The Worst Choice: Amos 2:4-5
Whose sin is worse: the sin of those who do not know God or the sin of those who claim to know God but act apart from His ways? Those who know God are assumed to be in the process of understanding His ways more deeply. Because we are in relationship with Him, though, we should know better than to sin against Him. When we who are supposed to know better still choose sin, we are assuredly guilty.
Up until this point, Amos spoke only of Gentile nations. Amos condemned each of the neighbors of the Hebrew people starting in the northwest with Syria and ending in the southeast with Moab. The Hebrew people would have hears Amos’ message and appreciated it. Who doesn’t think their people group is better than their neighbors?
When we add religion to the conversation, things get worse. From the perspective of the Hebrew people, God would condemn the Syrians, Phoenicians, Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites. They didn’t worship God. They were doomed to be flawed because they worshipped the wrong deity. Their morals, ethics, and motivations would be skewed away from God’s ways.
After attacking these six Gentile nations, though, God turns Amos loose on the Hebrew people. God speaks condemnation against the land of Judah. The Hebrew people have not kept God’s Law. They have not followed God’s commandments. In fact, they are being led astray into the worship of foreign gods. We know for a fact Solomon built altars to Ashtoreth (a deity of the Phoenicians), Chemosh (a deity of Moab), and Molech (a deity of the Edomites). He built those altars on what is now called the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. From this, we can infer human sacrifices were practiced among God’s people!
The worship sites to foreign gods stayed active until the reforms of King Josiah, roughly 300 years after Solomon built them and more than 100 years after Amos spoke these judgments. As Amos speaks against Judah, the gods of Chemosh, Ashtoreth, Molech, and others are being worshipped upon God’s holy mountain. As Amos is declaring outrage against the surrounding nations, the Hebrew people are imminently guilty of doing the same thing!
Can there be any doubt why God was unhappy with the people of Judah? God gave his people the examples of the Patriarchs. He gave them His Law. He gave them the Promised Land. He allowed them to have a king. After everything God did for the Hebrew people, they turned and embraced the world.
It is easy to sit back in judgment of the world and look down upon the bad things in the world. It is easy to consider the people of the world to be evil because of their sinfulness and rebellion against God’s ways. Yet, whose sin is worse: the sin of those who do not know God or the sin of those who claim to know God but act apart from His ways?
