Hosea 4:6 - Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge!

Hos.4:6; Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge!

Hosea 4:6 (KJV)  My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:
because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou
shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy
God, I will also forget thy children.

Hosea 4:6 (NLT)  My people are being destroyed because they
don't know me. It is all your fault, you priests, for you yourselves
refuse to know me. Now I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since
you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will forget to bless your
children.

Hosea 4:6 (CWB)  My people are destroying themselves because
they don't know me, and they reject anyone who tries to teach them
the truth about me.  Listen to me!  That's why I have rejected your
priests, because they have rejected my commandments and my laws.  That's
why I have rejected your children.

This is one of the best known and most frequently quoted
passages in Hosea. [Scofield SB]

So Isaiah mourns in the same words, "therefore my people are
gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge" .
They are destroyed for lack of it, for the true knowledge of God is
the life of the soul, true life, eternal life, as our Saviour saith,
"This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent." (Barnes' Notes)

"Knowledge" is not just a bookish collection of information. It
is experiential knowledge of the living God. Knowledge of His
written Word cannot be separated from personal knowledge of God. To know
God is to live in harmony with His will, and to live in harmony with
His will we must know His will. [Disciple SB]

Light, precious light, shines upon God's people; but it will not
save them unless they consent to be saved by it, fully live up to it,
and transmit it to others in darkness. God calls upon His people to
act. It is an individual work of confessing and forsaking sins and
returning unto the Lord that is needed. 2T123,4

To be a Christian is, in a sense, to be a man without a country.
If you truly are obedient to Christ - if you take the Scriptures to
heart and attempt to live them - you will inevitably come into
conflict with the world. You belong to no one but Christ, while those in
the world give themselves to people, possessions, institutions, and
idols other than to Christ. To be a Christian is to stand apart and
yet to remain within - to dare to be different. You look at
everything through the prism of Scripture, and things look different when
viewed biblically.
Success in the world means power, influence, money, prestige.
But in the Christian world, it means pleasing God. This quest for
obedience may lead you to do things that are wholly contrary to what the
world wants and rewards....
Obeying his commandments means reading and understanding
Scripture, then determining that you are going to live exactly as Scripture
teaches. I don't believe anybody can do that, because it is almost
impossible not to be caught up every day in the ways of the world. But you
can make an effort to live biblically. That is how the process of
sanctification works - learning how to obey God, how to listen for his commands
in your life. It is reading the Scripture and allowing it to soak
into you. It is understanding the requirements of God's commandments
and then gradually, day by day, in large ways and small, allowing
that understanding to control the actions of your life....
If I had to pick the one thing ... that has caused the most
failure in obeying God, it would be that we figure God's time is our
Bible study, our prayer time, the meeting with our prayer group, and
Sunday morning church service. That's just not true. God's time is
every moment of our lives. Bible study and church simply prepare us
for the rest of the moments of our lives.... We don't put him on and
take him off like a suit of clothes.... If we would "wear" him all
day long, we would discover obedience becoming a reflex reaction.
(From "The Quest for Obedience" by Charles Colson in Practical
Christianity)

The doctor carefully examines his patient but can find no
explanation for the young boy's unusual and persistent abdominal pains.
Suddenly the child blurts out, "I know what the problem is - green
apples!" "But how can you know for sure?" the doctor inquires. The boy
replies, "I have inside information."
Truth is transforming - but only when it is internalized. God's
Word brings conviction - but only when you expose your life to its
convicting truths. God's Word is likened to milk (1 Peter 2:2), meat
(Hebrews 5:12, 14), and honey (Psalm 19:10) - but it is only nourishing
when you feed upon it. An untouched pantry full of food is as useless
physically as an unopened Bible is spiritually.
Israel's spiritual bankruptcy could be traced to her vast
treasure of untouched truth. It wasn't that the people didn't know about
God. In fact, their very existence as a nation was based on that
knowledge. Rather, they had failed to live by that knowledge - to embrace
its implications in their individual and national lives.
How about you? Do you have "inside information" based on a
living relationship with Jesus Christ? If you have never done so
before, invite your loving Savior to come into your life. You'll
discover that to know him is to love him! [Daily Walk Bible]

A man has deprived himself of the best there is in the world who
has deprived himself of this, a knowledge of the Bible. When you
have read the Bible, you will know that it is the Word of God,
because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own
happiness, and your own duty. Woodrow Wilson [Passages Of Life SB]

1 John 2:3 (KJV)  And hereby we do know that we know him, if we
keep his commandments.

1 John 4:7 (KJV)  Beloved, let us love one another: for love is
of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

1 John 4:8 (NIV)  Whoever does not love does not know God,
because God is love.

1 John 5:3 (KJV)  For this is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

2 John 1:6 (KJV)  And this is love, that we walk after his
commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the
beginning, ye should walk in it.

John 14:15 (KJV)  If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Jer 22:15 (NCV)  "Does having a lot of cedar in your house make
you a great king? Your father was satisfied to have food and drink.
He did what was right and fair, so everything went well for him.
Jer 22:16 (NCV)  He helped those who were poor and needy, so
everything went well for him. That is what it means to know God," says the
LORD.

Col 3:10 (NCV)  You have begun to live the new life, in which
you are being made new and are becoming like the One who made you.
This new life brings you the true knowledge of God.

2 Th 1:8 (KJV)  In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that
know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: