The King Who Found Mercy - Chronicles Of The Kings (Week 4)

Can God really forgive someone who has gone too far? What if the mistakes, failures, and sins in our lives feel too great to overcome?

In Week 4 of Chronicles of the Kings, we look at the life of Manasseh, a king whose story reveals both the depth of human sin and the incredible depth of God's mercy. Listen as Pastor Andrew Strand takes us through The King Who Found Mercy and week 4 of Chronicles Of The Kings and discover the hope that is found in the mercy of God.

Transcript

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Oh yeah, well, I am excited to continue in our series that we've been in. But before uh we dive too far into the kinks today, can we just take a moment and continue the theme that Pastor Oscar had? Can I tell you a few dad jokes to begin our time today? Would that be okay? Okay, now let me just put this caveat out there. Don't be like first service and yell out the answer if you know it. Can we can we make that deal? Is that cool? All right, here we go. All right, what do you call a man with a rubber toe? Roberto. That's pretty good, isn't it? All right, one more. One more. All right, here we go. Uh, what did the buffalo say when he dropped off his son at school? By son. You can use that one. You're welcome. Uh well, I love a good redemption story. I love a good comeback story. And today uh I want to tell you uh a good redemption story. And I think there's something built into the human psyche. I think something that God built into us where we love to cheer for those who are down and out, for those who uh appear to have a story that's going this way, and then all of a sudden something happens, there's a hinge moment in their life, and they begin to live in a different way. And of course, we uh know that this is true. We are familiar with this in the sports world. Uh, it's when the momentum begins to shift. And uh, for those of you Spurs fans, you know all too well how this feels, don't you? So I'm sorry, you remember that moment. You know, game one, the Knicks won, it was a good game. In game two, the Spurs were playing and they had this opportunity, and Wemby gets the ball, he gets the last shot, he puts up the shot, and then he misses it. It was the moment, it was the fulcrum moment where everything in that series could have changed, and then you know, it went on to have another terrible moment where they're up by 29, and it just kind of the momentum began to shift, and uh there are these moments in life where everything changes, these hinge moments, these fulcrum moments in our life. And today we are going to look at a king in 2 Chronicles. If you have your Bible, you can open up there in 2 Chronicles uh chapter 33, who had one of these moments where everything was headed one way in his life, and then God shows up and changes everything. And uh, I've been praying this week. I just sensed it on Friday. I was out mowing the lawn and I began to pray that God would uh intersect that some of you that there would be a number, there's a number that came to mind, the 50 people across all the Mid-Cities campuses that would have a hinge moment in their life. That those of you who uh walked in one way today might leave in a different way. And we've been in a series this summer called the Chronicles of the Kings, and we've been studying uh some of the Old Testament kings. We've started off with the first three kings that all were reigning over a united kingdom. We've studied uh Saul and we've studied David and we've studied Solomon. Today uh we're gonna look at the 14th king of Judah. His name is Manasseh, and the title of today's message is The King Who Found Mercy. Would you please stand with me for the reading of God's word? And while you're doing that, I want to welcome those of you who are joining us online. Uh 2 Chronicles 33, starting in verse 1, says, Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem, 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. For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had torn down, and he erected altars to the Baals and made Asheroth and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them, and he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be forever. And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts in the house of the Lord, and he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the sun of Hinnem, and he used fortune telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Verse 10. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him 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 he heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I was reminded this week of the story of one of the great theologians in church history, Augustine of Hippo. Some of you have studied church history and you know a little bit about his story. Like Manasseh, uh, Augustine grew up with a rich spiritual heritage in his family of origin, at least uh on his mother's side. His father came to faith on his deathbed. But you see, his mother, Augustine's mother, loved God with all of her heart, and she taught young Augustine the foundations of our faith from a very young age. And yet as he began to grow up, he rejected that orthodoxy and he began to pursue a hedonistic and self-indulgent lifestyle. As a teenager, he found himself enslaved, he used that word, enslaved to sexual passions and desires, and he was allured by an unquenchable thirst for success. And he went on to uh be a prolific student in philosophy and rhetoric, notoriously going on to start schools of rhetoric in some of the world's most famous and prominent cities. As an early uh as a teenager, he began to follow