Ploughing The Rock

The ploughman cannot till rock, nor can ministers break hearts unwilling to yield. God’s Word pierces receptive soil, yet stubborn hearts resist. Let us learn patience, discernment, and the necessity of divine grace in fruitful spiritual labor.

“Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plough there with oxen?” — Amos 6:12 These expressions are proverbs drawn from common sayings of the Eastern countryside. A proverb is like a sword with two edges — or rather, with many edges. It can be turned in different directions, and each angle still cuts sharply. A proverb often carries several meanings, and it is not always easy to determine the exact sense intended by the one who first spoke it. In this case, the context allows more than one interpretation. An ancient commentator even claimed the verse contains seven meanings, each consistent with its setting. I cannot dismiss that possibility; indeed, it would simply be another example of the manifold wisdom of the Word of God. Like those intricately carved Chinese ivory balls, where one sphere rests within another, so many passages of Scripture contain meaning within meaning, teaching within teaching — each layer worthy of the Spirit who inspired it.

The first sense I will briefly mention is this: the prophet is confronting ungodly people about their attempt to find happiness where it cannot be found. They were striving to become rich, powerful, and secure through oppression. As the prophet says, “You have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.” Justice among them was bought and sold; the book of the law was used as an instrument of fraud. Yet, the prophet insists, there is no true gain in such a path, no real profit, no lasting happiness. It is as absurd as horses running upon solid rock or oxen attempting to plough stone. It is labor wasted. If any of you try to satisfy yourselves with this world alone, if you hope to find heaven in your business and family life without looking upward to God, you labor in vain.

If you expect pleasure in sin and imagine that it will go well with you while you despise God’s law, you are gravely mistaken. You might as well search for roses in the depths of the sea or look for pearls on the city pavement. You will find what your soul truly needs nowhere but in God.

To seek happiness in evil is to plough granite. To pursue real prosperity through dishonesty is as useless as tilling the sandy shore. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Young man, you are exhausting yourself with ambition, chasing honor and advancement. These are poor goals for an immortal soul. And you, sir, are wearing out both mind and body in the pursuit of wealth, as though life consisted in possessions. You are ploughing rock. Your anxieties will not produce peace; your toil will not bring contentment.

And you who attempt to weave a righteousness from your own works apart from Christ — who imagine that by diligent outward ceremonies you can accomplish the work of the Holy Spirit within your heart — you too are ploughing thankless rock. The full strength of fallen human nature can never save a soul. Why, then, continue this futile labor? Abandon the task.

So far, I believe this interpretation faithfully reflects the text. Yet another meaning suggests itself, equally suitable, and upon that I will now dwell, with God’s help. It is this: God will not always send His ministers to call people to repentance. When hearts remain stubborn — when people refuse to repent — God does not strive with them forever. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” There is a season of ploughing, but when it becomes clear that the heart is willfully hardened, wisdom itself may counsel mercy to withdraw her efforts.

“Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plough there with oxen?” No. There is a limit even to patient kindness. In due time, the labor ceases, and the rock remains unploughed forever.

I. Ministers Labor to Break Up the Heart Taking this meaning, we observe first that ministers labor to break up the hearts of people. A wise preacher, by the power of the Holy Spirit, seeks to break apart the hardened clods of the heart so that it may receive the heavenly seed. Many truths serve as sharp ploughshares. People must be made to feel that they have sinned and must be led to repentance.

They must receive Christ not merely with intellectual agreement but with the heart, “for with the heart one believes and is justified.” There must be genuine emotion and conviction. The ploughshare of the law must cut into the heart.

A farmer who is too tender-hearted to tear and harrow his field will never see a harvest. This is the failure of certain preachers: they fear hurting anyone’s feelings and therefore avoid truths that might awaken fear or grief. They keep no sharp ploughshare in their shed and are therefore unlikely to gather a harvest into their barn. They fish without hooks so as not to injure the fish. They fire guns without bullets out of respect for the birds’ feelings. This kind of love is cruelty to souls. It is like a surgeon who allows a patient to die rather than cause pain with a necessary incision or amputation. Such tenderness is dreadful — it leaves people to perish rather than disturb them. It may be pleasant to speak only smooth words, but woe to the one who does so at the cost of truth.

