Lack of Knowledge

Hosea chapter 4 &5
If you want to study along with me, before reading my devotional, read chapters 4 and 5 of Hosea.  Try to summarize in your own words what each chapter is about.  Write down your questions, see if you can answer those after you read my thoughts by cross referencing other verses, reading a commentary, or reading the first three chapters of Hosea. 

Our verse to look at closely today:
Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land.  There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery.  They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear. 
My people are destroyed by lack of knowledge   Hosea 4: 1-3; 4b

What are the thinking, actions, and behavior of those who have no knowledge of God?  God speaking through the prophet Hosea would say that not knowing God will always lead down a path of destruction.  Read carefully again and list the sins there.  All of them abusive to self and others.  All of them hurtful to God and self. 

Yet this path starts out seemingly harmless.  First there is a lack of faithfulness and kindness because there is no knowledge of God.  Then the list gets increasingly violent and intensifies.  All because there is no knowledge of God in the land.

Notice the people have no one to guide them in knowing God.  It says in verse 8 that the spiritual leaders feed on the sins of the people and direct them to iniquity.  The priests will be punished like the people; there is no difference in how they live than the people walking in darkness. 

Do you see around you the fallout from a life that is lived without considering God at all?  It is a bleak and empty existence.  People all around us are living without acknowledging Him at all and while some have hurt and pain that all can see, some are on the path toward it.  Not only will they languish but all of creation experience the consequences of this life as well. 


I hope friend you are asking yourself the question I have been asking myself since I read this:  what do I do if I have knowledge of God?  How do I keep the people around me from destruction?  The simple answer is that you must share the knowledge of God with them.  And what’s simple isn’t always what’s easy, but if you think of the chaos you see all around you, my prayer is that you and I would be moved with compassion to speak.  

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