"My People Perish"

"MY PEOPLE perish for want of knowledge." * This is the Lord's complaint in Hosea 4:6. The people in the days of Hosea were starving for real food, the Word of God, and it was the priests who were to blame for this famine.

Picture, if you can, a starving, pale, and sick Christian. A Christian who has not been fed the bread of life, someone who has a vitamin B (Bible) deficiency. There he is in the pew pale, weak, no response, no matter what the minister does. Too often his is a lethargy that results from lack of food.

I have seen many children with oversize tummies and big eyes who are starving for food. They seem to be full, but not of food; it's worms and wind. A Christian who is not properly fed or does not eat from the bread of life becomes a center for other philosophies and is full of pride and conceit, puffed up. Sooner or later he will die.

A Christian who listens to a sermon and does not respond is like a starving child. Ask her to play, to run, to jump; there is no reaction, no desire. There is no energy, no response. She needs to be nurtured first. She needs to be cured. Then there will be a new zest in life. So it is with the Christian!

Seventh-day Adventists need to be nurtured with the Word of God and it is our responsibility as ministers to preach the Word and "feed our congregations with the solid bread of life. If fed properly they will respond to our appeals and gladly accept our challenges. Promotion, goals, enthusiasm will not help a starving Christian. He needs vitamin B (Bible). Have you seen a healthy child at play? There is energy coming out in all directions. He never seems to get tired. There is an endless flow of energy as if Niagara is moving within him.

Isn't this a picture of what Adventists ought to be? Restless, active, with the same kind of zeal found in the primitive church and in those who carried the torch of the gospel during centuries of persecution. They did not have time to talk about the latest fads and fashions. They had a message: "Jesus is coming again. We saw Him go up. He will come again."

Think for a moment of the experience of the disciples on their way to Emmaus. They were discouraged, depressed, disconsolate. The Saviour had been killed and they did not know that He had been resurrected. What was it that brought light, joy, and vigor to their lives? The presentation of the Word of God. While Christ, whom they did not recognize at first, was explaining the Word, they saw the promises, the prophecies, the plan of salvation. They saw Christ in the Scriptures.

Present Christ in Scripture

This is our responsibility and task to the world and to the church to present Christ in the Scriptures. Doing so will bring new life to discouraged hearts, to depressed souls; for later on the two disciples, as they shared what the experience had meant to them, said to each other, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to' us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32).

How can we present Christ in the Scriptures, though, if we preach our whole sermon without opening a Bible? How can the congregation follow the Bible or become acquainted with what it is saying if the minister himself does not quote from it? How can our starving Laodicean people be fed if the minister preaches "my opinion" about guilt, anxiety, and all kinds of puffed-up philosophies, when he ought to be asking, "What is the Word of the Lord to us?"

Cause of Mental Weakness

"My people perish for want of knowledge," says God! Ellen G. White writes: "A failure to study God's word is the great cause of mental weakness and inefficiency. In turning from this word to feed on the writings of uninspired men, the mind becomes dwarfed and cheapened. It is not brought in contact with deep, broad principles of eternal truth. The understanding adapts itself to the comprehension of the things with which it is familiar, and in this devotion to finite things it is weakened, its power is contracted, and after a time it becomes unable to expand." --Counsels to Parents and Teachers, p. 441.

Paul was aware of this shortage and was constantly warning ministers and disciples of the need to preach the Word. In 2 Timothy 4:2 he says, "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine." Paul was happy that Timothy learned the Word of God from his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois, and was able to share it effectively. But even to Timothy he said, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15). The last part of the verse in Portuguese says, "One who handles well the word of truth."

Timothy could preach the Word because in his youth he had learned the Word. "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (chap. 3:14, 15).

Youth today are especially hungry for the Word of God. They want to see Christ in the doctrines as did those disciples of Emmaus. As ministers of God we must feed them. A group of young people in Atlanta, Georgia, has asked their pastor to feed them the Word of God. They meet on Friday nights and together study the doctrines of the church because they feel a strong desire to share the Bible with their neighbors and friends. Another group in Takoma Park, Maryland, has started a series of Bible studies on Friday nights. What else can we do to help the youth and people in our churches?

More Power Than Philosophies

As ministers of God we must preach the Word. We need, more than ever before, to open the Bible before the people and read and study it carefully from the pulpit. The Word of God has more power than all the philosophies in the world. The Bible shouldn't just be used as a means to hide your outlines as you progress with your sermon.

The Bible rebukes the sinner and rebukes sin. Jesus had power in His voice when He said, "It is written," and He quoted from the Bible. I have seen people possessed by the devil, restored by the reading of the Word of God. I remember especially one man who was possessed by the enemy. As the Word of God was being read to him he would ask us to stop, and would say, "What a whip, what a whip!" Another wanted to reach out, pick up the Bible and destroy it. There is power in the Word of God as Christ the Saviour is presented in this wonderful Book.

"Those who minister in the word must have as thorough a knowledge of that word as it is possible for them to obtain," Ellen G. White counsels. "They must be continually searching, praying, and learning, or the people of God will advance in the knowledge of His word and will, and leave these professed teachers far behind. Who will instruct the people when they are in advance of their teachers? All the efforts of such ministers are fruitless. There is need that the people teach them the word of God more perfectly before they are capable of instructing others."--Testimonies, vol. 2, p. 499.

At the 1973 Annual Council Pastor Roland Hegstad told of a minister who took time to explain to his congregation the significance of the Biblical reference to the two cities of Dan and Beersheba. At the end of the sermon a lady came to him and thanked him for explaining what this meant. She had always thought that they were man and wife like Sodom and Gomorrah! What a calamity! Yet many times we are brought up short with the evidence that some of our young people and brethren do not know the Word of God. They don't study it as they ought to.

Ellen G. White says to teachers: "The youth are in need of educators who will keep the principles of the word of God ever before them. If teachers will make Bible precepts their textbook, they will have greater influence over the youth. They will be learners, having a living connection with God. They will endeavor to inculcate ideas and principles that will lead to a fuller knowledge of God, an earnest, growing faith in the blood of Christ, and in the power and efficiency of His grace to keep them from falling. They will constantly seek to build up the strongholds of a healthy, well-balanced Christian experience, that their students may be qualified for usefulness." --Counsels to Parents and Teachers, p. 430.

Challenge to Seminary Teachers

This special challenge comes to the theologians and teachers in our seminaries. Let us study the Word with the future ministers of the church.

"The Bible teacher should be one who is able to teach the students how to present the truths of the word of God in a clear, winning manner in public, and how to do effective evangelistic work from house to house. It is essential that he be skillful in teaching those who have a desire to work for the Master how to use wisely that which they have learned. He should instruct the students to approach the study of the Bible in the spirit of humility, to search its pages, not for proof to sustain human opinions, but with a sincere desire to know what God has said."--Ibid., p. 431.

Parents also have a responsibility in this matter. They must take time to study for themselves and be able to explain the meaning of the Word and make it plain and clear to their children. "Parents should be studying the Word of God for themselves and for their families. But instead of this, many children are left to grow up untaught, unmanaged, unrestrained. Parents should now do everything in their power to redeem their neglect and place their children where they will be under the very best influence.

"Then search the Scriptures, parents. Be not only hearers; be doers of the Word. Meet God's standard in the education of your children." --Child Guidance, pp. 66, 67.

We all have failed to study and use the Word of God as we should. But it is not too late for a new beginning. Christ is waiting eagerly at the door of our homes and our churches to come in and reveal Himself to us in His written Word. There is no reason why any of His people today should perish "for want of knowledge."