Destroyed For Lack of Knowledge

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Since you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you from being My priest.
Since you have forgotten the Law of your God,
I also will forget your children. (Hosea 4:6)

As a statement in it’s own right, it is magnificent. It sweeps by the symptoms and comes right to the cause. It cuts through the rhetoric and silences discussion with force and finality, for the words of Hosea are the words of God.

Let’s begin with three things before turning specifically to our text, starting with the background of the book and it’s structure. Moving on to certain questions relating to truth and to knowledge before considering some thought-forms that may get in our way as we read and discuss what Hosea wrote so long ago.

Background:

The eighth century bc has been called the golden age of Hebrew prophecy. Now before we get all misty-eyed, it is probably worth noting that God tended to multiply prophets in proportion to the sinfulness of the people. More sin meant more prophets. So there is an upside and a downside to this ‘golden age’.

As it turned out, God warned the people that he would not always do this. His patience with them would one day run out and there would be a famine and a drought for the word of the Lord (Amos 8:11-12) There would be a period of prophetic silence and that silence would itself speak volumes.

Now it was during the eighth century that the prophet Jonah booked passage in a fish on his way to Nineveh. He succeeded despite reluctance to go and hoping for failure. It occurs to me that God had his own way of calling prophets and enlisting volunteers. The prophets were not always eager to go nor in step with the message. But the message was still true, despite their personal shortcomings. I suspect that that it is still so.

So God sent both Amos and Hosea to Israel. And in the year that king Uzziah died, in 739 BC he sent Isaiah to work in the kingdom of Judah. Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries in the southern kingdom as Amos, Hosea and Jonah worked in the northern one.

Hosea has been called many things by various writers. To Kirkpatrick he was “the Jeremiah of the northern kingdom” or “the St. John of the Old Testament.” Reflecting his broken home, Ward calls him “the man of the shattered romance” . To others he is “the home missionary,” “the evangelist” and “the prophet of grace” as he tenderly calls the erring back to God. As a writer, Hosea has been called “Israel’s poet laureate”. Certainly, this man of God is all this and more.

Now Hosea mentions four kings that reigned in Judah during the time that he prophesied to Israel. They were Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. At the same time he mentions only one king, Jeroboam II, who ruled in Israel. Jeroboam was the last great king to rule in the north. Based on the information that Hosea gives us, we would conclude that he prophesied from about 767-686 bc.

Set in the days of Jeroboam II, the book of Hosea addresses a people who have reached the low water mark in their history. The tide has gone out and the shore is littered with trash.

The book itself is also written with a higher standard in mind. It belongs to the high water mark set by God in the torah. And it looks forward to Israel’s return to God and to godliness.

As to the structure of the book: the first 3 chapters tell Hosea’s personal story. It begins with a divine command to marry.

• Hosea’s wife bears three children but in time she becomes unfaithful to him.
• Some think that the last son born into this family was conceived out of wedlock.
• She then abandons her husband and her children and is caught in the downward spiral of sexual promiscuity – ending in prostitution.
• But Hosea is commanded to seek her out. He is to buy her back in the slave-market and rescue her from the consequences of a sinful life.

You might say that Hosea’s family is a microcosm of Israel.

There is perhaps the suggestion that no prophet can truly speak for God – until he relates to sin as God does. Surely then, Hosea is qualified.

The balance of the book is about Israel and divides itself into three sections:

In Chapters 4:2 – 6:3, the problem is a lack of spiritual knowledge

In Chapters 6:4 -11:11 there is a lack of brotherly love

And in Chapters 11:12 – 14: 8 the people have abandoned loyalty to God

Each section ends with an appeal – to return to God. These appeals alert us to the main thrust of the book. That God is faithful though his people are not. That God loves his people and wants them backAnd that God will punish his people if they persist in sin

Though the book of Hosea must deal with sin, it is still filled with hope. It is forward-looking with twenty-eight distinct predictions taking up 111 verses, or about 56% of the book. So, throughout Hosea, a faithful God waits patiently for his people to repent.

Preliminary but related Issues:

These have to do with how we read books like Hosea. Or for that matter, how we read the Bible as a whole. So these early considerations are designed to temper our reading. Here are some pertinent questions:

1. When we open the pages of scripture, do we do so expecting to gain knowledge?
2. Is there such a thing as truth that is always true? Let’s call it absolute truth.
3. Is truth objective in nature?
4. Is truth antithetical in nature?
5. Can we know the truth – God’s truth – and gain this kind of knowledge?
6. Are there imperatives within scripture that require us to ‘know the truth”?
7. Or to put that a different way – do the scriptures command us to “know God”?

I would suggest to you that the answers to these questions are: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes…but that is probably not very satisfactory discussion. But without taking time to discuss the nature of truth, there are certain things about truth that are self-evident. That truth can be known is a given.

Believing that the bible is the inspired word of God, we can scarcely open the book for any other reason. If we cannot open the bible to learn about God, then what is the bible for? I might add – that truth in the bible – functions in exactly the same way that truth outside of the bible does. The bible does not recognize many different orders of truth.

