Chuck Larsen

My uncle Johnny was an authority on Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. He loved to tell how the famous pilot shot down eighty enemy aircraft during the First World War and how he built a working model of the red Fokker triplane to fly at airshows across Florida. On April 12, 1918, Richthofen was pursuing a Canadian pilot with such intensity that he flew too far into enemy territory. Eyewitnesses said he was flying dangerously low, completely absorbed in the chase, and never realized where he was until he was shot down. Focused desire clouded his awareness, and it cost him his life. Jeremiah describes a similar tragedy in the life of faith. People chase what they want with such concentration that they lose track of where they are. Possessions, pleasures, and positions become the horizon, and the warning signs slip quietly past.

That blindness is exactly what Jeremiah confronts in Israel. After likening them to an adulteress, a corrupt branch, and an irremovable stain, he challenges their denial: “How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done” (Jeremiah 2:23). Their behavior told the story plainly enough. Jeremiah goes further, comparing them to animals driven by instinct rather than reflection. “A restless young camel running here and there, a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind” (Jeremiah 2:24). Gingrich notes that Judah did not need to be wooed by false gods; she pursued them eagerly. The picture is embarrassing, intentionally so. Desire unrestrained becomes self-parody, and sin advertises itself long before it admits its name.

The New Testament speaks with the same clarity about misplaced pursuit. Paul warns that “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” (Romans 8:5), and such focus narrows vision until nothing else registers. Jesus describes it more sharply: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Slaves do not choose their direction; they follow their impulses wherever they lead. Israel ran after idols the way the Red Baron chased his target, unaware of the danger until the fall came. Christ enters that story as the one who restores sight and altitude. Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away” (Second Corinthians 5:17). In Him, the chase is broken, awareness returns, and the soul is lifted out of reckless pursuit into a truer sense of where it belongs.

Sin is not shallow. It runs to the bone and settles into the assumptions we carry without noticing. Its danger lies in its invisibility; it hides under the skin and rarely announces itself with a warning label. Over time it also bends our vision, so even honest self-examination feels like looking through fog. Paul told the Corinthians that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” so that truth could stand plainly before them and still not be grasped (Second Corinthians 4:4). Jeremiah faced that same blindness in Israel. After comparing them to an adulterer, a corrupt branch, and an unremovable stain, he exposes their denial: “How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done” (Jeremiah 2:23). The problem was not a lack of evidence but a lack of sight.

Commentators help us see how deep the blindness ran. Dearman locates the “valley” as Hinnom, infamous for idolatry and child sacrifice. Davidson observes that addiction to evil reshapes values until nothing seems wrong. Mackay adds that the people defended themselves with appeals to orthodoxy, the temple, and functioning religious systems. In other words, the checklist looked impressive while the heart wandered freely. That feels uncomfortably familiar. It is easy to confuse activity with faithfulness and to assume that correct forms guarantee a clean conscience. Jeremiah insists otherwise. Their practices differed little from the pagans around them, even though they wore better vocabulary and stood closer to holy furniture.

Jeremiah presses them to “know” what they had done, not as new information but as honest assessment under the covenant. Mackay notes that facts were available; discernment was missing. I remember my wife’s years at Assure Women’s Center and a young woman convinced she needed an abortion to fit into a prom dress. She spoke confidently about unborn souls floating in never-never land, waiting for assignment. The logic was creative, if nothing else. Jeremiah had already answered such thinking: God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). The New Testament sharpens the light. Jesus declares, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34), and Paul reminds us that self-deception is a skill easily learned (Galatians 6:3). Christ does not merely expose blindness; He heals it. As Paul writes, “God… has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (Second Corinthians 4:6). That light is steady, revealing what we might otherwise rationalize away.

