Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, part two of My People Perish for a Lack of Knowledge from Hosea 4, verse 6. Often cited, My People Perish for a Lack of Knowledge and what that means for America. America, you remember hearing this verse and how often it's used by speakers of various stripes to add authority to the kind of knowledge they think Americans should be apprised of, right? If it's a radio talk show host, America perishes because they don't listen to his knowledge.

If it's a politician, America perishes because they don't follow his policies. If it's a radio preacher, oh, like me, America perishes because we do not follow my knowledge, my understanding of the Bible, right? And on and on we could go. But we also looked at this verse, Hosea 4, 6, in its context. And lo and behold, the knowledge spoken of there by Hosea was not a bare apprehension of certain pertinent facts, like you need X, Y, Z calories every day to function, or pertinent fact that the United States is a republic and not a democracy, or pertinent fact that ISIS was funded and armed by our own State Department, right?

All these are pertinent facts, but America does not perish for a lack of this kind of knowledge. In the first place, that is primarily as a matter of the greatest importance, the knowledge of which Hosea speaks, for the lack of which the people perish, is the knowledge of God. We saw this. Hosea, in his first verse of this chapter, says, The Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and no knowledge of God in the land.

Ah, no knowledge of God in the land. This is the knowledge for the lack of which the people perish. Even this knowledge is far more than we might first suspect we saw, right? That is, it's not a bare fact about God, like he really does exist, or he created the world, or God is closer to us than we know. All of these facts are true.

But when the Hebrew of Hosea's day heard this phrase, the knowledge of God, he understood it to be the deep, personal, and intimate knowing of a person. That is the person, the living God of the Bible. We saw this idea of knowledge all through the Bible. Husbands and wives know each other. God knew Israel in the wilderness.

That is, he knew her so as to love her and save, protect, feed, and shepherd her. Negatively also, we saw that Jesus says, I never knew you to those he casts out on the last day. The knowledge of God in the Bible is deep, personal, and intimate. To know in the Bible is to love so as to act in deep, personal, and intimate ways. Let me say that again.

To know in the Bible is to love so as to act in deep, personal, and intimate ways. To know does so out of covenantal faithfulness and obedience, too. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. No. Now, this is the knowledge that America lacks, too, I submit to you.

The knowledge that America lacks. The knowledge of the Lord. So when I use this verse, my people perish for a lack of knowledge, this is what I mean. This is the prior to all knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge that politicians, statesmen, preachers, and commentators should have in mind when they use these words.

My people perish for a lack of knowledge. We perish for a lack of knowledge of the Lord in the United States. It is the kind of knowledge that used to suffuse the hearts and minds of Americans, so much so that we even called ourselves a Christian nation. Now, I rehearsed this faithfully for you last week, but we also saw that there was cause for this lack of knowledge, too. There's a reason for it.

Hosea says, the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, all right. But he goes on to say, yet let no one contend and let no one accuse, for it with you is my contention, O priest. Oh, it was the priest of Israel, the preachers and teachers of the land, who utterly failed to teach, exhort, inculcate, exemplify, to preach the knowledge of God. The priest pastors of Hosea's day neglected their teaching, knowing function, because they were too busy satisfying their appetites at the expense of the people. Hosea said, they feed on the sin of my people.

They are greedy for their iniquity, unquote. By this time, the people of Israel had lapsed into idolatry and all of the corruption and debauchery that this entails. And Hosea says that the priests saw it, and they were hungry and greedy for that corruption and debauchery, too. The feasting and football, the fame and fortune, the priests pursued as eagerly as the people. What then?

Was God's judgment against these pastors? He says, it shall be like people, like priests. I shall punish them for their ways, and I will repay them for their deeds. Oh, like people, like priests. It should be the other way around.

Like priests, like people. But no, the priests were hungry for the sin of the people. And I also confessed to you last week, my own mea culpa, that this is on us, O pastor in the United States. We are the priests today, of whom Hosea spoke yesterday. We cannot self-righteously wag our finger at the American people, can we, saying, bad dog, that you people are to reform while we primp and preen in our pulpits.

No, God's contention is with us. We must be preaching the knowledge of God in its fullness and exemplifying it in our lives as well. So, I don't know about you, but I got a lot of work to do. What we must also come to understand is that there will be consequences for not knowing God. There is always consequences for the lack of the knowledge of God.

There's a trait in human nature, isn't there, that ignores what may be inconvenience to us, overlooks that which may demand that we change, deliberately passes by that which may cause pain. We become sublime in our ignorance, delighted in our blindness, and content in our deafness. It's called willful ignorance. Willful ignorance is America's state of its union to God these days. What happens to such a people, though?

