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For the second part of this series, click here.
For the third part of this series, click here.
For the fourth part of this series, click here.
Read Jeremiah 2:9-13.
Need: Where I come from is a densely populated county. It’s about half the geographical size of Lawrence County (where I live now), but about five times the population. So when I was out and I would see someone I know, it was really exciting. Wave, honk, chat. I didn’t realize when I got to the Mohawk area, this would happen all the time. So when I was out and I would see someone I know, I got really excited. Wave, honk, chat. But now that I realize how often this happens, I’ve learned the simple wave. Most of the time, I don't even need to take my hand off the steering wheel to wave. Just lift a few fingers in the air.
I’m afraid that’s what has happened with Christ and the Gospel. At first, we are really excited and we find all our joy in the fact that God has sent His Son to earth to save us from our sin. And maybe each Christmas, we try to resurrect that excitement. But by the Sunday after Christmas, we’ve relegated the Gospel back to the simple wave.
But our hunger for happiness is not the problem. We all are engaged in a pursuit of pleasure, a search for satisfaction, a neverending journey for joy. Everyone wants to be happy. It influences everything we do: what job we take, whom we marry, where we live. We all want happiness. We may seek it in different ways and in different things, but we do seek it, and we do whatever we can to have it.
There is a school of thought that more people are a part of than they know. It is called Hedonism, and it is the belief that all of life is simply a pursuit of pleasure. Do you believe that? If not, then why do you live like it? Why does everyone around you live like it? Think of all of your decisions over the last week. Was anything not motivated by your own search for joy? It could be sensual pleasure. It could be immediate satisfaction. It could have been long-term happiness. It could have been future joy. But everything you did this past week was part of your pursuit of happiness.
It sounds condemning, I’m sure. And you may be a bit defensive right now, but hear me out.
What if our hunger for joy is not a result of the fall but given by God? What if this gaping hole inside each one of us that makes us long for joy is not because we are sinners but because we are made in God’s image?
CS Lewis, in a sermon that changed my view of the world, said this, “If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
I love this quote because in many ways it is the story of my life. I grew up in a very conservative Christian home. I learned from my parents and from my church at a young age that there is a great, powerful and wise God. He made us, He defines what our lives are for, and one day He will judge the world. And the issue will be: did we honor Him? Did we thank Him?
For many years in my Christian life, I misunderstood the Gospel. I thought the life of a Christian on earth is all about denying myself, rejecting all happiness, saying no to all the bad stuff. It was negative. Because I believed we have to choose, my happiness or God’s glory? In my mind, it was one or the other. This sucked the joy out of my Christianity and out of my life for many years.
And then I made one of the greatest discoveries of my life. My desire to be happy and God’s desire to be glorified were not at odds. I found in the Bible and in Christian writings that they were in fact one thing. The Westminster Catechism, one of the standards of our faith asks as its first question: What is the chief end of man? Many of you know the answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. But notice that it does not say “Man’s chief ends (plural),” but “Man’s chief end (singular) is to glorify God and enjoy Him.” They are one in the same goal. They are intertwined towards the same purpose.
When you enjoy somebody a lot, you show everyone how important they are. When I show how much I enjoy knowing and loving my wife, she is elevated and honored through my joy! If I declare from this blog that I enjoy being married to Heather, that loving her brings me so much joy, no one is reading this thinking, “Man, this guy. What a selfish jerk.” No, you’re thinking, “Wow, this Heather must be awesome!” (She is.)
It is the same way with God. We get the joy, God gets the glory. If I stop enjoying God, I stop glorifying God. This was almost too good to be true. I learned one of the most important things in the world. John Piper phrases it this way: God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.
