The other evening I watched a special on the Pharaoh, Tutankhamun, the “boy king”. His name means “living image of Amun”. Amun was one of the Egyptian gods. King Tut’s father, Akhetaten introduced a new religion: the worship of a sun god, Aten. He named his son Tutankhaten: “living image of Aten”. King Tut’s father even changed the center of religion from it’s ancient site, Thebes(present day Luxor ) to a new city and center of religion, Amarna up the Nile, which Akhetaten built. It lasted as long as King Tut’s father Akhetaten was alive. The priests of the traditional idols did not like the move, so when Akhetaten died, his son King Tut moved back to Luxor and the traditional gods and King Tut changed his name to the one history knows him.
In Jeremiah 2: 11 we read,
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.
Jeremiah is amazed that Israel had forsaken the Lord while the pagan idolaters would never throw over their false gods, nor think to do so! Why? Looking for a proof for the one true God is tricky business but I think the verse above points to a type of verification. Man, apart from the one true God, will persist in their falsehood because of sheer pride. Even when one nation, Egypt did change their gods, it was only by force of Pharoah and they quickly went back to their idols.The reason Israel (and us!) leave the one true God is our original sinful tendency to spurn the one who truly loves us and then commit adulteries. This is the Lord put the words “adultery” and “whore”, as the only description possible, into His Word through the prophets to accurately describe Israel. We only leave the One who actually loves as He set His heart upon Israel and the whole world. Israel could only and ever leave, change their glory, because the Lord is true
and truth and loves His people. We crave our idols. Unredeemed man insists on his idols because finally they are made in our own image: all of fleshly lusts and desires and aspirations writ large. For instance, Zeus, or Jupiter was constantly having affairs with humans as humans do. The Lord does not! My opinion of Roman and Greek mythology that it is nothing more than a divine soap opera writ large, but once hooked…it is like looking in the mirror or the image of lusts today: the selfie. Like Narcissus we look at our image till we fall and drown. Old Adam does not want to overthrow himself! The Lord does and has, as He did to Israel, as foretold by Jeremiah and the prophets. Then He gives us forgiveness in the only perfect image of Himself: Jesus Christ. No nation has ever changed it’s gods, until the one true God comes into the picture. I do not know if this constitutes, “proof”, yet it does point us to the right direction, that is, away from our selves. This again proves our sin and maybe even show us again, we can not imagine any god who would actually love us enough to say No so we can know His forgiveness. The closest natural man has to the one true God are true fathers and mothers. The gods, that is the idols, love only to possess and control and brutally enslave, as man can and has. The Lord loves to set the captive free as He did Israel in Egypt and now the whole enslaved world through Christ that we believe the good news of our freedom.
Concordia and Koinonia 