Craig T. Owens

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…the Lord has a charge to bring against you… (Hosea 4:1) 

Sadly, the charges that God brings against ancient Israel sound eerily similar to charges He could make against us today: 

• Faithlessness
• Lovelessness
• No acknowledgment of God
• Cursing
• Lying
• Murdering
• Stealing
• Adultery
• Deserting God
• Rampant sexual immorality
• Idolatry

I believe idolatry is at the root of all these other sins. And this idolatry stems from a lack of knowledge of God’s supremacy (v. 14). But the lack of knowledge of God among the people is due to a rejection of deeper knowledge of God by the religious leaders. God specifically identifies the priests and prophets as those who are stumbling in their sin. 

God says, “You stumble day and night, and the prophets stumble with you. … 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” (Hosea 4:5-6). 

God’s leaders set the tone. As the leader goes, so go the people.

A mark of a godly leader is one who is continually and increasingly growing in his knowledge of God.

Leaders must be learners in order to defend those under their care. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, “To be ignorant and simple now—not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground—would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen.” 

Leaders, I implore you: learn more of God. Abide intimately with Him. Get to know His heart and mind. Then impart this knowledge to those around you. Lead them into the all-satisfying presence of God, so that they may also know God more intimately. This intimate knowledge will fortify them against the pull if idolatry and the whole list of other charges God has against those who remain willfully ignorant of Him. 

This is part 89 in my series on godly leadership. You can check out all of my posts in this series by clicking here. And you may also want to check out my books for church leaders—Shepherd Leadership and When Sheep Bite. 

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