Dumber Than a Bird: The Unnatural Rebellion of the Unrepentant Heart Text: Jeremiah 8:4-7
Introduction: The Logic of Falling Down
There is a certain logic to the world. If you trip, you fall down. If you fall down, you get back up. If you take a wrong turn in your car, you make a U-turn at the next available opportunity. These are not complicated spiritual principles; this is basic, creaturely common sense. It is woven into the fabric of a world that God made. To act otherwise is not just wrong, it is irrational. It is to declare war on the nature of reality itself.
But this is the very nature of sin. Sin is not just a moral failure; it is a profound intellectual failure. It is a form of calculated insanity. And in our passage today, the prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God, expresses a kind of divine bewilderment at the sheer, mule-headed irrationality of Judah's sin. God is not just angry with His people; He is flabbergasted. He lays out a series of rhetorical questions that are designed to show them that their behavior is not just disobedient, it is fundamentally unnatural. They are violating the simplest laws of cause and effect, of action and consequence, that govern the entire created order.
We live in an age that prides itself on its sophistication, its education, its enlightened reason. And yet, we are surrounded by the same kind of willful, determined irrationality that Jeremiah confronted. We see people holding fast to deceits that are ruining their lives, their families, and their culture. We see them, like a war horse charging into battle, running headlong toward destruction without a moment's pause for self-reflection. And as God will point out with devastating clarity, this makes them dumber than a bird. The simple, created instinct of a migrating stork puts the spiritual intelligence of God's covenant people to shame. This passage is a diagnosis of a spiritual condition, a condition that is as prevalent in our day as it was in Jeremiah's.
The Text
"You shall say to them, 'Thus says Yahweh, "Do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not turn back? Why then has this people, Jerusalem, Turned away in continual faithlessness? They hold fast to deceit; They refuse to return. I have given heed and heard, They have spoken what is not right; No man regretted his evil, Saying, 'What have I done?' Everyone turned to his course, Like a horse charging into the battle. Even the stork in the sky Knows her seasons; And the turtledove and the swift and the crane Keep the time of their migration; But My people do not know The legal judgment of Yahweh."
(Jeremiah 8:4-7 LSB)
The Common Sense of Repentance (v. 4)
God begins with an appeal to basic, observable reality. He is not starting with the intricacies of the Mosaic law; He is starting with gravity.
"Do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not turn back?" (Jeremiah 8:4)
These are questions that answer themselves. Of course you get up. Of course you turn back. To remain on the ground after tripping is the behavior of a toddler in a tantrum, not a grown man. To continue driving in the wrong direction after realizing your mistake is the definition of foolishness. God has built a principle of correction into the world. Things go wrong, mistakes are made, people fall. The natural, rational, created response is to correct the error. To get up. To turn around.
This is the logic of repentance written into the created order. Repentance is not some bizarre, arbitrary religious duty. It is the spiritual equivalent of getting up after you fall down. It is the only sane response to realizing you are on the wrong road. God is saying, "Look around you! The whole world operates on this principle of correction. Why are you the lone exception?" The refusal to repent is therefore an act of rebellion against natural law. It is to insist that gravity should not apply to you, that the map is wrong and your misguided feelings are right.
The Determined Irrationality of Sin (v. 5)
Having established the sane and normal principle, God now applies it to Jerusalem, and they are found to be the great and tragic anomaly.
"Why then has this people, Jerusalem, Turned away in continual faithlessness? They hold fast to deceit; They refuse to return." (Jeremiah 8:5 LSB)
The "why" here is a cry of divine exasperation. Given the self-evident logic of verse 4, Judah's behavior makes no sense. Notice the description of their sin. It is not a momentary lapse. It is "continual faithlessness." This is a settled state, a perpetual backsliding. And it is not a passive drift. They "hold fast to deceit." The picture is one of a man clinging to a lie with a white-knuckled grip, even as it poisons him. They "refuse to return." Repentance has been offered, the way back has been shown, but they have actively, volitionally, stubbornly refused.
What is this deceit they hold so tightly? It is the lie of the false prophets who cry "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. It is the deceit of idolatry, the lie that a block of wood can save you. It is the foundational deceit of all sin: the lie that you can be your own god, that you can define good and evil for yourself, and that there will be no consequences. Our generation holds fast to its own deceits: the lie that a man can become a woman, the lie that sexual license leads to freedom, the lie that the state can be our savior. And like Judah, we refuse to return, because to return would be to admit that we were wrong, and our pride is a dearer idol to us than our own lives.
