Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with the Moment of Truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to ask you about this text from the Bible. What did the prophet Hosea mean for Israel, first of all, that my people perish for a lack of knowledge? You've heard this text before. God said despairingly of Israel, my people perish for a lack of knowledge.

And what does that text mean for us today in the 21st century here in America? This verse is cited, oftentimes, you hear it by preachers, statesmen, commentators, and they cite it in order to lend weight to a more general point that they make, that perhaps Americans are ill-informed. And if they had only the right information, that is, that they listened to the particular commentator in question, well, then they would have the right knowledge and be able to think right, vote right, and live right. But does this exhaust the meaning of this text? I would suggest no.

This text, Hosea 4, verse 6, my people perish for a lack of knowledge, has never been more pertinent to America than it is today. First of all, we must ask, what kind of knowledge is God speaking of when he says my people perish for a lack of knowledge? Sailors perish at sea from scurvy for generations they did for the lack of knowledge that they had a vitamin C deficiency. General Custer and his men perished at little bighorn for a lack of knowledge that the plains tribes had gathered en masse for war. Whole societies perished from famine for a lack of knowledge that they exhausted soils by failing to rotate their crops among other factors.

Wow. It is possible to perish from a lack of knowledge, isn't it? But is this what God means when he proclaims through Hosea, my people perish for a lack of knowledge? Well, is the lack of knowledge a bare ignorance of certain pertinent facts? No, I submit to you, not here, not in this text, in its context.

If you read this statement in its context, you know that the people are dying for not knowing the Lord. Hosea says in chapter 4, verse 1, 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, unquote. So Hosea puts this in context earlier in his prophecy. So, dear listener, this is the first and prior of all knowledge to know the Lord.

This is that knowledge that America lacks, the knowledge by which in the lack of she perishes. America is perishing for a lack of the knowledge of God. God can be known as a person. Yes, the person. It is ensconced in the Emmanuel.

That is the God with us principle. It is the promise of the new covenant, which Jeremiah says, puts it this way in chapter 31. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more, unquote. Extensive quotation from Jeremiah 31.

This sense of knowledge is critical to understanding the Bible. It is not a bare comprehension of facts. It is not a shallow acquaintance one may have with a neighbor. It is not a simple recognition of something you've seen before. No, the knowledge of God in the Bible is deep, personal, and intimate.

Ah, do you know this God, dear listener? It can be, he can be known through a relationship with Jesus Christ. The knowledge of God in the Bible is deep, personal, and intimate. And we know this from how knowledge is used in personal relationships throughout the Bible to know someone. For example, Genesis 4, 1 says, now Adam knew his wife and she conceived and bore Cain, knew his wife.

That is intimate relations, including sexual. Hosea 13, verses 4 and 5 says, I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt. You know no God but me. And besides me, there is no Savior. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought, unquote.

Here, once again, that knowledge is reciprocal too, intimate, personal, reciprocal. And then from Matthew chapter 7, verse 23, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. And then I will say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Here, it is important that God know you.

It is not enough that you know God. Is it true that God knows you? So that 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. And it does so, this knowledge does so out of covenantal faithfulness and obedience too.

These are not mutually exclusive ideas, the idea of obedience and love, but rather they are requisite. This is the kind of knowledge that America lacks, dear listener, 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 of all knowledge. That is the knowledge of the Lord.

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. It is the kind of knowledge that used to suffuse the hearts and minds of Americans, so much so that even our founders could characterize us as a Christian nation. George Washington puts it this way, Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers, unquote.

George Washington would be censored for saying those kinds of things today. Facebook and Google probably ban him for doing so, but it's true. We've had more character. We would have more character in Congress instead of more characters in Congress, right? This, despite our holy trinity of progressivism, which is tolerance, diversity, and radical egalitarianism.

Once more, as I have articulated it clearly in other sermons, we owe the very values and virtues of tolerance, diversity, and egalitarianism in their proper form and perspective. We owe them to Christianity. Our founders assumed as a working principle that America was a Christian nation. So did entire branches of early government. In fact, in reflecting upon the early colonial charters and their purposes, that is, they were founded, as the Mayflower Compact puts it, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.

