--Shakespeare
It was New Years Day, 1929. The University of California at Berkeley was playing Georgia Tech in the Rose Bowl. Roy Riegels, a Cal defensive back recovered a Georgia Tech fumble, ran laterally across the field, turned and scampered sixty-five yards in the wrong direction--straight toward Georgia Tech's goal line.
One of his own players, Benny Lomm, tackled Riegles just before he scored for Georgia Tech. On the next play Georgia Tech blocked the punt and scored.
From that day on Riegles was saddled with infamy: "Wrong-way Riegles was his name. For years afterward, whenever he was introduced, people would exclaim, "Oh, yeah. I know who you are! You're the guy who ran the wrong way in the Rose Bowl!"
It may be that our failures are not as conspicuous as Riegles, but we have our own alternate routes and wrong-way runs and we have the memories that accompany them--recollections that rise up to taunt us and haunt us at three o'clock in the morning. There's so much of our past we wish we could undo or redo--so much we wish we could forget. If only we could begin again.
Louis Fletcher Tarkington wrote for all of us when she mused,
I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the doorBRP>And never put on again.
There is such a place. It is found in the grace of God--a grace that not only forgives our past, but utilizes it to make us better than ever before. "Even from sin," Augustine said, "God can draw good."
There was a man named Manasseh...
(He) was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty five years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hephzibah (2 Kings 21:1).
Manasseh was the son of Hezekiah, one of the few kings of Judah who "did what was right in the eyes of the Lord" (2 Kings 18:3). Israel's historian tells us that Hezekiah...
removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.) Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no-one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses (2Kings 18:4-6).
Hezekiah was responsible for an historic spiritual revival that rejuvenated Judah. He did away with the idols that his father, Ahaz, had worshipped and delivered his people from apostasy. He was helped greatly in his work of reformation by the prophetic ministries of Isaiah and Micah.
There were at least two invasions of Judah during this time by Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. On both of these occasions the Lord miraculously protected Jerusalem. Although almost all of the land of Judah was devastated by the Assyrians, the capital city was preserved.
Sennacherib, in his annals said, "I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage." Isaiah, on his part, used a different metaphor: "The Daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege" (Isaiah 1:8).
But God miraculously intervened:
That night (the night of the final siege) the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies! (2Kings 19:35).
This was the spiritual climate in which Manasseh grew up.
--Alexander Pope
Manasseh ascended to the throne when he was twelve years old and reigned for ten years as co-regent with his father. When Manasseh was twenty-two, his father died and the young king took over the reins of government. He reigned from 692-638 B.C.--fifty-five years--the longest rule in the history of both Judah and Israel.
Manasseh had a godly father, lived through a time of spiritual vitality and prosperity and was tutored by the prophets Isaiah and Micah. He saw first-hand the Lord deliver Jerusalem under siege by the Assyrians. And yet... "He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites (2 Kings 21:2). Rather than subdue his "young disease," his sin "grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength."
The "nations" of whom the author writes were the depraved and disgusting Canaanites. Manasseh outdid them in his insane frenzy to break every rule--a madness spelled out in the following verses:
He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, 'In Jerusalem I will put my Name.'In both courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord 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 for ever. I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.'
But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites. (2 Kings 21:3-9).
Manasseh's sins are recited here in an ascending order of deviance: first he, "rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed." Ahaz, Manasseh's grandfather had established "high places"--groves on the top of hills--where the Asherah were worshipped. Hezekiah, Manasseh's father had torn them down (2 Kings 18:4); Manasseh built them up again.
Then he "erected altars to Baal," the chief Canaanite deity and he made an Asherah pole, as Ahab and Jezebel, Israel's diabolical duo had done (1 Kings 16:33). The Asherah were images of a female deity, the consort of Baal and represented the Canaanite goddess of sex and fertility. The pillars erected in her honor were evidently some sort of phallic symbols.
Manasseh worshipped the host of heaven and served them--gave his devotion to the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars, and practiced astrology (Cp. Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13). He built altars to astral deities in the temple in Jerusalem where God had said, "I will put My name."
He made his son pass through the fire--practiced child sacrifice. He slaughtered more than one of his sons. According to the chronicler, he sacrificed several "in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom..." (2 Chronicles 33:6)..
He practiced augury, necromancy, witchcraft, divination and "consulted mediums and spiritists." The Hebrew text suggests he did more than consult them; he "appointed" them. i.e., he gave them court appointments, put them in his cabinet.
If this were not enough, this debauched monarch then "took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple." He took the afore-mentioned pornographic post, dedicated to everything ugly and obscene, and set it up in the Holy of Holies in the Lord's temple.
