CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 4:6. Know.] Lit. the knowledge of God (Hosea 4:1), which is life to the soul. Reject] Utterly reject thee from being a priestly nation (Exodus 19:6); deprived of priestly rank, and made like heathens. God repays in kind; despise the truth, this will suppress it.
HOMILETICS
IGNORANCE OF GOD: A WARNING TO THE PEOPLE.—Hosea 4:6
The prophet had complained that there was no knowledge of God in the land. This was a serious offence in a land of privileges and religious teachers, and an error fatal to the people. All were ignorant. The people and the priests were all to blame. In spite of warning and judgment, by the destruction of one dynasty after another, they would not desist from the sin of Jeroboam. God therefore would deprive the nation of its priestly honour, strip it of its priestly rank, and make it like a heathen nation. The words contain a warning to people and priests.
I. Ignorance of God is inexcusable. Israel had abundant means and opportunities of knowing God. “For did Israel not know?” and “have they not heard?” (Romans 10:18-19). The sound of the gospel was heard, and was sent forth like the voice of nature in all the land. The conversion of the Gentiles and the universality of Christianity were predicted; they had the oracles of God, and were highly exalted above other people. They had no excuse therefore for their unbelief. They possessed the law of God, but neglected to look into it, and forsook it. In this Israel are like many now, who, in the midst of religious ordinances, in a land of Bibles and Christian Sabbaths, disregard, neglect their salvation, and live in total ignorance of God. There is a natural distaste for spiritual things, inattention to religious duties, and an absorption in things of this world, which beget indifference and lead to unbelief. There are persons who are moral but not devout, honest but not prayerful, benevolent but not converted, amiable but not decided, nominal Christians who are not real Christians. Those who forget God are more numerous than the profligate and profane. Ignorance of God seems a small sin, but ignorance is allied with wickedness. To forget God is to exclude the essential parts of religion. It implies that his goodness, holiness, and claims are of no value to us; it is to exclude God from our thoughts and give him no place in our heart and conduct. Hence to be ignorant of God is not to love and fear him; not to live in subjection to his law, nor to aim at his glory as the chief end of life. Yet this is the real, the sad state of thousands in Christian England!
II. Ignorance of God is wilful. “Thou hast rejected knowledge.” To forget is an act of negligence; to reject is a calm, deliberate sin, a positive refusal of God’s kind offers. Not the mere absence of knowledge, a deprivation of it; but a denial of it, an affected ignorance. They hated the light and loved the darkness. There is no guilt in rejecting some things, but to refuse the offers of mercy and despise the revelations of God’s love in his Son, is to sin away all mercy. “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.” Deliberately and knowingly to forsake God and the services of the sanctuary, is to make common cause with ungodly men and anti-christian synagogues. To suppress by an act of self-will your better knowledge and conviction, is to reserve yourself for future punishment and rejection. If the apostate under the Old Testament was punished with severe penalty, how much greater the punishment of the sinner against greater privileges and fuller light! “Behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.”
III. Ignorance of God is destructive. A man may be ignorant of mathematics, astronomy, and geology, without suffering much; but to be ignorant of God, the chief and highest good, is to rob ourselves of happiness and expose ourselves to death. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
1. Ignorance perpetuates folly. Ignorant men fall into temptations, seek sensual gratifications, and live in error. Knowledge is valuable for its own sake, and when rightly used, preserves from many “foolish lusts.” “Be assured,” says Dr Chalmers, “it is not because the people know much, that they ever become the willing subjects of any factious or unprincipled demagogue. It is just because they know too little. It is just because ignorance is the field on which the quackery of a political impostor ever reaps its most abundant harvest.”
2. Ignorance destroys present enjoyment. The animal has all the instincts necessary to make it happy; but man’s true enjoyment is in the knowledge and love of God. Human beings to fulfil their vocations must have knowledge. We are dependent for happiness upon knowledge. Every evil that curses mankind is connected with ignorance. Hence knowledge is light. Ignorance is a blind guide, and its results are often more fearful than the cause itself. Exclude knowledge from the mind, you turn it into a world of darkness, and rob it of its native element. Thus driven from light, no brilliant genius, no flashes of fancy, can enlighten it. These will scathe like the lightning, rather than bless and cheer, and leave the gloom more horrible. Knowledge is life and health. “That the soul be without knowledge, it is not good.” The words of God are the health and life of the soul. “They are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” Wisdom is the indispensable condition of physical and spiritual health. It promotes temperance, and gives self-restraint. It teaches submission to the Divine will, and leads to the emancipation of our noblest powers and capacities. It secures the fullest and freest development of body and mind in personal life and activity for God. Ignorance is sickness, decay, and death. Knowledge unites to God, but ignorance cuts off from God. “My people are cut off for lack of knowledge” Cut off from the source of life and enjoyment, like a branch lopped off from the tree. Man cannot bear fruit of himself, hence he will perish if not united to God in knowledge and faith.
