2 Chronicles 33
Manasseh’s story is clearly saying he finished well by the grace of God. He didn’t deserve it. Neither did Saul. But you can also put your name there. You didn’t deserve it.
My sixth grade teacher was a man named mr.
Thompson. I remember him well. Um, honestly he might have been the, um, grumpiest teacher I’ve ever had. I believe he has long since gone to heaven. So I’m okay saying that, but. We were assigned a story to write in sixth grade and it would be my first venture into, and it was my first major literary fiction work.
I wrote my paper, uh, a deep study of a high school basketball player who was the star of his team. And he was going to, uh, play in the championship game. And that afternoon his brother was. In a serious injury, a car accident and a serious injury and had to get immediate surgery. And so Jack, this, this ballplayer and his family were at the hospital.
And so we had this scenario where this guy is not able to get to the game and chooses to be with his brother and goes to the surgery and is there, and his brother recovers. And it’s obvious he’s on a he’s, he’s going to be on a, on a good track. And so the ballplayer hustles over to the game and the team is way behind it’s it’s in the second half and he plays valiantly, but it isn’t enough to overcome the deficit they’ve experienced and his team tragically loses.
And so you have this in my opinion, Shakespeare at his best, a tragedy with the highest portrayals of love loyalty. Loss. And I waited with bated breath for the, to come back with mr. Townsend. Cause he always wrote comments and uh, my letter grade and I got my first fiction word back with this C on it. And then his one comment was this real life is not all neat and happy like this.
I was astonished happy. He lost the game. I mean, this was, this was tragic and concluded that the school had somehow hired a grouch who hated basketball to be my English teacher. But looking back, I did realize in years to come that mr. Townson probably had some of his own stuff behind. His comments, his demeanor in class during the year probably did reflect a man in pain with many sorrows.
I don’t know. I didn’t know the cues at the time. I really didn’t until looking back years later, think about it. Maybe he had lost someone precious to him. Maybe he had just felt some real disappointments in life experience. But to him, real life is not all neat and happy like this. And his view of course is not uncommon.
Life is hard. I read a quote recently by actress, Laura Dern, who has started a number of films and, and a number of, uh, sitcom TV shows. And she said, I’m someone who feels extremely depressed by a happy Hollywood ending because it is not the way life goes. Life is hard. And there will be hard things in it for all of you, the hardest will come when it is the result of your own failures, where you feel like you are reaping the fruit of your own misses.
And every counselor knows that everybody that comes with their own stuff and is being confronted with their own problems and their own failures in their own screw ups. Desperately needs to hear hope the presence of the living. God assures us that hope Israel, that lives can be changed. That even the most self-absorbed destructive and empty lives can have a wonderful ending.
And this morning, I want to talk about a guy whose life exudes that reality. He is, to me the greatest example in the Bible as exhibit a evidencing, God is a God of grace. So I’d like to look at this guy, man, NASA King in Judah, his father was a godly King Hezekiah. We looked at him last time. For some reason, Manasseh chose an entirely different lifestyle.
It is the story that a bad beginning does not guarantee a bad ending. Judy, at this time was the center of spirituality and God’s work on earth. The nation of Israel, the Northern 10 tribes of the Israelites had already been. Conquered and obliterated by the Assyrians. And this man Manasseh is a man who made some terrible, terrible, terrible choices, but a bad ending, a bad beginning does not guarantee a bad ending.
I’d like to read these sobering words about his reign in verse one through 10. Of chapter 33 in second Chronicles, Manasseh was 12 years old when he became King and he reigned in Jerusalem 55 years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord following the detestable practices of the nations. The Lord had driven out before the Israelites, he rebuilt the high places.
Father has a Kaia had demolished. He also erected altars to the bales and made a sure of poles. He bowed down to all the story hosts and worship them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord of which the Lord had said, my name will remain in Jerusalem forever. In both courts of the temple of the Lord.
He built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his sons in the fire and the Valley of Ben him on practice, sorcery divination in witchcraft and consulted mediums in Spiritus. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger. He took the carved image he had made and put it in God’s temple of which God had said to David and to his son, Solomon in this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever.
I will not again, make the feet of the Israelites, leave the land I assigned to your forefathers. If only they will be careful to do everything. I command them concerning the laws, decrees and ordinance has given through Moses. But Ben NASA led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray. So they did more evil in the, they than the nations.
