Break Up the Fallow Ground of Your Heart

Intro

"You reap what you sow." Even if you have never gardened or farmed, you are probably familiar with the principle that you reap what you sow. You can't put wheat in the ground and then expect to get corn. You get what you put in. Still, something in us desires to reap what we haven't sown, or at least to reap something good when we know full well that we haven't sown good. To stretch the image a little, we often sow weeds, expect to reap wheat, and then when we reap weeds, we are surprised, but not surprised enough to get better seed. Hosea 10 is all about fertility. Israel has, for generations, been sowing sin, and the harvest is coming and it's not good.

But even now, with judgment at the door and exile imminent, the Lord calls his people to break up the fallow ground of their hearts and sow righteousness. By returning to the LORD and remaining faithful to Him, Israel could once again experience the Lord raining down righteousness upon them, even while far away in a foreign land. The prophet Hosea in ch. 10 draws from his stock images to condemn Israel again for her unfaithfulness to the Lord, while also adding some new ones along the way.

Hosea 10:1-15

The Vine and the Calf

The Vine

Arguably, the trial of prosperity is much harder than that of poverty. Now, I'm not saying poverty does not have its own challenges and its own set of sins. But by nature, poverty makes you dependent on others and can certainly lead you to depend on God. But prosperity tends to lead you to self-sufficiency; it leads you away from dependence on God to trust in self. Israel prospered and the more she did, the more she turned away from the Lord. Prosperity just made Israel more sophisticated in her sin.

Isaiah spells this imagery out a bit more in Isaiah 5:1-4.

Isaiah 5:1–4 (ESV) — 1 Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. 3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

God planted Israel 'a luxuriant vine' but instead of bearing the fruit of righteousness, she just multiplied sin. Prosperity comes from the Lord, and it is a stewardship that will try you. Maybe you've thought 'that is the kind of trial I would love to have.' But it's a trial that Israel was not up to the task for. And Jesus warned, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." (Lk. 18:25).

Israel's prosperity led them to develop a heart that was false, a heart that was deceitful. False in the sense that they may have considered themselves to be faithful to Yahweh, while they took the wealth that He gave them and spent it on Baal, or other gods.

Hosea 2:8 (ESV) — 8 And she [Israel] did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.

So in judgment, God himself would come and break down these idolatrous sites of worship.

There is no doubt that we live in a wealthy and prosperous age. Arguably, America's prosperity has helped lift the whole world out of poverty. But along with the rise of prosperity here in the west, you could plot right alongside it the fall of piety. In all our getting of wealth, we have only grown more and more 'sophisticated' in bedazzling our idolatry. And we are not immune from this encroaching decadence. One incident that led to the PCA scrutinizing Greg Johnson and Memorial Pres. was their hosting a transgender play in their chapel. What was once a place where the Lord was worshipped, they turned into an altar for sin. Now our denomination responded with a resounding 'no, you may not.' But the fact that it came so close to our front door means that it is prevalent in the church at large.

Prosperity often becomes the test that topples a culture, as an upward trend causes a downward spiral into godless vanity. God gives wealth, and he expects a harvest of righteousness, not new and novel ways of sinning. We'll come back to this idea in the end after we have considered more of how Israel's unfaithfulness led her to sow iniquity.

The Calf

After the somewhat peaceful and prosperous reign of Jeroboam II, there was a steady succession of would-be kings vying for the throne of Israel. And this marked a period of unrest and instability where the people despaired of ever having a peaceful and prosperous political situation again (sound familiar?). And this is part and parcel of rejecting the Lord as king by having no fear of God. Oh, they still have their pious-sounding language, still making covenants, still swearing oaths, but their words were just that—mere words, no more substantial than the air used to form them.

But the thing they have trusted in, the thing they gloried in the most, was the 'calf of Beth-aven,' which the Lord promises will be carried off to Assyria as a tribute to the great king. Jeroboam I set up a golden calf in Bethel, which means 'house of God,' but Hosea, in a play on words, now calls that city Beth-aven, which means 'house of wickedness.' What used to remind them of the Patriarch Jacob and the vision he had of angels ascending and descending from heaven, has become a detestable site of idolatry reminiscent of the golden calf episode after the exodus.

When the Lord breaks these altars and sends Israel's idol into exile, she will finally be ashamed of her sin. Only the purifying fire of the Lord's holiness could throw into sharp relief the hideousness of sin. Then any king they trusted in will be like a little tiny twig on the surface of the ocean. Again, Hosea brings us back to Gibeah, that lowest of points in Israel's history, to show just how bad things really are.