Well, I submit to you, God judges an obstinate people by confirming them in their ignorance. This is how God works. He judges an obstinate people by confirming them in their ignorance. And as we speak, the United States is being confirmed in her ignorance. And no book of the Bible exemplifies this truth better than Isaiah.

Isaiah was called as a preacher to convert. To convert how many? The whole nation? Well, maybe half of them. How about a small remnant?

No, Isaiah was called to convert none. Isaiah was called to confirm Judah in her ignorance. Oh, what a dire ministry. By the time of Isaiah's ministry, Judah had for centuries been willfully ignorant of her God. For generations, God had sent his prophets to call the people to repentance, to the knowledge of God, even as Hosea had.

For generations, he had held out his hand to a stubborn and rebellious people, as the prophets say. But alas, they would not listen. They, Judah, was sublime in her ignorance. She delighted in her blindness. She was content in her deafness.

Judah was willfully ignorant. And therefore, God sent this prophet, Isaiah, to confirm them in that ignorance. At Isaiah's commissioning, God says, Go and say to this people, Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, Isaiah.

Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Unquote. God was no longer to heal them, but to judge them. By this time, God had decided to judge Judah, and nothing was going to stand in his way. Right?

This is a fearful thing to comprehend about God. It doesn't fit that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, of our popular evangelism. People who feel that we are all children of God recoil from the God of Isaiah. People who secretly tell themselves, I can always go back to God, His door is always open, and thus continue in their sin. These fail to see the God of the whole Bible.

God does close His door. Not all children are children of God. God does not have a wonderful plan for everyone's life. Such people are willfully ignorant, and God confirms such ones in their ignorance. Americans are at this very crossroads, dear listener.

Remember, we are being confirmed in our ignorance, that is, our ignorance of God. My people perish for a lack of knowledge, that is, the knowledge of God. No one does this better than the false prophets of God either. That is, the ones who tell us there's peace, peace when there is no peace. The ones who tell us America will be delivered when God has decided on enslavement.

Those who tell you, you can't do anything to improve the world, we'll be raptured out of all this pretty soon anyway. Ah, these are false prophets. These are the kinds of lying spirits that God sends to confirm a people in their ignorance in preparation for judgment. For example, when God wanted to judge King Ahab, He asked, Who will entice Ahab that he may go and fall at Ramoth Gilead? Well, a spirit comes forward and says, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets, unquote.

And then in Ezekiel, he says, If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived the prophet. When God decides to judge, when his patience has run out, he sends lying, deceiving prophets and spirits. The Bible is clear that God is of such a character that when a people persist in their ignorance long enough, He will send his own prophets like Isaiah to make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed, unquote.

He will also confirm these people in their ignorance by sending a lying spirit in the mouths of false prophets who may sincerely believe they speak the word of the Lord when they do not. God's patience is not perpetual, dear listener. God's patience is not perpetual. The Bible is clear that at a time of his own choosing, in the counsel of his own will, God will judge a people and nothing will stay his hand. In that day, there will be no mercy.

In that day, there will be no cry of repentance that will be heard. Jeremiah says this regarding Judah, Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them that they cannot escape. Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them. Therefore, he tells Jeremiah, Do not pray for this people or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble, unquote. Ominous words.

Is America at this juncture, dear listener? Has God decreed destruction for us? Has God decreed destruction for us? Will no cry for mercy be heard by him, even if we were to offer it? Will no petition of repentance be accepted, even if we were to submit one?

Are we at the point in God's dealings with us that it is no longer salutary to pray for the United States? Yes, the Bible is clear that nations and peoples do come to this point. Oh, dear listener, if God would only admit me to the counsel of his will, then I can tell you to what point the fuse of his patience has burned and whether the powder keg of his wrath is about to explode over the United States. But alas, God has not consulted me, nor has he shown me the mystery of his will, nor do I expect him to. Moses said this about the will of God.

He says, The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Oh, dear listener, the measure of God's patience and the day of his wrath are two of those secret things. But the things revealed to us, we have already touched upon. That is, though at present my people perish for a lack of knowledge, we do not have to. We can know the living God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We also know that God's controversy is with us, oh, pastor, preacher. Unless and until we as pastors preach the knowledge of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we do it for and as a nation, and not just in the four walls of our churches, we will perish for a lack of knowledge right now. Our people, dear listener, right now, our people, dear pastor, perish for a lack of knowledge. We are wandering around in the wilderness of our civil society like sheep without a shepherd. It has not always been the case, has it?