It seems we often try to find meaning and purpose in all the wrong places, and love is not far behind on that list. When we do, we come away empty, sometimes surprised, as if the outcome were unexpected. Jeremiah names the problem with painful clarity by pointing to two broken cisterns from which Israel keeps trying to drink. “And now what do you gain by going to Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile? Or what do you gain by going to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates?” The rivers stand in for the nations Israel trusted instead of asking, “Where is the Lord that brought us out of Egypt?” The irony is thick. The Nile itself was worshiped as divine, even described as the bloodstream of Osiris. That explains why the first plague turned the Nile into blood. The supposed source of life became undrinkable. Exodus tells us the Egyptians dug along the riverbank, desperate for water, and found none. The question lingers: why expect satisfaction from a source already proven dry?

The text presses uncomfortably close to home. Drinking from the Nile or the Euphrates is Jeremiah’s way of exposing our habit of looking to the waters of this world to quench a thirst they cannot touch. We still dig along the riverbanks, confident that if we try a little harder or scoop a little deeper, something refreshing will appear. Instead, we end up tired, muddy, and strangely defensive about our holes. We offer ourselves broken cisterns as well, dressed up as self-improvement, moral effort, or religious routine. Even our confidence in politics can become a cracked reservoir. As Ryken observes, when the church trusts political solutions to save the nation, it loses spiritual influence. Aligning with the left or the right does not fix the leak. It only proves again that these waters do not satisfy, no matter how impressive the river looks on a map.

Ryken also points us toward hope by saying, “No water can compare with the living water God pours out in Jesus Christ.” Jesus himself says to the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” He adds, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.” John records Jesus later crying out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” The contrast could not be clearer. Thomas Boston put it simply: “God in Christ is the fountain, all-sufficient in himself. All the creatures are but cisterns.” In Jeremiah’s world and ours, the choice is not between good rivers and bad rivers, but between cracked containers and a living source. Only Jesus offers water that does not run out.

The book of Jeremiah unfolds with remarkable clarity once we notice its four primary addressees. God is the source and speaker of the message. Jeremiah is the chosen messenger, addressed personally and commissioned to speak. Israel and Judah are the wayward people who receive the sharpest words. The surrounding pagan nations are also addressed, though chiefly as instruments in God’s hands. In this way, Jeremiah speaks across a wide spiritual spectrum: believers who listen like Jeremiah, drifting believers represented by Israel and Judah, and unbelievers embodied by Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. There really is something here for everyone, which may explain why Jeremiah still feels uncomfortably current. In Jeremiah 2:1–2 we read, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, thus says the LORD…’” God is not addressing Jeremiah personally in this moment, nor is He speaking to the pagan nations. He addresses Jerusalem as a stand-in for His covenant people. As Timothy Willis notes, Jerusalem represents the whole nation, much like how modern conversations use Washington or Moscow to describe entire governments and peoples.

Jeremiah is also a master painter, though his gallery is not for the faint of heart. As Warren Wiersbe observes, Jeremiah chapter two presents ten vivid images exposing the people’s infidelity. The unfaithful wife, the broken cistern, the plundered slave, the stubborn animal, the degenerate vine, the defiled body, the animal in the desert, the disgraced thief, incorrigible children, and prisoners of war all parade before us. None of these are flattering, and that is precisely the point. They diagnose a people who have forgotten what faithfulness looks like while insisting they are doing just fine. It is easy to smile nervously at these pictures until we realize how often modern believers leak trust like cracked cisterns or wander like stubborn animals, all while insisting we know the way home.

The use of Jerusalem carries even deeper meaning. Jerusalem was the bridal chamber of the covenant, the place where God met His people at the Temple and where forgiveness and restoration were offered through sacrifice. It symbolized intimacy, promise, and belonging. The tragedy of Jeremiah chapter two is that this sacred space becomes the scene of betrayal. The marriage bed is defiled. This language prepares us for the New Testament, where covenant love is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. Paul writes, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). John declares, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), using language that echoes God choosing a dwelling place among His people. Jesus enters Jerusalem knowing its history of infidelity and still offers Himself, lamenting, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Matthew 23:37). Jeremiah shows us the depth of betrayal; Jesus shows us the greater depth of restoring love.