Now, this man who wrote this, he understood something about this passage, especially the last part is what I want to focus on, breaking up the fallow ground, circumcising our hearts. He understood something about hardness of heart. Can we relate to the song? Can we relate to the words of the song? Hopefully, every one of us can relate. I say hopefully, and I instantly say, well, of course, it's not a good thing to have hard hearts. But probably if we're saved, it's happened to every one of us. And certainly if we're unsaved, our hearts are very hard. But we can relate, can't we? There are times when we've read our Bibles in the morning or in the evening. And after we read it, we felt like we got nothing out of it. We felt nothing. It was just dry. There are times where we've listened to a powerful sermon. We felt very little, if any, conviction. Very little, if any, zeal or joy. And those things grieve us, as they should. I hope they grieve us. I hope they grieve you when that happens. But it's just a sad reality that in our Christian life, we have not totally overcome sin. We still battle the flesh. And one of those things we battle against is hardness of heart. But it's a very dangerous foe, hardness of heart. Now, do you ever wonder why? Do you ever, when you're reading the Bible and you don't feel anything, or you're listening to a good sermon that you know is very accurate and truthful and preached and filled with the Spirit, and you feel nothing, do you ever just puzzle over it and say, why? Why? Why am I so dull? Why is my heart so hard? I hope I can address that question some tonight. Let's look again at what it says in verse 3. This is my main focus of this sermon here. For thus says Jehovah to the men of Judah in Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. God commanded Israel to break up their fallow ground. Now, He's not giving them any command here about farming. I hope you know that. He's not speaking of physical things that we can see and touch. He's speaking about a spiritual reality. And as we read the passage, I hope you got the flow about Israel, how they had prostituted themselves by turning to other gods. And in a sense, they wanted to worship Jehovah, their God, the one who they knew had saved them in the past. And yet, at the same time, they wanted the idols of the nations around them. And God was furious with them. And all through the book of Jeremiah and Isaiah and the other prophets, it's this back and forth where God rebukes them strongly for their idolatry, and then afterwards calls them back and says, if you return to me, I will heal you. If you repent, I will forgive you. I will bring you back. You're still my children. You're still my wife, in a sense, even though right now you're under my judgment. But I'm ready to take you back if you repent. That was his constant message through the prophets. And it's his message to us as well. So he compares Israel here to a field that has been laying fallow perhaps for years. And if any of you have ever planted, this was actually my first year to plant a garden. I always wanted to do it. But if any of you have ever planted, you know it's hard work. Unless you use a tractor, which is cheating. But you know it's hard work. No, I'm kidding. It's not cheating. It's great. It's a great invention. But you know it's hard work to take tools, simple hand tools. and till up soil that's been sitting there for years. Now some soil is better than others, but you'll find some patches of soil that are filled with rocks and weeds and thorns and all sorts of things. Now this year, for the first time, I said, I decided to plant a garden, so I picked about a 15 by 15 foot square, and I didn't have a tractor or any electric tools or any gas tools, so I just used the simple tools. Part of me was wishing I had some better tools, but part of me thought, you know, this will be a good spiritual lesson. How many times does the Bible use farming as an analogy? and planting and sowing and reaping as an analogy. So I embarked on my endeavor, and I didn't realize it would take as long as it did. It probably took 10 to 15 hours, and I didn't even do that good of a job. If I had wanted to do a really good job, and I'm talking about a 15 by 15 foot square, not a big area. If I really wanted to do a really good job, it probably would have taken 20, 30 hours to get all the rocks and to dig deep. I have this book I'm using that teaches me how to garden. And I've read several times now, it says this, it says, if you wanna, basically, if your crop didn't turn out very well, and you wanna know what to do better next year, dig deeper, spade deeper. And we'll get back to that. But basically, God is giving an analogy here saying, Israel, your hearts are like a field that has lain there fallow, it's lain there untouched for years, and it's hard, and it's overgrown with thorns and weeds, and there's rocks in it. And he's saying, break it up. Now, as I was just describing, this command to break up the fallow ground is not something they can obey in an instant, is it? It's an analogy. These people were well acquainted with farming and they didn't have tractors and power tools. They knew what it meant. to dig up a piece of land. And they knew it was hard work. And they knew that there was no easy fix. There was no simple out. This was going to be hard, back-breaking work. And undoubtedly, when they sowed a field, they didn't do a 