Me Manasseh, You Manasseh

Let me speak candidly. Sometimes I wonder if it's more dangerous to start off on the right foot in life and experience God's gracious blessing in the beginning but then always be tempted to leave it behind for the vain things of this world and die in shame. I wonder if it might be preferable to front-load your life with the emptiness of sin and then come around to the Lord's ways having understood both mentally and historically the emptiness and destructive nature of evil. 

I think about this as we move from King Hezekiah to his son, King Manasseh - a Father and son with opposite trajectories of faith in God. 

The downfall of Hezekiah is eclipsed very quickly toward the end of 2 Chronciles by the rise of his completely immoral and pagan son, Manasseh. 

2 Chronicles 33:1–3 (ESV) Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. 2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. 3 For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down, and he erected altars to the Baals, and made Asheroth, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them.

Manassah also built altars to pagan deities in the Lord's Temple and even offered his children in the fire. It was so bad that this is the final account of Israel's spiritual state by the time his reign had run its course:

2 Chronicles 33:9 (ESV) Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the people of Israel.

Think of that... Israel was WORSE than the nations God drove out of the land to give the land to Israel. Isn't that crazy? They had the law, the prophets, the blessing, and all of it was rejected for the vanities of the evil around them. They are proof positive that the law cannot change us or save us.

Manassah is subsequently taken captive (at the directive of God) by the king of Assyria and bound with hooks and bronze chains. You could consider this to be the horrid end of a horrific king. But you'd be wrong. Amazingly this happens:

2 Chronicles 33:12 (ESV) 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.

Like many people, Manasseh prays when the chips are down and he hits rock bottom. And amazingly,  God responds with grace!

2 Chronicles 33:13 (ESV) 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.

Manasseh then goes about to turn the nation back to the Lord:

2 Chronicles 33:15–16 (ESV) And he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the LORD and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside of the city. 16 He also restored the altar of the LORD and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving, and he commanded Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.

Look at the turnaround! Manasseh is saved from the evil in his younger years and turns to serve the living God his father rejected in his later years though he had known his blessing. The two men remind me of Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21. The first who said he'd obey and later did not. The second said, "no, thanks" and later obeyed his father. It wasn't what one SAID that mattered, it was what one did. 

It's not about how you start in life. It's about how you finish. And Israel is learning through this narrative as they make their way back from Babylonian captivity that they should regard their exile as discipline for the years they acted like an older Hezekiah and their return as a picture of God's grace to the worst of sinners such as Manasseh. In short, it's never too late to turn back to God. 

What about you? Have you felt totally destroyed by your sins? I wonder if you are in a greater position to experience God's saving grace than that devoted moral man who seems to never sin. The truth is we are all sinners and seeing ourselves for the "Manasseh's" we all really are is the key to finding the true salvation our hearts desperately seek. 

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