Break Up Your Fallow Ground (Part 1) | Ep. 172

Grace demands a response. Throughout scripture, we see a consistent pattern: God initiates relationship through grace, but always includes requirements and expectations. This episode challenges popular notions of unconditional grace by examining the lives of Adam and Abraham to reveal God's true relational pattern.

We explore how Abraham, the father of faith, demonstrated his belief not through mere mental assent but through immediate and complete obedience. When God commanded him to leave his homeland, circumcise his household, or even sacrifice his son, Abraham responded without hesitation. This pattern reveals the true nature of biblical faith—belief that produces action.

Through powerful metaphors like circumcision and breaking up fallow ground, scripture shows that spiritual transformation requires both our effort and God's power. We must take responsibility for preparing our hearts, while God completes the transformation. This understanding explains why many believers reach spiritual "ceilings" in their growth—they respond to initial gospel demands but refuse to repent in other areas of life.

The conditional nature of God's promises isn't a limitation of His love but an expression of His wisdom. Like a good parent who doesn't enable destructive behavior, God establishes boundaries that lead to life. By understanding this pattern, we can break through our spiritual ceilings and experience the fullness of our relationship with God.

What area of resistance might be preventing your spiritual growth? Ready to break up the fallow ground in your own heart? 

Chapters

• 0:40 The Pattern in Scripture
• 3:01 Adam's Responsibility in Eden
• 5:22 Abraham's Call and Obedience
• 9:50 Faith Exhibited Through Action
• 15:11 Breaking Up Fallow Ground
• 21:36 Reaching Your Spiritual Ceiling
• 26:07 Conditional Promises and Blessings
• 29:25 Closing and Support Information