In fact, the Supreme Court of 1892, in a case called Church of the Holy Trinity versus the United States, the Supreme Court of 1892 tediously goes through charter after charter and then concludes, and I quote, there is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people, unquote.

Then again, an early American historian, a man named Benjamin Franklin Morris in 1864, had this to say in summary. He said, this is a Christian nation, first in name and second because of the many and mighty elements of a pure Christianity, which have given it character and shaped its destiny from the beginning. The chief security and glory of the United States of America has been, now is, and will be forever. The prevalence and domination of the Christian faith, unquote. Now, dear listener, I have only begun to document for you that indeed America used to thrive in an abundance of knowledge.

Now we perish for a lack of knowledge. Make no mistake about it, dear listener, that knowledge is the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is deep, personal, and intimate. And the knowledge of God is bound closely with covenant faithfulness and obedience. It is to this knowledge that we must return.

It is to this knowledge that we must cling in our daily circumstances. But to date, my people perish for a lack of knowledge. There is cause for this lack of knowledge, too. And Hosea puts his finger on it, once again putting this verse in context. Hosea says, the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.

Yet let no one contend and let no one accuse. For with you is my contention, O priest. No, the contention, the people were dying for a lack of knowledge because of the priests in Israel of that day. It was not kings, not prophets, not the pagan soothsayers, but the priests of the land. It is to their charge that Hosea lays the blame for the people's lack of knowledge.

It is to them, the priest, that he says, my people perish for a lack of knowledge because you, that is the priest, have rejected knowledge. I reject you from being a priest to me, unquote. Is your knowledge increasing, dear listener? Do you begin to see the fuller context? The priests were the teachers of Israel, the pastors of Israel, who were to teach the knowledge of the Lord.

Leviticus 10 and 11 says, to Aaron and his sons, you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses. And then in Deuteronomy 33, final words of Moses to the Levites were, they shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law. Ah, listener, dear listener, by this knowledge of the word, the people would come to know God. This is how God works. And it's still true today.

Pastors serve this priestly function today. The priests of the land were those who not only interceded for the people at the altar of God, the Bible says they shall put incense before you and hold burnt offerings on your altar. But the priests also made the people to understand God's word so that they might obey and come to know him. My people perish for a lack of knowledge. And that knowledge is the knowledge of God, the relationship of living with him, knowing him.

And when Nehemiah called all of the returnees from Babylon to Israel to hear the reading of the book of the law, that is the Torah, who was it who exegeted the text, right? Nehemiah chapter 8 says, the Levites helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense, and the Greek word there is exegete, to draw out the meaning, so that the people understood the reading, unquote. Behold the mandate of the priest under the old covenant. Behold the mandate of the pastor under the new covenant.

The roles are the same. Behold the condemnation of Hosea to false priests. Hosea says, my people perish for a lack of knowledge, because you, that is the priest, have rejected knowledge. I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children, unquote.

The priests or pastors of Hosea's day neglected their teaching, knowing function. It's a teaching, knowing function that they had, because they were too busy satisfying their appetites at the expense of the people. Sounds like many of the pastors today, doesn't it? As Hosea says, they feed on the sin of my people. They are greedy for their iniquity.

By this time, the people of Israel had lapsed into idolatry and all of the corruption and debauchery that that entails. Hosea says that the priests saw it, and they were hungry, greedy for that same corruption and debauchery, the wine, women, and song of the pagan festivities, the worship of the priests, pursued as eagerly as the people. Ah, what then? Was God's judgment against these pastors? He said, God says, it shall be like people, like priests.

I shall punish them for their ways, and I'll repay them for their deeds. Ah, like people, like priests. That was the condemnation, the punishment God visited upon Israel. God's judgment against these false pastors was that they would become like the people they so envied for their wickedness. It would be a punishment and judgment, not a relief and reward.

Now, this fate is exactly 180 degrees opposite of their role. They were to be leaders, not followers. The true model, it is like priests, like people. The model at the time of Hosea, like people, like priests. And Jesus himself was fond of telling his disciples this truth, extant throughout the ancient world, that like teacher, like student, like master, like servant.

