A lack of knowledge

Every day I hear people speculate about the future of our country. I hear them complain about lawlessness and about the general lack of discipline and how criminals are literally getting away with murder. There are also daily reports about the decline of the environment. In the book of Hosea the same conditions that prevail now were also prevalent at that time. Hosea was a contemporary of Isaiah.
Hosea 4:1-2, Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
The result of this sin is very interesting.
Hosea 4:3, Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.
I find this absolutely fascinating. Because people are committing all kinds of crimes and living in sin, the environment is suffering.
Verse 6, My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.
Look at what the countries look that turn away from serving God. Some of the African countries which should be fertile and productive, are shadows of what they could be. Look at a country like Zimbabwe. The majority of the people of Zimbabwe have been evangelized and know who God is, yet they turned away from him and see what has been caused by all the violence. The land mourns. There are other countries like Ethiopia where the same thing happened. Even the earth is crying our for God.
Romans 8:19-21, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Isaiah 24:1-6, See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it; he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants- it will be the same for priest as for people, for master as for servant, for mistress as for maid, for seller as for buyer, for borrower as for creditor. The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word. The earth dries us and withers, the world languishes and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore the earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.
Isaiah and Hosea are saying the same thing. Because of sin, the earth will suffer, and that’s what we are seeing on a global scale. It is just called by different names. Global warming, ozone depletion, and phenomenons like el nino, which influence the weather patterns. There is only one who is in charge of weather patterns and that is God, the one who created weather.
Isaiah says that people have broken the everlasting covenant, and Hosea says that people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge. We are going to have to dig deeper in the Word of God so that we can get closer to Jesus and live righteous lives. If we want to call ourselves children of God then we are going to have to start acting like princes and princesses. We are going to have to know what we believe in, and be willing to live out the things we believe in so that the world can see we look different. Once we do that the earth will have be able to start recovering. We can’t be satisfied with the scraps that are falling under the table anymore. Psalm 23 says that God will prepare a table for us in the presence of our enemies. We are supposed to be sitting at that table and taking part in the feast, not cowering under it and being satisfied with morsels that come our way. I invite you to take your seat at the table and start making a difference to your environment.