Dr. Lawrence Butler, The Bridge Church, Pembroke

Please allow me to share a thought with you today. The prophet Amos told his people, “But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba,” (Amos 5:5).

By way of explanation these were 3 important cities in Israel’s history. Bethel was where Jacob had his great vision of the angels passing to and from heaven, Gilgal was Israel’s first camp in the promised land and where they renewed their covenant with God, and Beersheba was home to Isaac and his family when Jacob was just a boy. They are now told not to make pilgrimages to these memorable sites because sin was rampant in them. The people of that generation had so turned to idolatry that the Lord rejected them and promised destruction upon them. My advice to you is: Don’t go where God has left!

God does forsake places that reject Him and allows them to choose their own way. When this happens, good can become evil and right can turn into wrong. Religion is a wonderful thing if you have truly met the Lord and He dwells within you.

But, if religion has become nothing more than ritual and ceremonial the presence of God will not be found there.

Following the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam took the throne, made bad decisions and prompted a civil war. The result was a split kingdom. The king in the revolting section was a man named Jereboam. He knew how important religion was, so he chose to put idols in Israel to prevent the people from returning to Jerusalem for worship.

He feared the loss of his throne if he did nothing, so he pushed Israel into idolatry. His plan worked well, as sin often does for a while, but ultimately became such a snare to the people that simply God forsook them. Idolatrous practices became so widespread that even Jerusalem’s temple was infected and the presence of the Lord withdrew from there also (see Ezekiel 8-11). The nation of Israel was lost through captivity, and even though Judah survived, they endured 70 years of slavery.