Transcript

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 0:03

The vision received was that of blood cells traveling throughout the body, supplying the much-needed oxygen and other nutrients to the differing members of the body to fulfill their purpose. Once the blood cells are sped, they must return back to the heart to be refilled before being sent out again and fulfill their purpose. Sometimes it's interesting when I give a message and I usually start in Genesis, and I usually give a story as Genesis rolls out, so I'd like to start there, if you will. Turn to Genesis. I guess I want to try to convey to you a pattern that I see in scripture. Kind of a pattern that we've been going over with our children. And this pattern combats the idea that is so prevalent in Christian doctrine, in quote-unquote Christianity. Where they believe God's grace is so overwhelming that it's all about Him and really nothing to do with us. So much so that we come up with different doctrines like once saved, always saved. And uh the doctrine of predestination. Well it doesn't have anything to do with your choices. It's all about what God says. And if God wants you to be saved, he will be. If God wants to do whatever he's calling you. And all of these are uh perversions. They're perversions of the truth. And so using a pattern that I've seen, I'm gonna try to convey some things and realize that there is a there is a combination. I think I've spoken that before, that there is a combination between you and between God that has to take place. Um it says that, you know, the word was not affective in a certain area locale because they did not mix their faith with the word. There was nothing wrong with the word, but if it's not mixed with faith, it doesn't, you know. If you guys have ever taken chemistry, you can put two chemicals together and nothing happens. But you put the right chemical together with the other chemical, and you get an explosion to happen. You get something to take place. Well, that's what it is in the spirit. When you mix the word with faith, true, genuine faith, explosions begin to take place. And God begins to move in a way that you never thought possible. Beyond your wildest dreams, beyond your wildest imaginations. Because you finally, finally mix faith with the word. Most of us hear the word, but we don't mix faith with it. We just sort of take it in and it becomes a part of our little library of knowledge. And you know that knowledge puffs up. So, starting in Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, God is in the process of creating. He created on the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day, and now we're into the sixth day, and God has created man, he's formed them, he's fashioned them into the ground, he's breathed in him the breath of life. And it says, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden so he can enjoy it. No, it doesn't say that. But that's kind of like what the prevalent doctrines of Christendom say today, that God loves you so much that he's just gonna bless you and prosper you and just give you all of these things, and yet you don't really have anything to do with it. He's just such a good God, he's such a loving God that he's just gonna do that. And you're gonna just be uh drowning in all of the blessings and the promises. And yet, when I read this, he gave him life, he gave him breath, and he took him from there, and then he gave him responsibility. He gave him something to do. He went to dress it and to keep it. It wasn't here, Adam, go enjoy it. Dress it and keep it. Furthermore, it says, and the Lord God commanded the man. He didn't ask him. He commanded him, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eat of us thereof, thou shalt surely die. And so the Lord, when he fashions man, he gives him life, he gives him responsibility immediately. He begins to command him of things that he can and cannot do, and it was only one thing that he could not do. That was eat of the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil. And so keep that in mind that when God comes to you, when God does something with you that you really didn't deserve, that's called grace. That's grace. That's God coming to you. You weren't calling for him, you weren't crying for him, you weren't asking for him. He literally comes to you, but he comes to you with requirements. He comes to you with conditions. It's not just uh here, let's hang out, let's have dinner together, and let's enjoy ourselves together. No. He's requiring something of you. And Adam wasn't even fallen at the time. But I want to go to Genesis 12 now. And let's look at this again. In Genesis 12, God does it again. He comes to man. To a man that was not looking for him, that was not praying to him, that was not crying out to him. As a matter of fact, historically speaking, I believe he lived in his father's house, and his father was an idol worshiper. He didn't worship, he didn't pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob weren't even alive at the time. But this particular man grew up in a house where it was just a bunch of idols. This man grew up in the Ur of the Chaldeans. And it says, Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, now at this point, Abraham never seen the Lord, had never, maybe uh, had never had any kind of relationship with him, and his father didn't have a relationship. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, God comes to Abram and says, Get out of your country. He doesn't say, Hi, I'm God. Let's hang out. No. He comes to him and he demands immediately, demands that Abram do something. Get out of your country. And he doesn't enter it. He says, Get away from your kindred, get away from your father's house to the land that I will show thee. So God didn't come and say, Here, let me show you this lamb, Abram. You see this great, wonderful land? It's got honey and it's got beautiful trees, it's got fruit, it's got everything. No. He says, Get out first. Come out from among them. He's demanding of him to do something. And then God is then going to show you the land that I want to bring you to. But you need to do something first. You need to turn away from where you're at right now and come. And then I will show you the land that I want to give you. And he continues on and says in verse 2, I will make of thee a great nation. See, now the promise and the blessing that God wants to do come afterward. But first came the requirement and the demand. And I will bless thee, and I will make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And three, I will bless them that bless thee, I will curse them that curse thee. In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. What a marvelous promise. What an all-encompassing, global promise that was. But it came after the demand. I want you to notice that the demand of what was required of man came first. And now look at what verse 4 says. So Abram departed. Abraham did exactly what was told of him, even though he had never met God before. God made a demand. Do these three things, and then I will bless you and I will keep you and I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you. And all the promises came afterward. But you see, Abraham obeyed. He departed as the Lord had spoken unto him. Complete utter obedience. There wasn't a question, there wasn't, well, where do I go? No, you know exactly what to do. Get away from your family. Get away from this land. Get away from your country. And it says Lot went with him, but I'm not really focused on that. Then we go to Genesis. I'm sorry. Did you have a question? Yes, ma'am. How old was Abraham at that moment? How old was he? Does anybody with more wisdom than I have the answer to this? I know it wasn't 99. And I know he was in 80 something. It was before that.

unknown: 8:58

Verse 48.