The Deafening Silence of the Conscience (v. 6)
In this verse, God leans in, as it were, listening for the faintest whisper of remorse, but hears nothing but the thunder of headlong rebellion.
"I have given heed and heard, They have spoken what is not right; No man regretted his evil, Saying, 'What have I done?' Everyone turned to his course, Like a horse charging into the battle." (Jeremiah 8:6 LSB)
This is a heartbreaking verse. God is attentive, listening, waiting. But what does He hear? He hears perverse speech, things that are "not right." But more damning is what He does not hear. He does not hear the cry of a convicted conscience: "What have I done?" This is the beginning of all true repentance. It is the moment of horrified self-awareness when the prodigal son comes to himself in the pigsty. It is David's cry after Nathan confronts him. Without this question, there can be no turning back. Its absence reveals a conscience that is seared, cauterized, and deadened.
Instead of this self-reflection, what do they do? "Everyone turned to his course." They simply keep doing what they have been doing, but with greater velocity. The image of the "horse charging into the battle" is brilliant. A war horse is not a reflective creature. It does not pause to consider the strategic wisdom of the charge. It runs on pure adrenaline and instinct, caught up in the madness of the moment, charging into the spears. This is a picture of mindless, passionate, unthinking sin. This is the man who, when caught in his adultery, does not repent but simply gets better at hiding it. This is the culture that, when confronted with the wreckage of the sexual revolution, does not repent but doubles down, celebrating what was once shameful. It is the raw, animal momentum of rebellion.
Shamed by the Stork (v. 7)
The climax of God's argument is a devastating comparison. He shames his image-bearing, covenant people by holding up the instinct of a simple bird.
"Even the stork in the sky Knows her seasons; And the turtledove and the swift and the crane Keep the time of their migration; But My people do not know The legal judgment of Yahweh." (Jeremiah 8:7 LSB)
The created order is filled with a wisdom that God has hardwired into it. A stork does not need a class on meteorology to know when winter is coming. It does not form a committee to debate the optimal time for migration. It knows. God has written the law of its seasons onto its very DNA. The turtledove, the swift, the crane, all of them obey the silent, internal command of their Creator. They are in tune with the rhythms of the world God made.
And here is the punch to the gut: "But My people do not know." These birds, who do not have the Torah, who have never heard a prophet, who have no Scriptures to read, have more functional wisdom than the people of God. The birds know God's natural law, but Israel does not know His revealed law, His "legal judgment." The Hebrew word is mishpat, which means more than just rules. It means the right ordering of things, the justice, the wisdom, the way the world is supposed to work. The people who were given everything, the oracles of God, the covenants, the promises, have become more disordered, more out of sync with reality, than the fowls of the air. It is the ultimate rebuke. Their rebellion is not just a sin; it is a profound and unnatural stupidity.
The Gospel for the Unnatural
This passage is a grim diagnosis, and if it ended here, it would leave us in utter despair. For we must see ourselves in this. We are the ones who fall and refuse to get up. We are the ones who cling to our deceits. We are the war horses, charging into battle without a thought. We are, in our natural state, dumber than the birds.
Why do we act this way? Because we are dead in our trespasses and sins. A dead man cannot get himself up. A dead man cannot decide to turn back. The problem is not a lack of information, but a lack of life. Our hearts are stone. Our wills are in bondage to sin. We don't ask "What have I done?" because we love what we have done.
The only hope for such unnatural creatures is a supernatural intervention. The only hope is a new creation. And this is precisely what the gospel is. God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The one who truly fell and got up again was the Lord Jesus Christ. He fell into the grave under the weight of our irrational rebellion, and on the third day, He got up, breaking the power of death.
And in the new covenant, which Jeremiah himself will prophesy, God promises to solve this problem of spiritual ignorance. He says, "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it" (Jeremiah 31:33). Through the Holy Spirit, God gives us a new nature, a new instinct. He gives us a heart that knows and loves His mishpat, His right order. He grants us the gift of repentance. He is the one who stops the charging horse in its tracks and turns it around. He is the one who opens our deaf ears to finally hear the question, "What have you done?" and to answer it with the cry, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"
Therefore, do not look at the wisdom of the stork and despair. Look to the wisdom of the cross. For there, the irrationality of our sin was judged, and the wisdom of God was displayed. It is only by His grace that we, who are by nature dumber than birds, can be made wise for salvation.