{"id":7692,"date":"2016-06-22T00:05:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T07:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7692"},"modified":"2016-06-21T09:11:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T16:11:59","slug":"trash-for-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/06\/22\/trash-for-treasure\/","title":{"rendered":"Trash for Treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look, <br \/>\nsend to Kedar and observe closely; <br \/>\nsee if there has ever been anything like this: <br \/>\nHas a nation ever changed its gods? <br \/>\n(Yet they are not gods at all.) <br \/>\nBut my people have exchanged their Glory <br \/>\nfor worthless idols. <br \/>\nBe appalled at this, O heavens, <br \/>\nand shudder with great horror,\u201d <br \/>\ndeclares the LORD. <br \/>\n\u201cMy people have committed two sins: <br \/>\nThey have forsaken me, <br \/>\nthe spring of living water, <br \/>\nand have dug their own cisterns, <br \/>\nbroken cisterns that cannot hold water. <br \/>\nIs Israel a servant, a slave by birth? <br \/>\nWhy then has he become plunder? <br \/>\nLions have roared; <br \/>\nthey have growled at him. <br \/>\nThey have laid waste his land; <br \/>\nhis towns are burned and deserted. <br \/>\nAlso, the men of Memphis and Tahpanhes <br \/>\nhave shaved the crown of your head.<br \/>\nHave you not brought this on yourselves <br \/>\nby forsaking the LORD your God <br \/>\nwhen he led you in the way? (Jeremiah 2:10-17)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>People do not easily change their minds about things like religion or politics.   For hundreds, if not thousands of years the people of Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt continued worshipping all their multiple gods\u2014gods that didn\u2019t even exist.  They never even thought about changing their religion.  So, God wonders what to make of his people, who turned their backs on him.  He\u2019s real; they\u2019ve seen evidence of his power repeatedly, unlike say Babylon, where no one had ever seen Marduk do anything but they faithfully worshipped him all the same.<\/p>\n<p>Some identify Kittim with Syria.  Others with the Philistines or all the islands of the Aegian.  Kedar refers to a confederation of Arab tribes in northern Arabia.  Memphis and Tahpenis refer to the two cities in Egypt.  Memphis was Egypt\u2019s capital, while Tahpenhes is where Jeremiah would be taken by those who fled the Babylonians (see Jeremiah 43:7). God\u2019s point: no matter where you look, can anyone find people that have abandoned their own gods?  <\/p>\n<p>Sin is irrational.  They turn from a God who is real, to gods who are fake.  They turn from a God who is demonstrably powerful to things that are demonstrably ineffectual.  As their lives spiral down, why do they exchange a treasure trove for a trash?  <\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look, send to Kedar and observe closely; see if there has ever been anything like this: Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/06\/22\/trash-for-treasure\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7694,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692\/revisions\/7694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}