Speaker 01: 8:59

Verse 4? Where is he? Verse 4. Oh, 70 and 5 years old. There you go. But like I said, I wasn't really focused on his age. Okay, so he was 75 years old when that happened. And we go a couple chapters later in Genesis 15. Abraham's response when God came was complete, full obedience. He departed. Just as the Lord had spoken unto him. And it says in Genesis 15 regarding the promise of Isaac. And he believed in the Lord and he counted to him for righteousness. But see, the believing in the Lord was not something mental. It was something that Abraham had done. You see, because if Abraham didn't believe in the Lord, he would have left his country, he would have left his kindred, he would have left everything that he was grown accustomed to that he was used to. But he believed in the Lord so much that he did exactly what the Lord had told him to do. And that belief, which is what we call faith in the new covenant, is what was given to Abraham as righteousness. It allowed Abraham to be able to have a relationship with God that he did not have before. Faith doesn't necessarily save you in the moment. What it does is gives you something that you didn't have before, a relationship with God, whom you were separated from because of your sin. It makes you whole in the sense that you now have a relationship that had been torn apart, that have been ripped up because of sin. And now you now have a relationship where you now have an opportunity to be reconciled with God. It says in Romans 5, repeating this same scripture, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness. Paul is writing to Roman saints here and saying that to him that works, or to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly. In other words, God is going to give righteousness not to the person that works. But everybody gets confused with that scripture and they think, well, you see, you can't do the deeds of the law. You know, you can't get justified by the deeds of the law. So you don't have to do the Ten Commandments and all of that stuff. But if you look at what it says in Romans chapter 3, it says what the works were. The works were the deeds of the law. But here's the thing: this is what I was teaching to my children. I said, you had Adam here. He begins all of the human race. Okay? Then you had Eve, and you had Cain, and you had Abel, and you had Enoch, and you had Seth, and you had all of these people, and you had Noah, and you had um, who else? Who else? Ham, Shem, and Japheth. And then all of a sudden you had Abraham. From Adam to Abraham.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 12:14

Right? After Abraham, you had Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you had Moses, right? So Moses is way over here. Now, what do we know very remarkable about Moses? What did Moses receive?

John H. S. Leyva: 12:28

The law.

