“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.”

According to our verse for today, there are two solutions to the problem if you are thirsty. You can drink from “the spring of living water,” or you can drink from a “broken cistern that cannot hold water.” Put in such stark terms, one wonders why anyone would ever want to forsake pure spring water for leaky cistern water. Yet that is what God accuses the people of Judah of doing.

“The spring of living water” is a metaphor for the Lord Himself. Like a pure mountain spring that continuously gushes forth life-giving water, so the Lord is the source of all life and the sustainer of all life. God, one might say, is a spring that waters His people so that they will live and flourish. Psalm 36:9 says, “For with you is the fountain of life,” and Isaiah 44:3 says, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground.”

On the other hand, “broken cisterns that cannot hold water” is a metaphor for the idols created by people. The metaphor is appropriate for any man-made alternative to the Lord above. Like a cistern that contains water muddied by the earthen structure that contains it, idols are a poor substitute for the Lord. Indeed, idols are broken cisterns—the illusion of aid, but containing only fetid and noxious water.

People who drink from cisterns rather than from the mountain springs have committed two sins. They have forsaken the one true God, and they have set up for themselves an alternative deity. Since there is only one true God, any deity designed by men cannot really compete with the uncreated Lord above.

Thus, any attempt to quench your thirst from a broken cistern will only lead to disappointment. Any attempt to find life in something that you have set up yourself will actually bring death to you. There is no good man-made alternative to fresh spring water.

Ultimately, only the Lord can satisfy our thirst.