Transcription
The words to which I should like to call your attention this evening had to be found in that section of scripture that we have read at the beginning, in the book of the Prophet Jeremiah, in the second chapter, in the thirteenth verse. The thirteenth verse in the second chapter of the book of the Prophet Jeremiah: "For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out broken cisterns that can hold no water."
My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. This is one of the many statements which you must have noticed in the reading at the beginning, which the Prophet Jeremiah makes in this, the first message which he addressed to his recalcitrant and sinful fellow-countrymen. Jeremiah was a man called of God to address the nation of Israel at the time of great trouble, trial, and perplexity. Everything had gone wrong in almost every respect; there had been a serious and terrible muddle. There was trouble even in a military sense, and indeed their whole future was in jeopardy. For these and other reasons, the Prophet is sent to them to address them, to call them to repent and to turn back to God.
In this chapter, as I say, we have the first part, the beginning of his first address, his first message to them. In this, as you noticed, he analyzes the whole situation in a most thorough and searching manner. But I am calling it in particular to this 13th verse tonight because in this he seems to me to put plainly and clearly the whole essence of the situation. That is a characteristic of his method; he deals with a lot of details, then he seems to sum it up and puts the whole case before us in a very succinct, clear, and dramatic manner. I am calling your attention to that, and I hope, God willing, to follow him also in subsequent Sunday evenings as he brings out his various points, various parts of his analysis, showing why these people were in such a terrible and indeed tragic state.
Now here, of course, the main trouble essentially was that these people had turned their backs upon God and they were backsliding. But that shouldn't make us feel that this has got no message in general for us or for the unbelieving world tonight. For the essence of sin is always the same, whether it is seen in an unbeliever or whether it is seen in a believer. Sin is always essentially the same thing, and what the Prophet says here, therefore, about the nature and the character of sin as it was seen particularly in his own contemporaries is as true tonight as it was then.
Now, I made scarcely explain that why I'm calling your attention to this. Yet I say it is a prophet addressing his people at the time of real calamity. Things were going from bad to worse every month, every year, and there was the great possibility of that Chaldean path out of Debbi threatening the whole life of the nation, threatening to attack them, to destroy them, and to carry them away into captivity. But the end does not yet come; it's not too late, and God calls upon these people to awaken and to consider the situation and to repent before it is too late.
I think the parallel is obvious, isn't it? The world is in a terrible state tonight. The world is in awful trouble; the world is a place of unhappiness. The world is ill at ease; the world is perplexed and bewildered and doesn't understand and doesn't know and doesn't realize what it ought to be doing.
Now this is the extraordinary thing: the whole world tonight is seeking for satisfaction. Nobody wants to be miserable; nobody really wants war. Everybody's looking for peace, happiness, satisfaction. Talk to any man you like, wherever you may find him, ask him what he's looking for, and everybody will tell you that they're looking for satisfaction in life, something worthwhile. They say peace, enjoyment—this is the great quest of the whole of mankind.
Well then, the question is: why is the world as it is tonight? Why are we under the threat of war? Why is there disunity? Why is there unhappiness? Why is there misery? Why is the world as we see it described in our newspapers day by day? What's the matter?
Now that's the question; that's precisely the question that is dealt with here by the Prophet Jeremiah. For in effect, what he says to them is this: "You know, there's no need for you to be like this. You are not meant to be like this. It's you yourselves who brought this upon yourselves." And therefore he says, "Listen, listen to what I'm telling you. Here it is: it's not too late; come back."
And the same message is the message that is needed by this great world this evening. I'm asking: why is the world as it is? And the answer is given here. It is always the same answer. When will mankind wake up and learn this lesson and see the truth?
Well, what is it? Well, here it is: we're all confronted in this world by two possibilities. There are only two in a search for satisfaction, peace, rest, happiness, and enjoyment. We're all either going to that fountain or else we are going to make cisterns. There is no other possibility; it all comes down to that. We are all seeking satisfaction tonight either from some cistern or else we have been to what the prophet Isaiah calls the wells of salvation, this fountain of living waters which Jeremiah describes to the people in the name of God and which is nothing but another name for God Himself.
Now the whole tragedy of the world is just this: the world, like these children of Israel at this juncture, is guilty of these two evils. It's a double blunder; it is a double falling. "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water."
