Having a successful and bountiful garden or field of good crops takes a lot of special preparation and care. It takes a lot of work, and a good gardener or farmer needs to put in that work. One doesn’t just throw some seeds out of one’s back window into their yard and expect a prize-winning garden. One of the first steps in having a good garden is to properly prepare the soil. One cannot plant seeds on rock-hard dirt, such as ground that is hard and packed down, like where a path is. The dirt has to be broken up and plowed. One also has to remove all the rocks and stones, along with old, dead roots and any other foreign objects. Only then can one begin to plant. In our Scripture passage today from the prophet Jeremiah, he makes a parallel between preparing the ground for planting, and preparing our hearts for God.
For many, many years the people of Israel had been turning their backs on God and His ways and Word. Jeremiah was one of the final prophets that was sent by the Lord to the people before they went into captivity as punishment for their sins. Jeremiah pronounced God’s message of judgment to the people, but he longed for them to return to God in repentance and restoration (vs. 21-25). God was going to bring judgment, but He would rather that the people stop their backsliding and return to Him for spiritual healing and restoration.
Most of the religious leaders of the day were not faithfully teaching the people in the ways of the Lord. We find the same problem today with many so-called preachers and religious leaders. They only want to bring pleasant, feel-good messages. No mention of sin or the need to change one’s life. Instead they focus on building up one’s self-esteem, and doing whatever makes one feel good. That’s not the message God gave Jeremiah to tell the people. Sin needs to be seen for what it is. It is Satan’s deception, deceiving us until we are caught in his trap. When trapping an animal, one must hide the trap, disguising it with the surrounding. Make the animal think there is no trap, so it is more likely to step into it, and then it’s too late for him. When we are never told our ways are wrong, and are never instructed fully from the Word of God, we will fall into Satan’s trap.
Jeremiah called upon the people to return to the Lord by preparing their hearts for him, just as a gardener or farmer prepares the soil (vs. 3). This is a message that we need today, as well. We need to weed out present sinful practices and break up the fallow or untended ground in our heart. We then need to sow new seeds of fruitfulness for God. Repentance and a broken heart precede renewed spiritual life. Mere outward conformity to God’s Word is insufficient.
When Jesus told His listeners the Parable of the Sower, He spoke of what happens when the seed of God’s Word falls on unprepared soil (Mark 4:1-20). Satan snatches the seed away, or if a plant does begin to sprout, it will wither and die. In order to bring revival into our spirits, which is what we so desperately need, we need to break up the hardness of our heart like a plow breaks up the hard soil. In Jeremiah’s day the people’s hearts were hardened to God’s will. We, too, need to remove the sin that has hardened our hearts, before the good seed of God’s Word can take root and grow.
The people the prophet Jeremiah preached to were adept at looking outwardly good and spiritual, following some of the outward rituals, such as circumcision, without understanding or following the spiritual meaning behind the ritual (vs. 4). Jesus also spoke about how what’s in our hearts is more important than just outward conformance to God’s Law (Matthew 15:1-20). There is a need for the heart to be cleansed from sin’s deadly disease. The surgery needs to happen on the inside, where God takes away from our heart what keeps us from being spiritually devoted to Him.
Let’s dig out of our spiritual toolshed the spiritual plows, hoes, rakes, and shovels. Let’s get to work on our hearts, plowing and tilling them so that we can readily accept God’s Word and teachings in our lives.
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