spectacular repentance

Manasseh. Many know this king of Judah to be the most wicked in Israel’s history. In fact, it is recorded that he “has done more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols.” (1 Ki 21.11) For starters, after his father Hezekiah died, he began a reform of that can only be described as malicious, violent, bloody, and abominable. He rebuilt all the sacred high places that his father had destroyed and erected altars for Baal and Asherah. The worship of these idols included such acts as ritual prostitution in order to arouse the god so that he may ejaculate his seed in the form of rain on the earth. Furthermore, it is recorded that he offered his own sons in child sacrifices. He continued in this tirade by setting up altars for all the host of heaven in the temple of Yahweh. Frequently, he consulted mediums and necromancers, dabbling in all sorts of wicked practices. Tradition holds that it was Manasseh who was responsible for sawing the prophet Isaiah in half. It is recorded that “Yahweh spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention.” (2 Ch 33.10) There can not be a more dark, bleak, evil description of the nation than what has just been described. We are talking apostasy on a national scale that is manifesting itself in egregious sins that most would find nothing less than nauseating. A picture of the human heart when sin is allowed to show what it is truly capable when it goes unchecked. Depravity on full display. And yet....

I have to admit that I never knew this because I have typically skipped reading Chronicles to my loss. I learned a valuable lesson on why it is important to read through the entirety of Scripture. If you only read the account of Manasseh in Kings, you will miss out on quite possibly one of the most spectacular accounts of repentance and forgiveness recorded in Scripture. It is recorded in 2 Chronicles 33 that as a result of this apostasy that God brought the Assyrians to capture Manasseh. They would end up taking him away with hooks and chains to Babylon. “And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of Yahweh 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 Yahweh was God.” (2 Ch 33.12-13) I was speechless. I never knew this. I couldn’t believe what I had just read. This man who had done more wickedness and evil; who had killed his own sons in brutal, vulgar sacrifice; had killed the prophet Isaiah; who set up idols in the very Temple of God; he repented. And what’s more, God forgave him!

This is a beautiful account of God’s mercy and grace. You see, Manasseh is really a paradigm of the human heart apart from God in all its fury. We are all capable of such sin and in fact Christ teaches in the sermon on the mount that if we are angry with our brother, then we have committed murder in our hearts. Don’t think for one minute that our sin is not that bad. This is a very accurate picture of the depth of sin and what it is capable of. This is really a beautiful account of the Gospel! The Good News! We are all in need of deliverance from this disease called sin. Like Manasseh, we must humble ourselves before God and acknowledge our true state. It is only by the person and work of Christ that we have forgiveness!

I couldn’t help but think of how many kings started out well, but finished apostate. And yet, hidden away in the back of Chronicles is this beautiful, spectacular account of a wicked man that is forgiven by a gracious, merciful God. Truly remarkable!

take this heart of stone

Where do my affections lie? What is it that truly moves my innermost and sets my heart ablaze? It seems as if it has been so long since I have felt the heat of a burning flame. This heart of stone is calloused and hardened, longing to be released and transformed into a life of passion and purpose. If I claim to love my God and my maker, then I should just as passionately hate what He hates. Sin should not reign in this body. My desire should not be to please this flesh. Please, O God, give me spiritual eyes so that I may see you! Give me spiritual ears that I may hear you! Ressurrect this spiritual corpse from spiritual death that I may be fully alive and living unto you. Do not allow my faith to be of a spurious sort. Do not allow my desires to be about this physical, material life. Create a new heart within me. Take this heart of stone and shatter the sin that dwells within it. Do not allow me to leave the bloody ground of the Cross. If this does not move my affections; if beholding Christ’s battered, distorted, bloodied, bruised and mingled body does not move me then nothing will. I am a pilgrim, a sojourner, looking for peace. I am wondering through this life aimlessly, treading a path to the abyss of Sheol. There are not road signs. Directions have been hijacked. I roam in circles. Every now and then I capture a glimpse of a hill with what appears to have a tree erected upon it. But the fog rolls into the dark valley and I become lost once again. Every once in a while I will capture a flicker of light that appears to be coming from that same hill, but then it fades as I wonder deeper into this chasm. The harder I search and the more I attempt self-rescue, the more it becomes apparent that I do not have what it takes. I give in to the temptations and the lies. Who am I? This is not who I am. I have been bought for a price. I am not my own. I have been ransomed from the pit of hell and transferred from this kingdom of darkness to a Kingdom of Light. My citizenship is in another world. It is my task to live as a Kingdom ambassador to those I encounter along this cold, dark, eerie path called life. I have been given a message to proclaim: good news to those who are spiritually poor and bankrupt; to bind up the wounds of those whose hearts have been broken; to open the prison of those who are spiritually oppressed by the enemy; to proclaim that this is the year of the LORD’s favor! O God, if this does not move my affections, then what will? Why am I bound by past guilt when there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ? Why do I allow the fear of the future to control me when you are the Sovereign Lord and there is not one single inch of this world that you say, “Mine! And I rule it!” Although the victory has been won, the battle wages on. Help me to see the risen Christ who conquered sin, death, and Satan by His atoning death. This is the only thing that can save such a damned sinner as myself. My sin is so great that it took the God-man to die in order to redeem my life and soul from Death. If this does not move me, nothing will! O God, I pray that you give me holy affections and passions for You. Do not allow the things of this world to distract me from the straight and narrow path that leads to your Kingdom! Even though I have not seen you, please give me spiritual eyes to see you and love you, that I may believe in you and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Allow my muted tongue to become spiritually alive that I may sing from the depths of my being, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty; who was and is and is to come! Worthy are you, our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power, for you created ALL things, and by your will they existed and were created. Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Please God, help me to press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I do not deserve to breathe the next breath. There is nothing good in me, save Christ Jesus. Even the good things I do were prepared ahead of time in Christ Jesus that I may walk in them. Press on to know the Lord! Give me spiritual thirst and spiritual hunger. Allow this famine to pass. Burst forth with the rivers of living water, gushing forth from the spring of life. May your bread fall from heaven and may your Word never cease to be my guide and my strength. When all around me fall and forsake me, let me cling to your mighty right arm that brings salvation for your people. Oh God, slow to anger, yet abounding in loving kindness and mercy. You will not allow sin to go unpunished and you punished my SIN in the death of your son and have given me His righteousness. I have been adopted and can now call you Abba Father! If this does not move me, then nothing will! I feel so alone, yet I am more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. You have wounded me so that you may heal me. Restore to me the days of my youth. The time that I have wasted, may I give it back to you immeasurably. Into your hands I commit my Spirit! The saint must walk alone. If this doesn’t move me, then what will? Take this heart of stone....