15 by 15 foot square. That was my example. But they did a much bigger area. To break up fallow ground is very difficult work. And it's a process. It's not something you do in a moment. It's not something you do in five minutes. It takes time. And it's grueling. It wears you out. I would get worn out after an hour, and I'd want to quit and give up. But you have to keep going. And this is the analogy. And I want to ask us the question, are our hearts hard? I want us to examine ourselves tonight as we consider this text. Are our hearts hard toward the Lord, toward His Word? Can we sense hardness in some areas of our life? Some aspects of our walk with the Lord is their hardness. Have we experienced recently these times of dryness and hardness of heart as we read the Word and get nothing out of it? As we listen to good sermons and get nothing out of them? And I would say that if that happens, it's always because of some measure of hardness in our hearts, isn't it? If we read God's Word, if we come to God's Word and we get nothing, is that God's fault or ours? Clearly, it's ours. It's very similar to if you're trying to speak to your child and he won't listen. Or he's just not getting it. Or you're trying to speak to your wife or your husband, and they're just not getting it. When God speaks to us, we need to understand it, but not just understand it, we need to let it soak into our beings. It needs to move our hearts and soak in. So are our hearts hard? If so, I would challenge us not to just dismiss this as a light thing, as a small thing or something. Oh, well, everyone, everyone deals with that, even though I said that just a little bit ago. It's true. We probably all have dealt with it. Maybe all are dealing with it today in some way, form or fashion. But that doesn't mean it's a light thing or something that we should justify and say, well, everybody does it. You know, I'm pretty good overall. I'm doing pretty good. No, but we should view hardness of heart as a very serious thing. especially as we consider God's admonition to the churches in Revelation, some of which were struggling with this hardness of heart, this apathy. As He said to them, You're neither hot nor cold, so I'll spew you out of my mouth. He said to another church, You think you're rich, but you're really poor. So hardness of heart isn't something to play around with. It's not something to take lightly or justify ourselves and say, Well, I'm a pretty good person. I come to church. I read my Bible. I teach my kids the Bible. We have Bible reading at home, so I'm doing okay. That's not enough. You see, those are all outward things. God wants your heart. He wants your heart to be soft and pliable, and He wants you to respond immediately when He speaks to you and not turn away. So it's not something light, it's not something to dismiss, but it's something to take seriously and examine ourselves. Our heart's hard. Have we allowed ourselves over time, just as that field that lay there for maybe years, it takes time for this to happen, doesn't it? And it's a gradual process of God pointing out a sin in our lives, maybe. And we say, oh, I'll get to that later. Or God pointing out something He wants us to do, and we say, I don't have time. You see what I'm saying? Gradually. Or we read the Bible, but we don't pray. We just read five minutes and then we're on our way. But we don't take time to really meditate on what God's saying. Think about it. Apply it to our lives. Search our hearts. Is this true of me? Is what God's Word says true of me in this area? Am I guilty of this sin? Am I practicing this aspect of God's commandments? Are we taking time to do this? To break up our hearts? To be broken before the Lord? Or are we just going on our way? in our religious rituals. So it's not a light matter, is it? It's very serious. People, this is a path. And if you find that you are somewhere along this path down the road of hard hardness, which to be to be honest with you, as I've wrestled with these scriptures, I've had to realize that, yes, this is true of me. My heart has become hard in some ways. That's not something to take lightly or just say, well, you know, I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. It's something to address, to be serious about. And then we need to heed this command from the Lord to break up our hard hearts, to break up our fallow ground. So how do we do that? That's the next question, isn't it? How do we go about breaking up our hard hearts? And I want to bring up three specific ways that I think we see in this text in which we can break it up. First of all, we need to recognize our sin. Now you might say, oh, that sounds so basic. That's simple, Daniel. That's so easy. We've already done that. Okay, let's go on to step two. But wait a minute, slow down. I don't think it's as easy as that. Let's think about this a little more. Look first with me at chapter three, verse 13. God says, only acknowledge your iniquity that you have transgressed against Jehovah, your God. So this is step one. God wouldn't tell us this if it were something easy, would it? Or something that we could just assume and brush off as something that we've already done. No. God wants us to really take this seriously to the point where He commands us to recognize our sin. This isn't something that automatically happens. You might think that you know yourself and you really don't. For instance, think about