Hosea 10:12

Here is a break in the judgment message. If they would return to the Lord and would sow righteousness, they would reap mercy. But such sowing is impossible unless the fallow ground is broken up, that is, true repentance and a heart return to the Lord.

As it is in nature, so it is spiritually. Man's heart is, to say the least, a fallow field, which must be broken up before the seed of the word of God can be sown there and become fruitful. So the Lord calls "the men of Judah and Jerusalem" to "break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns."

The preparatory work that was needed the slothful man would not do. Sinners would rather not have their hearts broken. It is humbling and painful work. They resist the ploughshare in the conscience, and prefer to be left alone in their sins. The same thing happened long ago. The apostle Paul "reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment," and "Felix was alarmed and said, 'Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.'" Felix felt the apostle's appeal to his conscience, but he did not answer it. He refused the ploughshare, and his heart stayed unbroken.

Believe me, no amount of religiousness, or half-hearted piety with a huge amount of the flesh underneath it, will do for God. There must be reality; God will have reality, and so there is the breaking up: "break up your fallow ground." The fallow ground of the heart must be broken up. When it is, the heart is in the fitting condition for that most precious of all ministries, which He alone can give: "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted." But God must break down first.

Still, there must be repentance, and the deeper the better. It is well that the plough should do its work in breaking up the fallow ground, and making deep the furrows in which the incorruptible seed of the Word may take root. We do not believe anyone ever had reason to complain that the ploughshare went too deep into the soul.

God's government is brought before us in Galatians 6:7. It takes spiritual discernment to put grace and government in their true and proper setting. Grace makes me a child, and government will chasten me with a rod if I am naughty. The principle, "whatever one sows, that will he also reap," is divine and cannot be revoked. Our own experience, and the lives of Abraham, Lot, David, and the people of Israel, all confirm it: what is sown is surely reaped. How encouraging in this matter of sowing are the words that follow: "let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."

He waited for His people to repent with such patience! He would have saved them, but they would not. Still, God's gifts and calling cannot be taken back, and the day will come when a remnant of Israel will seek the Lord. Then He will come and rain righteousness upon them.