Related to our text there is this further question: Is ‘knowing God’, and ‘knowing the commands, statutes and ordinances of God”, the same thing? Some say that there is a difference between ‘knowing God’ and ‘knowing about God’. In fact, I have heard people say, “I don’t want to know about God, I want to know God”

Those who say this mean well and want to encourage spiritual growth, and in the process, they intend to compliment God. To draw an analogy, if you had to choose between a recipe and the cake itself, who wouldn’t rather eat cake?

But I think that we need to be careful here. The implication of the statement is that one must go beyond knowing about God to knowing God. I have yet to hear anyone explain how to do it. Let’s apply this notion to Moses and see if it works. Moses was called by God through a miracle. He spoke directly to Moses at Horeb where Moses saw a burning bush that was not consumed. God performed miracles through Moses and allowed the prophet to appear in his presence – over and over. In the days that followed the golden calf incident, Moses spoke with God daily and face-to-face. If anyone ever rose above knowing about God – to knowing God, surely Moses is the one. This makes his unique and intimate relationship with God an interesting case study against which to read Exodus 33:13. Here Moses said to God: “let me know your ways that I may know you, so that I might find favour in your sight”.

What Moses said, indicates, that knowing God’s ways (commandments, statutes and ordinances) is the same thing as knowing God. The person who knows God’s ways is then in a position to do them – and that is what pleases God. The bible does not make the artificial distinction between knowing about God and knowing God. If there is a distinction at all, it is that you cannot know God without first knowing God’s ways.

Those who know God’s ways and live by them – do experience God. When the truth about God is transformed into obedience it does yield a higher form of knowing. In that sense, there is no O.T. dichotomy between knowing the will of God and doing it. Biblically speaking, those who really “know” God are those who do his will.

The nature of truth is – that it is not truth at all, unless it has content. Thus, one cannot know God without first knowing about God.

Even the spiritual experiences that Moses had in the tangible presence of God were no substitute for the objective content that he was asking for. Those supernatural experiences told Moses that God is God. But based on these alone, he did not know and he could not know how to please God. Moses needed to know God’s ways in order to actually know God and to do God’s will.

Now there is within scripture, no such thing as accidental obedience. Accidental obedience is a contradiction in terms. You may talk about coincidental action that parallels the will of God – but that does not make it ‘obedience’. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not obedience. It is even conceivable that someone might do what is good and virtuous for entirely selfish reasons. Not surprisingly, various versions of the ‘Humanist Manifesto’ argue for good behaviour while denying the existence of God.

By contrast, when Hosea calls his people back to God, their return must be guided by a knowledge of God and of his ways. That knowledge must lead to obedience. It is not possible to be accidentally saved without intending to be, any more than it is possible to be accidentally obedient to God.

On another related matter, we have within our own legal system, the modern concept of ‘what the reasonable man’ would do. The issue is not whether a person knows the laws of the land – but whether it is reasonable for him to be expected to know them. After all, our laws apply to all of citizens, regardless of whether they are informed. No legal system could function if ignorance was a viable defense. If you don’t know the laws of the land, the courts still deem that you should have known. Implied in all of this is a duty ‘to know the law’.

The book of Hosea reflects this same expectation when it comes to God’s law. If we accept the concept of the ‘reasonable man’ in our legal system, then it we ought not be surprised to find the same expectation within scripture.

Our Text (Hosea 4:1-6)

Hosea begins the chapter with a summons. He calls Israel to “hear the word of Yahweh.” In true prophetic fashion, his words are ‘thus says the Lord’. There is no substitute for the propositional truth of God. Without it, there is nothing to believe in and no call to believe at all.

God has a controversy with the “house of Israel”. He calls them into court. He brings a lawsuit against them whose terms and conditions are set out in his covenant. It is a covenant that they have broken and to which God himself has always been faithful.

Israel faces three main charges. Hosea lists them and then discusses them in the reverse order that they appear in the list.

Israel is charged with:

1. A failure to be faithful to God (chs. 11:12-14:9)
2. Deficiency in mercy or kindness (6:4-11:11)
3. And Israel lacks – knowledge of God (4:2-6:3).

It is this third charge to which we now turn.

Now to say that “God’s people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” is to make a very significant statement. Verse one identifies the kind of knowledge that’s missing: it is the ‘knowledge of God’.

As a legal charge, this ‘lack of knowledge’ – implies several things.

1. The first is that knowledge of God is attainable. Why would God hold Israel responsible for failing to do that which cannot be done?
2. The second is that God expects it of his people. Knowing God is not a theoretical construct, an abstract ideal or an item on a divine wish-list. God expects his people to know him – it’s as simple as that.
3. A third thing that is implied – is that a relationship with God demands it. Covenant relatedness to God is impossible – apart from knowledge of God.
4. Union with a holy God is broken by persistence in sin. God’s people are destroyed by their sin, whether it flows from ignorance or defiance. Ignorance is no excuse. And defiance is high-handed rebellion

So, one way or the other, Hosea says “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”.

