Bible Commentaries

Jeremiah 4:3

I. There is a special lesson in our text, because the facts of which it warns us are specially common. Hard and trodden soils, dull and heavy as the fool's heart, there are; thin and shallow soils, on which only hunger-bitten and blighted harvests grow, there are; and thank God there are also soils rich and good and deep, which bring forth fruit to perfection; but commoner than any of these are those soils in which the tares and wheat grow side by side, and the crisis of time and of eternity depends on this—whether we suffer the tares or the wheat to prevail. The thorns of the parable, and of the prophet's metaphor, are our evil nature; our evil impulses; the wrong which struggles within us, and which, if not suppressed, if not to the utmost of our power eradicated, will render it impossible for the good to grow.

II. Break up your fallow ground. (1) Make your choice now and for ever. In the field of your life, which shall grow—wheat or tares? that is, shall it be life or death? shall it be good or evil? shall it be light or darkness? shall it be shame or peace? (2) Let the choice be absolute. No tampering with the accursed thing; no truce with Canaan; no weak attempts to serve two masters; no wretched and wavering wish to grow both tares and wheat.

F. W. Farrar, In the Days of Thy Youth, p. 169.

References: Jeremiah 4:3.—W. Simpson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 284; G. Litting, Thirty Children's Sermons, p. 141. Jeremiah 4:10.—H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i., p. 267. Jeremiah 4:14.—J. Foster, Lectures, 1st series, pp. 71, 85; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1573. Jeremiah 4:20.—Ibid., vol. vii., No. 349, and vol. xxiii., No. 1363. Jeremiah 4:30.—Ibid., vol. xxiii., No. 1363.