False and True Fertility

The problem as Hosea has forcefully shown is you get out what you put in, and Israel has for a long time, 'plowed iniquity' and is reaping 'injustice' and eating 'the fruit of lies' (v. 13). Why? Because they have trusted in their own way. Have you ever watched a child struggle to put something together, and you can tell they're starting to get angry, and the angrier they get the worse it seems to come together. But when you try to help, they insist on doing it themselves, they want to do it their way. It sounded so romantic when Ole Blue Eyes sang 'I Did it My Way,’ but I promise you that the outcome of living life your way is death.

Notice in v. 11 that Israel was 'a trained calf that loved to thresh.' Similar to a luxurious vine, Israel was plenty capable of sowing righteousness. But she did the opposite, going her own way and trusting that she knows best.

Although we are removed from the pastoral setting of Israel, it's not difficult to catch the full import of this metaphor. 'Sowing' is the works we do. Depending of course on what you sow, that will be what you reap. Israel has sown the works of the flesh.

"Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."(Gal. 5:19-21).

Israel had been sowing the works of the flesh, and the harvest was injustice and lies (v.13). Those who persist in working the works of the flesh are not fit for the kingdom of God, which in this case is typified by dwelling in the promised land. Now we are speaking corporately of Israel, and so we know that her exile is temporary, meant to purify her, so that she would inherit the promised eternal rest.

That means that the same can be said of the Church today. When she persists in working the works of the flesh, the Lord may come and 'take away her lampstand' (Rev. 2:5). I fear for the church in the West. For just as Israel, we have grown fat and lazy in our prosperity. We who once, from the fruits of revival and reformation, sent missionaries around the world, now have need of the church in other parts of the world to come and evangelize us. Africa is no longer the great missions opportunity, America is, Europe is. It now doesn't make as much sense to send missionaries halfway around the world, when the greatest mission field is right out your front door.

It is deeply saddening to see the great fervor and zeal people in the church have for politics, but have little to none for evangelizing their neighbor. Oh, you'll campaign for this or that politician, but you don't tell your neighbor about King Jesus, who did much more than secure our border and make America Great Again, but freed us from the dominion of sin and death. Now certainly politics has its place. We need godly men to rule over us, privileging, protecting, and promoting the gospel and restraining and punishing evil. But if you are going to err on doing one thing too much, let it be erring on the side of evangelizing too much. For the ramifications of evangelism are eternal, whereas all our political endeavors are temporal.

Sowing Righteousness

What does it mean then to sow righteousness? Jesus said, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the prophets." (Mt. 22:37-40). If sowing righteousness is keeping covenant with the Lord, then keeping covenant is loving God and loving your neighbor. Love equals covenant loyalty, we see that in v. 12. When you sow righteousness you reap steadfast love. That is those whose lives are characterized by righteousness can be assured that the Lord will continue to be true to his covenant promises.

But scripture is everywhere insistent that the natural man, the man who has not been born again, who does not have the promised Holy Spirit, is not able to sow righteousness, he's not able to live a life characterized by works of righteousness. So we turn to John 15 to see how we can possibly bear the fruits of righteousness.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (Jn. 15:4-5).

Only those who have been united to Christ can sow seeds of righteousness, and reap a harvest of His steadfast love. Apart from Christ you can't please God. But those who have trusted in Christ believing that he is the Christ, the Son of God, have received the gift of regeneration through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent to make us a fit dwelling place for God. The Spirit is renovating your life so that you conform to the image of the Son. The confession teaches:

"good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidence of a true and lively faith." And "their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, besides the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will, and to do, of His good pleasure." (WCF 16.2-3).

The evidence someone has been born-again is seen in the crop their life produces. But these good works are produced by the Spirit, and in so far as they are good, they proceed from Him and therefore are not to our praise and glory, but to God alone. As Paul teaches in Gal. 6:8 "the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." And sowing to the Spirit is endeavoring to keep in step with the Spirit, by walking in the good works that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10). And that is what the prophet means by calling Israel to "sow righteousness." Calvin commenting on Gal. 6:8 said, "they are said to sow whose views are directed more to heaven than to earth, and whose life is regulated by the desire of reaching the kingdom of God."

What then are you sowing your life with? Again, as last week, the works you do will be evident in the fruit of your life. If you are walking according to the Spirit, then the fruit of the Spirit will be evident, plain for all to see. Instead of focusing on the individual fruits of the Spirit, I want to ask a simple diagnostic question: how do I know the seeds of righteousness vs. iniquity? You see, our enemy does a masterful job of convincing us that evil is good and good is evil. We cannot escape the categories of sin and righteousness, or even clean or unclean. These are inescapable. But what we can do is change and transform our definition of righteousness to something much more attainable.

