Choir together for years, but being a choir of nearly 100 singers, we knew OF each other but didn’t KNOW each other. Until 1993 when the choir toured Sweden, Estonia, and Russia. Our friends were hanging out together, and we were hanging out with them, so we were, by the transitive property (look it up!), hanging out together.
Heather noticed the attraction first. For me, it wasn’t until we got home and she sent me a postcard from Alaska where she was living at the time that I noticed it. When she returned to school for her Junior year, I was beginning my first year of seminary and we began to hang out for the first time outside of Russia. For the next year we talked and walked and our friendship grew. By the following summer, we were walking for hours together and continued to grow closer. Eventually we were engaged, just before I left for a year’s internship in Mankato, MN while she taught in the Chicago inner city. We were married the next year.
Being human, we love each other because we find the other lovable. We were attracted to each other for various reasons, and that attraction led us to determine that the other was worthy of the commitment of marriage.
I am eternally grateful that this is not how God loves, not how God’s faithfulness to us works. You see, if God loved us only because He deemed us lovable, then He wouldn’t love any of us at all. We are a deeply unlovable species, inherently selfish, drawn to darkness, and greedy. The very best of us is utterly unlovable when compared to the perfection that is God. But God, being God, doesn’t love us because we are worthy of love. He isn’t faithful because we have earned His faithfulness. God loves us because He is love; He is faithful to us because of His faithfulness, not our worth. This means that there is nothing we can do to lose God’s love or cause Him to be unfaithful, because we can never change who God is. Ponder that!
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, He had to be thinking of this passage from Jeremiah. Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the source of “springs of living water”, a direct quote from this passage. And so we have to look at the implications of this verse, because we know that John’s readers would.
There are in fact no less than four implications in this simple sentence given to Jeremiah. The first is that God’s people have forsaken Him. This is the primary message of this entire chapter, book, and Jeremiah’s life work. By following false Gods, Jeremiah’s contemporaries have turned away from God.
The second is that God is the spring of living water. Springs are never-ending, eternal supplies of water, one of the most valuable and necessary things in all human life. But more than water, this spring brings “living water”, which is the water of cleansing and healing. Water that is “living” is water that is flowing and moving. Washing dirt or sickness in still water, a pool or well, keeps the dirt or sickness in the water – it does not take it away but instead dirties the water. Washing instead in Living Water, in moving, running water, takes the dirt or sickness away. This is why the Law required people to be washed or cleansed in living water. And God is the source of a spring of it.
The third is that God’s people have turned away from this free gift of living water and have attempted to dig wells of their own. They are seeking the healing, cleansing power in sources other than God.
And finally, the idols and false deities to which God’s people turn for salvation and healing can never heal since they aren’t alive. They are “broken cisterns” offering nothing at all.
Jeremiah proclaimed these truths, and Jesus proclaimed them again when He referenced it. I believe we could proclaim it yet again today. We are turning from God to our human leaders, whether political or intellectual or social, and to our own accumulation. We are seeking salvation, safety, and healing from these “broken cisterns”, empty wells that cannot give us what we truly seek. Like Jeremiah’s audience, and Jesus’, we need to heed this warning and turn back to God, to our only source of the living water we truly need.
A few years ago we studied the book of Revelation in our adult bible study class. And as we read through and studied that book chapter by chapter, verse by verse, one of the recurring themes that we kept noticing was just how little in that book was original to John. Much if not most of the book was taken directly or indirectly from previous writings, and a lot of it from the book of Isaiah. Today we find just such a passage; one that was taken by John and incorporated in his Revelation.
Here we find the first promise of a New Heaven and a New Earth. It’s been hard for many to reconcile their views of the afterlife with the scriptures. Their idea was that there would be a rapture and we would all be taken to heaven to live forever with Jesus in the sky. This Escapist view of the afterlife leads to some pretty terrifying beliefs and behaviors by its proponents. Among them is the belief that if the world is going to be destroyed anyway, why conserve it, care for it, or protect it? Another is the idea that the things of this world are temporary and therefore meaningless in the long run so we should devote 100% of our time to spiritual things instead of tangible ones. And the list goes on and on.
Scripture again and again tells us that this earth is not going to be recycled but reconciled. This very world on which we live is to be redeemed, restored as a New Heaven and a New Earth. Jesus will return, meaning come back to this earth, and reign as king forever. And this New, redeemed earth will never see war, or pain, or tears, or sorrow, or injustice, or sin again. This is the promise of scripture and so must dictate our behavior in the here and now.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.”
I know me better than anyone short of God Himself, so I know better than anyone else the sins that try me. I know my temptations, my weaknesses, and more to the point, I know when I give in to them. I don’t know your sins, temptations, weaknesses, or fallings. I just know me and mine. I believe this goes for every person on earth.
This being the case, I also know better than anyone else just how much grace has been given to me. I know how God has not punished me for the sins I have committed, and I know how He has helped me grow through and out of some of the sins I’ve faced. Nobody can know the amount of grace God has given to me except me. And I cannot know the level of grace offered to you as well as you can.
If we could recognize the truth of this, I think we could change the world. First, if we could recognize that we do not know the sins of others, we would be significantly more effective at sharing the good news with others. As it stands, we are so busy dissecting and gossiping about the sins of others that we have no time, nor any voice in their lives, to share the gospel with them. Second, if we could remember the grace we ourselves have received, we would be so much more able to offer that grace to others.
Jesus didn’t come to scrutinize our sin, or to condemn us for it, or to remind us of just how awful we are. He came to save us, we sinners, and to offer more grace than we know what to do with. Paul got this, and was the most effective evangelist ever. Let’s remember this ourselves and join Paul as he joined Christ in his mission to save sinners.