The High Cost of Forgetting God Text: Hosea 4:4-6
Introduction: When the Rot Starts at the Top
We are a people who love to point fingers. When a nation begins to unravel at the seams, when the fabric of society frays and the center will not hold, the natural human impulse is to find someone to blame. The people blame the politicians, the politicians blame the media, the media blame the uneducated masses, and everyone blames the generation that came before them. But the Word of God cuts through this cacophony of accusation with a terrifying precision. God knows exactly where the rot begins. And it is almost always a spiritual rot that begins in the spiritual leadership of a people.
In our text today, the prophet Hosea is delivering God's formal covenant lawsuit against the northern kingdom of Israel. The charge sheet was read out in the first few verses of this chapter: no faithfulness, no steadfast love, no knowledge of God in the land. Instead, there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery. The land itself is in mourning. But just when you would expect God to bring the hammer down on the general populace, He pivots. He tells the accusers to stand down, because His primary case, His central contention, is with the priests. The shepherds were striking the sheep. The physicians were poisoning the patients. The watchmen were asleep on the wall.
This is a timeless principle. When a nation finds itself in a moral freefall, do not look first to the brothels and the taverns. Look first to the pulpits. When a family disintegrates, do not look first to the rebellious child. Look first to the father who forgot the law of his God. Spiritual corruption is a disease that flows downstream. It begins in the sanctuary and seeps out into the streets. And the consequences are catastrophic, not just for this generation, but for the next. This passage is a sobering warning about the high cost of forgetting God, a cost paid in the currency of stumbling leaders, a destroyed mother, and forgotten children.
The Text
Yet let no man contend, and let no man offer reproof; Indeed, your people are like those who contend with the priest.
So you will stumble by day, And the prophet also will stumble with you by night; And I will destroy your mother.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from ministering as My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I Myself also will forget your children.
(Hosea 4:4-6 LSB)
The Unreprovable People (v. 4)
We begin with God's strange command to cease all arguments.
"Yet let no man contend, and let no man offer reproof; Indeed, your people are like those who contend with the priest." (Hosea 4:4)
At first glance, this seems odd. Isn't it the prophet's job to contend and reprove? But God is saying something profound here about the spiritual state of Israel. They had reached a point of terminal hardness. To reprove them was to waste your breath. It was like trying to reason with a brick wall. The time for debate was over; the time for sentencing had arrived.
God says that His case is not with the average man in the street, but with the priests. And yet, He describes the people in a fascinating way: "your people are like those who contend with the priest." This was a high crime in Israel. According to the law in Deuteronomy 17, the man who treated the priest with contempt, refusing his judgment, was to be put to death. It was the ultimate act of rebellion, a direct defiance of God's appointed authority. God is saying that the entire nation has adopted this rebellious, insolent posture. They have become a nation of priest-contenders. The very men who should be teaching the law are the ones being defied, but this is a double-edged indictment. The people are rebellious, yes, but why? Because the priests themselves had become contemptible. The salt had lost its savor, and so it was being trampled underfoot by men.
When the spiritual leaders of a nation abandon the Word of God, they forfeit their moral authority. They can no longer speak with a "thus saith the Lord." They become just one more voice in a sea of opinions. And the people, sensing this weakness, become ungovernable. They are not just contending with the men in priestly garments; they are, at root, contending with the God who appointed them. The breakdown of authority in the land was a direct result of the breakdown of fidelity in the sanctuary.
The Stumbling Guides (v. 5)
The consequence of this spiritual anarchy is universal confusion and collapse. The guides themselves have lost their way.
"So you will stumble by day, And the prophet also will stumble with you by night; And I will destroy your mother." (Hosea 4:5)
When you reject God's light, you should not be surprised when you start tripping over things. The stumbling here is comprehensive. The priest, addressed as "you," will stumble by day. This is not the accidental stumbling of a man in the dark. This is the shocking, inexcusable stumbling of a man in broad daylight. It is a public, flagrant, and shameful collapse. When the sun is high in the sky, when the truth is plain to see, the priest still manages to fall on his face. This is what happens when you have a Bible but refuse to read it, or read it and refuse to believe it.
