My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me. (Hosea 4:6)One of the most powerful sermon illustrations I ever saw was with this verse. The preacher was speaking and he said, “As the Bible says in Hosea 4:6,” and then he stopped. He looked through his Bible, the front, the back, he leafed a bit. It was obvious he could not find the book of Hosea. He finally went to the table of contents and found the page number.
The congregation was obviously embarrassed for him. He finally finds it and reads (from the King James Version) My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge. Wow! That hit home so hard. He wasn’t lost. He was making a point.
And it was a point that I have kept for the next forty years.
Hosea says that God did not turn away from his people simply because they had done bad things. He turned away because they refused to know him.
When Ella and I were dating, we would talk about our commonalities, things we liked and disliked. We got to know each other. Favorite colors, favorite music, favorite food. we were looking for ways in which we were alike. And we learned to love each other.
The young man dates the young woman and he tells her about himself and how he is, how he feels, and that he loves her. In return, she says “Meh.” She doesn’t care to know who he is. In fact, she is not even sure why she came on the date.
When it comes down to it, he cannot form any kind of relationship with her simply because she will not learn to know him. She doesn’t care about him.
It may even be that they form some kind of relationship and he is devoted to her. But she is not devoted to him. She may marry him to get away from home, or for his money, or some little romantic feeling. They may even be married for a while, but she really, deep down inside, doesn’t care enough about him to get to really know him.
For him, it is a deep relationship. For her, it is shallow. She really doesn’t care.
Finally, it becomes apparent to him that she just doesn’t care. She runs around on him, she neglects him, she slanders him among all her friends, She makes it plain that she does not want to get to know him.
Israel made it plain they did not want to know God. They wanted to know a God, just not this one. They wanted a God they could manipulate, that they could order around. YHVH God was just too strong for them. They wanted someone a little more manageable.
The same holds true today. People want a God that they can handle, that will participate in their stuff with them, that cares about the same things they care about, who they can use to advance their programs.
But God is not like that. He goes his own way. And quite frankly, any God you can control would not be that powerful a God in the first place.
God’s people sinned greatly in the Old Testament. But it was not their sin for which God punished them. He turned away from them because they did not care about him.
They were destroyed because they refused to get to know God/
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