You can't read this chapter without feeling how foolish were those children of Israel. You can't read their story as it's depicted here in the pages of the Old Testament without always feeling that, you know, the last word to be said about sin is that it is folly. The sinner is a fool; apart from being anything else, he's just a fool. And what the Prophet is here so anxious to do is to bring home to these people the utter folly of their position. He does it in this message by holding before them the only two possibilities confronting men in this life and in this world: we are either, I say, drawing from the fountain of living waters or else we have made cisterns for ourselves and are failing to find satisfaction.
Now let me, this evening, solidly and as briefly as I can, hold these two things before you. You see, this is the biblical method, isn't it? It's either this or that, always. You're either a follower of Abel or a follower of Cain. You either listen to God as He speaks to you and promises you blessing, or you hear His threat of cursing. Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim—it's always the one or the other. We are either building tonight on the rock or else in the sand. We are either entering into the straight gate into the narrow way or else we're going into the wide gate into the broad way. We're either serving God or Mammon. It all comes down to that. There are no other possibilities. In other words, it comes to this: we are either for God, with God, or else we're against Him, and there is no other category that's worthy of our consideration.
Now then, let's look at it as it's put before us by the Prophet here in this most interesting and pictorial manner. Let's look at that false way first. "You," he says, "you children of Israel, my fellow countrymen," he says, "you've been mad enough, you've been foolish enough not only to turn away from God, but you try to make for yourselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." You notice his sarcasm? Well, yes, he's anxious to ridicule the thing; he's anxious to show its foolishness.
God grant that in this service tonight we may begin to see something, all of us, and see it as we've never seen it before—the unutterable folly, I say, of trying to live life apart from God and His blessing upon us. It's summed up by this word: cistern.
What's the characteristic of that kind of life? Well, it's obvious from the picture, isn't it? A cistern, in contrast with a fountain, is man-made. Men don't make fountains—I mean not imitation fountains; I mean the genuine natural fountains. Men don't make them; they are there. But men make cisterns, and that is the emphasis, of course, which the Prophet himself puts to this: "You've turned away from me and have hewed out cisterns for yourselves."
That's another way of translating it. He says, speaking more objectively, "They have hewed out for themselves cisterns." Well, this is a tremendous principle, and it's not surprising that we must start with this. What does it mean?
Well, let me put it in a more modern form. We can put it like this: all the philosophies and theories and views concerning life and how we are to live apart from what we have in this book of the Bible are entirely the work of men. They come entirely and exclusively from men. And the simple truth about all non-Christians in this world tonight is just to say that their ideas by which they are living are entirely their own ideas.
What I'm emphasizing is this: you see that they have no authority; they have no sanction whatsoever. Men say, "Well, I don't believe in a God who allows infantile paralysis or astok children or calamities." They say, "I don't believe in such a God." But what authority are they for saying it? On what grounds do they say that? The answer is they have no grounds at all except their own opinions, their own ideas, their own fears.
I don't care if you take the works of the greatest and the mightiest philosophers that have ever lived; they are still only men. They've looked out at life; they've tried to analyze it; they've tried to understand it, and they give us the results of their meditations. But when they've done so, we know that we've got nothing but opinions. It's entirely human; it's men produced. Go to them and say, "What's your authority for saying this?" And all the man can say is, "Well, that's what I think." You say, "Well, is that an authority?" Well, you see, somebody tells you he's got a great brain; you know he's got a great mind, but you've got nothing further than that.
And then you begin to examine his life, and you see that he's a failure in many respects, so you have much respect for this great mind and his great brain. But, my friends, the point I'm trying to establish, and I want to leave it in its general form this evening, is this: do we realize that apart from this book, we have nothing but human speculation, human thought, human theories, human attempts to arrive at a knowledge of truth and of ultimate reality? There is nothing beyond man if we exclude this book and its teaching.
Now this applies, you see, to men's views of God. They have no basis; they have no sanction whatsoever. When they say that the God of love cannot endure this, it's simply that they're saying nothing more. And therefore, if you accept their teaching, you are simply basing yourself on pure speculation. We are theorizing about the being of God Himself.
Then what about men? What about the nature of men? Take these modern views and theories of men, which are so constantly changing. Man was a pure biological being, or man is a purely economic being, or man is the result of the interplay of certain great historical forces and factors. These are the current notions about men and the being and the nature of men. But again, they have no authority; they're only theories. One man says this; the other man contradicts it, and they contradict themselves blatantly and obviously. There are different theories, and they all cancel one another out. But the thing is about all of them that they're but human; they're but natural; they're but men groping and trying to find the truth about himself in his own nature.
