The Poison of a Full Stomach Text: Hosea 13:4-6
Introduction: Covenant Amnesia
There is a spiritual sickness that prosperity breeds, a kind of divine amnesia that settles in when our bellies are full and our barns are overflowing. It is the slow, creeping poison of a full stomach. When we are in want, when we are desperate, our prayers are sharp and our reliance upon God is keen. But let the pressure off, let the blessings flow, and our hearts, like unsupervised toddlers, wander off into mischief. We begin to think we built the house we live in, that we earned the bread we eat, and that the breath in our lungs is our own private property.
The prophet Hosea is sent by God to diagnose this very disease in the northern kingdom of Israel. They were a people fat with blessing and riddled with idolatry. They had forgotten the grammar of their own existence, which was grace. God is reminding them, in the starkest possible terms, of who He is, what He has done, and how they have repaid His covenant faithfulness with adulterous forgetfulness. This is not just a history lesson for a defunct kingdom. This is a spiritual diagnostic for every Christian, every family, and every nation that has ever tasted the goodness of God. The temptation to forget is perennial. The danger of a proud and satisfied heart is the great peril of the blessed.
God speaks here as a jilted husband, a spurned savior, and a forgotten father. He lays out His case with devastating clarity. He establishes His exclusive right to their worship, reminds them of their history of utter dependence, and then identifies the precise point of their departure: they became satisfied, their hearts swelled with pride, and they forgot Him. This is the etiology of apostasy. It begins not with a bang of overt rebellion, but with the quiet whisper of self-satisfaction.
The Text
Yet I have been Yahweh your God
Since the land of Egypt;
And you were not to know any god except Me,
And there is no savior besides Me.
I Myself knew you in the wilderness,
In the land of drought.
As they had their pasture, then they became satisfied,
Indeed, they were satisfied, and their heart became raised up;
Therefore they forgot Me.
(Hosea 13:4-6 LSB)
The Exclusive Savior (v. 4)
God begins by reasserting His foundational identity and His exclusive claim on Israel.
"Yet I have been Yahweh your God since the land of Egypt; and you were not to know any god except Me, and there is no savior besides Me." (Hosea 13:4)
God roots His identity in a historical act of redemption. "I am Yahweh your God since the land of Egypt." This is not an abstract philosophical claim. He is not "the ground of all being" or some vague cosmic force. He is the God who showed up, who rolled up His sleeves, and who brought them out of bondage with a mighty hand. Their relationship with Him was established in their salvation. Before that, they were slaves making bricks. After that, they were a people belonging to God. Their very existence as a nation was a testimony to His saving power.
Because of this, He lays down the law of covenant exclusivity. "You were not to know any god except Me." This is the language of the marriage vow. To "know" another god is to commit spiritual adultery. This is the first and greatest commandment. All their subsequent sins, all their Baal worship and golden calves, were violations of this primary stipulation. They were cheating on the God who had rescued them.
And then He drives the point home with a phrase that echoes through all of Scripture: "there is no savior besides Me." This is a flat, dogmatic, absolute statement. It demolishes all pluralism. There are not many paths to salvation. There are not many saviors to choose from. There is one God, and He is the only one in the saving business. All other "gods" are either impotent idols or demonic charlatans who can only enslave, never save. This is why the central confession of the New Testament is that "Jesus is Lord," because in Jesus, Yahweh Himself has come to save His people from their sins. As Peter would later declare, "there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). To look for a savior in politics, in technology, in self-help, or in another religion is to look for a living king in a graveyard.
The Wilderness Memory (v. 5)
God then forces them to remember their utter helplessness and His faithful provision.
"I Myself knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought." (Hosea 13:5)
The wilderness was Israel's defining experience. It was a place of total dependence. There were no farms, no wells, no markets. It was a "land of drought." Every drop of water they drank was a miracle from a rock. Every bite of manna was a gift from the sky. Every day they survived was a testament not to their ingenuity, but to God's intimate care. The word "knew" here is one of intimate, personal relationship. He did not just observe them from a distance; He was with them. He knew their thirst, their hunger, their fears. He led them as a pillar of cloud and fire. The wilderness was God's school of dependence.
