When Too Much is Not Enough

A sermon preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
February 1, 1998

Text: Jeremiah 2:13

A sign on a Lone Star Cafe in Texas said brazenly: TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH!

We smile. It has a kind of Texas swagger to it. And what was it another decade popularized: Too Much of a Good Thing can be Wonderful. We smile again.

But the Too Much theme has some relevance for all of us. For there are some times when Too Much turns out to be Not Enough. It occurs when with a kind of single vision we invest ourselves in one dimension of our lives and ignore the other crucial areas, particularly the spiritual area.

Jeremiah lived in a day not unlike our own, a day when the leadership of his nation tipped their hats to religion, but their real commitments were elsewhere. God says through the 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."

Jeremiah's metaphor of the cistern comes right out of the needs of that day. The Palestinian area does not have enough rainfall. It is semiarid, not like a desert but always short of adequate water. To remedy this situation they dug wells, or cisterns. The Hebrew word is used interchangeably. Part of the problem was that the porous limestone out of which the cisterns were dug allowed much of the water to escape. Later, these wells and cisterns were not only lined with rocks but also with plaster. Even then, the porous nature of the soil and the rocks did not hold water such as they needed.

Jeremiah sees in this a wonderful parable of what the people are doing. In essence they keep doing what they have always done, only they keep doing it more intensely. Their motivation is: if what we have done has got us by in the past, let’s just do more of it.

Jeremiah says, this approach to life is just not the one to make. To simply keep doing more of the same thing is like digging a leaky cistern. When it doesn't hold enough water, just go down deeper. But, of course, you have not solved the problem at all. What is needed is to dig a well in another place that will hold water.

Too Much is Not Enough when we keep digging in the same place and making matters worse. What is needed is digging holes in new places.

There was a woman who was very educated. She could speak eight languages but she entered a monastery. Someone asked her, "How can you, so educated, so gifted, how can you turn your back on all of that to go into the life of a monastery?" She said simply, "Because I learned that eight languages were not enough." What she was doing was sinking a well in a whole new area of life, the spiritual area. Entering the monastery was the only way she knew how to do it.

Work Ethic
Consider how we make a false cistern of work, and the work ethic. Here is a man called Joseph. He is president of a great company. He is where he is by his hard work, his complete dedication to the job. When he hits fifty his body begins to rebel and his emotions so long unnoticed surface in rebellion and throw him into turmoil. The only thing he knows is hard work. Surely if he works harder he can work his way out of this. But of course, the harder he works the more he digs himself deeper into a cistern that, for him, can no longer hold water.

There was a man named Ashby Shaw. He had fallen several feet on a construction job and landed in the hospital with broken bones. It took him several weeks to mend and even get out of the hospital. He had thoughts about God before, but he never paid much attention to them. He was busy working, looking forward to weekends off, but never taking all of this religious stuff seriously. But when he was flat on his back going to work and looking forward to the next weekend was not an option. He began to think about God and had an experience with the love of God. He said, "It’s a shame I had to be put flat on my back before I learned to look up." He began to see the answers to his life in a whole new dimension, on a whole new page.

But it does not always take a reversal in health. I read of a window washer in New York City who washed windows on those high skyscrapers. He became a Christian and traced his conversion back to a time when one afternoon, around sunset, the colors of the sunset reflected off of those windows and completely captivated him. The colors splashed all over the glass on that side of the building. For the first time in his life he realized that there was something really wonderful going on other than what he was doing. He said later, "For the first time in my life, I was overwhelmed by a tremendous sense of the presence of God. I don't know why, but somehow I knew in that moment that God was where I would really find my answers in life."

If you tendency is simply to work harder, you may be digging a cistern that doesn't hold enough water to satisfy your soul's needs.

The Rational Mind
You have heard me say many times that we tend to worship in this day and time at the shrine of the logical, analytical, rational mind. We pay little attention to the emotional side of things, much less the spiritual side of things. The trouble is, just thinking more efficiently, may not satisfy the inner needs of our hearts at all.

Whitaker Chambers lived during the height of the communist influence upon the world. This was a time when academic types were turning to communism as an answer to the greed of capitalism. In his book entitled, The God who Failed, Chambers tells of the day at the breakfast table when he noticed his daughter's ear. It caught his eye. He noticed the beautiful construction of it, the amazing design behind it. He began to ponder the amazing mechanics on how the human ear worked. He wondered how communism would explain such a marvelous thing. They couldn't, of course. This was his first step to a vital faith in God.

To use Jeremiah's phrase, he had come upon a cistern that would not hold water. Instead of simply digging that cistern bigger or deeper, he put down his hopes and his dreams in a whole different kind of spiritual rock. God is my rock, says the Psalmist, a good place to dig a well.

So, how can you keep from simply doing what you've always done, digging where you have always hope to find water? You say, 'Look, I already believe. Yet, I find myself in something of the same patterns that you have mentioned.

Try sinking a well down in a different spiritual soil, a different spiritual rock.

For example, praise. Praise is an amazing antidote for almost everything. Praise me, says the Lord. Does the Lord want our praise for his ego sake? Or does the Lord want our praise because of what it does for us. Praise is an amazing spiritual energizer.

Louis Evans II had a remarkable early life. Son of the minister at large of the Presbyterian Church he was a gifted athlete and played football at UCLA. He later married a Hollywood star named Colleen Townsend. He studied to be a minister and his life became packed with good things to do. He was successful. The churches under his leadership grew. But then he began to get migraine headaches. The strain had begun to show. One day when leading a Bible Study in his home, a migraine showed up. He went to the bedroom to try to get some relief. None came and then he heard a voice. Was it from within or from without. Who knows? Who cares? The voice was from the Lord and said simply, "Praise me!" In the process he learned how to dig a new well. His headaches lost their hold on him even as the stress under which he worked lost its hold on him. Praise is an individual thing. Some are very emotional. Others quite private. But praise is a tonic all of its own. Try praise.

Most of us dig well the cisterns of responsibility and obedience. We may believe in salvation by faith but we live by the doctrine, the more you obey, the better person you are. Works salvation.

How about a new place to dig? Try releasing and trusting instead of responsibility and trying. Both are part of the spiritual adventure. If you find you are not getting anywhere with the answer you are using, let God. Let God and let God.

I remember the remarkable story of J.C. Penney. If you ever read his biography you will discover that in 1929, after the great stock market crash, he went through a physical and mental nervous breakdown. He landed in a hospital. He was so depressed he thought he wold not live much longer. In fact, one night he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and son because he thought he would not make it through the night. When he woke up that morning, he heard some music coming from the hospital chapel. He went in and sat down as he heard the words, "Be not dismayed whatere betide, God will take care of you." He found himself praying to God and saying, "Lord, I have found I can not really do anything on my own. Will you help me." He said later that a weight seemed lifted from his shoulders and he discovered a peace beginning to become part of who he eventually became.

Too much is not enough when you keep trying to dig deeper a cistern that isn’t holding water. Go to some new rock that is more in rhythm with what you need, a spiritual rock, a God-gifted rock, a rock that is higher than anything you've known. Remember: if we just keep digging where we have always dug, we are going to dig ourselves in deeper. Try a new answer cistern, a cistern that will help balance out who you are and what you are about.

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