Speaker 01: 12:29

The law. But wait a second. Abraham came way before the law. So Abraham could not have been justified by the law. Abraham was justified or made right in the sight of God by something else. Something that has always been the way that you get justified before God. Abraham was made justified by faith. But that faith was exhibited not by mere belief, it was exhibited by obedience to whatever God told him to do. And when God told him to do it, he then did it. So here's that example that I'm trying to give you. In Genesis 17, we see now Abraham is 90 years, 99 years old. The Lord appears to Abraham and says unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be perfect. There he is demanding again. And some people might get offended at that. Well, how can I walk before God perfect? I can't be perfect. And there's that pride again. You always come up with some excuse. God never calls you and demands of you to do something that you cannot do. You may not understand how you're going to be able to do it, but he always demands of you something, and he always gives you the ability to do it. So there we are in Genesis 17, after it was already counted to him as righteousness, his faith, and then we read in verse 13 of the same chapter. Abraham is telling him, hey, I still don't have this promise. I still don't have this child. I'm going to have a servant take up my inheritance. And so Abraham says, He that is born in thy house, and he that is that is bought with thy money must needs be circumcised. God is telling Abraham, whoever is bought in your house with money as in a servant or a slave, he needs to be circumcised. And my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. So now God is talking to him about, I require of you to be covenant. I mean I'm in covenant, and I require of you to be circumcised. I require not only you, but your children and all of your male servants in your house. They all need to be circumcised. Because God is calling him out. God is calling him to be something far different than anything else in the world, and nobody in the world circumcised. You don't see Abraham argue again. Because what we know as we read the account is that Abraham obeyed and was circumcised. And after he was circumcised, then he received the promise. The thing that he had brought up to God. I still don't have this promise, God. I still don't have this promise, God. I don't have this son. I'm going to have a servant inherit my house. So he says, be circumcised. All your males be circumcised. Abraham obeyed. Abraham then got the promise. Because a year later, then came Isaac. And he continued to obey. Because on the eighth day, Isaac was then circumcised. And here we see this pattern again. God comes to Abraham. This is Abraham, I want you to go up to the mountain. I want you to sacrifice your own son. This is years later after Isaac was born. And this is in Genesis 22, 2. God comes to Abram. God then demands and requires that Abram do something. And he said, Take now thy son, Genesis 22, 2, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. There it is, that same pattern. He tells him what he must do, and then when you go do it, then I'm gonna tell you what mountain you're to do it on. He gives him just enough that he would begin the process of responding to God. And so hopefully I've shown you this pattern that God comes, requires, demands. And then you need to respond to that requirement, that demand, in order to receive the fullness of whatever it was that God came to you for. And what Abram did, what Noah did, what David did, what so many of the faithful patriarchs of old did, whenever God came to them and told them to do something, they then did it. This is what we call faith. But that faith was exhibited in repentance. And it says in the New Covenant that in Acts 17, 30, but now God commands all men everywhere to repent. If there's anything, anything at all that you can do in your life to start having a relationship with the Almighty, it is repentance. Because repentance is predicated upon faith. If you don't have faith, you're not gonna repent, you're not gonna change. If you have faith, because faith is where everything begins. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. And God is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him. So if you diligently seek Him in faith, the first thing you're gonna do is repent. The very first thing you're gonna do, my friend. This isn't a new message. I'm not preaching or teaching anything new to you. I'm only highlighting it and emphasizing it because its importance is pivotal to what God is gonna do in your life or not do in your life. If you turn to Deuteronomy 10, 16, the word is in repentance. God is going to use the word that he gave to Abraham, circumcise. He says in 1016, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-nicked. Be no more stubborn, be no more obstinate. Be no more rigid like a rock. Circumcise yourselves. That's what it says in Deuteronomy. If you've read Deuteronomy, it is the story of God bringing them out of Egypt and all of their accounts in the wilderness. And how God had to keep dealing with their obstinacy and their complaining and their murmuring and their wanting to go back to Egypt. And he says in the very beginning, you guys need to circumcise yourselves. You obstinate people. So stubborn. And he repeats this echo, this echo continued. Even after the people left the wilderness, they got into the promised land, and then they got into captivity. Jeremiah hears that same echo that God spoke to the Israelites coming out of Egypt. He says in Jeremiah 4, verse 3, Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Fallow ground, what is that? Fallow ground is ground that's hard. Ground that's infested with weeds, with thorns. Fallow ground is ground that has not been tilled, that has not been broken up. It's just hard there. And what we're going to come to realize is that he's using this as a metaphor for the heart of man, for the heart of people. Break up your follow ground. Sow seed not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves. There's that word, circumcise yourselves to the Lord. Take away the foreskins of your heart. He's echoing the same thing that he said hundreds of years earlier, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire and burn, that none can quench, because of the evil of your doings. If the people don't respond by breaking up the follow ground, the fury and the wrath of the Lord is going to come and consume them, because they will not, what's the other word for circumcise? Repent. They will not repent. They have hardened themselves, but the Lord can only do so much because he will never possess you, he will never force you. He's saying to you, break up your fallow ground, break up your hardness.

John H. S. Leyva: 21:29

Amen. Amen.

Speaker 01: 21:31

You need to do that. And there's a hardness in a lot of areas of our life. We talk about it in this fellowship as levels of obedience. Different saints have different levels of obedience. And some hear the gospel, some respond to it, they get baptized, all of a sudden they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and they're moving and they're walking with the Lord. But there's this one area of their life that they stop. They fall short, and then their level of growth in the Lord hits a ceiling. Because they will not repent in that particular area. They repented for the gospel. They heard the gospel, they obeyed, but then, oh, um, you want me to stop listening to that music? Uh, what else? Oh, um, you want me to stop doing that job? You want me to change jobs? That job pays me so well. Well, we have um the TV. I gotta stop watching it. Sexually explicit material? Pornography of some kind on the internet? I have to stop that? But I got baptized, I received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. But did Abraham stop obeying when God first came to him and demanded of him something? Or did he continue walking in obedience every time God came to him? Abraham is the father of the faith. And in his steps we are to be walking it. But he never stopped obeying God, even though in Hebrews it says he never received the full promise. He never saw it, he didn't see who we are today, but he continued walking in obedience even unto his death. And so the same thing is with us. But it starts really after God comes, it starts with us responding. It starts with us saying, Yes, I'm gonna take this pickaxe and I'm gonna nail it into the ground of my heart. I'm not talking about anybody else's land, I'm talking about your own heart. There are issues, there are things that you are unwilling to deal with, even in your own heart. And you may be in the kingdom, you may be in covenant, but you've reached the ceiling. And you can't go any farther because you will not repent of that area. Why would God give you meat when you're still nibbling on milk? You haven't developed your teeth to grind the meat. And yet you want more, but you won't make the sacrifice to have more. Something interesting happens at the end of Deuteronomy. I told you in Deuteronomy, he said to the people, You circumcise your heart.

