Consider some of the cisterns, and see whether it be not strictly true that they can hold no water.
I. The cistern of Sensualism. Not even the sensualist himself can always succeed in so utterly hoodwinking himself as to believe that the passions have a right to govern us. The flimsy, gaudy curtains of his sophistry are often burnt up around him by the fire of a kindling conscience, and he has to weave fresh concealments which in their turn will be consumed. He forgets that from their very nature the passions can never yield a constant happiness. Every stroke he puts to this cistern will put him farther from his aim; the more he strives to make it hold water the less certainly it will hold it, and if he continues his abortive labour until death his cistern will be his sepulchre, for he that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth.
II. The cistern of Wealth. The love of wealth for its own sake is a passion, and grows with that it feeds on, swelling far more rapidly than the acquisitions it makes, and therefore leaving the man who is the victim of it, day by day more in arrears of his aim.
Would you learn the weakness of wealth as well as its power? Look at the narrow limits within which after all its efficacy is bounded. If there are times when one feels that money answereth all things, there are times when one feels still more keenly that it answereth nothing.
III. The cistern of Intellectualism. Even the intellectual man is not satisfied; if he gets fresh light he seems only to realise more fully the fact that he is standing on the border of a vaster territory of darkness; that if he solves one mystery it serves but to show a thousand more.
IV. The cistern of Morality. This cistern, too, has chinks and cracks. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified." Christ said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." He is the Fountain of living waters.
E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment,p. 236.
Along the journey of life there are many "cisterns," and onefountain. The children of Israel in their passage through the desert had one fountain all the way, and always the same. And to us it is the like. Let us see the difference between the fountain and the cisterns.
I. God makes fountains, or, for the word means the same thing, springs.Cisterns man makes. And therefore because God makes the fountain, it is of living waters. This is exactly what those thoughts and feelings and pleasures are which come straight from God Himself.
II. The water from the fountain follows a man wherever he goes, and just suits his appetite, and is sweetest and best with him at the last. The water from the cistern is always low and never reaches the margin of your real heart, and when you want it most, it is gone is not.
III. Cisterns, the world's waters, lie in open places; the fountain is in the shade. Cisterns are of flimsy make; fountains are in the rock. You must go to Jesus if you want the Fountain.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,15th series, p. 237.
I. The evils of which we are here accused: (1) departure from our Creator; (2) seeking our happiness in the creature rather than in the Creator.
II. The light in which these evils are here represented: (1) their folly; (2) their guilt; (3) their danger. (a) Let us return to the Fountain of living waters. (b) Having returned, let us avoid the cisterns.
G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 145.
References: Jeremiah 2:18. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 356; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p, 203.Jeremiah 2:19. J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions,p. 384.