Break Up Your Fallow Ground [Jeremiah 4:3-4]

Break Up Your Fallow Ground [Jeremiah 4:3-4]

Jer 4:3-4 This is what the LORD says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem:
"Break up your unplowed ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done — burn with no one to quench it.

From: The Book of Jeremiah, J. A. Thompson, .

What then is required of Israel, now represented by the sinstained Judah? Repentance! Not the superficial repentance conveyed by formulas and liturgical utterances mouthed during a reform movement, but repentance of the kind outlined in vv. 1-2, a deep and radical repentance which was not a working over of old ground but was demonstrated in the opening up of new ground — new wine in new bottles (cf. Matt. 9:17; Mark 2:22).

The people are invited to plough up you unploughed ground, The instruction does not refer to ground that has lain untilled for a long time and has grown hard so that it must be broken up again. The Hebrew verb and its cognate noun refer to virgin soil. The command is therefore to break new soil, no easy task on the rocky slopes of Judea. There was a further problem, Tilled ground encouraged the growth of thorns and thistles. It was normal to collect and burn the tinder-dry thorns after the harvest had been gathered in. But at sowing time, sowing preceded ploughing. The farmer scattered his seed over the unploughed stubble, on the path, among the thorns, on rocky ground, etc. (Mark 4:3-8). The whole was then ploughed in. This may seem bad farming to the Western mind but it was the custom of centuries in Palestine. The fact was that the ground was infested with thorn seeds despite the fire following the previous harvest, and these were all the more abundant because of years of strong growth in good ground.

Against this background we begin to understand Jeremiah’s picture. Judah’s own field was so infested with the thorn seeds of past evil deeds that her only hope was to reclaim new ground. The whole future was threatened by the legacy of the past, and only a complete and radical new beginning would suffice to save the nation. Historically, this needed the collapse of Judah and the Babylonian exile, although finally even this was inadequate. Only the new covenant of 31:21-34 would suffice.

Ps 69:6 May those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me, O Lord, the LORD Almighty; may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me, O God of Israel.

DO WE PERSONALLY NEED A BABYLONIAN EXILE?

What did the exile do for the Jews? Their temple was destroyed. The leaders of the land were taken to a foreign land 800 miles away. People were killed. Jerusalem was destroyed. Eyes were put out. The society was destroyed. The economy, property, and crops were lost. Probably, the trees were cut and the land was salted. We will find from the remainder of Jeremiah, the type and extent of destruction done to the land and the people.

Why did God allow that to happen? The prophets announced that it is the judgment of God. At this time, I do not contend that disasters in our own lives are necessarily the judgment of God. They might be, but then they might not be. My question about a personal Babylonian exile is more in the context of the concept of developing a new religious experience in our lives – a new unplowed field that has never been cultivated before. You see, the old religious experience we have is the religion of our own creation; a religion that does not have God in the center, but has our self in the center. This ego-centrist religion is the religion we inherited from our original parents, Adam and Eve.

The temptation was the fruit that provided the knowledge of good and evil. Eve desired that knowledge without God. She wanted it in herself with no dependence upon a Higher authority. And Adam, standing right there with her, was all too willing to go along.

Gen 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Their new knowledge resulted in their own solution: fig leaves sewn together to cover nakedness. They did not need that solution before and now they did. They plowed up their field and sowed the seeds of thorns. Something changed that could not be undone. God, besides telling them the effect of their action, made garments for them.

Gen 3:21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

It is hard to make garments of skin without bloodshed. A sacrifice was made. This is new ground that is broken. This is a new religion. One could say that Adam and Eve had to break up fallow ground because they had seeded their cultivated field with thorns.

Each of us has this tendency towards sin; it is our nature. Romans 3 references Psalms 14 and 53.

Ps 14:2-3 The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men

to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.

3 All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt;

there is no one who does good, not even one.

Solomon observed:

Eccl 7:27-29 "Look," says the Teacher,"this is what I have discovered:

"Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things-

28 while I was still searching but not finding-

I found one [upright] man among a thousand, but not one [upright] woman among them all.