The history of this nation, you have the church through the centuries, is that the church has always been a prophetic voice to its ruling magistrates. That is, it has been faithful to the civil covenant in seeking justice and only justice. For example, St. John Chrysostom preached against the injustices of Queen Eudoxia, and he was persecuted severely for it. John Knox preached against the injustices of Bloody Mary, and he preached to her face. It so stunned her that she fell into silence for a full 15 minutes.

She couldn't even respond. She'd never been spoken to so frankly before, but nevertheless, John Knox was thrown into prison for it. Preachers in the colonies, too, in our own history, preachers in the colonies spoke relentlessly against the injustices of King George and his parliament against the American colonies, made the hanging list of General Cornwallis, too. On and on we could go. The Bible and church history are filled with examples of those knowledgeable of and faithful to their covenants, the civil covenants.

Brother preacher, if we do not shake off these false notions of pacifism and compartmentalization of the gospel, we compartmentalize the gospel when we say, we must not soil the garments of the gospel with culture, society, and government. We compartmentalize the gospel when we say, the world's going to hell in a handbasket, and we can't do anything about it. Just wait for the rapture. Oh, unless we jettison these false notions, then my people will continue to perish for a lack of knowledge, the knowledge of God. And, dear pastor, God's contention will continue to be with us.

Dear pastor, in order to be faithful to our charge, we must do several things. Number one, we must fully awaken the people. Number one, we must fully awaken the people. We are right to call people to repentance and salvation in Christ. As Paul says, awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Oh, this is indeed salvation, repentance and salvation in Christ. But as we have outlined above, that awakening involves the whole consciousness of the Christian life. All who are saved and entering into discipleship in the Christian life must understand that a crucial part of discipleship is how they frame, form, and fashion their surrounding culture, society, and government. This is part of sanctification, and sanctification is part of the gospel. Right now, the church is walking around in a hypnotic stupor, babbling about revelation, red heifers, raptures, and antichrists.

Meanwhile, the beast is already here, ravaging the world. And all we can do is throw up our hands, figuratively speaking, and say, God is in control, God is in control. It only means the rapture is almost here, right? This is a true example of Christian fatalism, too. It is time for us to offer our people the red pill.

Right? Out of the matrix, wake up. Show them the truth. Come out of the cloister and break the hypnosis of dispensational premillennialism. Maybe look at another eschatology that has served the church much better in her history.

Secondly, O pastor, O preacher, we must also hearken back to biblical principles of government and then teach them, too. Do not be afraid to do this, O pastor. We here in the United States especially have a rich tradition of a constitutional republic. This model, the constitutional republic, as I teach exhaustively in my series on the Christian background to the American Constitution, this model has been labored over for millennia. And it is founded on clear biblical principles, too.

Things like justice and mercy, law and order, provision for our common defense, and also the general welfare of all the people. Our founders also understood that we yet live and are bound by a civil covenant. We are obligated to participate in it as Christians, too. It is part of our responsibility before God to keep the provisions of the civil covenant. We cannot put ourselves on theological cruise control and play civil solitaire in the back seat while the vehicle goes God knows where.

Christians are obliged to pay attention and labor for justice and mercy in the halls of government. And we as preachers are obliged to teach our people so, or else we persist in perishing for a lack of knowledge. Dear preacher, dear pastor, stop preaching escape, hatch, rapture, fatalism. Stop preaching Bible bubble believism about government, as if faith can be put in one box and us civil lives together in another box, and ne'er the twain shall meet. Our people continue to perish for a lack of the knowledge of God because we preachers are dying for the right biblical message for our people.

So, is the Christian Republic, is the civil covenant and our obedience to it perfect? No. No, it can be improved. But instead of whining about its imperfection and waiting only for the perfect rule of King Jesus in the future, some literal thousand-year millennium, which I questioned in the first place, do the hard thing instead. Do the hard thing instead.

That is sweating over, improving the Christian Republic now, insofar as it can be done. It will never be perfect, but it can be improved, and we must labor in our sanctification of it, even as we labor in our own personal sanctification, though it will never be perfect. This is our obligation under the civil covenant. And then thirdly, preacher, thirdly, pastor, we must also mitigate the ignorance of our people with true sources, with the truth of the world and society around us. Indeed, people perish for a lack of knowledge.

That knowledge begins with the truth of Scripture, of new birth in Christ, of life in Christ. But it does not end there. The ninth commandment is as much enforced today as it was on the day it was promulgated on Mount Sinai. That ninth commandment, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

The ninth commandment. And implied then in this negative format of the command is it's positive too. That is, you shall speak the truth to your neighbor. This is a good test. Dear listener, this is a good test, dear pastor, of the information that we consume.