If you are on the left, righteousness consists of being on the right side of history. Which means you affirm a person's right to whatever gender or sexual preference they may have, you fight for justice for any and all victims who have merited an aggrieved status, and you adopt every 'green' policy the establishment comes up with to purify the environment. In this view, the unpardonable sin is being a white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male. If you happen to find yourself in that most unfortunate position, then you must daily do obeisance by letting the world know exactly where you stand on those issues. Only then will the wrath of the left pass over your sins. But in reality, no amount of virtue signaling will ever fully absolve you of your sin.

Those on the right have their own redefinitions of sin and righteousness, these revolve around America-first policies, and above all not being woke. Each side views its cause as righteous and sees the other side as sinful, but the bar for each is man-made, with very little recourse to God and His word. If we do not attend to the Word of God, looking to Him alone for our standards of righteousness and the nature of sin. Only by doing so can we prevent the natural tendency to redefine righteousness and sin.

But notice what the prophet adds. He says, "break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you" (v. 12). Through repentance, prepare the soil of your heart to receive the seed of God's word, so that it may produce in you a harvest of righteousness. Breaking up fallow ground is the process a farmer goes through to prepare land that either has not been cultivated or has not been cultivated for some time. How then do you break up the fallow ground of your heart?

Repentance has two parts. Right apprehension of the vileness of sin, and a right apprehension of the mercies of God in Christ. When sin becomes anything other than "a want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God," then you have not properly understood the heinousness of sin. But no matter how much they try, wicked men always know that sin is wrong, which is why it is also necessary for you to understand the mercies of Christ. For Jesus came and took on flesh so that he could suffer and die in your place, to pay the penalty your sin deserved in his death on the cross, and liberate you from sin's power in his resurrection from the dead. Then as he ascended into heaven, he sent the promised Holy Spirit, to convict you of sin and assure you of Christ's mercy and grace.

To break up the fallow ground of your heart is to repent of your sin, and flee to the mercy and merits of Christ. In repentance you recognize that your sin is great, but His grace is greater. Only in Christ can you sow righteousness and reap steadfast love. Since therefore you reap what you sow, you must break up the fallow ground of your heart and sow righteousness. Amen.

Lord’s Supper Meditation

Each Lord’s Day we come to renew our covenant with the Lord. We are in need weekly of being remade in the image and glory of the Son. So by beholding Him in His word, and in this meal, we are being conformed to Christ. We see two things in this supper which immediately impress on us through our senses the glorious gospel of Christ. First, even if we may have struggled to see the gospel in our sermon text this morning, we nevertheless see it clearly here in this meal. For here we see a message, not of trying harder or being better, but a message that speaks a better word than the law ever could. For here we have God the Son, who came to stand in your place. You who have sown your fair share of iniquity, reaping also the sins of our father Adam. But those who look to Him for their salvation by faith, He takes their sinful works and paid their penalty in His death on the cross, while at the same time giving you all His works of righteousness. Now because of His perfect life and sacrificial death, you have been given the Spirit who continues the work of the Son, working in us those things which are pleasing to the Lord. Secondly, just as the OT saints would, in the culmination of the sacrificial service of worship, sit down in a meal and participate in the peace offering, by eating a portion of the sacrifice together with the priests. So too do we come at the culmination of our worship this morning, to be reminded that we are at peace with God. Having your sins forgiven and your heart cleansed from all iniquity, you have been reconciled to God. As you are reminded by the broken body and shed blood of the Lord, that the Lord loves you. But let me warn you who would come and eat, there were many in Israel who mixed the worship of Yahweh, including sitting down to a peace offering meal, while also carrying on in their worship of Baal. Maybe even secretly in their hearts worshipping Baal through those means established for the worship of Yahweh alone. I would warn you, the fires of hell are kept hot by the anger and wrath of a jealous God who brooks no rivals. He will have your undivided heart. So if you have not trusted in Christ for your salvation, have never been baptized, and have not been admitted to the table by the church, please don’t provoke the Lord to jealousy, you are not strong enough. Let these elements pass you by, and pray that the Lord would open your eyes to see Jesus and respond to His call by faith. Which one of us can say unequivocally that they are wholly devoted to the Lord? Our hearts are often a mystery to us, we think we want the Lord, and desire only to sow the seeds of righteousness, but we find another law at work in us that when we would do good evil lies right at hand, so that we do the things that we hate. Having privately and corporately confessed our sins already, now is the time when we renew our pledge to the Lord to return to Him and remain faithful. So come and welcome to the whole Christ.

Charge

To break up the fallow ground of your heart is to repent of your sin, and flee to the mercy and merits of Christ. In repentance you recognize that your sin is great, but His grace is greater. Only in Christ can you sow righteousness and reap steadfast love. Since therefore you reap what you sow, you must break up the fallow ground of your heart and sow righteousness. Amen.

Benediction

So go, sow righteousness and reap steadfast love. God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work…He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (Hosea 10:12; 2 Cor. 9:8, 10; 13:14)