Was this Christ’s spirit? Did He hide the sinner’s danger? Did He cast doubt upon the unquenchable fire and the undying worm? Did He soothe souls with flattering speech? No. With honest love and deep concern, He warned of wrath and urged people to repent or perish. Let Christ’s servants follow their Master. Let them plough deeply with a sharp blade that will not be turned aside by hard soil. If we truly love souls, we must prove it through faithful speech. The hard heart must be broken, or it will continue to reject the Savior who binds up the brokenhearted.

There are certain things people may or may not experience and still be saved. But the realities associated with this ploughing are indispensable. There must be holy fear and humble trembling before God. There must be acknowledgment of guilt and a penitent plea for mercy. In short, there must be a thorough ploughing of the soul before we can expect the seed to bear fruit.

II. At Times Ministers Labor in Vain The text also teaches that sometimes ministers labor without visible success. “Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plough there with oxen?” A ploughman quickly senses whether his plough can cut the ground. So does a minister. He may preach the same words in two different places. In one setting he feels hope and joy; in another, heaviness and resistance. The plough seems to leap out of the furrow.

The blade chips against the stone. He says to himself, “I do not understand why I make no progress here,” and realizes he has been assigned particularly hard soil.

All who labor for Christ know this experience. You may have felt it in a Sunday school class, in a cottage meeting, or in any setting where you have tried to teach Christ. At one time you turned up rich soil that yielded easily under the oxen. At another time, though the horse strains and the oxen labor until their shoulders are sore, no furrow can be cut. The rock resists to the very end.

Such hearers exist in every congregation. They may sit beside tender hearts. A sister, brother, son, or daughter may respond readily to the gospel, yet they remain unmoved. They listen respectfully.

They allow the message to pass in one ear and out the other. They would not abandon public worship, and so they attend — but only to refuse the message inwardly. They are hard rock; the plough does not touch them.

Others are equally hard, but in a different way. The impression made upon them is shallow and temporary. They receive the word with joy, yet do not hold fast to it. They listen attentively, but never put it into practice. They hear about repentance but never repent. They hear about faith but never believe.

They are capable judges of gospel preaching, yet have never personally accepted it. They insist that good bread be served, yet refuse to eat it. They strongly defend truths which they themselves reject. They may be moved to tears, yet their hearts remain unbroken. They leave unchanged and forget what kind of people they are. They are rocky ground throughout. All efforts to plough them seem to fail.

Now this is all the worse, because certain of these rocky-hearted people have been ploughed for years and have grown harder instead of softer. Once or twice ploughing — with a broken share or two and a disappointed ploughman or two — we might not mind, if at last they would yield; but these people have known the gospel since childhood and have never surrendered to its power. And for some of them, childhood is long past. Their hair is turning gray; they themselves are growing weak with age. They have been urged and persuaded times beyond number, yet all that labor has been lost on them.

In fact, years ago they felt the Word in a way they do not feel it now. The sun that softens wax hardens clay; and the same gospel that has brought others to tenderness and repentance has had the opposite effect on them, making them more careless about divine things than they were in their youth. This is a mournful condition, is it not?

Why are some people so extremely rocky? Some are so because of a certain natural stolidity. There are many people whom you simply cannot easily move. There is a great deal of granite in their constitution; they are more closely related to Mr. Obstinate than to Mr. Pliable. Yet I do not altogether think badly of such people. Anyone who has preached to highly excitable hearers knows what it is to stir them greatly, only to discover in the end that they are none the better for it. By contrast, when some of these more immovable people are truly moved, they are moved indeed.

When they feel, they feel deeply, and they retain the impression made upon them. A small chip struck from granite by heavy blows will remain there, while the lashing of water — though easy enough — leaves no trace at all. It is a noble thing to take hold of a solid piece of rock and exercise faith concerning it. The Lord’s hammer has mighty power to break, and in that breaking great glory comes to the Most High.

Worse still, some are hard because of infidelity — not always open rejection of the heart, but a kind of unbelief that springs from a desire not to believe, and that desire helps them discover difficulties. These difficulties do exist, and they were meant to exist; for if everything were as plain as the nose on one’s face, there would be no room for faith. Such people gradually come to doubt — or at least to think that they doubt — essential truths, and this renders them resistant to the gospel of Christ.

A far more numerous group are orthodox enough in doctrine, yet hard-hearted all the same.

Worldliness hardens a person in every way. It dries up charity toward the poor because the man must make money, and he thinks the taxes he pays are excuse enough for neglecting compassion.