Jesus said that many times. And this Jesus would do, especially when he wished to underline the certainty of suffering in their future. The true pastoral model is that of Jesus and Hosea. Like priests, like people, pastors are to be leaders out in front, sometimes halting the advance of the people when its direction is wrong, not following them in their error. Pastors are to declare clearly, this is the way, walk ye in it, not which way are you guys going?

Okay, I'm right behind you, right? Leading from behind? No, pastors are to be out front. No, we do not follow the Obama model of leadership leading from behind. We see where that's gotten us in the world.

And you see where it gets the United States when her pastors lead from behind, like the priests of Israel. And for many of us, it is like people like, pastor, we are so afraid of offending too many people or preaching the whole counsel of God. Oh, pastor, if you're listening, this is on us. Rather than crying crocodile tears and wringing our hands and pointing the finger at the people for the sad spiritual state of the nation, perhaps we ought to look first to our own house. This is on us.

God holds us responsible for this mess. The Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land for with you is my contention. Oh, priest slash pastor. Oh, dear pastor, if you're listening, if we are not preaching Christ crucified first, foremost, and boldly, then with us is God's contention. If we're not preaching Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, based upon scripture alone, then with us is God's contention.

If we as pastors are letting the worldling dictate our worship styles, like the seeker would make music and make praying and make sermons, that is insipid, comfortable worship to make the seeker, read unbeliever, feel comfortable, then with us is God's contention. If we are still preaching blood, moon, buffoon, balderdash, revelation, red heifer, rapture, ring of my role in end time prophecy with no end in sight, then with us is God's contention. If we're not preaching God's true economy with man, that is his mode of dispensing grace and law, blessing and curse, judgment and salvation, that is covenant, then with us is God's contention.

If we're not preaching the Christian's obligation under the civil covenant, that is to do all within his power to ensure godly culture, society and government, then with us is God's contention. Now, God has dealt with us, dear listener, under four great covenants. We need to be preaching covenant as God's economy, not dispensationalism. Four great covenants we are under at this point, at this time, we are under the covenant of creation, for example. This bond God made with the creature who bore his image, that is Adam.

God made all of creation out of nothing and put it all under someone that is our first father, Adam. And under that covenant, he gave him the dominion mandate, which is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth, unquote, from the covenant of creation. But we are also under the covenant of marriage, too. This bond God makes between the man and woman, between husband and wife. As Adam says, this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And by the covenant of marriage, we find fruitfulness, too. We can fill the earth and take dominion. We find companionship, too. And God gets for himself godly seed, as Malachi says.

Malachi says God wants godly seed. Well, thirdly, then, we are also under the great covenant of redemption, redemption, the covenant of redemption. This is that great solemn covenant by which we are saved. God the Father has covenanted with his Son to purchase and redeem a people for himself from among the lost of mankind. As John records Jesus praying to his Father, revealing this covenant, he says, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Unquote from John 17. Then, we are also under the civil covenant. Under the civil covenant.

And here, God rules the temporal affairs of men immediately through his image bearer, that is man. God does not sit on a cloud every day with his gavel yelling, hey, you, off to jail. You, a big fat fine. You, off with your head. No.

God rules immediately, doesn't he, through godly men. God first ordained this covenant, that is the civil covenant, after the flood. He laid it out in principle in Genesis 9. For your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning, he said to Noah. From every beast, I will require it, and from a man.

From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. Unquote. This was the first obligation of government, that is justice.

And to those who would be magistrates, he commands justice, and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Now, this is reinforced for us in the New Testament, too, where Paul says, rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. He is God's servant, that is the magistrate, is God's servant for your good. And that good is good defined by what standard? Huh?

By what standard? That of the Code of Hammurabi? Well, I don't think so. That under Islam? No.

The good that is to be enforced is good defined by the Bible. That is biblical standards of justice and mercy. By what other standard will you measure the good, dear listener? By what other standard will you measure the good, or the bad, or the ugly, for that matter? Dear fellow pastor, dear fellow priest and servant of the Most High God, we are under covenant obligation to strive after godly government.

