Comfort, Ease and Forgetting God

God loves us too much to let us wander for long:

No one likes suffering. No one likes to be afflicted and in pain. We all prefer to live a life of ease and comfort. That much is obvious. But for the Christian, we know there is more to this. We know that a life of luxury and ease and good times can easily take us away from God.

It is often through hardships and difficulties and afflictions that we get things into divine perspective, and then turn back to God. Just three verses from Psalm 119 make this clear:

-Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word. (Verse 67)
-It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. (Verse 71)
-I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. (Verse 75)

When we veer away from God, he will graciously allow things to come our way to get us back on course. Sure, we want things to be problem-free and pain-free. That is the ideal. But in a fallen world, too often the good life takes us away from the best life – a life fully lived in love and devotion to God.

The ancient Israelites had to keep learning and relearning this truth. They too kept forgetting God. They too allowed personal comfort and wellbeing to move them away from Yahweh. And God had even warned them about this – repeatedly. Consider for example Deuteronomy 6:10-12:

And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

See also Deuteronomy 4:9-10 and Deuteronomy 8:11-16, among other verses that offer such warnings. But like us, the Israelites DID forget their God, and they did allow the nice things of the world to crowd God out of their lives. Many Old Testament texts speak to this. Hosea 13:4-6 says this:

But I have been the Lord your God
    ever since you came out of Egypt.
You shall acknowledge no God but me,
    no Savior except me.
I cared for you in the wilderness,
    in the land of burning heat.
When I fed them, they were satisfied;
    when they were satisfied, they became proud;
    then they forgot me.

That passage is worth dwelling on a bit further. Two expository commentaries can be appealed to here. The first is the brand-new volume by Paul House and Stephen Coleman on the Minor Prophets in the “Preaching the Word” Series. House says this about the passage:

Hosea is well-versed in Israel’s history. To him, history is not useless information from bygone days. Hosea thinks the past is never dead. In fact, it is not even past. The past keeps getting lived out in the present. There is no present or future without the past. The past informs the future if we have eyes to see. For Hosea, the fact that God is the only savior was the key to Israel’s history and Israel’s future. The same is true of all of us who are part of Abraham’s family through faith in Christ. It is also true of all humanity, for God made us all.

He goes on to discuss God’s personal concern for Israel, not just his deliverance of the people from Egypt, but his caring hand over the centuries. Yet Israel forgot God. House continues:

So what happened? When and how did they turn away from God? Verse 6 continues the story. God brought them into Canaan, a land lush by comparison with the desert. After grazing in such good pasture, Israel got full and satisfied. When they got full, “their heart was lifted up” (v. 6b). That is, they became proud. They forgot who they were, where they came from, and how they got where they were. This was because, God says, “they forgot me.” Unfounded pride led them to cast off their past, which marred their present. They forgot their God and lost themselves. Pride always wreaks this sort of havoc. When we give ourselves credit for what God has done, we lose God in the process. Success can lead to self-satisfaction, then to dangerous forgetting.

So the just judgment of God is needed to chastise and turn around a wayward Israel:

The reason for this continuous incremental punishment is clear. Verse 9 says that Israel has forgotten God, who tells them, “You are against me, against your helper.” God’s help had extended over seven centuries at this point and had “made possible everything good in Israel’s life (cf. Pss 33:20; 70:5; 115:9-10; 121:1-2; 124:8).” God’s help took concrete form. It was not theoretical, never abstract.

He ties all this into the life of believers today:

One more time we need to see ourselves in Israel’s past, for this is our past. God has saved us from sin through Christ’s death as surely as he delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. He has given us brothers and sisters in Christ and all that we need to survive and serve him (see Matthew 6:19-39; 19:16-30; Mark 8:17-21), just as he gave us a homeland and kings. Will we grow fat, satisfied, proud, and forgetful of God as most Israelites did in Hosea’s time? Or will we serve God no matter what others do? God continues to provide his word and all the lesser bread we need (see Deuteronomy 8:1-10), just as he did in the desert. God is our help. There is no ultimate savior but God. Whatever your circumstances, believe and cling to these promises. Let us take care lest we forget Yahweh, our God (see Deuteronomy 8:11-20).

Richard Phillips in his Reformed Expository Commentary on Hosea says this:

If the calamity falling on Israel during Hosea’s time did not result from a lack of grace on God’s part, then why did it happen? The answer is given in Hosea 13:6: “but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.”

 

In our study of Hosea 12:7 to 13:3, we noted the warning from Moses in Deuteronomy 6:10-12 that Israel should not respond to God’s bounty by losing sight of her God. The language of Hosea 13:6 directs us to a similar passage, Deuteronomy 8:10-20, the language of which is echoed by the prophet. Moses foretold that the aim of God’s rich provisions was so that the people would “eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you” (Deut. 6:10). But they must take care, Moses said, “lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them” – along with many other temporal blessings – “then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (vv. 12-14).

 

Despite the warning, this dreadful scenario was fulfilled in the history of ancient Israel. Books such as Joshua, Judges, and Samuel recount God’s wonderful provision and protection, so that the people achieved victories and received great material abundance. But those same books, along with Kings, recount the very scenario that they should have avoided: complacency leading to spiritual negligence.

He examines the life of Nebuchadnezzar in this regard, and then he applies this to the Christian scene today:

What happened to Israel and Nebuchadnezzar happens to individuals in all societies today. Perhaps the most telling example today is the United States, which in its early days was blessed beyond measure through widespread faith in God but has since turned him away. Not only does our government no longer call on the Lord in prayerful faith, but it has banned the influence of God’s word from public life. As a pastor, I am frequently asked whether God is likely ever to judge our nation. I always answer in astonishment, since the evidence of biblical judgments – including many from Hosea – is all around us: the breakdown of marriage and family, a widespread practise of gross sexual indecency, the debasement of leaders, a breakdown of safety, and a staggering spread of depression and chemical dependency. Isaiah chapter 3 chronicles just such a judgement from God: “the people will oppress one another, every one his fellow and every one his neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the despised to the honorable” (Isa. 3,5). But he adds a word of hope for those who remember the Lord: “Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds” (v. 10).

 

Here is a message for God’s faithful people, that in the midst of a collapsing society, like Hosea’s Israel in her dying days, the integrity of our lives before the Lord will not be wasted. Moreover, it is the calling of all such believers – like the prophet Hosea in Israel – to remind people of the grace of the Lord, how he delivered Israel and blessed nations like our own, pointing to Christ Jesus and his gospel message, which remains “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).

These are important truths to always keep in mind. I like a peaceful and stress-free life just as much as the next guy. But if that results in me straying from the Lord and getting spiritually complacent – or worse – then I am so very grateful for the Lord to graciously and lovingly discipline me and bring me back to himself.

As the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Heb. 12:9-11)

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