And the same about life. What is life? What's the purpose of life? What's the object of life? What are we doing in this world? Now you take all these views outside the biblical view, and again I say you have no authority at all for them except that men say so. Somebody says this or that; people say, "No, I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe that man is anything but an animal, and therefore you live in this world to gratify yourself, have a good time, eat, drink, and be merry, enjoy yourself, do what you want to do, don't let anybody interfere with you, don't let anybody repress you in it, let yourself go, express yourself." And they say that's the way to live, and many are adopting it and are doing it.
But, my dear friend, what's your authority? What's the sanction for that view of life? There's nothing beyond men. Men write it and say it; they say it with great confidence, but it's only men like yourself. There's no real difference. And it's the same with death. You know they say dogmatically, "Death is the end; there's nothing after death." Don't believe, they say, in an afterlife and another world; death is the end. Can they prove that? Can they demonstrate it? Can they establish it? Of course not; it's nothing but a theory, just a human opinion. And again, there's great disagreement amongst them.
But the point is that all of them are trusting to something that they produced themselves. They've made a system. All views and theories of life and men in all these relationships apart from this, or I say, are entirely factitious and made by men. And there you've got nothing but supposition and theory and guesswork.
But wait a minute; let's look at another aspect, another characteristic of that cistern view of life. And that cistern way of life is this: it is always something that comes into being as the result of this effort which I've been describing on the part of men. A man has to make it, you see; he decides first of all how to make it, how long, how deep, where to put it, and so on and so forth. The supply and the exit involve a great deal of effort, a great deal of striving on the part of men. Of course, it's a man-made product.
And here is something which is so true of this non-Christian view and way of life this evening: it leaves it all to you. It has now helped to give you a part from what you can do yourself. It doesn't believe in the supernatural and the miraculous; it doesn't believe in that God, in the God to intervene. No, no, it says it's left to you. So all it can do for you is to educate you, try and give you an example, try to give you a stimulus, try to help you on your way. But it's left all to you—your willpower, your understanding, your brains, your effort. You've got to live your own life yourself. It's a good life if you want to live a good life; well, you've got to do it. It leaves it all to you, and all it can do is to give you a certain amount of help.
Think of the effort involved. But above all, let us remember how it leaves it all in the end to us and with us, our self.
Then another characteristic of the cistern is this: one, the cistern, of course, is always limited in its capacity. A cistern—well, you can tell exactly the cubic capacity of a cistern; you can measure, therefore, exactly the contents of a cistern even when it is full. And here I see a great and the most important parable: there is nothing to me which is as pathetic about the non-Christian view of life as its limited nature and character. You can read it in your greatest philosophers; you won't have read very far; you won't have read them at all thoroughly before you find that they're all very limited.
Oh, they can deal very well with certain aspects of life, but the moment you come to the great questions, to the profundities, they have to admit and confess that they don't know; they don't understand. That's the tragedy, I say, of all the non-Christian views that are before men. Mankind is evil.
Let me ask it again: what is the meaning of life itself? Don't ask a non-Christian thinker; ask your non-Christian philosophers, the moderns and those who've lived in past ages, and they rarely cannot tell you. It eludes them; it's beyond them. They put up their theories, but they're not satisfactory, and they cancel one another out, as I'm saying.
I look at it like this: they're also exclusively intellectual. Also, they know nothing about the feelings and the sensibilities. These, you see, are things that can't be analyzed; they can't be docketed. There is something subtle about them, and they don't understand, but they're very real in life, are they not?
In other words, your human philosophies, your man-made ideas concerning men and his life in this world, are never able to account for our deepest and our most valued experiences. We are living in a scientific age, and they're trying to tell us that the whole of our lives should be scientific, that we must get rid of all these other aspects of life and that our lives must be planned; they must be rational; they must be thought out. We must be scientific, they say. We've got all these discoveries; let's apply them to the whole of life, they say. Man has been living in an irrational kind of manner.
Well, now, his whole life must be systematized, and he must live according to his scientific novel. Where do the feelings come in? Where does love come in? Where do those feelings come in? I say you can't even describe a time.
Whoa, says the poet, "To me, the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." What does your scientist know about that? He knows nothing about it; he doesn't understand it; he can't account for it. This is something to give me a rational, and yet these are the profound things in life. These are the things which make life life—love, this deep emotion, this something which you can't dissect and analyze. You're aware of it, and you can't always give reasons for it, but there it is.
One of the most moving, glorious experiences in life, and so on with all these finest and highest sensibilities. The cistern philosophies don't cater for that; they know nothing about that.