And if we're not doing so and preaching this to our people, then with us is God's contention. It is an abrogation of duty as a pastor to say, get him saved and let the devil take the hindmost. No. It is a partial gospel we preach if we do not preach sanctification of the whole man, including his obligation under the civil covenant to sanctify his culture, society, and government insofar as he is able. Because we do not do this, my people perish for a lack of knowledge, dear pastor.

Knowing and fulfilling God's covenants is part and parcel of knowing God. If the knowledge of God is deep and personal and intimate, a bond of covenant and obedience, then knowing and obeying his covenants is crucial that my people thrive for an abundance of knowledge, not that my people perish for a lack of knowledge. And that requires that we engage with our culture, society, and government, not withdraw from it and keep silent about it, pretending that all we have to do is cloister ourselves into the four walls of the church and preach the gospel in season and out of season.

We pick at faults and foibles, pimples and piccadillos, but ignore the big cancerous tumor that's mushrooming in our gut as a nation. We must call evil for what it is and the evil for who they are. It is part of the prophetic stance of the prophet pastor and part of the teaching function of the priest pastor. Here, there is an implicit warning. God judges an obstinate people by confirming them in their ignorance.

Sinners do not go on at their own timing and discretion, letting God know when they're done sinning, ready now for an accounting. No, rather, it is God who decides when he has had enough and when he should bring judgment and what kind of judgment that should be. He said to them, to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables, Jesus said, so that they may indeed see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.

Oh, dear listener right now, our people, including us, fellow pastor, we are wandering around in the wilderness of our civil society like sheep without a shepherd. This has not always been so. 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's been faithful to the civil covenant in seeking justice and only justice. For example, just a couple, St. John Chrysostom, back in the early century of the church, preached against the injustices of Queen Eudoxia, and he was persecuted severely for it.

John Knox preached against the injustices of Bloody Mary to her face, preached to Bloody Mary's face, and so stunned her into silence that for a full 15 minutes, she had never been spoken to so frankly before. And John Knox was thrown into prison for it. Preachers as well in the colonies spoke relentlessly against the injustices of King George and Parliament against the American colonies and made the hanging list of General Cornwallis. Well, on and on we could go, dear listener. The Bible, church history, are filled with examples of those knowledgeable of and faithful to their covenants, even the civil covenant.

Brother preacher, if we do not shake off these false notions of pacifism and compartmentalization of the gospel, we must not soil the garments of the gospel with culture, society, and government. Oh, unless we wake up from this, then my people will continue to perish for a lack of knowledge, and God's contention will continue to be with us, dear preacher. Oh, in order to do and to be faithful to our charge, brothers, we must do several things. We must fully awaken the people. First of all, we're right to call people to repentance and salvation in Christ.

Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. But as we have outlined above, that awakening involves the whole consciousness of the Christian life. Yes, and then we must also hearken back to biblical models of government and teach them. Number two, hearken back to biblical models of government and then teach them to the people. We here in the United States especially have a rich tradition of a constitutional republic.

Hearken back to biblical models of government and teach them. And then thirdly, mitigate the ignorance of our people with true sources. Thirdly, mitigate the ignorance of our people with true sources. Indeed, people perish for a lack of knowledge, and that knowledge begins with the truth of scripture. But it does not end there, does it?

No. Continue to teach and preach from the scriptures and mitigate the ignorance of our people with true sources. Three things that we can do. Well, this has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we've challenged you to think through an important issue of life and faith. What I encourage you to do is visit us here in Idaho Falls at New Geneva Presbyterian Church.

And we are located on the corner of 4th and Boulevard in Idaho Falls. And we meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. And you can call us for further information and feedback. Give me some feedback from time to time. Area code 208-523-0196. Area code 208-523-0196.

Or check out our websites. We've got two of them. First of all, our church website, which is newgenevaopc.org. And then we also have a website where these radio messages are chronicled and cataloged. And you can find that website at omnispotestas.org.

That's Latin, omnispotestas.org. O-M-N-I-S dash P-O-T-E-S-T-A-S dot org. Omnisprotestas.org. And there you'll find our radio sermons catalog for you. And once again, call me for feedback.

Call me for further information. Pastor David Bass, New Geneva Presbyterian Church at 523-0196. Area code 208-523-0196. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.