This is Christian Hedonism. This is the Biblical truth that our joy and God’s glory are not mutually exclusive but are one in the same. It’s knowing that our desire for joy is given by God to glorify God. Our desire for joy is the greatest pursuit we can make in this world. Because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
This depends on the fact that our greatest joy is God. He created us, He designed us, He loves us, and He saved us. There is no greater joy to be found in this world than in our Maker and Redeemer. And it depends on the fact that God's greatest glory is our joy. When we find our complete satisfaction in God, we are declaring to the world that God is great and awesome. His glory is declared when our joy is shared.
So the question we must ask this morning is this:
Question: What joy does the Gospel offer?
Does the Gospel offer joy? And if so, what joy? How? How can we get this joy?
It is my prayer as you read this, you will know this:
Truth: Only the Gospel offers true joy (read that again).
Text: To see this, let us look to our passage from Jeremiah 2. Particularly, let’s look at verse 13. Let me quote it again. This is the Lord speaking to the people of Israel through His prophet, Jeremiah: “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.”
In this passage, God is bringing a charge against his covenant people. He says they have done two evils. They have indeed committed many other sins, but it all boils down to these two sins. First, they have rejected God, the spring of living water. He has time and again offered Himself to Israel as their joy and satisfaction, as their all in all. And they have time and again rejected Him. Second, they have dug their own cisterns, which have broken and cannot hold water.
A cistern in the Old Testament was basically a hole in the ground that is lined with some sort of waterproofing material so that it can hold water. This cistern would collect rainwater which they would use for drinking or washing. A cistern is not a well. A well taps into underground water sources; a cistern collects above ground water sources.
So God is saying to the Israelites, "Instead of finding your satisfaction in me, a spring of living water, you have tried to find your satisfaction in all sorts of other things, which cannot satisfy. You have dug broken cisterns, which cannot hold water, and looked for satisfaction there."
Do we not do the same? One reason this post was so difficult for me to write is because I am guilty of these two sins so often. We are thirsting for happiness and we search and search. God is ever present, offering us overflowing satisfaction. But instead we turn to lesser things to try to find joy. They might even be good things, like family, love, education, health, materials, comfort, security. But they are cisterns that cannot offer us joy. They might be good things and it’s okay to have them in life. God says to celebrate them. But it is evil when we turn to these things for our joy instead of God.
Let us consider four contrasts between the spring of living water and broken cisterns:
1. There is one all sufficient spring but many insufficient cisterns.
Notice it is one spring (singular) but multiple broken cisterns (plural). God is everything. In one God we find all of our joy. Or we will run around to so many broken cisterns to try to find that joy. Think about the craziness of life. It often feels like we have to juggle so many things just to make sure we are happy. We must make sure we have enough money, enough clothes, enough comfort, enough friends, enough reputation, enough health, enough sympathy, enough pain, enough tradition, enough amusement, enough pleasure, and on and on, just so we can find happiness in this world. There are so many cisterns out there! But none of them hold water.
Turn to Christ, the all sufficient, all in one spring of living water. He alone is enough. When we realize that, we realize we can enjoy other things, but we don’t have to depend on them for our joy. Our cup is already overflowing with Christ!
2. The spring is free but the cisterns have to be dug out.
Let’s be honest: finding happiness in this world is not easy. If we are looking for joy without God, there is hard work to be done. We must dig and build and dig and build. Constantly laboring to find happiness. Cisterns must be dug out, but the fountain is free. Isaiah 55:1 says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” The Gospel offers this joy: no work remains to be able to enjoy the spring of living water. Christ completed every last bit.
3. The spring is full but the cisterns are ruptured and leaking.
The spring never runs out of water. It continues to overflow and drown its partakers. But we continually return to our cisterns to quench our thirst. They are ruptured, broken, leaking. If you relied on a cistern for your drinking water, you would have two problems if it broke. The first problem is that the water would leak out. You would continually find yourself without enough water. You might have water for a short time, but it would always be fleeting.