Oh, I think I may have quoted here before that poem of Robert Browning, which seems to me to put this so well, called "Bishop Blougram's Apology." It's the story of an old bishop having a conversation with a young man. The young man was a student and very well educated and very knowledgeable and felt he understood everything. He has a talk with the old bishop. The old bishop was very patient with him and very kind and said, "Yes, I know exactly what you feel. I remember feeling that at your age."
But he said, "You know, life has taught me certain things. I once had got a complete philosophy; I thought I'd made my system." In other words, I'd got my system, a system of philosophy, and everything went into that; it fitted into this system that I'd made. But you know, said the old bishop, "Just when you're safest, there's a sunset touch, a fancy from a flower-bell, or a shadow from you, reading someone's death, and that's enough for me."
Fifty hopes and fears, as old and new, with nature's very self, that grand perhaps the system was too small. The system was not big enough; it can't account for the emotion a man feels when he sees a flower or a sunset or hears of the death of a dear friend. These things that really make life life—the finest, noblest things—they can't account for them; they don't come in; they don't understand them, and they're doing their utmost to get rid of them and to make our life cold and sterile and scientific.
Oh, the narrowness and the limited capacity of the cistern! And another thing that's characteristic of the cistern is that the water in a cistern is static. There's no life there; there it is. You send in the given amount, and there you've got it, and there's no more. If there suddenly comes an emergency, there's still no more; it's a limited capacity. There are no reserves in time of need.
But not only that; your water in the cistern tends to get hot; it tends to get stale. You tend to tire of it because it's static. I say because it isn't living, because it isn't bubbling up from the depths, it doesn't have life in it. No, no, it's something static; it feels the heat of the sun and doesn't know how to deal with it. It hasn't got any depths of reserve, and thus it becomes stale, flat, and insipid, and no longer can refresh you, especially when you need it most of all.
Those are the characteristics then of these cisterns that men make. They've made for themselves cisterns, and then the third point is, as we are reminded by the next word, "broken." A cistern—what a perfect picture this is of the prophet's yard! You know the trouble with these made cisterns is that they're always needing attention; they always need to be patched up. Why? Well, because they're broken.
You think you've made a watertight cistern, but you go to it, and you'll find it isn't watertight. What has been leaking out in all directions, and there isn't enough there for you? And what is there, as I say, is hot and stale and perhaps a little bit muddy at the same time. Why? Well, because these man-made cisterns are frail at their very best, and at their very highest, everything man makes is frail.
My friend, is a frail creature himself, and all his creations manifest the same frailty as he does himself. But not only that, you see, you make your cistern, and you put it there in the position on the earth. Well, there's something in the earth itself that affects it. There's an interaction of the very ground, chemicals in the ground upon the water of your cistern, or whatever material you've used in making it. Rust comes in, and it begins to eat, and the holes begin to develop. There are forces all around it in the earth; the rain comes; there are movements of the earth, and the result is that your poor cistern becomes broken, and you're constantly having to pay attention to it.
I mustn't keep you this evening; I'm resisting the temptation to expand these points one by one. But if you take up any book which gives you the history of philosophy, you know what you'll find? Well, you just see the mechanics trying to repair the broken cisterns. Somebody brings a masterpiece, years of at last the complete philosophy, but then the whole develops. Somebody comes along and finds a defect, and now then you've got a patch-up network. But the moment you've done that, there's another, and here are the philosophers patching up the holes, trying to stop them, but the water is going out the whole time—broken cisterns.
Oh, the very forces that are in life itself are too much. You see, I always feel that one sinner smashes every human philosophy. One man alone in history is enough to smash and to destroy every human philosophy. Why? Well, because man is incalculable. They're always telling us what we ought to be and what we ought to do, but we are not there. And when you think you've got your perfect society, everything goes wrong.
Now this century is a perfect proof of the very thing that the Prophet Jeremiah is saying here. We are in the 20th century; we have rarely are now going to make a perfect world. We fought the last war, the war to end war, from 1914 to 1918—that's what we said. Now then, we've made the system, the League of Nations, never another war. It's rarely going to do it. Had another war. Why? Well, you can't keep men in a system; you can't reduce men to a system. You know, the man is too big for that; sin is too big for that. It smashes all our systems.
