THE HEART OF THE ISSUE AND FERTILITY CULTS ~ A Study in Jeremiah

When Israel moved into the neighborhood, soon thereafter the local chapter of the Canaanite Welcome Wagon showed up on their doorstep. I remember two different times after moving into a new neighborhood when there was an unexpected knock on my door. There, on the doorstep were members of a local cult (I had encountered them enough times to recognize them immediately). “Hey! Welcome to the neighborhood,” they said. “We often visited with the sweet older lady who used to live here. We have some good news to share with you; could you spare a few moments of your time for us to come in and share with you? By the way, do you read your Bible?” As I invited them inside the foyer, I cheerfully replied, “Read it? I teach Bible studies right here in my home. Maybe you’d like to join us on Friday mornings.” “Umm…you teach Bible studies? Can we read to you from John 1?” I said, “Sure, I’ll read it with you; let me go get my Bible.” “No, we have it right here,” they insisted. “I like to read along with my Bible; it’s no problem at all!” “Umm…well, that’s nice, but we can come back another time. We just remembered a prior engagement.” “We meet every Friday morning at 10:00 a.m.,” I hollered after them as they quickly got in their cars.

Before we look at the next verse, it is important to understand something about the fertility cults of the Canaanites, Israel’s new neighbors. These pagans, who knew not the God of Israel, were enticing God’s people to join with them in participating in their religious rituals.

God made a covenant with Abraham when he lived in the Negev desert. The covenant was made in blood and sealed with circumcision. It was in the desert where God met Moses in a burning bush. And there he would be called to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt. The Israelites had a solid foundation of wilderness and desert life where their faith was developed. After 40 years wandering in the wilderness, they longed for the land flowing with milk and honey—this good and spacious land to which God promised to bring them when He delivered them from Egypt. Throughout their wanderings, God had been faithful to go with them, protect them, feed them, and guide them.

 

In Canaan, the land was filled with farmers, not shepherds, as the Israelites had been accustomed to in the wilderness. This fertile land was beyond their wildest dreams and greatest expectations. Their neighbors, the Canaanites, gave all praise to their god Ba’al for the land’s richness. Glory was being given to false gods for the rich land God had given exclusively to the Israelites as an inheritance. Their reaction should have been like David’s toward Goliath in that these pagans were calling into question the character of God as Creator and Sustainer of all things. If they had refused to allow any seeds of doubt into their minds…if they had stood firm on God’s promises and His Word to them and on His character and faithfulness to them…it may have been a different story. Didn’t they yet trust Him after all He had done for them to get them there? In their slide into compromise, maybe they thought it would not hurt to honor the Canaanite gods alongside Yahweh. They were dead wrong. The battle that began in the mind with an idolatrous look at a fertile land, a choice blessing from God, turned into a passionate pursuit of many false idols. Idolatrous temptations must always be quickly checked at the door of one’s mind and slayed by the Sword of the Spirit immediately.

 

Under a succession of wicked kings, the spiritual battle progressively raged on. When Ahab and Jezebel came onto the scene, the fertility cults had the official sanction of all of Israel’s leaders. Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, even built a temple to Baal in Samaria with his full approval. In the meantime, God’s holy prophets were thundering forth calls to repentance proclaiming failure to do so to result in judgment. It was not until the captivities in Assyria and Babylon that Israel finally became convinced that God alone is Sovereign, and she gave up her idolatry.

 

Fertility cults was a term for religions that carried out certain rites which reenacted a myth thought to change seasons and the earth’s fruitfulness. They often involved a great mother-goddess as a symbol of fertility and a male deity, usually her consort but sometimes a son, who (like vegetation) dies and returns to life again. In different cultures or places, there were different names for the same goddess and consort or son. In Mesopotamia, the divine couple was Ishtar and Tammuz; in Egypt it was Isis and her son Osiris; in Asia Minor it was Cybele and Attis. And there were others. Asherah, the great mother-goddess was the consort of El, the chief god in the pantheon. When Baal replaced El as the major deity, he became associated with Asherah. All of these goddesses have been referred to by the tile Queen of Heaven. Interestingly, it is the title the Catholic church has now given to Mary who some want to say is also co-redemptrix with Christ.