Nowhere is there the slightest hint of the worship of Yahweh. Manasseh selected his pantheon from the cultures surrounding Israel--from the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Phoenicians--but there is not one reference to the God who had revealed himself to Israel.
The historian concludes: "Manasseh led (Israel) astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites" (2 Kings 21:9).
Sin always overtakes us and overwhelms us in the end. Though we think we're in control sin eventually, inevitably dominates us and hurls us headlong into corruption and decay. Life becomes a steep downhill slide. "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34).
Most of the time we're not even conscious of sin's control. That's because it overwhelms us so slowly and with such subtlety. Hosea said that Israel's sin "sapped his strength, but he did not realize it; his hair was sprinkled with gray, but he did not notice (Hosea 7:9).
That's the deceitfulness of sin: gradually and unconsciously we drift away from God. We lose control of our thoughts. The current carries us inexorably on until we are enslaved at last by greed and lust, our pathetic, feeble state evident to all eyes but our own. Sin has sapped our strength, but we do not know it.
It is strange: but life's currents drift usSo it was with Manasseh.
So surely and swiftly on
That we scarcely note the changes
And how many things are gone.
--F. B. Meyer
The LORD said through his servants the prophets: `Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb-line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes out a dish, wiping it and turning it upside-down. I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and hand them over to their enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their foes, because they have done evil in my eyes and have provoked me to anger from the day their forefathers came out of Egypt until this day' (2 Kings 21:10-15).
The Amorites, to whom Manasseh is compared, were a subset of the Canaanites, notorious for their kinky practices. One old Babylonian text reads, "The Amorite says to his wife, `You be the man and I will be the woman.'"
The comparison suggests an uncurbed, lecherous life-style, one that corrupted Manasseh and eventually eroded away the moral fiber of his nation. "He led Judah into sin." He alone was responsible.
Understand what's being said here: Manasseh alone bore the responsibility for bringing an entire nation down. What a legacy to leave behind! The author of 2 Kings repeats this charge in the end...
The Lord sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders ...to destroy Judah, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by his servants the prophets. Surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord's command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done... (2Kings 24:3, 4).
There is a final footnote, bloody and terrible in it's implications...
Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end--besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord (2 Kings 21:16).
Manasseh silenced the prophets with terrifying fury. Josephus, the Jewish historian, reports that Manasseh "slew all the righteous men that were among the Hebrews, nor would he spare the prophets, for he every day slew some of them until Jerusalem was overflown with blood."
There is a long-standing Jewish tradition reported in the Talmud (Yeb. 49b) that Manasseh put his old teacher, Isaiah, in a log and sawed it in two. This is almost certainly the background of the statement in the book of Hebrews that at least one of God's heroes was "sawn in two" (Hebrews 11:37).
As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? Manasseh rested with his fathers and was buried in his palace garden, the garden of Uzza. And Amon his son succeeded him as king. (2Kings 21:17,18).
Here is an odd thing: Manasseh thumbed his nose at God for fifty-five years, indulged himself in every lustful passion for as long as his reign lasted, corrupted and ruined an entire nation and God sat on his hands. Or did he?
There is a line, by us unseen,Normally, we see only one side of God--his long-suffering patience: "He is waiting to be gracious" (Isaiah 30:18). But there is another side: his "strange work" of judgment. Jeremy Taylor says, "God threatens us with terrible things if we will not be happy."
That crosses every path;
The hidden boundary between
God's patience and His wrath.--Joseph Addison Alexander
The whole story is not told in the book of Kings. The purpose of First and Second Kings was to trace the decline of Israel and Judah to the Babylonian exile and to supply the reasons for that exile. The stories are necessarily abridged. The writer dwells only on those facts that contribute to his theme.
The account of Manasseh's reign is resumed and supplemented in 2 Chronicles 33. The purpose of the Chronicler was different: his theme was the restoration of the Davidic throne and for this purpose he selected events that contributed to that motif. He included a number of facts that are omitted in Kings.
The first nine verses of 2 Chronicles 33 are basically a rewrite of 2 Kings 21:1-9 with a few minor changes. Then a new story emerges...
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. (2 Chronicles 33:10-13)"The Lord spoke to Manasseh...." God's judgment did not fall precipitously; it never does. Theologian John Piper says, "(God's) anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger."
God loves us too much to let us go. He pursues us--even into our sin and guilt and pleads with us to turn back. An old Turkish proverb says that God has "feet of wool and hands of steel." We may not hear him coming, but when he gets his hands on us, we cannot wriggle away.
The flip side of the promise "I will never leave you or forsake you," is the pledge that he will never leave us alone. He will hound us, badger us, bother us, pester us, hector us until we give in.