And it is a picture for us. Before Christ, we are all in a spiritual wilderness, a land of drought. We have no resources in ourselves to quench our spiritual thirst or satisfy our spiritual hunger. We are utterly lost and helpless. And it is in that state of acknowledged bankruptcy that God "knows" us in salvation. He finds us there, not because we are impressive, but because we are desperate. We must never forget that our relationship with God began in our own personal land of drought.
The Path to Apostasy (v. 6)
Here, God traces the anatomy of their fall. It is a three-step descent from grace to disgrace.
"As they had their pasture, then they became satisfied, indeed, they were satisfied, and their heart became raised up; therefore they forgot Me." (Hosea 13:6)
First, they moved from the wilderness to the pasture. God brought them out of the drought and into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. He gave them vineyards they did not plant and cities they did not build. He gave them pasture. This was an act of pure grace. They did not earn it. They were a grumbling, stiff-necked people, yet He was faithful to His promise.
Second, they became satisfied. The hunger pangs that once drove them to God were gone. Their satisfaction was not the sin; God delights in blessing His people. The sin was in the effect of that satisfaction. They were "satisfied, and their heart became raised up." This is pride. A full stomach led to a puffed-up heart. They began to look at their blessings and take credit for them. They mistook the gifts for their own achievement. They began to believe their own press. Pride is the original sin, the root of all others. It is the delusion that we are self-sufficient, that we are the captains of our own souls. As Proverbs says, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18).
Third, the inevitable result: "Therefore they forgot Me." Pride and gratitude cannot coexist in the same heart. A proud man cannot be a thankful man, because he thinks he deserves everything he has. And a man who is not thankful will inevitably be a man who forgets God. Forgetting God is not a mere lapse in memory, like forgetting where you put your keys. It is a willful act of covenant rebellion. It is looking at the Giver and pretending you cannot see Him. It is erasing Him from the story of your life. This is the ultimate insult. After all He had done, after the rescue from Egypt and the care in the wilderness, they took His good gifts, grew fat on them, and then acted as though He did not exist.
The Gospel for the Forgetful
This passage is a severe warning, but it is not without hope. The very fact that God is speaking to them, diagnosing their sin, shows that He has not utterly abandoned them. And the pattern described here is one that is gloriously reversed in the gospel.
We, like Israel, were in a land of drought, dead in our trespasses and sins. We had no savior besides God. But God, in His mercy, sent the true and final Savior, Jesus Christ. And what did Jesus do? He entered the wilderness for us. He was tempted for forty days, recapitulating Israel's forty years, and where Israel failed, He succeeded. He was the true Israel who never forgot His Father.
And on the cross, He entered the ultimate land of drought. He cried out, "I thirst," bearing the curse for our proud and satisfied hearts. He was forsaken so that we, the forgetful, might never be forgotten. He was humbled, brought low into the grave, so that our raised-up hearts might be forgiven.
The result is that we are brought into the true pasture, the church of the living God. We are fed not with manna, but with the bread of life, Jesus Himself. We drink not from a rock, but from the living water that flows from His side. We are satisfied. But the gospel teaches us how to be satisfied without becoming proud. It teaches us that every blessing, from our daily bread to our eternal salvation, is a blood-bought gift of grace. A true Christian is one who has learned the grammar of gratitude. We look at our full pasture, and we do not say, "Look what I have done." We fall on our knees and say, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain."
Therefore, the call to us is simple. Remember. Remember your Egypt. Remember your wilderness. Remember your Savior. Fight the poison of a full stomach with the antidote of a thankful heart. When you are tempted to be satisfied in your blessings, let that satisfaction drive you not to pride, but to worship. Because the one who remembers his Savior is the one who will never be forgotten.