Jeremiah’s message to sinful Judah was the same as Hosea’s to apostate Israel— “Break up your fallow ground” (Jer. 4:3; Hos. 10:12). It could be successfully argued that were these two great prophets among us in person today, their message would be largely unchanged. But what is “fallow ground” and what is involved in “breaking it up?” Fallow ground is land that has been left untilled, uncultivated, unplanted and unattended. Breaking up such ground would include plowing it and clearing out weeds, rocks and roots, that the ground might be receptive to the planting of seeds (cf. Jer. 1:10).

Jeremiah and Hosea were not giving Judah and Israel a lesson in horticulture. It was not the physical soil that captured their interest. It was the soil of the hearts of God’s people. Important to note is that the things Israel and Judah needed to remove from their hearts are no different from the things that keep the word of God, the seed of the kingdom (Luke 8:11), from growing in the hearts of many people today. Consider these:

The Fallow Ground of Forgetfulness

God indicted His own people on charges of forgetting Him. “The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me” (Jer. 2:8). Later He emphatically stated, “Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number” (2:32).

Too many are the Christians today who, on a practical level, have forgotten God. Days, even weeks, pass with precious little time spent in serious prayer, Bible study and meditation on God’s word. Important plans are made for the future without considering what God’s will on those matters might be (cf. James 4:13-15). By leaving God out of our daily affairs and confining Him to the church building on Sundays, we have sinned.

The Fallow Ground of Ignorance

Through Hosea, God announced, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (4:6). Due in large measure to corrupt spiritual leaders, who didn’t know God (Jer. 2:8; Hos. 5:1), the people did not know Him either. God’s law was considered a “strange thing” (Hos. 8:12).

No less could be said about our world today, and even some in the church of our Lord. Ignorance has been put on display by those who balk at the proper role of baptism in God’s plan of salvation, those who open the doors of Christian fellowship to promoters of religious division, and those who undermine the sanctity of the home by sanctioning divorce and remarriage for reasons other than the only one Jesus gave (Matt. 19:9) — and that is not an exhaustive list.

The Fallow Ground of Idolatry

In the days of Jeremiah and Hosea, idolatry was the order of the day for God’s wayward people (Jer. 2:5, 26-28; Hos. 4:12; 8:4, et al.). But let us not think that idolatry is no problem today, for it very much is. Paul reminded the Colossians that covetousness is idolatry (3:5). Far too many people today allow their possessions to possess them. The making of money consumes their every thought. Their pocketbooks are closed when it comes to supporting the Lord’s work, but shamefully open to almost everything else. Wherever one finds materialism, one finds idolatry — and that is fallow ground that must be broken up (1 Tim. 6:6-12; Luke 12:15-21).

Do you have fallow ground that needs to be broken up?

Eddie Parrish