George MacDonald says, "It's a terrible thing to be bad. All God's efforts are bent to deliver us from it, nor will he stop until we have given up being bad. God will have us good."
God has many ways to deliver us from sin. Sometimes by a drawing we feel in our souls; sometimes by a word dropped by a friend; sometimes by an incident related; or it by a book, a sermon, a chance meeting. In this way God appeals to us to come back to him.
I think of a student I met at Stanford University years ago, sitting on a bench in front of Memorial Church, reading a Stanford Daily. I sat down next to him and we began to talk. The conversation went well until it turned to the subject of his relationship with God.
He leaped to his feet with a curse and stalked away. Then he stopped and turned around. "Forgive me," he said, "I was raised in a Christian home. My parents are Presbyterian missionaries in Taiwan, but I've been running away from God all my life. Yet wherever I go someone wants to talk to me about about God." As Francis Thompson learned, God's "strong feet" were following after, "with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace...."
More than anything our Lord wants us to give in to his love. "Love surrounds us," MacDonald said, "seeking the smallest crack by which it may enter in." God waits tirelessly, loves relentlessly. But if we will not have him, he will let us have our way and let us reap the consequences of our resistance. But even this is for our good. It is the redemptive judgment of God. God knows when the cold wind blows it may turn our head around.
So the Lord brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God (2 Chronicles 33:11,12).
The Assyrian king mentioned here was probably Esar-haddon the son of Sennacherib. Sennacherib died in 680 BC., a date that corresponds to the traditional date of Isaiah's martyrdom. Manasseh's murder of God's prophet was evidently the last straw.
Sennacherib was succeeded by Esar-haddon. With the change of guard Manasseh, in concert with the king of Ethiopia, Tirhaka, led an insurrection against Assyria that swept up most of the other Assyrian provinces in the west.
Esar-haddon retaliated quickly, invading Judah and conquering Jerusalem. In his great prism, now displayed in the London Museum, Eser haddon reports that he conquered twenty-two kings "on the other side of the river (Euphrates)" and that among them was "Me-na-si-i (Manasseh), king of Ia ú di (Judah)."
Esarhaddon put a ring in Manasseh's nose, manacles on his hands and feet and marched him off to Babylon where for twelve years he languished in a dungeon.
A ring in the nose was the Assyrian way of humiliating conquered kings, a custom clearly illustrated on Assyrian reliefs. One such carving depicts two conquered kings, portrayed as dwarfs beside the gigantic figure of Esarhaddon. He holds a rope that leads to rings in the noses of the smaller figures. The taller of the two small images is thought to be Tirhaka, king of Ethiopia, the more diminutive figure is Manasseh.
What utter humiliation; what awful ruin! But all to bring Manasseh home to God.
Well mayest thou then work on indocile hearts;
By small successes, disappointments small;
By nature, weather, failure or sore fall;
By shame, anxiety bitterness and smarts;
By loneliness, by weary loss of zest.
The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger quest,
Drive home the wanderer to the Father's breast.
--George MacDonald
Recovery begins with shame. "To be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing," MacDonald said. "Shame is shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get to the heart of things.... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth." Humility and contrition are the keys to the heart of God.
Note Manasseh's response:
In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. (2Chronicles 33:12).
In his distress Manasseh "sought the favor of the Lord his God." Manasseh was not forsaken. Despite his monstrous wickedness the Lord was still Manasseh's God. Though anger swept across God's face he never turned his eyes away. "I know those eyes," John Donne wrote. "They never will despise."
Then Manasseh "humbled himself greatly." Josephus, the Jewish historian, said that Manasseh "esteemed himself to be the cause of it all. He accepted full responsibility for what he had done--no denial, no excuses, no justification, no special pleading, no blame-shifting.
Our tendency to make excuses for ourselves comes from thinking that God will never take us back unless we can minimize or explain away our wrong-doing. But, as C. S. Lewis observed, "Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, that sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the one who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness; and that we can always have from (God)."
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom laments, "I's wicked I is; mighty wicked; anyhow I can't help it!"
Sin is our usual thing. It is the way we make our way through life--and we can't help it. Yet our repeated failures do not change God's fundamental disposition toward us: if it's our nature to sin it's his nature to save. Without that understanding we could never survive our sin. It would only terrorize us and drive us away from God.
We'd have grounds for that terror if God had chosen us in the beginning because we were so wonderful. But since our original acceptance did not depend on anything in us, it cannot be undone by anything in us now. Nothing in us deserved his favor before our conversion; nothing in us merits it's continuation.