Men may be all right with his mind, but there's something else in him. He decides with his mind there; he's made a system, and then he himself, obeying a lust, smashes it, and there's a hole in it. Isn't that life? Broken cisterns. You see, we can't make them; we're too frail; we don't understand; we're not big enough. And this earth and this rain and all these movements of the chemical—all these things are affecting it, and the rust, I say, and thus our cistern is broken; it's got holes in it.
But quite apart from all that, it always is getting older and older, isn't it? You made a wonderful system perhaps years ago. What's it like now? It gets old; it begins to decay; it becomes out-of-date. And so it is with all these theories and ideas and schemes of men. How confident they are in every age! How proud of them! Little realizing that subsequent ages are going to look at their handiwork and patronize it and feel rather sorry for it. They say, "Well, of course, considering their circumstances, they didn't do so badly." But really, it's not funny, isn't it?
Everything everybody's ever done until the 20th century, we feel rather sorry for them, don't we? Quite a good attempt, but of course they didn't know what we know. And you know, if it is another century, they'll laugh at us in the same way. Why? Well, our old system gets out-of-date; we want something new. There's an element of decay in it—always broken cisterns. The best systems made by men are incapable of standing up to the stresses and the strains and the trials and the circumstances of life.
But let me end this examination of the false by putting this last point, which he makes: "They have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water." That's the final problem; they can hold no water. It's another way of saying that they do not and they cannot satisfy; they cannot meet and satisfy the needs of the soul.
Man has an awareness in him that he's not a stranger in this world; we've all got it. Whatever you may say with your head, you know it in your bones. Man has a feeling that he was not meant for a life like this. The things were not meant to be like this. He's got some yearning, some longing for a lamp, a diviner air he can't find. And these cisterns don't provide it; the needs of the soul are not being met.
The needs of the soul for what? Well, the need of the soul for God. Man has this feeling within himself that he's made for another and made by another. He has a longing for some certainty, some absolute. The philosophers have got it if they would talk about the absolute; it's their way of confessing that within them there is a sense of God, a sense of supreme being. But they can't find it in the world; by wisdom, they knew not God.
Man, by searching, cannot find out God; he cannot; he's always trying to, but he cannot. And all his efforts fail to satisfy his need and his desire for God, for some security outside himself, some well-knowledge of himself. He can't find it.
What else does man seek? He seeks for forgiveness. He's got an evil conscience, a condemning conscience, but the world doesn't help you, and its philosophies don't help you. There's a poetess again who puts it: "It leaves the world to misery and to me." If you go wrong, the world won't help you very much; it can't help you. Why not? Well, because it all depends on human effort. If you fail, well, they say you shouldn't have failed; you should have pulled yourself together; you should have exercised willpower. Why didn't you do as I've done?
It can't help you; it's got nothing to offer you. If you've broken down in life and fail tonight, have you found that the world can help you? What is it going to give you with its morality, its philosophies, its social schemes, and everything? What has it got to give a man who is conscious of failure and who needs forgiveness, who needs sympathy? It hasn't got it; it can't give it. They have no water.
Is it any power to give him when you become conscious of this moral failure or failure in any respect? And when you say, "What can I do? I've taken my resolutions; I can't keep them. I've resolved, but I break my resolves. Can't I find help somewhere? Is there no strength? Is there no power available?" They can't give it to you; they can't do it themselves. They can talk about philosophy and goodness, beauty, and truth, but look at their lives—so many of them.
No, no, it's sad; there is no water there. There is nothing to give them satisfaction. And I say it has no comfort again, and at the end, it has no hope to you. Yes, a man gets older and older; it gives him less and less. It takes a young man to be excited about his philosophy. As a man gets more and more experienced, he becomes doubtful; he becomes uncertain; he tends to become cynical. And there he is, as he gets older and older, and his powers are failing, and his mind is no longer functioning.
He talks about these great terms and these great contrasts and to be clever when he fails. He's got nothing; he's got no hope for his old age. He doesn't know how to face death; he knows of nothing beyond it. There's no water; they don't hold water; there's no satisfaction. These are the things we all need, and he'll need at some moment or other in our lives, but they leave us helpless and hopeless without help.
I know of nothing in the modern world that is quite so tragic. I must say, forgive me for mentioning a person, but for me, the greatest tragic sight in the world at this hour is an old man aged 88 called Bertrand Russell, even prepared to incite men to civil disobedience. What for? Oh, just to try to prolong life a little longer in this world. Poor tragic philosopher! Why does he do all this and even incite civil disobedience to prolong life a little longer?