The Lord had destroyed before the Israelites, the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no. Attention. I mean, this is a man who had a horrendous start. I’d like to just highlight that for a moment. Manessa had a bad start. We see that in verses one through 10, the trajectory of his life and reign reflected that awful start in his life and rain.
He was guilty of leading the nation into idolatry. Verse three says he rebuilt the high places. These were the centers of, of pagan worship that were brought in from the surrounding nations into Jerusalem. In verse three, worship the stars and the planets and the moon verses four and five. He built altars to, to those, uh, very, uh, entities.
It says in both courts, which means the outer court, where they offered the sacrifices and even into the very most Holy of Holy places. Has, uh, excuse me, man. NASA brought these, these pagan gods and, and replaced God’s altar with pagan altars replaced, uh, the candlestick and the table of showbread and the altar of incense with, with statutes to other gods, it was just an amazing sacrilege.
He took God’s temple and he made it a place to the gods that God had had the people. Uh, conquer. He led the nation into sexual perversion. Basically the various worship experiences that are defined here throughout the old Testament are all identified with sexual perverted practices. The high places, the groves, the Ashira poles are all involved in that practice.
It was all part of the pagan worship. He led them into satanic worship. We read these in these verses. They used fortune telling and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and necromancers, but most horrifying and vile of the actions of massage of Manasseh that ultimately grew out of these, these, these embracing of these pagan religions.
Was the fact that he was responsible for the slaughter of innocent blood in verse six, it says, and he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the sun of Hinnom. This is a literal statement. The worship of Molik, which was a premier God of, uh, the Edomites, the worship of , which was a premier God of multiple gods, both were famous for the fact that the way you could most express your devotion to a pagan God was to offer your own children as sacrifice upon the altar.
He did that. And the sun that will eventually rain was a son that was born very late in his life, uh, in his, probably his mid fifties, because he had killed his other Boyce. It’s just an aside story of an individual. It is why we read in the parallel passage in second Kings chapter 21, verse 16, he shed much innocent blood.
The prophet Isaiah. The prophet that Jesus himself quoted the most, the most prominent, most influential of all of the profits of, of Israel. Isaiah actually served as the counselor to five different Judean Kings, uh, Kings of Judah. He was martyred. During the time of Manassas rain and tradition has it, that he was literally, um, tied his limbs, his arms and his legs were tied by rope to horses.
And they were set out in different directions and he was pulled apart. This is a man who did horrible things and particularly did horrible things. To the nation that God had placed his ion, this remarkable statement in VR is made in verse nine. He was guilty of more evil than the nations. The Lord had destroyed before Israel.
Now I want to just think of it, what that means. What were these nations that he’s talking about? And I’m not going to get into the detailed practices that they were involved in. But I want to, I want to just get the, the weight of this statement, because if you remember in the history of Israel, one of the great questions that all of us have and looking at the old Testament is why when the people of Israel moved into the land of Canaan, did God tell them to, to wipe out certain groups and, and whole city States and, and people were literally forced to leave their homes and not stay in the land, the Canaanites and the Amorites and.
God gives us some clues in the old Testament. As a matter of fact, back in Genesis chapter 15, he’s talking to Abraham. Now this is prior to the people of Israel going into slavery in Egypt. Abraham’s now living in the land and God makes this prophetic statement. Then the Lord said to Abraham know, for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and we’ll be servants there and we’ll be afflicted for 400 years.
Your descendants are going to go into Egypt. That’s what he’s saying for 400 years. And he says, but afterwards they will come out with great possessions and they will come back here to this land. And he says, we’re not, and we’re going to wait and they’re not going to come and vanquish the land for all that time.
And he makes this explanation because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. He says, I’m going to take over this land. There’s going to come a time when the sin of the people that land is going to is going to require judgment, but it’s not now. And it’s not going to be for four centuries.
Four centuries later we come and in the book of Deuteronomy, the people of Israel about to go into the land and to conquer it. And God says this to them. When you go in there shall not be found among you, anyone who burns his son or his daughter is an offering, and there should be no one who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or it does this, or is a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or anyone who inquires of the dead.
For whoever does these things and is an abomination to the Lord. And it’s because of these abominations, this is Deuteronomy 18 because of these ABOM abominations. The Lord, your God is driving them out before you, you will be blameless before the Lord, your God for these nations. Which you are about to dispossess.