He has no time to think of the next world; all his thoughts are absorbed with this one. Money is scarce, he says, and so he must hold it tightly; and when money yields little interest, he finds even more reason to be stingy. He has no time for prayer — he must get to the office. He has no time to read his Bible — his ledger demands attention. You may knock at his door, but his heart is not at home; it is in the counting-house, where he lives and moves and has his being. His god is gold, his joy is business, his all-in-all is himself. What is the use of preaching to such a man? You might as well have horses run upon a rock, or oxen drag a plough across a field covered with iron a mile thick.

With others, hardness comes from the opposite of stern worldliness — a constant levity. They are like butterflies, flitting about and accomplishing nothing. They never think, nor do they wish to think. Half a serious thought exhausts them; they must be amused, or their shallow minds grow weary. Their life is a circle of entertainment. To them the world is a stage, and all men and women merely actors. It is of little use to preach to such people. There is no depth of soil in their nature.

Beneath a thin layer of shifting, worthless sand lies an impenetrable rock of stupidity and senselessness. I could multiply reasons why some are harder than others, but the fact is certain — and there I leave it.

I now ask you to consider whether horses should always run upon a rock, and whether oxen should always plough there. Is it reasonable to expect that God’s servants should labor in vain forever?

These people have been preached to, taught, instructed, warned, pleaded with, and advised. Shall this unrewarded work continue endlessly? They have been given a fair trial. What do reason and prudence say? Are we bound to persevere until we are worn out by fruitless effort? Ask those who plough their own fields — do they recommend continuing when failure is certain? Shall horses run upon the rock? Shall one plough there with oxen? Surely not forever.

Consider the ploughman. He may not seek much consideration, but his Master does not overlook him. See how weary he becomes when his work discourages him. He cries, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” “Why have You sent me,” he asks, “to a people who have ears but do not hear? They sit as Your people sit, they hear as Your people hear, but then they go their way, forget every word, and do not obey the voice of the Lord.” Observe how disappointed the preacher becomes. It is hard work to see no progress, though one has done his utmost. No one likes to be assigned a task that seems a complete waste of time and effort. It begins to feel almost absurd, and he fears he will be despised for attempting the impossible.

Shall it always be the lot of God’s ministers to be trifled with? Will the great Husbandman command His ploughmen to spend their strength for nothing? Must His preachers continue to cast pearls before swine? If their Lord commands it, they will persevere; yet their Master is considerate.

I ask you to consider whether it is reasonable to expect a zealous heart to be forever occupied with the salvation of those who never respond. Shall the horses always plough upon the rock? Shall the oxen always labor there?

And what of the Master Himself? Is the Lord always to be resisted and provoked? Many of you have had eternal life set before you as the result of believing in Jesus, and yet you have refused to believe. It is a wonder that my Lord has not said, “You have done your duty with them; never present Christ to them again; My Son shall not be insulted.” If you offer a beggar a coin and he refuses it, you simply put it back in your pocket and walk away. You do not plead with him to accept relief. Yet our God, in mercy, pleads with sinners to come to Him and implores them to receive His Son. In gracious condescension He stands, as it were, like a merchant in the marketplace, crying, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!” And elsewhere He says, “All day long I have held out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”

When the Lord of mercy has been refused for so long, does not some righteous indignation mingle with your pity? While you long for sinners to be saved, do you not feel there must be an end to such insult? I ask even the careless to consider this. If they do not respect the ploughman, let them at least consider his Master.

Moreover, there are so many others who need the gospel and would receive it, that wisdom seems to suggest leaving those who despise it. Did not our Lord say that if the mighty works done in Bethsaida and Chorazin had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented? Even more astonishing, He said that if the same works had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah as were done in Capernaum, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Should we not then take the word to those who will receive it and leave the despisers to their willfulness? Does not reason say, “Send the medicine where there are sick people who value it”?

Thousands are willing to hear the gospel. See how they gather wherever the preacher goes — how they press upon one another in their eagerness. If those who hear daily will not receive the message, “then in God’s name,” says the preacher, “let me go where there is hope of soil that can be ploughed.” “Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plough there with oxen?” Must I always labor where nothing results? Does not reason say, let the word go to China, to India, to the farthest ends of the earth — where people will receive it — rather than remain where it is despised in the streets?

