IGNORANT OR IGNORING

How many times have you heard a brother or sister in the Lord say, "Because of a lack of knowledge, the people perish."?  I have not only said it, I have preached it!  However, I have never paid much attention to the rest of the verse, and consequently, I missed its most important context.  And yet, I cannot count the times that I have stressed the importance of the context of a verse in understanding what it is teaching.  Bible study can certainly humble a person!

But the Bible does say it, right?  Well, sort of.  What the Word of God actually says is, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to Me: seeing thou hast forgotten the Law of thy God, I will also forget thy children" (Hos. 4:6).  Notice first of all, that the people were God's people, and in this case, Israel.  Through the Law and the Prophets, God had provided His chosen people with all that they needed to know in order to live a peaceful, prosperous, and God-pleasing life on earth.  But they had rejected it!  They were not ignorant due to never having been exposed to the truth; they had the truth and they chose to ignore it.  There is a huge difference. 

In the Gospels, Jesus clearly understood the difference between those having never heard the truth and those who heard it and chose to ignore it (Mt. 10:15; 11:22).  Some even memorized it and taught it, but never applied it to their own lives; He called them hypocrites fourteen times in Matthew alone (Mt. 6:2, 5, 16; 15:7-9; 16:3; 22:18; 23:13, 14, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29; 24:51)!  I think Matthew 15:7-9 says it best:  "Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me.  But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."  Their destiny is described in Matthew 24:50-51 which says, "The Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for Him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Bible ignorance is bad, but ignoring it can be fatal!