In this message I would like to give a very brief concluding word to this life-study of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah may be likened to a walnut: on the outside there is a hard shell, and on the inside there is a kernel. When I was young, I read Jeremiah a number of times, but I touched only the "shell" of this book; I did not see anything of the "kernel." Gradually, the Lord has opened the shell of Jeremiah and has shown me the kernel. In this message, therefore, I have the burden to speak a word concerning the kernel of the book of Jeremiah.
This kernel includes three matters—what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us. Jeremiah strongly presents these three matters to us, but they are concealed within the shell. In order to see these three things, we need to "crack" the shell of Jeremiah and concentrate on the kernel inside.
What God wants from us is mentioned mainly in 2:13, which reveals that God is the fountain of living waters. God wants us to take Him as the fountain of living waters for our living. This means that He wants us to take Him as the source, the fountain, of our being. How can we take Him as our source? The only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink of Him day by day. By drinking we take into us the living water that issues from God as the fountain.
The importance of drinking of God as the fountain is illustrated in John 4. To the Samaritan woman who had come to the well to draw water and whom the Lord Jesus had asked to give Him a drink, He said, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water" (v. 10). When she asked Him where He could get this living water, He answered, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life" (v. 14). The Lord's word here indicates that whatever we drink becomes one with us. When we drink of God as the fountain of living waters, He becomes one with us, and we become one with Him. The more we drink of God, the more He is one with us and the more we are one with Him and constituted with Him in His life and nature.
Jeremiah 2:13 says, "My people have committed two evils: / They have forsaken Me, / The fountain of living waters, / To hew out for themselves cisterns, / Broken cisterns, / Which hold no water." The most evil thing in the eyes of God is to forsake Him as the source, as the fountain of living waters, and to turn to some other source. All other sources are idols. In this verse the idols are likened to broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. People today are busy hewing out for themselves all kinds of cisterns. Actually, these cisterns are idols. As we consider this situation, we need to realize that God wants us to take Him as the fountain, the source, of our life and our being.