I will not extend the argument further, but I ask the question again solemnly: Would any of you continue pursuing an object once it proved hopeless? When the Lord has sent His servants with kind, gracious, tender words and people refuse to hear, do you marvel that He says, “They are joined to their idols; let them alone”? There is a limit to human patience, and we reach it quickly.

Surely there is also a limit — though we reach it slowly — to the patience of God. At last He says, “It is enough. My Spirit shall no longer strive with them.” If the Lord declares this, can we complain? Is this not wisdom? Does not prudence itself affirm it? Any thoughtful mind will agree: a rock cannot be ploughed forever.

There must, then, be a change — and that soon. The oxen will be taken away from such labor. This can be done easily and quickly, and in three ways.

First, the unresponsive hearer may be removed so that he no longer hears the gospel from the lips of the minister most fitted to reach him. There may be a preacher who has some measure of influence over him; but since he rejects the message and remains unrepentant, he may be relocated to another place where he hears monotonous discourses that do not touch his conscience. He will go where he is no longer urged and pleaded with, and there he will sleep himself into hell. That can be done easily enough. Some of you may even now be arranging your own removal from the field of hope.

Another possibility is this: the plowman may be taken away. He has done his work as faithfully as he could, and he will be released from his difficult task. He is weary. Let him go home. The soil would not break up, but that was not his fault. Let him receive his wages. His plow has been damaged in the effort; let him go home and hear his Lord say, “Well done.” He was willing to continue the discouraging labor as long as his Master commanded him, but if it is clearly fruitless, then let him go home, for his work is finished. He has been seriously ill—let him die and enter into his rest. This is not unlikely.

Or something else may happen. The Lord may say, “That field will trouble the plowman no more.

I will remove it.” And he may remove it in this way: the man who has heard the gospel but rejected it may die. I pray that my Master will not allow any of you to die in your sins, for then we can no longer reach you or hold even the faintest hope for you. No prayer of ours can follow you into eternity.

There is one name by which you must be saved, and that name has been proclaimed to you—the name of Jesus. But if you reject him now, even that name will not save you. If you refuse to receive Jesus as your Savior, he will appear as your Judge. I plead with you: do not destroy your own soul by stubbornly resisting almighty love.

God grant that something better may happen. Is there nothing else that can be done? This soil is rock—can we sow it without breaking it up? No. Without repentance there is no forgiveness of sins. Is there some way of saving people without the grace of God? The Lord Jesus never suggested such a thing. Instead, he said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16, ESV). He did not hint at a middle path or suggest a “larger hope.” He plainly declared, “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Do not imagine there is a hidden back door into heaven. The Lord has provided none.

What then? Should the preacher continue his seemingly fruitless labor? If even half a hope remains, he is willing to go on and cry, “Hear, you deaf, and see, you blind, and live, you dead.” He will speak that way today, because his Master commands him to preach the gospel to every creature.

But it is heavy work to repeat words of appeal for years to those who refuse to listen.

Yet there is still one more possibility. There is a God in heaven—let us pray that he would stretch out his power. Jesus is at his right hand—let us ask for his intervention. The Holy Spirit is almighty—let us call on him for help. Brothers who plow and sisters who pray, cry out to the Master for aid. The horse and the ox may fail, but there is One above who can accomplish mighty wonders. Did he not once speak to the rock and turn flint into a flowing stream? Let us ask him to do the same now.

And if there is someone who feels and grieves that his heart is like a rock, I am glad he feels it.

The very awareness that your heart is hard is a sign that the stone may already be softening. O hard heart, instead of striking you—as Moses struck the rock in the wilderness and sinned in doing so— I would speak to you. Would you become like wax? Would you melt into streams of repentance?

Listen to God’s voice. Break with holy desire. Melt with longing for Christ, for God may even now be at work within you. Who knows? At this very moment you may begin to crumble. Do you feel the power of the Word? Does the sharp blade of truth pierce you now?

Break and break again, until through true sorrow you are softened. Then the good seed of the gospel will enter your heart, and you will receive it, and we will see its fruit.

So I will cast one more handful of good seed before I finish. If you desire eternal life, trust in Jesus Christ, and you are saved at once. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). Whoever believes in him has eternal life. And as Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15).

O Lord, break up the rock. Let the seed fall into the broken ground and bring a harvest even from hardened stone, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.