Oh, I'll tell you why: because he has no hope whatsoever. He knows nothing about the soul; he knows nothing about life beyond the day; he knows nothing about heaven and hell. He's a materialist, you see; his little system is so small, and there's no water in it, and there's no hope there. So all he can do is to clutch and hold on to it at 88, frantically, pathetically, tragically.
The cisterns are broken, and they hold no water, and they leave a man at the end of his life without hope, as Paul puts it, "without God in the world." And nothing else. There is the view of life that is described by the cistern. That's your trouble, says Jeremiah to his contemporaries. You've been trying to get water from broken cisterns, and you can't. That's why you are as you are.
But you know, he says, that's only one half of your folly. Look at the other half. What's that? Well, that they have turned their backs upon the other. "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water."
Oh, my dear friend, how glad I am that I can go on to this. You know, life without God and without Christ is unnaturally hopeless, isn't it? As the poor man who doesn't believe in God in Christ—any hope at this moment with all that's happening in the world and in these conferences and all the threats of calamities coming? Where is he? What does he have to fall back upon? Where is his hope? I say he has none.
Oh, thank God there is another view; there is something else confronting you this evening. It's called a fountain. And look at the contrast; look at the glory of this. What is true about it? Let me just note them for you. This comes from God. They have forsaken me, God. What's my authority as I speak in this pulpit? Am I here saying that, having meditated and cogitated over the problems of life and my own personal problems, I have come to certain conclusions?
My dear friend, that's not my position at all. I am NOT voicing a single personal opinion. I am simply opening to you and expanding to you the truths of this book, which is called the Bible. Where did this come from? We'll ask the men who wrote it, and they'll tell you that they have received it of God.
No prophecy, says Peter the Apostle, is of any private interpretation, but holy men of God spake as they were moved along by the Holy Ghost. None of these men says, "This is my idea." They all say the same thing. They say, "The word of the Lord came unto me; the burden of the Lord was given to me."
His prophet—you read the story of Jeremiah; you'll find that at certain points he said, "I'm not going to speak another word." He says, "Every time I speak, I only make enemies for myself. They hit me; they're maltreating me; they're going to kill me." He says, "I'm not going to speak any longer." But he says, "The word of the Lord came; it was like a fire in my bones, and I had to speak."
He didn't want to; it was God's word, not his word. Jeremiah didn't want to be unpopular; who does want to be unpopular? Why did he speak like this? Oh, God had given him a message. My dear friend, don't you see the choice that is before you in all your views of self and of life and of God and of death and of eternity? Are you really going to base it all upon human theories and suppositions?
Aren't you rather going to listen to this revelation from the Living God Himself? That's what we have here. This isn't human speculation. Read your Old Testament—God speaking. God called a man whose name was Abram and turned him into a nation called in Abraham. Why? Well, He wanted to address the world through this nation that would come out of this man.
And then you see a man arose in that nation called Moses, and God called him up to a mountain. He said, "Go and tell the people this." He gave them Ten Commandments, the moral law—that's how people are to live, says God. "If only they do that, I'll bless them."
Now this is, you see, a divine view with divine sanction. I mustn't keep you; I'm powering over above your Abram, your Moses, your Aaron, your mighty succession of prophets to Israel stands one alone—Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God. This is no man; only this one doesn't combine natural birth or generation; this is incarnation—God the Son entering into time. Coming, what for? To reveal God, as John puts it in the prologue of his gospel: "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
My dear friend, isn't it about time you began to listen to Jesus Christ? Stop listening to men—any men. Listen to this one who stands alone—Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in word and deed, one who was crucified, buried, but who rose again triumphant even over the grave. Listen to him; he's speaking. That's the alternative—not the vaporizing sands and theories of men, but the authoritative Word of God.
Man does not live, he says, "by bread alone, but by every word proceeding out of the mouth of God," the authority of God Himself. But let me hurry on to tell you something about the characteristics of the fountain, or what that contrast was—a perfect picture.
Look at that man sweating there to make his cistern; look at a fountain—there it is, you see, and it's always been there, bubbling up. All you do is to take your little cup, whatever it is, and fill up out of the fountain. There it was; you did nothing about it. It was made before you.
Well, that's Paul's gospel. This, you see, in Jeremiah, by grace we are saved. No man makes himself a Christian; thank God, no! Thank God my hope in life tonight doesn't depend upon me and my feeble efforts. You know, the first thing this gospel announces is this: we are His workmanship, not our own making—creation. We are His workmanship, created anew in Christ Jesus.
