Jeremiah (1-31) 4:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 4:3

Comments

This is a matter of the heart, and the prophet moves immediately into graphic language. Of course, he is not interested in them ploughing their fields; he is using these illustrations concerning the hearts of the people, as he goes on to say in the passage. ‘Break up your fallow ground.’ Your hearts are like unploughed fields where the ground is hard, and perhaps stony. And you cannot sow anything in that. You cannot sow the seed of salvation and righteousness among hardened ground where only the thorns thrive. There has been no repentance. All the old attitudes and habits of the heart are still thriving there, which are hostile to the gospel, and will strangle any truth of God that is sown there. The ground has got to be broken up and the thorns taken out. They have got a melt in their hearts, and receive God's word. The preacher does not flatter men and women, but calls them to the most radical change that can take place. He cannot leave out repentance, for if someone tries to receive gospel truth without a deep and thorough work of repentance, it will all come to nothing. The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches will choke the word.‘Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart.’ The implication here is this: You Israelites and men and women of Judah: you are not even true Jews, because although your men as babes have had the symbol of circumcision, but they haven't had the real circumcision, which is a circumcision of the heart, a purification of the heart. The first without the second is worth nothing. So Jeremiah uses this language to get under their skin. He takes away from them all their imagined superiority. You need to be bought in. You are outsiders. You need a far greater circumcision than the one that you practice. It has got to be in the heart. ‘… ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.’ So a complete conversion is put forward by Jeremiah in which they will be purified in their hearts.

Application

All worship of God that does not come from a renewed heart is unacceptable to him. It is mere formality and not in spirit. We cannot approach God with our spirits, while they are still at enmity with him and all that flows out of them is hostility and rebellion, or reluctant conformity. Those in this unrenewed state can do little more than worship in a formal way with external expression. That is the highest they can achieve. But God is a spirit and he must be worshipped in spirit, as well as in truth. To worship him only with external rites and ceremonies is not a real approach to him. God is a spirit, and man has a spirit and a body, and to approach him only with the body and not the spirit is to give him the least important part of us, and to withhold the more important part. We must worship him with our minds, with our deepest feelings, with our wills – all these are part of our spirit, and without these being engaged in worship, we are ignoring the true nature of God. We are like those with an electric car, who seem to want to push it everywhere, instead of turning on the ignition.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 4:3 Commentary and Bible Study