 

What these cults believed was that the fertility of the crops and herds of the land was due to the sexual relations of these divine couples. That would be bad enough, but worship in these cults involved the people. “Sexual intercourse by priests and priestesses or by cult prostitutes was an act of worship intended to emulate the gods and share in their powers of procreation or else an act of imitative magic by which the gods were compelled to preserve the earth’s fertility.” ~ Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. All sort of wicked, deviant behavior was associated with their practices, all in the name of worship. Sacrifices included produce, livestock and even children. Giving the god what was most precious in life was thought to restore order to the cosmos and ensure fertility. We can see these cults continuing in the New Testament days. Diana or Artemis of the Ephesians was a many-breasted fertility goddess, as was Aphrodite, whose temple was in Corinth. Many of the mystery religions competing with Christianity in the early church developed the myths of the older fertility cults. It is no wonder that the Whore of Babylon talked about in Revelation is called Mystery Babylon, the Great. 

For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, “Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns.” (Jeremiah 4:3) They were concerned about rich, fertile land. God was concerned with fertile hearts.  Their hearts had become cold and hardened towards Him. Break up means to freshly plough or till. The soil of their hearts was hardened. Fallow ground implies uncultivated farmland which was plowed before but has laid dormant or rested for a year or more. Though it is hard to plow, it once was fruitful but needs extra work to break up because the ground resists the plough. Hosea 10:12—Sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD until He comes to rain righteousness on you. James 3:17-18—But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Their hearts needed cultivated into soft, receptive hearts for the planting of God’s seed resulting in the fruit of righteousness. The fruit of righteousness would be seen in their ceasing to waver in their faith and to live hypocritically professing to love God but chasing after false idols. They wanted God’s blessings, but they did not want Him! God was never going to sow His blessings in unrepentant hearts. Only thorny weeds grow on stony ground. God would not waste His precious seed on ground not fully prepared to receive it.

The heart of the church in America needs to be broken. It has become complacent. Even in the best churches great messages are heard, and because of the cares and worries of the world choking out the seed, it is not able to penetrate far, i.e., people hear a great message, acknowledge its truthfulness, then transition to the busyness of their world sometimes even before they leave the parking lot. It is literally in one ear and out the other instead of going deep into the heart to cut and do its work of transformation where needed. We must be willing to allow God to break our hearts with what breaks His.

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD and remove the foreskins of your heart, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or else My wrath will go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.” (Jeremiah 4:4) The note in the John MacArthur Study Bible on this passage says this: “This surgery (circumcision) was to cut away flesh that could hold disease in its folds and could pass the disease on to wives. It was important for the preservation of God’s people physically. But it was also a symbol of the need for the heart to be cleansed from sins’ deadly disease. The really essential surgery needed to happen on the inside, where God calls for taking away fleshly things that keep the heart from being spiritually devoted to Him and from true faith in Him and His will…God selected the reproductive organ as the location of the symbol of man’s need of cleansing for sin, because it is the instrument most indicative of his depravity, since by it he reproduces generations of sinner.” A baby was to be circumcised in obedience to the covenant God made with them.

Jeremiah is telling God’s people several different ways that they have a heart problem. They focused on God’s blessings, and they focused on their rituals, but never on their relationship with God. Their hearts, first and foremost, were not right with Him; and He wanted worship from pure hearts. They wanted to worship Him their own way, even though there was all sorts of evil lusts and wicked longings in their hearts. They had even gotten to the place where they believed that if they were circumcised, they would not go to hell. They were ‘in’ because of something that happened to them as a baby! The Jews believed they were His just because they were part of the nation of Israel, so they could live anyway they wanted to live as long as they walked through the religious rituals passed down throughout their history. They had no idea what any of those rituals represented or pointed to. The text does not say they were to be circumcised. It says they were to do the circumcising. They were to circumcise themselves to the Lord. How were they to remove the foreskins of flesh from their hearts? By turning to God to do what only He could do. Only those whose hearts are wholly His, belong to Him.

Later, this would be elaborated on in Romans 2:28-29—For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God. They might be circumcised in their physical bodies, but unless they repented and turned back to Him, following Him with all their hearts, judgment was coming. The consequences of breaking covenant are more severe when the worth of the covenant maker is considered. If I snub my nose at my boss, it is wrong, and I may suffer some consequences from that. If I snub my nose at the President of the United States, the consequences that I may incur may be much greater. God’s chosen people had snubbed their noses at many prophets, and ultimate at the holy Sovereign One over all the universe whom they represented! Someone once said God warns before He wounds. They had been duly served more than sufficient notice.