what Jesus taught us in Matthew chapter 7. He said, don't be like the man. who sees a little speck in his brother's eye. He says, oh, let me help you with that speck in your eye. And all the while, he has a plank in his own eye. Now, it's sort of a comical illustration that Jesus gives us, but it illustrates such a weighty point. It is so easy to see the sin in other people, isn't it? Even a little speck. Even something so small. It's so easy to see that. It might even be easy to help them out by pulling it out. But you know what's really hard? And what we often forget and ignore and overlook in our lives is the glaring sin in our own lives. Now everybody else can see it, which is why they laugh at us, perhaps. But do I see it? I'm preaching this to you, and as I was going through this in my preparation, I'm thinking about myself. I'm standing up here preaching to you not to do this, and I feel that I do it as well. And so I feel hypocritical, but it is the Word of God, so I have to proclaim it. Don't do this. Don't be a fool. Don't assume that you know yourself. Don't assume that you know your sins, but examine yourself first. Really look inside your heart. Look at your life and examine it by the Word of God and say, do I really recognize my sin? Do I see it? Is it coming to light? So first we need to recognize our sin. It's not easy, first of all, and it's easy to see other people sin, as Jesus mentioned, but it's not easy to see our own sin. It's not easy to notice it. But if we do notice it, don't just, as I said earlier, sort of dismiss it or give a vague, general confession. Do you understand what I'm saying? A vague, God, I'm sorry for my sins, forgive me, move on. That's not what we see in Scripture. God doesn't come to us and say, Daniel, repent of your sin. That's not how he does it. He says, Daniel, repent of your pride in this area, and let me show it specifically to you. Daniel, repent of this specific sin in your life. That's how he comes to us, isn't it? That's how he speaks to us. He doesn't just speak to us in vague general terms. He speaks to us in specific ways. As we're reading God's Word, as we're listening to a sermon, he points out a specific sin in our life, maybe hypocrisy, maybe sexual morality. He points out specific sins. Here, what was the specific sin of Israel? But what he says, he says, you've scattered verse 13 again, says acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed, transgressed against the Lord and have scattered your charms to foreign gods, to alien deities, he says, under every green tree. This is specific. He says, you've gone under all these trees and you've done exactly what the nations around you are doing. You're worshiping their false gods. And it is making me angry. And he gets very specific with them about what it is. And if we were to read on through Jeremiah, we would see numerous things that God points out, specific things that they were doing that were terribly wicked. And God points them out. And our sin is wicked as well. Let's consider idolatry. You see, we may think well of ourselves because we don't worship statues. I doubt anybody in here has a statue in their house to bow down to or pray to or trust in. But how many times do we trust in our bank account? Is that not an idol? Is that any different instead of trusting in the Lord to provide? How many times do we trust in our own strength and abilities instead of the Lord's strength working in us? How many times do we foolishly trust in our own goodness only to be plunged into sin so that God will remind us How foolish and weak we really are. How many times do we trust and try to find our joy in hobbies and other things that we enjoy or work, make idols out of all these things? Is that really any better than worshiping a statue? It's not, is it? It's the same thing. God points out specific sins in our lives, and so when we repent, we need to repent about specific sins. It's not right, and it's not enough to say, God, I'm sorry, but we have to mention what it is we're sorry about. And you've been on the receiving end of this. How did you feel when someone wronged you, did something terrible to you, and it was very specific what they did, but when they apologized, it was a flippant, oh, I'm sorry. You're not mad at me, are you? And you knew that they weren't really that sorry because they weren't tumbling themselves before you. They weren't getting specific in their apology. And you knew it. You were offended by that. I've been there and I believe God feels the same way when we repent in vague general terms. It's not a true repentance. We need to be specific. Also, we need to to read the Bible and let The Bible exposed our sin to us. If we want to break up our fallow ground, if we want to break up our hard hearts, if we want to recognize our sin, that's the first step. We have to read the Bible, and while we're doing it, allow God to expose our sin. See, it's easy to just read the Bible as a thing we're supposed to do. But to read it with the purpose, when we come to the Bible with the purpose of saying, God, show me my sin. God, your word is a sharp, two-edged sword, as it says in Hebrews. And it pierces and divides soul and spirit and discerns the thoughts and intentions of my heart. God, your word can show me things in my heart that I haven't even seen. It reminds me of the psalm. As we read the scriptures, we should also pray the prayer of the