Is the truth being spoken to us in our news, in our information? Is it being spoken in truth to us? We are, after all, a neighbor to the news source in question. Or is it a false witness, a lie? As preachers, we must be trained and attuned to discern truth from lie and also to train our people to do the same.

Without true information, we will not be able to act righteously or truly. This is so true, dear listener, so true, pastor. Without true information, we will not be able to act righteously or truly. There is much to address in this realm for the Christian, dear listener. Terms like spin.

How often do you hear terms like this on our news today? Cynically, we see our politicians cynically. We see the mainstream media use terms like spin or maybe a politician's or a statesman's or a news outlet's narrative of a story. Narratives can differ. Narratives can deviate.

Narratives can alter from the truth, but they are still called narratives of a story. Or phrases like this. The fact of the matter is. How often have you heard a talking head use that phrase? The fact of a matter is.

It's a euphemism, isn't it? For doubtful and distorted information all the time. The fact of the matter is. Talking heads use this when they have no facts and they have no matter to their matter anymore. They use a phrase like the fact of the matter to lend weight to their point.

It is doubtful and distorted information we get from mainstream media. It only makes the public cynical about hearing the truth about their world. They turn off, do they not? We as pastors, we as preachers, must be trained and attuned ourselves to bona fide sources of information for ourselves and for our people. Dear listener, if indeed the United States of America perishes for a lack of knowledge, then it is because God's people, that is the church, has no knowledge of God.

Truth begins with a church. Repentance and reformation begins with a church. We cannot stamp our foot and impatiently point at the people and ask them to reform when indeed the church has not, when the pastors have not. It does not have to be so. We do not have to perish for a lack of knowledge.

We can know God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have seen that true knowledge, that the knowledge for which we perish for a lack of is indeed the knowledge of God. But we can change this. It does not have to be this way. We can know the living God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is the first and foremost what we must preach. Is it not, dear pastor, as I speak to you, brother and sister, and I look in a mirror when I say these things because our first obligation is to preach repentance and salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then all of the responsibilities that come after that. Dear listener, if you do not believe that sanctification is part of the gospel, if you reject this sanctification, that is the transformation of the life of the believer, then you have half a gospel. Because without sanctification, without true transformation, there is no salvation.

Without fruit, there is no root. And part and parcel of sanctification is our relations with each other as we govern ourselves under the civil covenant. That is, our sanctification must progress apace in culture, in society, and in government as well. This is indeed part of sanctification, and sanctification is a part of the gospel too. So as we preach salvation and repentance in Christ, eternal life in Christ, we also preach our responsibilities then in sanctification and our responsibilities of sanctification then under the civil covenant and all the other covenants of God.

Just as you, O married person, are engaged and you are under and you are bound to your spouse in the marriage covenant, and just as you, dear listener, are bound to Christ and to the living God in the covenant of redemption. You are also bound one to another, to a brother. You are bound to a neighbor under the civil covenant, and therefore you must labor for justice and mercy and safety and law and order and all of the other things that government stands for under the civil covenant.

You must labor for these things, not only vote, but also labor for your brother's good, labor for true justice, call injustice what it is, prosecute injustice where you find it, and indeed establish mercy towards brothers and sisters to those indeed who are in need, for those who are being carried away to death, as the Proverbs say, we must intervene. That means intervening on the issue of abortion. That means intervening on the issue of injustice and unjust wars and all of the things under that kind of a rubric, all falling under the civil covenant. So, dear brother and sister, it is time indeed to get proper and good information out there.

If indeed the United States perishes for a lack of knowledge, it's on us, pastors. It's on us, church. It's because we, God's people, the church, have not a true knowledge of God in Christ. Doesn't have to be so, does it? Continue to preach Christ.

Continue then to preach the love of God. Continue to preach our responsibilities and sanctification, which includes our responsibilities under the civil covenant. Do this, brother and sister. And as we do, we will see a transformation. We will see us basking in the knowledge of God, a true knowledge of God, thriving and living rather than dying for a lack of knowledge of God.

Let us live and thrive for a bountiful knowledge of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. I exhort you to visit us. Come and see us.

Perhaps you've been meaning to pay us a visit here in the past few weeks, and this is the time to do it. Cross our threshold. You'll find a warm welcome and solid worship and preaching of the word. Come and visit us. New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for further information at 523-0196. That is, call us once again at New Geneva, 523-0196. 523-0196. 523-0196.

523-0196. 523-0196.