He says, look, the same of these people has been building for centuries and rather than repenting and rather than changing, and rather than restraining their evils, it’s gotten more and it’s heaped upon heat. And through these terrible experiences, they’re often their own children in the fire and they are doing these, uh, satanic rituals in every sense.
This is a people by anyone’s evaluation. Who are living in abject horrid, evil. And so he says, don’t feel guilt for driving them out. Now we fast forward, the period of the judges comes the period of the beginning of the, of the kingdom of Israel comes in this same land where Israel has now become. The conquer, they have formed their own kingdom under Saul and then under David and then under, uh, Solomon.
And eventually the kingdom is divided into two groups and Northern, and then the Southern. And there is a guy in the Southern kingdom who has basically replaced all of those practices in Jerusalem itself. Devil worship the abuse of children. The the, the selling them into, uh, uh, the, the sacrificial offerings, all these things.
And this is what Manasseh has brought and has restored to the nation. He did more to lead the nation away from Jehovah God and to violent, destructive idolatry than any other King. And he did it as an insider. As a person born into a godly home, the impact of his life and rain is that God brought judgment upon Judah.
Ultimately, we read this in second Kings, I’m going to tie all this together. Second Kings 23 verse 26 and 27. It says this. Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath by which his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
And the Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight as I removed Israel. And as I kept off this city that I have chosen Jerusalem and the house, which I said, my name shall be there. Here’s what he’s saying. He’s saying, look, Jerusalem is now doing the very things that I brought my people out of Egypt and allowed them to conquer this land.
And now they’ve turned and I’m going to ask, and he says, so I will not maintain this kingdom forever. And it would be just a couple of generations later. That they will be vanquished and Jerusalem will go into what’s called a BA and we would expect no less. I mean, how would it be fair to God to judge the Amorites and Canaanites for these practices and not to judge the nation who have continued in them and do continue and in them after Manasseh, but Manasseh was the human vehicle for implementing many of those practices.
Now you may be out there saying, you know, When you started talking in this message this morning, I was thinking this is going to be a very positive sermon. I mean, bad beginning. Doesn’t even embed ending. This sounds terrible. Right? This is horrible.
But Manasseh actually had a good finish. I’d like you to look at verse 11 and following verse 12 and following. It says this while I’ll start, I’ll start at verse 10. Actually the Lord spoke to Monash and to his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought upon them, the commanders of the army of a Syria who captured Manessa with hooks and bound them with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.
And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord, his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. When it says here, he brought me it up in verse 11.
He captured Vanessa with hooks and bound him with chains. He was put in shackles, uh, in his arms, his legs. And, but when it says hooks, it actually is referring to a practice of, of a Syria. And this is said in the parallel passage where they actually put a big hook in your nose. And that’s how they dragged him.
And he walked all the way to the Assyria. I mean, it was, it was a way of showing a disdain to the King. Manasseh was taken as a prisoner to Assyria. The whole city didn’t fall at this time, but he did. And he was captured and the whole nation didn’t completely fall, but as he’s going somewhere, when he gets there, Something happens inside of him.
And it says he humbled himself greatly. Now I just land on this for a few, few moments. What does it mean? He humbled himself greatly. Um, because terms are important, right? I mean, it’s important to understand what does this, what is God saying he did? Does it mean that he, he, he saw, wow. Um, things are bad. I can’t conquer the Assyrians in my own.
So I’m going to ask for God’s help. I mean, or I’m just saying, well, that didn’t work, so I’ll try it this way. I mean, it doesn’t sound like what we’re hoping for in this man. What does it mean? He humbled himself greatly because I remember, I mean, words are important and definitions are important. I remember years ago when we were up in Northern Michigan, And one of my sons, Timmy was young and he went to a Sunday school class at the local little church there.
And they had some rough kids in the crowd. And, uh, so this big kid came up to Timmy and he said to him, uh, he said, do you want a piece of me? And Timmy said, That’s disgusting. It didn’t know what I meant. So words are important terms are important concept. So what does that mean? He humbled himself greatly.
Well, the word humbled here is the word literally translated. It is the little literal translation of to balcony. He yielded. Fully wholeheartedly to God. He surrendered to God. He surrendered to God’s view of himself. He surrendered God to God’s assessment of him. He turned over the wheel of his, of his vehicle, of his life to God.