And he is not alone. "The prophet also will stumble with you by night." The false prophets, the ear-ticklers who tell the people what they want to hear, will also fall. The day of public sin will be followed by the night of terrifying judgment. Both sets of spiritual leaders, the priests who were supposed to represent God's law and the prophets who were supposed to speak God's word, are implicated. They are partners in this national disaster. The light-bearers have become blind guides, and the whole sorry lot of them are headed for the ditch.
And the end result of this leadership failure is the destruction of the nation itself: "And I will destroy your mother." Who is the mother? The mother is the covenant community, the nation of Israel. She is the one who gave birth to these priests and prophets. The whole national structure, the very identity of the people, is going to be dismantled. God is not just pruning a few bad branches; He is taking an axe to the root of the tree. When the shepherds lead the flock astray, the entire flock is threatened with destruction. This is corporate solidarity in judgment. The sins of the fathers, and especially the sins of the spiritual fathers, are visited upon the children.
The Logic of Destruction (v. 6)
In this final verse, God lays out the cause and effect with chilling clarity. This is one of the most important verses in all of Scripture for understanding the downfall of a people.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from ministering as My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I Myself also will forget your children." (Hosea 4:6)
First, the diagnosis: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." This is not a lack of information. They had the scrolls. They had the temple liturgy. They had the stories of the patriarchs. The knowledge spoken of here is not intellectual data; it is relational knowledge. It is the deep, covenantal knowledge of God Himself, the kind of knowledge that transforms behavior. They did not know God. And because they did not know God, they were perishing. A nation that does not know God is a nation on death row.
But this was not an innocent ignorance. It was a willful ignorance. "Because you have rejected knowledge." The truth was available, but they shut their eyes to it. They actively pushed it away. The priests, whose lips were supposed to guard knowledge (Mal. 2:7), were the chief rejectors. They found the demands of God's law inconvenient. It interfered with their lifestyle, their income, and their popularity. So they rejected it.
And God's response is a perfect, terrifying lex talionis, an eye for an eye. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from ministering as My priest." You reject my word, I reject your ministry. You declare my law irrelevant, I declare your office vacant. This is a complete stripping of their identity and function. They may keep their vestments for a time, but in God's eyes, they are defrocked.
The indictment continues, moving from the priests to the people they led. "Since you have forgotten the law of your God..." This forgetting is, again, a willful act. It is not a senior moment. It is the deliberate setting aside of God's covenant instruction. It is treating the Word of God like an old piece of furniture you store in the attic and never look at again. And the consequence extends into the future with breathtaking severity: "I Myself also will forget your children."
This is the principle of covenantal succession in reverse. God's promise is to be a God to us and to our children after us. But that promise has conditions. Our faith is the instrument God uses to bring the promise to fruition for our children. When one generation forgets the law of God, the next generation is set adrift. When fathers and mothers stop teaching the catechism, when they stop praying with their children, when they stop bringing them to worship, they are actively cutting their children off from the covenant blessings of God. God says, "You forget my law, I will forget your children." He is not being vindictive; He is simply honoring the choice they have made. They have chosen a godless path, and God is allowing their children to walk it to its bitter end. This should be a terrifying thought for every Christian parent. The spiritual laziness of one generation becomes the apostasy of the next.
Conclusion: A Call to Remember
The message of Hosea is not simply a history lesson about a failed state. It is a perennial warning. The same principles are at work today. We live in a civilization that is being destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Our seminaries, our universities, and tragically, many of our pulpits, have actively rejected the knowledge of God. They have forgotten His law and substituted it with therapeutic deism, political ideologies, and sentimental nonsense.
And we see the results all around us. We see stumbling leaders, both in the church and in the state, falling in broad daylight. We see the "mother," our Western Christian heritage, being destroyed, dismantled piece by piece. And we see a generation of children being forgotten by God because their parents first forgot Him. They have been catechized by TikTok and discipled by the state schools, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
The only way back is the way of remembrance. The only cure for this disease is to recover the knowledge that was rejected. This begins with the priests, with the pastors and elders. They must repent of their cowardice and their compromise and return to the unadulterated law of God. It continues with the fathers, who must take up their priestly duty in their homes, teaching their children the law of God diligently.
We must reject the rejection. We must remember what has been forgotten. We must turn back to the knowledge of God revealed in the Scriptures, which is ultimately the knowledge of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. He is the great High Priest who was not rejected, the Prophet who did not stumble, and the one who secures the covenant for us and for our children. To know Him is life eternal. To forget Him is to choose destruction for ourselves, and for our children after us.