John H. S. Leyva: 24:30

Amen.

Speaker 01: 24:31

But watch what it says at the end of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 30 says, 30 verse 6. And the Lord, thy God, will circumcise thine heart. And the heart of thy seed to love the Lord, thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul that thou mayest live. So which is it? Am I to circumcise my heart or is God going to circumcise my heart? It's both. That's what it means to mix faith, your faith, with the faith that He gave you with His word. And His Word says, circumcise your heart. Get your heart ready. That's what I tell my kids all the time, and they're probably hearing a repeated message. You need to prepare your heart to receive the promise of God. You need to do that. That's what all of this childhood is about. Yes, you should have fun. Yeah, that's all fine. But you need to prepare your heart because your destiny is not so that you can have fun all the rest of your life. Your destiny is mighty and powerful and high in the Lord God. And you need to prepare your heart now. That's why you need to show acts of kindness. That's why you need to do this of your own self so that God can see that's faith. I'm gonna bless that faith with my power, and I'm gonna glorify all that he does from here on forward. But the idea that's so predominant in Christianity is that God does not love conditionally. God does not promise conditionally. Yes, he does, and there's nothing wrong with that. Why should I bless a rebellious, impenitent child who will continue to walk in sin? Why should I give him food? Why should I enable him with clothes? Why should I enable him with a shelter and a car? Why am I going to enable him in that knowing that that will lead to his death? Amen. That's just common sense, guys. But we're so spoiled, we're so messed up in our hearts that we can't see that God's discipline and correction is love. Because he doesn't want us to kill ourselves. He doesn't want us to be separated from him eternally. So, yes, when God says, I will bless thee at thy right hand, it's an if then. If you do this, then I will do this. It's always that way. Look at them all. It's always if then.

unknown: 27:17

Amen.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 27:20

This conditional promise is so prevalent throughout all the scriptures, but Christians, quote unquote, don't want to acknowledge that the promises of God, his blessings and cursings are conditional. They're based upon how do you respond to his word? How are you going to respond to his word when he speaks to you? When he tells you, change. When he tells you, don't do that anymore. What are you going to do? The Lord sets a standard of righteousness in his word. And depending on you, depending on what you decide to do with that standard, you're going to receive whatever the consequences of that decision. You choose righteously, you choose wisely, God is going to bless you. And I can promise that to you because that's God's promise. I'm only repeating what he said. But you want to walk contrary to his word, He's not going to bless you. Matter of fact, he's going to allow the enemy to deceive you into thinking that you're getting blessed by God, and then you're going to continue walking in that rebellion. And I've seen that so clearly this past week in the lives of a few saints that I'm ministering to. They think that because their job is overflowing and they're not just breaking even, but that they're making money, that this is the blessing of God, yet it takes up all of their time, all of their wives' time. There is no really family time. It's like the couple wee hours of the night. And they're thinking that's God blessing them. And they don't realize that that's the enemy being allowed by God to busy you so that you can't grow any further with God. You only reach a ceiling because you can't give God that much time. You're so busy doing everything else. If you were blessed and appreciate listening to this podcast and you would like to support us in our efforts, consider lifting us up in prayer first. Then remember these four social media buzzwords. Share, like, subscribe, or follow. Share this podcast like button. Like the podcast web. Subscribe to support the show podcast with the link. Follow us on the web. May God bless you and make you prosperous in Him as you listen and obey His voice.