He said, God,
I see what I am. He cried out in the appalling reality of what he was. And he brought himself under God in every sense. And as he bowed the knee gear in the 46th year of a 55 year rain, God graced him with forgiveness. Now, sometimes it’s hard to tell. When a person’s life trajectory is reoriented.
Sometimes it’s hard to sell, telling ourselves when did you know? I, when did I really begin? It’s it’s like, uh, I was thinking about this recently, trying to think, um, had not sure why I was asking this question, but I thought when does a cucumber become a pickle? Huh now you think about that the rest state, when is it the pickle?
And one is a cucumber sometime. There’s a transition when the pickle, when the cucumber has been in the, in the, the, the, whatever it is, the juices, what is it, Brian? Long enough. Thank you. Um, it turns to a pickup, a win, you know, the first hour, the first four hours, the first, I don’t know how long it is, but anyway, it goes in a cucumber and you don’t just go whoop, cute coming out to pick up.
Now it’s time. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of slow transitions in our life, right. But sometimes like in the moment of regeneration, it’s instantaneous, we may not be able to identify that moment, but there are also many of us that can say that was the aha moment. I got it. This man had this aha moment sitting in a dirty jail in a Syria.
And he humbled himself and he was broken and he who had rejected the God of his father who must have so proudly and arrogantly been willing to, to bring in such debauchery to the, to the name of God, this man bowed the knee to the God he had mocked. No. For many of us, I think our reaction to this is this almost doesn’t feel right.
There’s a, there’s a Jewish, um, tradition or fable about Manasseh. And the Jewish story is that the angels of God looked at Manasseh and they deliberately closed up the throne of God. So Monasil. Prayers could not come to God, but they didn’t know that God had a secret hold that would board in his throne, that Manassas prayers of brokenness could come to him.
Why would the angels do that in this fictitious story of same reason? We would say just not right. This guy doesn’t deserve he, if anybody deserved to bear the fruit. Presently eternally in his life. It’s this man, but that’s not how God functions. The nature of his good finish is found in the fact that Manasseh finished well, he finished well with this calling.
Verse 14 through 17. Describe him going back now. A humbled broken man full of grace, full of wonderful, the God that he had distained and he began, it says he took out the idols that he himself had put into the most totally place. And then the outer court, the Holy place. And he began to make changes. Now he was not effective in turning the nation with him.
But he did turn his life and he spent the last nine years of his life. 84% of the years of his reign were wasted, but he used what he had. He finished. Well, he finished well with his family, the son of Manasseh who became the air after him only rain for a couple of years. He was not a godly man. However, his grandson who was alive when he was still alive, we know by the reckoning of the years was a man named Josiah.
And I mentioned to you two weeks ago when I spoke, Josiah was the most godly King that ever rained on the throne of Judah. To me, it’s this amazing picture. That God even allowed there to be good to come out of the, the, the family of this man, the life of this man, he didn’t see his son turned to God, but his grandson wholeheartedly followed Jesus.
Second Chronicles, 34 is emphasizing the terrible things this man did, but it is also clearly saying he finished well by the grace of God. He didn’t deserve it either did Saul. He didn’t deserve to be graced by God, a man who was literally trying to destroy Christianity and to take the lives of Christians.
But you can also put your name there. You didn’t deserve it. Maybe you’re here or you’re listening online and God has been. Pointing out in your life, or maybe you’re very aware of it yourself. You have started very badly. There’s a lot of your life. That’s just a summary of regrets. This man’s story is put in scripture to say to us, he who begins badly.
Can finish well finish. Well, maybe today’s the aha moment. Maybe it’s today is, is the turning where your heart is humbled greatly. There’s a whole board in the throne of God, a listening year of a God, of grace to you. It is why Micah, a contemporary of, of Manasseh. The prophet said this in chapter seven of his book.
Who is a guide like you, who pardons, sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance. You do not stay angry forever, but you delight to show mercy. He delights to show mercy. It’s why a good, a bad star does not guarantee a bad ending. It’s all because of God, Lord, we look to you this morning.
There’s not a person listening today that hasn’t had a bad start. We not, may not have been aware of it. We may not have been as conscious. That just how much. Sin was the reality of our life experience. And do you penetrate our lives
with Lord? I’m guessing there are people listening to me speak this morning that are very aware that they have had a bad star Lord lead us to Christ latest. The one that is the ultimate exhibit. Of a God who delights to show mercy, may we flee to him today? I pray in Jesus name. Amen. Now, go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.
Amen.