Forsaking the Living Fountain

13          “Therefore thus says the Lord:
                        Ask among the nations,
Who has heard the like of this?
                        The virgin Israel
has done a very horrible thing.
            14          Does the snow of Lebanon leave
the crags of Sirion?
                        Do the mountain waters run dry,
the cold flowing streams?
            15          But my people have forgotten me;
they make offerings to false gods;
                        they made them stumble in their ways,
in the ancient roads,
                        and to walk into side roads,
not the highway,
            16          making their land a horror,
a thing to be hissed at forever.
                        Everyone who passes by it is horrified
and shakes his head.
            17          Like the east wind I will scatter them
before the enemy.
                        I will show them my back, not my face,
in the day of their calamity.”
Jeremiah 18:13-17
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Forsaking the Living Fountain
Israel’s sin is not merely disobedience, it is madness. The Lord describes it as a shocking exchange: His people abandon Him, the living fountain, for what cannot satisfy. Like snow that should remain on Lebanon’s peaks or cool waters that ought to flow steadily, God’s faithfulness is constant. Yet His people turn aside to what is empty, unreliable, and false. So it is with us. We trade the certainty of God’s Word for the shifting sands of our own desires. We chase what cannot give life, though Christ Himself is given freely. But the Lord does not merely expose this sin, He answers it. At the cross, Christ bears the judgment our wandering deserves. There, the fountain is opened again, His pierced side flowing with mercy. Return, then, not to your own ways, but to Him. For only in Christ is the path made straight, and only in Him do sinners find living water that does not fail.