Saturday, August 24, 2013

Cistern Digging



Galatians 4:3-9 We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?

Last week, we finished up our Wednesday Family Summer nights at church that featured a study of Jesus, based upon the video series “That the World May Know” with ordained minister, teacher & Historian Ray Vander Laan. The final lesson was at the spring fed Oasis, adjacent to the Dead Sea in the Judean Wilderness, called En Gedi, where David hid from King Saul. The faith lessons based upon the symbolic metaphor of water in taking that which is physical to illiterate the spiritual and teaches of what our Lord God would want us to know, for application in our daily lives and soul growth. I’d like to share a portion of that study with you today. It is my pray that you be as blesses as I was by it.

Jeremiah 2:13 “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Vander Laan tells us that in the Bible, there are a number of different kinds of water that the Word of God refers to. Flowing, running, moving water (like at the oasis of En Gedi) is called “Living Water”. It is “living water”, not so much as it gives life, but “living” in the sense that it is “fresh”, it’s “clean”, and it’s always “pure”. Living water doesn't get stagnant or stale. It’s “live-giving”, and in that sense it is called “Living Water”, whereas, the water captured and kept in “cisterns” (that we've seen in the Holy Land) is referred to as “Cistern” or “Dead” water, and that water can get stagnant, have impurities and is just not always fresh. When we think about this kind of water, in light of Jeremiah 2:13, we see the contrast between “living water” (so cool, fresh and so pure) and “cistern/dead water” (stagnant & room temperature with dust & dirt in it. It’s like as if we are refreshed, like King David, at the oasis of En Gedi, but then turn our backs, walk away and forsake it. Then we dig our own broken cisterns that cannot hold the dead water. A cistern would represent what you and I make with our own hands verses God’s living water out of the rock. The symbolism of “have dug their own cisterns” is God’s people worshiping idols, which is “spiritual adultery”. They have left God (who is symbolized as “an Oasis of Living Water” in a dry & tired wilderness land). They've gone and dug these broken cisterns that won’t hold water, even dead water and they are trying to satisfy their “thirst” with an idol.

2 Peter 2:20-22 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”

Vander Laan goes on to realize what a big job that God gives to people. What an enormous responsibility being a Christian in our culture really is. But the source of our strength comes from the “living water” God. The reverse side of the coin is this: when you get involved in this task, there is a tendency to trust in our own strength. I know that it is true for me. It’s what is called “cistern digging”. Cistern digging is saying: “I’m going to go out into life and finding the life that I need; the energy I need, the desires I need, the courage I need, whatever I need and I’m going to do it myself.  I’m going to find it in my talents, in my hard work, in my successes or even in my friends.” But God says: “Idols and cisterns fail … always. And if we trust our own strength, we will never be “living water” to anyone else. But this wellspring of God never fails. Imagine this oasis of En Gedi with “living water” running 3000+ years ago, when King David came here. This doesn't fail. It’s always there. It seems to me that the source of our strength is “the water of life” - God, so we come here and are filled. And now, we have something for others, then we come back and we become effective. We don’t dig cisterns. 

John 4:10-15 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says 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 with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?  Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”


In Christ, Brian

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