3. Ignorance destroys future happiness. Eternal life is suspended in knowledge, for men “perish for lack of knowledge.” On the other hand, “This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Knowledge of all kinds is the proper wealth of our rational nature: but to captivate us with the knowledge of God, it is set forth as the only wealth worth possessing—the only science which conducts to life. And this life not mere unending existence, but growing knowledge and conformity to Christ. Religion on earth consists in the knowledge of God, and blessedness in heaven consists in the vision of God. Well may we pray with Professor Hall, “O Lord, remove our ignorance, that we may know thee; our idleness, that we may seek thee; our unbelief, that we may find and enjoy thee.”
IGNORANCE OF GOD: A WARNING TO THE PRIESTS
I. Priests blamed for the ignorance of the people. They were appointed to teach and warn the people; but were unfaithful to their trust, and suffered the nation to sin.
1. They neglected study. “Thou hast rejected knowledge.” They had the means, but did not improve them. They had the law, but did not read it. The preacher should be wise and teach the people knowledge (Ecclesiastes 12:9); should study to make provision for their wants (Matthew 13:52); and make full proof of his ministry. But an idle, ignorant minister, is a disgrace to the community, and a curse to the Church. 2. They lived inconsistent lives. They professed to belong to God, but worshipped the calves of Jeroboam. Through poverty, fear, or shame, they withheld, suppressed the truth, and connived at the nation’s sin. They shared in the rejection of God’s truth, and brought themselves under God’s curse. “I will also reject thee.”
II. Priests punished for the ignorance of the people. It was their duty to remove it, but they encouraged it to answer their own selfish ends. Hence they were guilty, partook of the sins of the people, and were deprived of their honour.
1. They were cast out of office themselves. “Thou shalt be no priest to me.” Sad fall! God will not retain idle and ungodly men in office. Those that have no love for Christ and immortal souls, will have no love for their work, and display no activity in it. “Consider this,” says Bishop Taylor, “which is a great truth—that every degree of love to the world is so much taken from the love of God.” “Take heed unto thyself,” lest thou miscarry and become a castaway.
2. They deprived their posterity of honour. “I will also forget thy children.” What will the rising generation be without the means of knowing and loving God? What will the nation become when its “candlestick is removed out of its place”? It is sad to be forgotten of God. The sun does not shine on more wretched creatures, than on the awful masses of our fellow-creatures growing up in ignorance and estrangement from God. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” God only knows how far the ministers of his word are the cause of this destruction. “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ezekiel 3:18; cf. Psalms 51:14; Acts 20:26).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Rejecting knowledge. Proves—
1. A wrong spirit: (a) hating to be taught, (b) despising the teacher, (c) resolved to sin.
2. A mournful indication: (a) pride, (b) contempt of God, (c) indifference to truth.
3. A fatal result: (a) deadness of conscience, (b) unbelief of heart, (c) utter rejection of God.
Forgetting God.
1. The course, forgetting his love and goodness, word and power, justice and grace.
2. The result: (a) awful, (b) unexpected, (c) universal, (d) inevitable. “Ignorance is so far from being the mother of devotion, that it is the mother of destruction; lack of knowledge is ruining to any person or people [Matt. Henry].”
Parents who are careless as to themselves, as to their own lives, as to their own shame even, still long that their children should not be as themselves. God tries to touch their hearts where they are least steeled against him. He says not I will forget thee, but I will forget those nearest thy heart, thy children [Pusey].
It is the righteous judgment of God upon negligent parents and unfaithful ministers, to requite their children, for their treatment to his. “I will also forget thy children.” Parents cannot do wrong without injuring their children. Ministers cannot neglect their duty without robbing their people. The iniquities of the fathers and teachers shall be visited on their children.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hosea 4:6. Knowledge. Some years ago a vessel sailing on the northern coast of South America was seen to make signals of distress. When hailed by another vessel, they reported themselves as “dying for water!” “Dip it up, then,” was the response; “you are in the mouth of the Amazon river.” There was fresh water all around them, they had nothing to do but to dip it up, and yet they were dying of thirst, because they thought themselves surrounded by the salt sea. How often are men ignorant of their mercies! How sad that they should perish for lack of knowledge! Jesus is near the seeker even when he is tossed upon the oceans of doubt. The sinner has but to stoop down and drink and live; and yet he is ready to perish, as if salvation were hard to find [Spurgeon].
Those are marked for ruin that are deaf to reproof and reject good counsel. “Therefore,” says Bp Pilkington, “let every one keep himself in God’s school-house and learn his lesson diligently. For as the body is nourished with meat, so is the soul with the word of God.”