My dear friend, why don't you listen to a gospel that does things to you, does thinking for you, does things for you—the greatest things of all? The fountain—there it is; you've done nothing about its production; it was there confronting you, filling its water to you. That's Christianity; that's the gospel.
And then, you know, think of this other point. In contrast to the cistern, I said that was very limited in capacity. There's nothing more wonderful about the fountain than this: its depth. How deep down does it go? Nobody knows; it seems to be coming up from the bowels of the earth.
But oh, the depths of the fountain! Listen to the Apostle Paul saying that in his own way: "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the knowledge of the wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!"
You know, says Paul again in writing to those Ephesians, he says, "It's a wonderful thing; God has called me; He gave me a revelation; He laid His hand upon me; He has committed to me a dispensation of the gospel." What is it? Well, he says, "It is that I might preach amongst the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of God."
Such a you can't get to the bottom of it. You can very soon get to the bottom of your cistern; it's so limited, you see. Length, spread, height—multiply them together, cubic capacity; there it is, no more. Can you do that with a fountain? Of course not!
You can go down; it has resources—all the depths of the riches of the wisdom of the knowledge—unsearchable riches of Christ, that he might be filled, he says, with all the fullness of God. Yes, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"
There's no end to this; there's an end to every human perfection; there is an end to every human philosophy. But you know, my friend, there's no end to this gospel. I've been preaching this gospel now, you know, for 33 years, and I feel I'm only at the beginning of it. It's not easier to preach now than it was 33 years ago. Why? Well, I see more and more in it; there's no end to it. It goes on and on, all the depths of the riches in God.
I'm drawing out of a fountain, and now there's another contrast. A man-made system, and then another obvious contrast: that whatever I say gets stale and flat and hot, the fountain. Have you ever been to a fountain on a hot day when you've been walking and you're tired and weary, and you don't know what to do? Suddenly you've come to a fountain, and you get down on your knees, and you just put your face into it, and your lips—the coolness and the refreshing quality!
Oh, how wonderful it is! In spite of the heat and the drought, it comes, you see, from the depths, and there it is in all its pristine purity and coolness and strength. Yes, the old, old story—it is ever new when it is ever true. Though it's been running all these centuries, it's as fresh as ever and as lively as ever and as life-giving as ever.
How can anybody be fool enough to go and make a cistern and try and satisfy his needs when here is this bubbling water, the water, the well, the fountain of God Himself? And let me hurry to my next contrast. I say the broken cistern is getting old and is breaking more and more. This is permanent; there it is; there it has been.
Its changes—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. Oh, but you say, "Look at the changes that have taken place in history and the amendment in his knowledge." Well, I'm well aware of them all, you know, but I don't know at the same time that the needs of men are unchangeable. The things I've been talking about—the need of forgiveness, the need of moral strength and power, the need to be able to resist—you can't find it there.
But here is something unchangeable; there's no need for anything different. There's no need to improve it; there's never been a hole in it. It stood the test of the centuries, not of a few years. Do you know, read your Bible, my friend? The moment Jesus Christ was born, the attack upon him began. Here, the king tried to kill him; he didn't succeed. The Pharisees and scribes and the audience said it; they tried to make holes; they could.
He can answer everybody; even at the age of 12, he could conquer all the masters in debate. They tried him; they tried to condemn him; nobody could bring a charge against him. He was faultless and guiltless. But you say, "They killed him; they've got him at last." No, they haven't; he rose again. Never a hole, never a break, never any defect in every respect he stood.
He did everything he could look at his father at the end and say, "Father, it is finished." Nothing was left; nothing incomplete. There he was at the beginning, and you know ever since they've been trying to find holes in this fountain of living water. The critics began; the Jews did it; the Greeks did it; they get their applause, but they failed.
Christianity time has continued throughout the centuries. It's been going on the last hundred years, but this land, as all the others have ended, as the enlightenment of the 18th century ended, this is a kingdom which cannot be moved. This is a fountain in which there will never be a defect nor blemish. It is permanent; it is everlasting, and the men are taken of it by the thumbs, and it's still there, and it's still as full as ever.
Are never having seen the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And lastly, it is fully satisfying. "They have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water." Oh, the tragedy and the folly! They are forsaken me, the fountain of living water. What's this? Oh, this is everything a man needs.
Do you need forgiveness? Of course you do. Where can you find it? How do you answer an accusing conscience? How do you lie on your deathbed without fear? Tell me, how can you do it? Who can help you? Nobody can help you. There's only one. You will only know forgiveness as you go and look at this Jesus, Son of God, dying on the cross on Calvary's Hill.