psalmist in 139. See, it's not enough to read the Bible. We have to read the Bible prayerfully. We have to read the Bible and then pray about it. In Psalm 139, he says, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me, try me, see if there be any wicked way in me. And if there is, lead me away from it. That's what he says. Lead me in the way everlasting. Lead me in the truth, Lord. That is what we should pray. Every time we read the Bible, Lord, show me my sin, teach me your ways, and help me to run from that sin. Help me to confess it specifically, forsake it, repent of it, turn from it, and follow you. Help me to see the sins of my life that I don't see. That's what we should pray. And if we do that, we'll be breaking up our hard hearts, and we'll become broken-hearted Christians. But that's not enough just to recognize our sin, is it? What else does it say in this passage? Chapter three, verse three. Jeremiah, chapter three, verse three. Says, therefore, the showers have been withheld and there's been no rain. You have had a harlot's forehead, you refuse to be ashamed. So it's not enough just to recognize our sin, is it? We have to be ashamed of it. And this is so important. Now, most people. I say, I should probably say, unbelievers, most unbelievers, they won't even recognize their sin. If you confront them, just try it. Confront one of your co-workers about a sin that you see him commit, something you see him do, whether it's cursing, taking the Lord's name in vain, being unkind to a fellow employee, something like this. Confront him about it in a loving way, trying to help him come to the Lord. And most of the time, they're going to deny it. They're going to justify it. They're going to say, oh, it's not really bad. What you're saying is true of me isn't really true. They're just going to justify themselves. But, sometimes they will admit it, but they won't be ashamed about it. They'll admit it, but it won't really bother them. I once asked a friend of mine who's not a Christian, I said, when you sin, does it grief you? Does it bother you? Does it trouble your conscience? Is it hard for you to be happy and at peace? Is it hard for you to sleep at night? He's like, no. It just seemed like an odd thing that I would even say that to him. It just grieved me. It grieved me that he doesn't see the weight of his sin. He doesn't understand what sin is and who God is. So, first we need to recognize our sin, but then we need to be ashamed of it. We need to realize what sin is. Sin is wicked. It's rebellion against a God who loves us and has given us so much. It's, so to speak, biting the hand that has fed us our whole lives. It's a rebellion against our, as Christians, against our spouse, our God, our maker, our master, the one who loves us more than we can imagine. Sin is a wicked, terrible thing, and it hurts our relationship with God. Not only that, but sin crushes God's heart. Now, I want us to think about that for a minute. Let's turn to Ezekiel 6, 9. Keep your finger on Jeremiah, but turn to Ezekiel 6, 9. Because not only should we be ashamed, but we should even get to the point of loathing ourselves in a certain way. Self-loathing is biblical. Ezekiel 6, 9 says, Then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart, which has departed from me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols. And then he says this, they will loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. Now, surely we can relate to this as we think about the sins we committed before we knew the Lord, before we were saved. And even since we've been saved, the sins we've committed and how wicked and abominable they were, by idolatry, when we've loved other things more than God and turned our affections toward other things instead of God. And we can look at that and we can just loathe it and loathe even who we were in those moments and at that time. Be disgusted and abhorred by it. We should abhor that sort of thing. And yet we are the very ones who practiced it. So self-loathing even to a certain extent. Ashamed, yes, and self-loathing. Now, by the way, that specific passage is talking about the Jews who were carried away into exile. for their wickedness. And then after they were carried into exile in the foreign land in which they were carried to, then they repented, then they turned to the Lord, then they followed Him. And when they looked back at the things they had done before they were saved, before they went to exile, they just loathed themselves. They were disgusted by themselves. So we need to recognize our sin. We need to be ashamed and disgusted and grieved by our sin. But not only that, We need to return to the Lord and remove the abominations from our lives. Let's look at chapter 4 in Jeremiah verse 1 again. He says, If you return, O Israel, says Jehovah, return to me. I love the way he puts it there. You're returning. Yes, you think you're returning to me, but you're not really returning to me. That's what he's saying. No, if you're going to come back, you got to come to me. You say you're coming to me, you use my name, but you must not know who I am, because you're coming to me and you're not putting your abominations aside. You're even saying, look, we're not going to follow these idols anymore, but you're not doing what you're saying. That's what's going on here. And if we read the rest of Jeremiah, what we'll read, we'll just confirm it. You see, the