| What I Can Learn From . . . , Part 9: Manasseh |
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| Written by David Lawrence |
| Monday, November 07 2005 00:00 |
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There are two distinct lessons that come from the life of Judah’s king Manasseh, son of the great King Hezekiah. First, as we have so often seen, sin always has consequences. Even though Hezekiah had enacted many righteous reforms in Judah, and his great-grandson King Josiah would bring about the most sweeping reform ever known to Judah, Manasseh’s grievous sins became a direct link to the seventy years of Babylonian captivity for the Jews. Manasseh was so vile that he sacrificed his own children in the fire to pagan gods in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so desecrating that place that it became the trash dump for Jerusalem and the illustration Jesus used for the eternal punishment of the wicked (Hinnom = Gehenna in Greek = hell). Manasseh meticulously reversed all the great reforms of his father, put pagan images in the temple, and established paganism as the religion of Judah. In so doing, he evoked the wrath of God on the nation whom Manasseh so unfaithfully represented as king. Yet there is a second lesson that seems amazing when placed alongside the first. Manasseh is an example of how no one is beyond redemption if God calls him and grants him repentance, which He did for Manasseh. When Manasseh paid no attention to God’s word, God brought the Assyrians against him who put a hook in his nose and took him to Babylon. Now humbled and broken, Manasseh turned to the God he had rejected and profaned and sought His favor in bitter repentance. God granted it to him and allowed this most evil of kings to return to Jerusalem and do restitution for his sins by purging the city of idols and restoring the worship of the Lord. We read, “Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.” And Manasseh took his place in the genealogical line of the Savior. Conversion is possible for the worst of sinners. Paul knew it, and we know it. Nothing is impossible for our God. |
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