29 This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes."

We have gone in search of many schemes – and these are religious schemes. It is when we recognize that we have gone in search of many schemes and acknowledge that they don’t work and we admit our need, then salvation can come. But that means -- really – plowing an unplowed field.

The Babylonian exile forced Judah to plow a new field.

A NEW FIELD – A NEW CREATION

Why should we have to develop a new field when we have a plowed field already? Jeremiah was reminded earlier to look at the Israelites. These were the ten tribes to the north that the Assyrians took away and replaced with peoples from other places. The Israelites had introduced great sin into their society and now Judah was going down the same path. God tells Jeremiah, "break up your fallow ground."

We find out later that because of the Babylonian exile, the Jews never again had a problem with idolatry and Baal worship. Their temple was taken away from them and they had to learn to worship God in a new way. The thorn seeds that had been cultivated in their belief structure for so many years had been removed. The newly cultivated field – new religious thinking – had less thorn seeds than the previous old field.

We are not talking about too many thorns, but too many thorn seeds. And thorn seeds grow real good in "cultivated" fields.

The new field must be a new creation. That is what Christ is offering to us, because we need it.

2 Cor 5:16-20 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation ; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

Gal 6:15 ... what counts is a new creation.

A NEW WINESKIN

There is a combination of concepts here. Jeremiah was told to plow up the fallow ground. The prophets kept telling the Israelites and the Jews to repent. Jesus tells the concept that is readily understood by most people: unshrunk cloth cannot be used to patch shrunk clothing. And new wine cannot be put in old wineskins or they will burst.

Matt 9:16-17; Mark 2:21-22; Luke 5:36-39 He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins . If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins . 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'"

There was a popular Christian book amongst some Evangelical ministers (1975) called The Problem of Wine Skins, Church Structure in a Technological Age, by Howard A. Snyder. The assumption is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the wine; and the manmade structures of the church are wineskins.

Simplified: new structures (ways of doing Christian religion) are always needed for the ever-changing society or societies on our planet. New wineskins are constantly needed. Since the 70s, there has been a significant change in style of worship in places that includes throwing away the hymnbook, and having a steady stream of new songs before the older new ones have even been learned. And of course there are the drums and the disappearing Hammond organs and always four or six vocalists with microphones. New wineskins? Maybe. But maybe what Jesus was talking about is the unplowed field each of us needs – that new creation HE makes where there is room for the Holy Spirit.

POTTER

Later in Jeremiah we are introduced to the potter forming a pot and then forming it again because it was marred. That was the potter’s work, not the pot’s. The new pot is a new creation.

Jer 18:1-10 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

Jeremiah was told to tell Judah to plow up unplowed land – to not sow seed amongst thorns. The potter takes a pot he was forming that was not forming correctly and creates a new pot. Paul teaches us that the symbolism of water baptism is dying to the old self and being resurrected a new creation.

Romans 6

6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All have sinned. All of us have religious fields full of thorn seeds. If we try to cultivate our faith in God in our pre-existing cultivated religious field that is full of thorn seeds, we will raise thorns. Rather, Jeremiah said plow unplowed land and plant your new seed there. It is pragmatic – there are no thorn seeds in new ground.

Rom 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind . Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The gift of God is eternal life. It is a gift and it must be from God.

From Luther’s Large Catechism, Article Three

Meanwhile, however, while sanctification has begun and is growing daily, we expect that our flesh will be destroyed and buried with all its uncleanness, and will come forth gloriously, and arise to entire and perfect holiness in a new eternal life. For now we are only half pure and holy, so that the Holy Ghost has ever [some reason why] to continue His work in us through the Word, and daily to dispense forgiveness, until we attain to that life where there will be no more forgiveness, but only perfectly pure and holy people, full of godliness and righteousness, removed and free from sin, death, and all evil, in a new, immortal, and glorified body.

How often? DAILY. The renewing is daily. The plowing is done daily. Why cultivate thorns?