There you will know that he was bearing your sins in his own body on the tree, taking the punishment that you deserve, dying your death. And because of that, you're offered free forgiveness. It's the only place in God's universe where you'll ever find it. You've got to come to this fountain; it's nowhere else.
Forgiveness, peace with God—when God seems a terror to you and His holy law is flashing upon you and His Ten Commandments are condemning you and the prophets and Christ and the teaching are all against you—what can you do? Where can you find peace with God? It's only here: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them."
You need power, of course; you need power. And the only place where you'll find this power is in the same old fountain—Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We are strong in Him, whereas we were weak; He makes us strong. Whereas I was blind, now I see. Whereas I was hopeless, He fills me with hope.
He gives me power: "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." It's the only way, the only hope. Knowledge of God—nobody else can bring you to God. He said, "Sir, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me."
But you know, my dear friend, however weak and ignorant we may be, however little we know philosophically, if you go to Him, He'll bring you to a knowledge of God—not a knowledge about Him that makes you clever; He'll bring you to know God, and as your Father, He'll give you life.
He'll give you comfort: "They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing." He said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." And when you do get old and your powers fail, He won't turn His back upon you. When you can't think, you're feeling guilty, you'll feel His presence; you'll know something about the unfolding of His arms.
He'll never leave you, neither in life nor in death—everywhere, always. He said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Not only that, He'll be with you in the river of death; He'll take you through safely, and He'll take you to the other side.
He will tell you in this world of a blessed hope. He turned to His disciples as He turns to you tonight and says, "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."
He is preparing for us an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven by God for those who believe in Him. That's what the fountain does; it's a fountain of living water. It never has failed; it never will fail; it will satisfy you in every need.
My friend, you've given me the privilege of holding the two positions before you this evening: man-made systems, the fountain of God. You've seen the truth about them. Can you continue, if you have either, to indulge in the utter, indescribable folly of choosing these broken cisterns which don't hold water and rejecting the fountain of living water—God Himself? I can't believe it.
Oh, come, say with me now, as a man once put it: "I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but ah! their waters failed. E'en as I stooped to drink, they fled and mocked me as I wailed."
You know something about that—these broken cisterns, their waters fail, and even as you stoop to drink of them, they fly away from you; they disappear and they mock you as you wail in your thirst and your agony. That will laugh at you and leave you as those people left Judas when he'd betrayed our Lord and was suicide. They said, "That's your business, not ours; get on with it."
The world will leave you on some scrap heap and will mock you even as it fails you. Are you ready to say that? Well, if you are, turn to the other side and say this: "O Christ, in Thee my soul is found, and found in Thee alone. The peace, the joy I sought so long, the bliss till now unknown."
Now none but Christ can satisfy; none other name for me. There's life, there's health, there's lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in Thee. Go to Him and say that. What do you prefer to put it in the language of the richest burner?
"I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'Come to me and rest. Lay down, thou weary one; lay down thy head upon my breast.' I came to Jesus as I was, weary, worn, and sad. I found in Him a resting place, and He has made me glad."
Go to Him, and you will say the same thing, or go on saying it. "I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'Behold, I freely give the living water. Thirsty one, stoop down and drink and live.' I came to Jesus and I drank of that life-giving stream; my thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in Him."
Go on: "I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'I am this dark world's light. Look unto me, thy dawn shall light, and all thy days be bright.' I looked at Jesus, and I found in Him my star, my sun. In that light of life, I'll walk till traveling days be done."
That's their testimony, the men you see who prove it—who looked at the two, who tried the broken cisterns and found them to fail, then they've come to Him, the fountain of living water. That's their testimony.
Let me add one more as I leave you: Charles Wesley. He knows what it is to try the others; he knows what it is to be buffeted by the storms of life. But this is his conclusion: "Though Christ is all I want, more than all in Thee I find. Raise the fallen, heal the sick, and lead the blind. Plenteous grace in Thee is found, grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams abound; make and keep me pure within."
"Thou art the fountain of life; freely let me take of Thee. Spring Thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity."
Are you sad? Are you weary? Are you tired? Are you a failure? Are you forlorn? Are you condemning yourself? Do you feel hopeless? Do you feel the world has failed you, that you've got nothing? Are you afraid of the model of the future? Just as you are, come to Him, the fountain of living waters, and you will find this plenteous grace.
Christ is the fountain of life. Come to Him; He'll give you life, and you'll never fail.
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