The fact is that we live in a world that is filled with danger. It is a world designed and maintained by almighty God. And in this world, the dangerous things that you don’t know about…can kill you just as certainly as the dangerous things that you do know about. Ignorance is no protection. Ignorance just puts you in harms way.

Now if this is the way that the physical part of God’s temporal world, works, then what makes us think that the spiritual part of that same world – operates in another way? In the spiritual world that we live in, there is great peril in ignorance. The child locks were taken off of these doors a long time ago and there is no going back. Knowledge is the key to life on earth. Knowledge of God is the key to life with God – both here and beyond earth.

Now the state of Israel in the days of Hosea was no accident. It began with idolatry in the days of Solomon. It spread north to the 10 tribes of Israel as a state religion in the days of Jeroboam. And once it was firmly rooted in the minds and hearts of the people, no prophet of God was able to dig it out.

I don’t know if you have thought much about Idolatry. It’s not as obvious in North America as it is in other parts of the world. But we ought not mistake appearances for reality. Here are some thoughts about how it works. /the first thing that is sacrificed on the altar of idolatry is truth. Idolatry and God’s truth cannot co-exist. If you choose idolatry, then the truth has to go.

No one ever created a god of his own – that didn’t let him do whatever he wanted. They are designer gods, made to order. It is like a tailored suit that just fits perfectly.

Idolatry has not been confined to ancient times. People still fashion gods in their own image and to their own liking. Even those who name the name of Jesus may bring in a double to act the part. And when they do, he is usually a god with modern sensibilities. A god of political correctness, with a taste for pluralism. An existential god who is from moment to moment what you want him to be – a kind of silly putty god that can be formed and reformed. He is a light-weight god that is blown around by every doctrinal wind and a fickle one who changes his mind or doesn’t mind having it changed for him. You might say that he is the god that you’ve always wanted but didn’t dare to ask for.

A few years ago, it was common to see folks wearing a button with the letters WWJD. It reminded us to ask the question “what would Jesus do?” It was supposed to be a way of keeping our lord front and center. The question itself seemed innocuous. But it suggested that there is a standard that perhaps rises above the one set out in scripture. A sort of spiritual constitution by which all else – even scripture itself ought to be measured

Instead, we should have asked “what did Jesus do?” “What did Jesus say?” Let us not ask questions that suggest even the slightest possibility that we may come to know Jesus better than the scriptures do. Let us not set out to construct a hypothetical ‘mind of Christ’.

It is instead so very important that we come to know the actual mind of Christ. Idolatry takes many forms. But it cannot exist unless first lives in the mind. That is why the truth is the first thing sacrificed on the altars of idolatry.

In the Decalogue, the first command has always been pivotal. If the God who exists is not the one that you worship, then nothing else that you do will be right. And if the God who made man in his own image is not your God, then you will not understand what it means to be a human. Everything else finds it’s place in this world relative to God

But Israel chose to worship gods that did not exist. They turned away from God’s word, and as time went by, it was as if the scriptures did not exist

There is no guarantee that this will not happen to us. Left to our own devices, we should not expect, to rise any higher than they did.

In Hosea’s day, sin was normal. No one was shocked by it. They swore by God’s name to deceive and to defraud. Murder was commonplace. Crime rates rose and only the victims seemed to notice. Sexual immorality and violence were the order of the day.

If you want to know what it was like to live in Hosea’s day, just read the newspaper or turn on the news. Hosea describes our cities and our society. The question is – does he also describe me?

Life away from God pretty much knocks the wind out of you. It turns disappointment into despair. It seasons sorrow with hopelessness. It curses life with futility and meaninglessness and exchanges the sweetness of life with the pallor of death.

Hosea says – ‘the land mourns and those who live in it languish’. All of creation is affected by Man’s sin and it is all the more sad, because it doesn’t have to be that way.

All the same, no on had better say “stop sinning”. No one can really know what is right and wrong – so let’s just live and let live. Everyone has their own truth – so everybody is right and no one is wrong – right?

Their leaders had all caved and run from God’s truth. So God’s people stumble by day and their leaders by night. The blind are leading the blind because truth has gone up in smoke.

There is no knowledge of God in the land, so, how can there be faithfulness? How can goodness grow when no one has planted it? “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”

This is not the passive ignorance of the uninformed, nor the vacant ignorance of the mentally lazy. It is a willful ignorance that has rejected scripture and the God who gave it.

Conclusion

The fact is that knowledge is power. That’s why Moses prayed to God and said “let me know your ways that I may know you, so that I might find favour in your sight”.

It is the reason that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16)

If we don’t know about God, then we do not know Him. And if we don’t know his ways, then it is impossible for us to find favour in his sight.

God’s word is not out of reach. He has put it in our hands and He wants us to put it into our heads. God wants it written on our hearts, so that it may guide us back to Him and be blessed forever more.