{"id":6556,"date":"2015-04-25T00:05:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T07:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6556"},"modified":"2015-04-24T12:00:44","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T19:00:44","slug":"relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/04\/25\/relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attention all Israelites! God\u2019s Message!
\nGod indicts the whole population:
\n\u201cNo one is faithful. No one loves.
\nNo one knows the first thing about God.
\nAll this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex,
\nsheer anarchy, one murder after another!
\nAnd because of all this, the very land itself weeps
\nand everything in it is grief-stricken\u2014
\nanimals in the fields and birds on the wing,
\neven the fish in the sea are listless, lifeless.
\n\u201cBut don\u2019t look for someone to blame.
\nNo finger pointing!
\nYou, priest, are the one in the dock.
\nYou stumble around in broad daylight,
\nAnd then the prophets take over and stumble all night.
\nYour mother is as bad as you.
\nMy people are ruined
\nbecause they don\u2019t know what\u2019s right or true.
\nBecause you\u2019ve turned your back on knowledge,
\nI\u2019ve turned my back on you priests.
\nBecause you refuse to recognize the revelation of God,
\nI\u2019m no longer recognizing your children. (Hosea 4:1-6)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How can you have a relationship with someone you don\u2019t even know? If you don\u2019t love other people, then you don\u2019t love God\u2014and vice versa. Not loving people results in all the crimes God listed. The crimes were merely symptoms of the underlying disease: an unfaithful and unloving heart.<\/p>\n

Those who were in positions of leadership\u2014particularly those tasked with the responsibility of teaching, had failed to live up to their calling. Priests and prophets had turned their back on God\u2019s revelation to his people. They did not concern themselves with what God had told them: they ignored the Bible as it existed to that point, and consequently, they had no idea what it was that God expected of them. They mistreated the people around them, and had no idea who God was, what he cared about, what mattered to him. <\/p>\n

What we know is what we will live. Christians today are all priests, with direct access to God. But to whom much is given, much is required. It is impossible for us to worship God in spirit and in truth if we know nothing about the one whom we claim to be worshipping. The religious establishment in Hosea\u2019s day had forgotten who they were worshipping and they imagined that it didn\u2019t matter: that all that counted was their enthusiasm, their sincerity, their rituals. But we can\u2019t love someone we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

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Attention all Israelites! God\u2019s Message! God indicts the whole population: \u201cNo one is faithful. No one loves. No one knows the first thing about God. All this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex, sheer anarchy, one murder … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6558,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556\/revisions\/6558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}