The Renewing of the Holy Ghost by Mark Hanby

Author:Mark Hanby
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biblical Studies, Spirituality, Devotional, Religion, General
ISBN: 9781560430315
Publisher: Destiny Image Publishers
Published: 1991-07-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Wells and Cisterns

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Jeremiah 2:12-13

Having much mercy upon the author's poor ability at mental artistry, let us all patiently 'gather round' in an attempt to decipher the meaning of the following illustration.

The next time you stand in your congregation, try to imagine the auditorium as an open field and each individual member as representing a hollow, sunken cylinder, like a hand-dug well.

Please disregard the fact that they all look similar externally and consider that all of them fall into one of two distinctively opposite categories. Each regular member, is either a WELL or a CISTERN.

There is an all-important difference between a well and a cistern.

A WELL has a source within itself and flows ever upward and outward, bathing its surroundings in cool, refreshing, life-giving water. Jesus spoke of these wells saying:

... but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

St. John 4:14

In sharp contrast, the CISTERN has all the possibilities of being a well—except that the inward supply is gone. These empty souls have forsaken the "fountain of living water." Their walls are soon cracked by dryness, neglect, and self-hewn philosophies so that even when filled by some external supply, as they must be if they possess anything at all, the water is lost into the black humus of their carnal hearts. Indifferently, these spongers wait in motionless satisfaction for some spiritual well to overflow and again moisten the thirsty abyss of their souls.

Jude beheld these and with unbridled candor, penned this searing rebuke:

These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruits withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;

Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

These be they who separate themselves ("They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water"), sensual, HAVING NOT THE SPIRIT.

Jude 12-13, 19

Nor could the insidious spiritual crime of the cisterns be overlooked by the apostle with the keys; for Peter said:

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest: to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.

II Peter 2:17

For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

II Peter 2:21

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

Psalms 46:4

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

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