1 Kings 12:26-33
The religion of Israel began with a man, Jeroboam I, who changed the true worship of God. • He established a feast in the eighth month to replace the true Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh. • He may have replaced the Sabbath with Sunday worship. • He replaced the Levitical priesthood with men of his own choosing. • Lastly, he replaced God with golden calves in Bethel and Dan. A religion with such a beginning was doomed to fail, bringing the nation down with it. When religion is ungodly, its power is destructive, and every institution in the nation suffers. For instance, Amos 2:7 describes a deliberate act of ritual prostitution in a pagan temple: "A man and his father go in to the same girl, to defile My holy name." What was the rationale behind this perverse, immoral act? Because Baal was neither alive nor a moral force, his worshippers felt they could communicate with him only by ritual actions that portrayed what they were asking him to do. Since Baal was, like almost all ancient deities, a fertility god, the human act of intercourse demonstrated that they wanted Baal to prosper them. But what was its real effect on the participants and the nation? Ritual prostitution only served to erode the family, eventually leading to the destruction of the nation. Baal was different from his adherents merely in that he was above them. God's difference from us is that He is holy; He is moral and we are immoral. After we accept His calling, He commands us to become moral as He is.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prepare to Meet Your God! (The Book of Amos) (Part Two)
|