God saved us because he determined to do so. He created us for himself and without that fellowship his heart aches in loneliness. That's why Christ suffered for us--"the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring (us) to God (1 Peter 3:18). He did not set out to save us at first because we were sinful and he will not stop saving us now just because we're weak and difficult to save. He loves us too much to give up. He will never give up. "He who began a good work in (us) will carry it on to completion..." (Philippians 1:6).
Bernard of Clairvaux, that 12th century Christian wrote this: "No sinful man should ever despair--even if he has sinned ever so greatly, or ever so often, or ever so long. We have an example in Peter who denied Christ; in Paul who pursued the Church; in Matthew and Zaccheus who were publicans; in Mary Magdalene who was a sinful woman, in the woman who was taken in adultery, in the thief who hung on the cross beside Christ; in Mary the Egyptian; and in innumerable other grievous and great sinners."
We must accept God's full and free forgiveness and then forget ourselves. That we are sinners is undeniably true. That we are forgiven sinners is undeniable as well. We must not dwell on our sinfulness. God's heart is open to us. We must take what forgiveness we need and get on with the business of living.
"We remain such creeping Christians," George MacDonald said, "because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments.... We mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and then forget our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace and lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken us...."
There is more: God not only forgives our sin, he uses it to make us better than ever before. Consider Manasseh: he was released from prison after twelve years and restored to his throne at which time he set out to strengthen his defenses.
And when (Manasseh) prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God. He rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David, west of the Gihon spring in the valley, as far as the entrance of the Fish Gate and encircling the hill of Ophel; he also made it much higher. He stationed military commanders in all the fortified cities in Judah. He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. Then he restored the altar of the LORD and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank-offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel (2Chronicles 33:13-17).
Manasseh took away his pagan gods and the images of them, and the terrible idol that he had set up in the house of the Lord. He hated his idols with as much as fervor as he had loved them before. He'd had enough of them.
He repaired the altar of the Lord, which he had broken down. He sacrificed on it peace-offerings and thank-offerings to praise God for his deliverance. He used his power now to reform his people rather than to corrupt them.
This is what John the Baptist described as "fruit in keeping with repentance" (Matthew 3:8). True repentance involves a fundamental change in our outlook and attitude. It is not mere sorrow over sin. It is a radical reversal of our thinking. It will manifest itself in a determined effort to strengthen ourselves in those areas where we are weak and where we have fallen before. There will be a fierce determination to guard ourselves against sin.
True repentance will mean staying away from the company of a man or woman whose influence corrupts us. It will mean staying out of situations in which we're inclined to stumble and fall. It will mean staying away from polluting influences in movies, books, magazines and cyberspace. It will mean finding another man to hold us accountable when we travel, someone who will keep us honest when we're away from home. Whatever it means, our waywardness will have made us stronger and better than ever before. Even from our sin God has drawn good.
God gave Manasseh twenty years more of rule. He got a fresh and better start and he made the most of it. He became one of the greatest kings of Judah, and for twenty-two years was a glorious example to Israel of God's unimaginable grace. He will do the same for you.
Manasseh's name is taken from a Hebrew verb that means "to forget." That's the name God writes over Manasseh's past and ours--"forgotten." "I will forgive (your) wickedness and will remember (your) sins no more" (Jeremiah 31:34). Oswald Chambers says, "God forgets away our sins."
Jeffrey Dahmer comes to mind, the young man who confessed to murdering seventeen young men, dismembering some, having sex with their corpses and eating parts of their bodies.
The media blitz surrounding his crimes turned Dahmer into a national symbol of evil. After his bloody death, at the Columbia Correctional Center in Wisconsin, everyone was convinced that Dahmer was going straight to hell. One columnist uttered a fervent plea to the powers of darkness: "Take Jeffrey Dahmer, please."
But as it turned out, Dahmer began attending Bible studies in prison. He subsequently made a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ and was baptized. He found forgiveness and peace. He was calm about his fate, even after an inmate attempted to slit his throat during a chapel service. If he was sincere, and it appears that he was, we will see him one day in heaven.
Odd, isn't it? But such is the grace of God.
During half-time of that Rose Bowl game in 1929: Riegles hid in a corner of the UCLA locker room with a towel over his head. His coach, Nibbs Price, said nothing to him and very little to the team.
Three minutes before the second half he said quietly, "The team that started the first half will start the second half. Riegles called out: "I can't, coach; I can't go back in. I've humiliated the team, the school, myself. I can't go back in." "Get back in game, Riegles," Price replied, "The game is only half over."
What a coach! What a God!
Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thy self, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now and-heretofore;
And, having done that, Thou hast done,
I fear no more.
--John Donne