Enable to get to the question of lack of knowledge, we will look at chapter four of Hosea as a whole. In this section, God brings a charge of noncompliance (disobedience) against Israel.
The religious leaders had neglected to lead the people to God, and the custom of prostitution had supplanted the right godly worship that they should have had.
What Is the Lack of Knowledge in Hosea 4:6?
The Israelites had declined in their spiritual and moral behavior, violating the commandments that God had given them. They found it simpler to denounce the wife of Hosea for her infidelity, yet they failed to see that they were unfaithful to God.
God clarifies in verses one through three the explanations behind Israel's misery. Their untamed lawless conduct had brought twin decisions of expanded viciousness and natural emergency.
There is not consistently immediate circumstances and logical results (cause-and-effect) connection between our activities and the issues that we face.
By and by, when we are encircled by hardships, we ought to genuinely ask ourselves, “Have I done anything corrupt or unreliable that has caused my torment?”
If we find that we are even to blame, then, at that point, we should change our ways before expecting God to help us.
Verse two may suggest the deaths of the rulers during Hosea's lifetime. Shallum killed the king Zechariah, not the prophet, and took the sovereignty. Then Menahem killed Shallum and obliterated a whole city since it would not acknowledge him as the king (2 Kings 15:8-16).
God called attention to that as even homicide was being taken nonchalantly in Israel.
We regularly fault others if and when we are dreading discipline for our own immoral behavior. Hosea cautioned the priests not to fault any other person; the country's transgressions were their shortcoming.
Israel's priests were good at bringing up the people’s transgressions, however, God would not permit them to disregard their own unreliable activities.
Rather than teaching the country morality and religion, the priests had driven the way toward worshipful admiration of idols and indecent immoral behavior.
Their inability to lead the people in God's ways puts the vast majority of the fault for Israel's annihilation on them. Realizing that God will not permit us to fault others for our missteps should make us manage our transgressions head-on.
We are liable for our own evil activities. We ought to be careful with the inclination to fault others since it can hold us back from wanting to atone for our own sins.
Hosea evened out his charges against the religious leaders. Who were these men? At the point when Jeroboam opposed Solomon's son Rehoboam and had set up an opponent realm in the north, he likewise set up his own religious institutional framework (1 Kings 12:25-33).
Infringing upon God's regulation, he made two gold calf symbols and advised the people to begin to worship them. He additionally designated his own priests, who were not relatives of Aaron.
From the outset, the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom kept on adoring God, despite the fact that they were doing it incorrectly. In any case, very soon they likewise started to revere Canaanite gods.
After a brief time, they had subbed Baal for God and they had stopped worshipping God by any stretch of the imagination. It is not to be expected that Jeroboam's flawed priests could not protect the genuine worship of God.
God blamed the religious elders for holding the Israelites back from knowing him. They should have been the spiritual leaders, yet they turned into the heads of immoral behavior. The people might have told each other, “The priests are doing it so it should be alright for us to do it as well.”
Being in a spiritual leadership position is a weighty obligation. Regardless of whether we are teaching a Sunday school class, teaching a Bible study, holding an office in the church, or are music leaders, we are not to mess with our obligations as church leaders. We should be church leaders who point others to God.
The priests would cheer when the individuals trespassed, because each time an individual gave a customary offering, the priests would get a part of it. The more the individuals trespassed, the more the priests would get.
Since they could not eat every one of the actual offerings, they would sell some and would give some to their family members. The priests had benefitted from the continuation of wrongdoing. It gave them an elevated position in the community as well as power.
So rather than attempting to lead the individuals out of trespassing and toward God, they urged the continual sinning to have a more noteworthy benefit.
What was this ritualistic prostitution? The central Canaanite divine beings, Baal, and Ashtoreth embodied sexual propagation and fertility power. Of course, their worship included ceremonies that had contemptible sexual practices.
The male worshippers had intercourse with female sanctuary prostitutes, or priestesses, and the young ladies that wanted to have children engaged in sexual relations with the male priests.
God made wine to make man happy (Psalm 104:15) and he tells man to “rejoice with the wife of thy youth” (Proverbs 5:18). However, every one of God's gifts can be abused. A festival can transform into intoxication and joy in marriage can be supplanted with unbiblical sexual intimacy.
At the point when any of God's gifts become more significant than the Giver, some type of abuse will follow.
By eliminating themselves from God's legitimate law that was focused on Jerusalem, the occupants of the Northern Kingdom had actually cut themselves off from his Word and from his method of pardoning.
The drive to be free and autonomous from every religious limitation can move us all the way out of God's will.
God sent an admonition toward the Southern Kingdom of Judah and to its priests that they were not to become like Israel. The priests of Israel who stayed in the North had failed to remember their spiritual legacy and they had sold out to Baal.
They currently advanced the worship of idols and ritualistic prostitution. Israel would not get away from chastisement, yet Judah could assume that it would not follow the example that Israel portrayed.
What Is the Meaning Today of Hosea 4:6?
my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children (Hosea 4:6).
Christians today have failed God for not teaching and preaching about the gravity of sin. If they do, they are considered to be discriminating against others, regardless of the type of sin that is committed against God’s Word. Religious freedom seems to be slowly going away.
It is all about inclusion and tolerance. Humanistic values are entering our churches. It has become more about prosperity, church growth, making everyone “feel good” and not about redirecting our unrighteousness to our High Priest (Jude 1:17-19; Matthew 15:1-3, 7-9).
Our society today wants to mock, scare, and undermine Christians into quietness and acknowledgment of today’s social norms. Society wants to question biblical truths. Society wants to confine the church’s impact inside its own structure.
Society wants to execute full oppression due to the "risk" of biblical Christianity. Society assaults Christians who contradict its way of thinking. Society wants Christians to preach and teach the need for tolerance and unity in the church.
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! (Acts 5:29).
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels (Luke 9:25-26).
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
For further reading:
What Is Knowledge According to the Bible?
Why Do the Wise Shine Like the Brightness of the Heavens?
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