awake, O sleeper

Miracles. The eternal breaking into the present. A physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. The Gospels and Jesus will not make any sense at all until you come to the realization that He did not come first and foremost to perform miracles. You see, He was first and foremost about reaching people at the heart level. The reason people didn’t get him then or get him now is they fail to realize that Christianity and the Gospel is first and foremost about the heart. The miracles were simply a physical manifestation of a inward spiritual reality. For instance, when Christ healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda, he was among a multitude of invalids who were blind, lame, and paralyzed (Jn 5). If He came simply to heal people of their physical disease, then why did he only choose one man. The dire conditions were a physical reminder that spiritually we are all lame, blind, and paralyzed in need of healing. You see, Jesus was about the heart and individuals. He chose this one man who had been there for thirty-eight years and he healed him. Jesus would heal a man who was born blind from birth; spiritually we are all born blind and thus we need spiritual eyes to see who Christ truly is. In addition we are all born spiritually deaf in need of spiritual ears to hear. Like Lazarus, we are born spiritually dead, a corpse rotting and decaying in the tomb with no life. Hence, we need to be resurrected in a spiritual sense in order to truly live. All of these miracles are a picture or symbol that Jesus was using to teach a spiritual reality.

The majority of those who witnessed the miracles, however, failed to grasp these truths. They were thinking strictly on a physical, material level. So, when Jesus feeds the five thousand in John 6, they want to take him by force and make Him king. It’s high time that the Messiah arrive and destroy the hated Romans. He gives us free food. Look at all the things he can give us. Material. Physical. By the end of the chapter, Jesus brings hard truth and says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you....When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” When Jesus was providing for their physical needs they were all about him, but the minute He brings hard truth and draws a line in the sand, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” Why is this? Hard truth exposes motives. They wanted the gifts, but not the Giver. So long as Jesus was about feeding them, healing them, and meeting their physical needs, they were all about him. They could’t come to terms that Jesus was about the heart. Christ then turns to the twelve and asks them, “Do you want to go away as well?” Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Two groups, two totally different responses. The crowd, who was ready to take Him by force, walks away. The Twelve, where else will we go?

Why do I write all this? I’m concerned that there are many today who have placed their faith in a Jesus that serves them and their physical material needs, rather than making Him the object of their faith. There is such a thing as spurious faith. Simply repeating words in a prayer like some magical chant is not saving faith. You can even believe that Christ lived, was crucified, and rose again but still fail to have saving faith. Like the seed that falls on the stony ground, you may begin well, but when hard truth comes your “faith” never took root and you immediately fall away. You desire the gifts, but not the Giver. Even the demons believe in God and shudder. You must place your faith “IN” Christ. This means that even when times are tough and you may be tempted to walk away, you put your big boy pants on and say, “To whom will we go?” Christ must be the object of your faith. Anything less, is spurious.

Our spiritual state is so bad, that we are compared to lame, blind, deaf, paralyzed, and ultimately, dead corpses. We are in desperate need of a miracle. This miracle is described in the new birth! This occurs when God gives us His Spirit and through the hearing of the Good News of the Gospel, Christ says “LIVE!!!!” and we are resurrected and given spiritual eyes to see and spiritual ears to hear! Christ gives us a new heart and takes our heart of stone. We are given a new disposition and nature that is described in terms of a new creation. EVERY TIME A SPIRITUALLY DEAD PERSON COMES TO CHRIST IT IS A MIRACLE! The eternal has broken into the present! The image and name of Christ have been sealed upon our hearts. THIS IS SAVING FAITH!

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine in you.” Eph 5.14