Israelites, they made promises to God. They made vows, we'll turn away from these idols, but they didn't keep their promises. They came to God in a sort of repentance, it would seem, an outward repentance. Look what it says again in verse 22. They say, Indeed, we're coming to you, Lord. We're coming. Here we are. You're our God. You're Jehovah, our God, the God of Israel. And we know that there's no salvation in these idols. Look what they say. We know there's no salvation in these idols. And they also say we're ashamed. They say we lie down in our shame. They go through all the motions. It seems so sincere. until you read on in the book of Jeremiah and God destroyed them because they continued in their idolatry. It wasn't sincere. That's why God says, if you're going to come, come to me and put away your abominations, because he knew, as he said earlier in the chapter, that they were coming to him by deceit. They were coming to him deceitfully as a pretense. Now, why do you think they did that? Why do you think they came to him that way? I think it's probably what we see here in verse 24. They say, "...for shame has devoured the labor of our fathers, their flocks, and their herds, their sons, and their daughters." So why are they coming to Him? They're coming because God's wrath is starting to be poured out upon them. The judgment of God is being poured out. And the same thing will happen in America, and it has happened, when we see God's wrath poured out. The same thing may even happen to some extent in this church, when God's wrath is poured out. that there will be a pretense, a false repentance coming to the Lord, saying, wait, we don't want this judgment. God, we've sinned, we've done wrong. But there's not a true deep work of repentance and a true deep intention of really following through with what they're promising. They're just turning to God, not because they want God, not because they want Him, not because they're grieved because they've crushed His heart. They don't care about God. They care about themselves. They care about their own well-being. Examine our, let's examine ourselves. Do we want God or do we just want what he'll give us? Do we want him? Do we want his righteousness? Do we want his life in us? Or do we just want his blessings? Do we just want comfort and ease? Or do we want God? That's what's going on here. He says, return to me. Don't come for my blessings. Come to me. Come because you're broken over me, whether I bless you or not, whether you go into captivity or not, whether you're destroyed or not. And we should have the same attitude. Come to God, whether, no matter what is the consequence, whether you suffer for it or whether you're blessed for it. And not only that, but we must understand who God is in his holy righteousness, that God does not tolerate sin. And we cannot come to God and keep our sin too. Listen to me, this is so important. We live in a land that is so filled with worldliness. And we live in a Christian subculture, every one of us, that is so filled with worldliness. This is so true in the way we dress, in the way we talk, in the places we go, the way we act. And it's everywhere. We cannot have God in the world too. Listen, this is God's word to us. We have to put away the world, the abominations of this world. We cannot come to God and want God and the world too. We have to be careful about this. What are you watching on TV? The TV is so filled with godlessness. It's so filled with despicable things. The movie theater. I actually enjoy watching movies, but I occasionally get online and check this website just for a clean movie, and you hardly ever can't find one. I mean, even G-rated movies for kids are filthy. It's absurd. Be so careful to guard yourself. Don't let the world creep into your heart so quickly. And we have so many examples of this in the Bible. The Israelites, of course, over and over, being drawn away by the neighbors around them into the idolatry, into the sexual immorality, into the greed, into all that. And we can too. America is so wealthy. We have so much opportunity to sin. We have so much worldliness on every turn, on the streets, on the computer, on the TV, at work, amongst our co-workers, everywhere. We must be on guard. Put away the abominable things. I've heard it said this way, and I love this. How can we come to God and then go home and watch things He hates on TV? It just doesn't make sense. It's a pretense. That's what it is. To come to God. To come to God in His Word and then right afterward go out and enjoy filthy jokes at work. It's a pretense. It's not real. And God is angry with us if that's what we're doing. So we need to be zealous and repent. And these things are dangerous. I know I'm talking to myself and I'm talking to you. We are tempted in these things, are we not? Take these things seriously. We must remember who God is. He is holy. Now, we have an option. We can either break up our fallow ground or we can just dismiss this. We can break up our hard hearts or we can dismiss it and say, ah, I'm still a pretty good person. So if we choose not to do this, if we choose not to take this seriously, and keep our hearts soft and pliable to the Lord. It says here, we'll be like a fool who sows his seed among thorns. Now I want us to think about that for a minute. Israel, let's go back to Israel. What did they want? They wanted, as I said, they wanted a quick fix to their problems. God