“For Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities, so I will send a fire upon his cities and it shall devour her strongholds.”
– Hosea 8:14
Did you hear the indictment of Israel in the beginning of this verse? “Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities.” This is what God had warned His people very specifically about, in the very beginning when they came into the promised land.
Deuteronomy 8:11, God said, “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, and His rules, and His statutes. Lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built good houses and live in them, and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, all that you have is multiplied.” That’s the language here in Hosea 8, they’ve multiplied. But God said, “Your heart will be lifted up and you’ll forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Who led you through the wilderness, and protected you and guided you, who brought you to this place.”
“Beware,” God says, “Lest you say in your heart,” this is Deuteronomy 8:17, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me to this wealth.” Then in verse 18, He says, “Remember the Lord your God, for it’s He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm the covenant that He swore to his fathers.” And God said, “If you forget, meaning, go after other gods and serve them and worship them, you will perish.”
That’s exactly what’s happening now in Hosea. They’re forgetting God. They’re thinking that they have done all these things, that they’ve fortified cities and multiplied in great ways because of their own strength instead of the reality that they have all these things because of the strength that God provides, and He can take away these things, these cities and strongholds in an instant.
Oh, there’s so much we could talk about here, but suffice to say, it is possible for you and I to do the same thing in our lives, to forget our maker, to forget the Lord our God, and not to remember all the things He has done and is doing even right now to uphold us. How easily we can become self-reliant in the same way thinking we’ve done this and we’ve done that.
Oh God, help us, guard us today from self-reliance, self-dependence, and forgetfulness like we see in Hosea 8. God, help us to remember today who you are, what you have done in our lives to this point, to uphold us, to keep us, to provide for us. What you are doing right now at this moment, it’s you who are giving us breath to breathe. You’re causing our hearts to beat. You’re the one who’s giving us life right now, who’s providing everything we need. Everything good thing we have comes from you.
God, help us to be a people who remember this all day long, every day, that you are our maker, our provider, our Lord, our God. You are so gracious to us, and you alone are worthy of our worship.
And even as we pray for this sense of remembrance in our lives, God, we pray for people around the world who don’t know that you Lord are their maker, and that you have sent Jesus to die on a cross for their sins that they might know you as their God. God, we pray for the Dogon people of Russia, and Ukraine, and the Caucasus region. God, we pray that you would bring the Gospel to them, cause the Gospel to spread to them that they might know it, and once they know it that they might remember it. God, we pray for this for them and we pray for this in our lives in light of your word in Hosea 8:14. Please keep us from being a forgetful people, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