The same is true when we try to drink from the broken cisterns of happiness that the world offers. They can only provide short term satisfaction for thirst. This is not a secret; everyone knows that is all this world can offer. That adds to the problem of a leaking cistern. Since we know the temporary happiness this world offers will quickly run out, even that short happiness is cut shorter as we grow anxious about it running dry. Leaking cisterns can only offer temporary joy tainted with anxiety. So we should run to the spring of God's joy where it is always full and overflowing.
4. The spring is pure but the cisterns are stagnant and poisonous.
The second problem with a broken cistern is that dirt, rodents, and disease would leak in. The water that doesn't leak out of a broken cistern would quickly become contaminated. This means the water would not only not be a benefit to the drinker, but it would also be a serious danger to the drinker.
4. The spring is pure but the cisterns are stagnant and poisonous.
The second problem with a broken cistern is that dirt, rodents, and disease would leak in. The water that doesn't leak out of a broken cistern would quickly become contaminated. This means the water would not only not be a benefit to the drinker, but it would also be a serious danger to the drinker.
When we look to the world to satisfy our thirst for joy, we only find sources that come with danger and trial and immorality. Many of the joys of this world that God created for our benefit can even be turned into a detriment to our lives if we try to make them our source of joy. But if we drink of the spring of the Gospel, the water is always pure, always flowing, always satisfying.
By looking at those four distinctions between the spring and the broken cisterns, hopefully now you can see why God would say, “Be appalled at this,” and “shudder with great horror.”
The Gospel calls out to us, to come and drink of Christ. Listen to Jesus' words echoing this call in John 4:14: “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Jonathan Edwards in his first sermon ever preached, says this about Christian Happiness: "The godly man is happy in whatever circumstances he is placed because of the spiritual privileges and advantages, joys and satisfactions, he actually enjoys while in this life. How great a happiness must needs [it] be to a man to have all his sins pardoned and to stand guilty of nothing in God's presence: to be washed clean from all his pollutions; to have the great and eternal and almighty Jehovah, who rules and governs the whole universe, and doth whatsoever he pleases in the armies of heaven and amongst the inhabitants of the earth, reconciled to him and perfectly at peace with him. How great a pleasure and satisfaction must it be to him to think of it, and not only that God is reconciled to him or has nothing against [him], inasmuch as all is pardoned; but also that this same almighty being who created him, who keeps him in being and who disposes of him and all other things every moment, loves him, and that with a great and transcendent love; and that He has adopted him and taken him to be His child, and given Himself to him to be his father and his portion, and that takes care of him as one that is very dear to Him, continually guides and directs him, and will lead him to the fountain of living waters. And how joyful and gladsome must the thoughts of Jesus Christ be to him, to think with how great a love Christ has loved him, even to lay down His life and suffer the most bitter torments for his sake, Who also now continually intercedes for him at the throne of grace; to consider that so great a person as the eternal Son of God, who also made the worlds, is his lord and master, and is not ashamed to call us brethren, Who will come in and sup with him, and He with him, and to see His arms expanded to embrace him and offering Himself to be embraced by him.”
Conclusion: The Gospel offers us true joy. Let us stop relying on broken cisterns.
"Now none but Christ can satisfy,
None other name for me;
There’s love and life and lasting joy,
Lord Jesus, found in Thee.
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But, ah, the waters failed!
E’en as I stooped to drink they fled,
And mocked me as I wailed.
Let us make the choice to find our joy in Christ. Our desires are not too strong, but too weak! Let us like Jonathan Edwards, fiercely resolve to find all the joy we can in God: “Resolved, To endeavour to obtain for myself as much happiness in the other world as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigour, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.”
We have seen over the last five posts what the Gospel offers to us compared to the world. We have looked at the hope, purpose, love, and joy that comes through Christ in the Gospel. This is your daily call to respond to that. Preach the Gospel to yourself everyday so that in it you can continually find these blessings for your life. In life, we’re given a choice: we can have all that God offers through Christ in the Gospel, or we can try to find all of that in the world and end up with nothing. The choice facing everyone of us is this: Gospel or Nothing. What will you choose?
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