was bringing destruction upon them. They wanted a quick fix. They wanted God to make everything better, to send rain, to defeat their enemies that were coming and they were on their frontiers about to destroy them. Literally, armies. They wanted a quick fix, and so they came to the Lord with this cheap repentance, this cheap, please fix this, this five-minute prayer, we might say. Or maybe even more sincere than that, more drawn out. I mean, probably if there was armies about to invade Dixon, we wouldn't just pray a five-minute prayer, would we? Even if we weren't truly seeking the Lord, we'd probably pray a two-hour or three-hour prayer. And they probably did too. They were terrified for their lives. They wanted rain. They wanted to eat the good of the land. They didn't want to starve. But God compares them to someone who goes out and sows seed among thorns, saying, you're doing the action, but your heart's so hard it's not going to have any effect. Your heart is not really on my side. Your actions are. They seem to be. Your prayers seem to be, your words seem to be, your confession seem to be, but in your hearts, your heart, you don't really love me. You don't really long for righteousness and purity. You aren't really grieved in your heart of what you've done, how you've broken my commandments and what you've done to me, how you've profaned my name among the nations, how you've dishonored me. You're not grieved about that. And so they wanted a quick fix. They didn't want to truly change their whole course of life. That's what I'm saying. They just wanted God to fix their problems. But to reap spiritual blessings, we must do the hard work of breaking up that soil in our hearts. We must do the hard, grueling labor. It's not going to be overnight. It's not going to be a five-minute prayer. It's not going to be a simple thing, and then we go on with our daily lives. No. It's going to have to be our all-consuming passion to follow the Lord. Now, I want to give a few examples of things I think would be sowing among thorns. First of all, if we come to church, we listen to sermons, we read the Bible, but our heart just isn't in it. And when we leave, we forget it. Just like the man in James, who looks in the mirror and goes away and forgets everything he saw. We come to church, we hear a good sermon, we say, that's good, I need to do that. We go home, and the next day we've totally forgotten it. Now, I have done that. That is wicked. That is wrong. We should not live this way. I've done it many times, and I confess that before you, and it grieves me. But we should not be this way. Or we read the Bible in the morning, and maybe we even get emotional about it. Five minutes later, we couldn't even tell you what we read. This is not right, brothers and sisters. This is not how we should be. No, but that would be like sowing a seed in a bed of thorns. It's useless. It's totally useless. So what do we do? We go home, we pray about it. We get done reading, we pray about it. We say, Lord, do this work deep in my heart, deep so that the root takes deep. So the seed takes deep root in my heart, and it doesn't just leave when I leave this room, when I leave this building, but it stays with me. We go home and we pray about it. We consider it. We make practical steps on how we're going to change our lives and our practice. We say, this is how I need to follow up on that sermon. Maybe have discussions with family members about the sermon. How can we do this? How can we put this into practice? Maybe have people at your house and discuss, how can we put this into practice? But don't forget it. Don't just go through the motions. Let it soak into your heart. Also, we could have a half-hearted, false repentance that isn't really broken hearted or devoted to restitution. What I mean is doing something about it. If we've sinned, if God has pointed out our sin in any specific area, he's pointed out something in our lives that is not pleasing to him, whatever it may be, that we have a true, heart of repentance that has every intention of making restitution, that is, righting the wrong, changing that part of our lives so that we can be conforming to the image of Christ. If we don't do that, if we just have this half-hearted, okay, I've already mentioned this, but I'm sorry, move on sort of attitude, that's like sowing seed among thorns. Again, it's useless. It's not going to profit. And also, we can continue in a stagnant religious routine without doing soul searching and secret prayer. Again, I'm stressing prayer again, which maintains the vitality and the life. The Word of God without prayer, it's dead. It's like this. It's like listening, but you never respond. You might listen to God's Word, but if you never respond, there's no give and take. There's no relationship. It's just like having a conversation with someone. If they do all the talking and you do all the listening and you never talk back, they're going to think you don't care at all about what they're saying. They want to hear what you have to say. They want give and take. They want a relationship. And so does God. He wants a relationship. He wants us to respond in faith and obedience. So in conclusion, let us take time every day to break up our hard hearts, to not let our hearts get hard, to continue tilling that soil, and to be on guard against this. Why? So that we can take deep root and then bear fruit upwards. Let's pray.