a pagan religion uh called Manichaean, and much to the chagrin, as you can imagine, to his mother. At age 17, he began a relationship with a woman, a young woman in Carthage, and uh his mother was not happy with that. And then he pursued a 15-year relationship with her. She was his lover soon after, in 385, he fathered a child out of wedlock. And about the time that he was going to end this 15-year relationship and pursue another relationship with a wealthy heiress, there was a hinge point in his life. He had heard about uh this bishop named Ambrose, who had an eloquent style of speaking, and uh Ambrose was the bishop of Milan, and so Augustine showed up to hear him speak. And that day, Augustine's life changed forever. You see, the bishop of Milan preached the gospel, and all of a sudden, Augustine returned to what he had been taught as an early child. He became a follower of Jesus that day, and his life began to drastically change. Though he did not deserve mercy, he received mercy that day. And he went from being a man who has this famous quote Give me chastity and continence, but not yet. This is who he was before Christ, to a man describing himself and his repentance and conversion, who said this, how sweet did it suddenly become to me to be free of the sweets of folly, things that I once feared to lose, it was now a joy for me to put away. He says, You cast them forth from me, you the true and highest sweetness, you cast them forth, and in their steed, you entered in sweeter than every pleasure. The story of King Manasseh is not so different than that of Augustine of Hippo. We find Manasseh's story in 2 Kings and also in 2 Chronicles, and uh the text that we read earlier tells us that he was the longest tenured king in all of Judah. He reigned for 55 years. He was the 14th king of the southern kingdom, and he reigned from 697 to 642. He likely became a co-regent under his daddy, Hezekiah. Some of you are familiar with him. We'll talk about him here in just a moment, and then we're gonna study his life later in the summer. But for 10 years, Manasseh ruled with his father, and surely he had learned some things under his father's wisdom. He had learned that Ezra, what Ezra teaches us, uh, is that that Hezekiah had been a man of faith. He had been a man who had understood the power of God, and yet Ezra tells us about Manasseh's story. He speaks rather scathingly about his story. And you can imagine uh Manasseh's in this, you can imagine his reign in this way. Whatever terrible world leader that you can think of in the past, I want you to imagine that person times a hundred, and that was Manasseh. See, he was a wicked king and an evil king, a king that in no way, shape, or form deserved any type of mercy. And yet Manasseh received mercy. But in his early life, he was a wicked king. He didn't walk with God, he didn't listen to God's wisdom in his leadership, and as we will soon discover, he basically spat on God's wisdom and God's ways. And not only did he do that, but he also led the people who he had been entrusted to lead straight into the pit with him. I want to give you uh one observation for today. I want to explore one powerful reality, and then I want to close our time with one profound truth that reverberates all throughout Scripture. The first observation is this that Manasseh rejected the spiritual heritage that he had been given. He rejected it. Similar to uh Augustine of Hippo, as we talked about earlier, Manasseh's father Hezekiah was a man of faith. And yet, verse 3 told us today that he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down. You see, Hezekiah had brought lots of reform during his rule, and yet just a few years later, when Manasseh had the ability to lead in his own way, he rebuilt those high places. And you can go back and read the story of Hezekiah yourself later today. You can see that Manasseh had grown up with a rich spiritual heritage. And Hezekiah had had a dependence on God, and certainly he didn't get it all right. There was a very key moment that we'll talk about later in the summer where he just completely missed it. But Manasseh knew the God of the Old Testament, he knew the truth, and yet he chose to walk away from God's wisdom. And some of you in here today, you have the exact same story. Maybe you grew up in a household of faith. Maybe you had a grandmother who prayed for you. Maybe some of you in here grew up in a household where your parents taught you the ways of the Lord, and you can remember a time in your life, often it's in the teenage years, where you walked away from all the things that you had been taught, and you thought, I'm gonna go see what the world has to offer. But I want to tell you that there is power in leaving a spiritual legacy. I want to lean in for just a moment for our fathers, and for those of you who would call yourself, I'm a spiritual father to maybe somebody who doesn't have a father. There is power in leaving a spiritual legacy, and you may not have tons of money, you may have never been taught how to do that on your own, you may even feel deficient in how to lead your own family spiritually. But listen to me, this is the very best gift that you can give your children. It is the best gift. You can give them incredible cars, you can, you know, pay for their wedding. The best gift that you can give is a spiritual legacy to be the leader of your own home. And I believe the principle that we find in the Proverbs is true. It says, Train up a child in the way that they should go. I want you to read these words with me. And when they are old, they will not turn away from it. When they're old. This was Manasseh's story. He walked away from the legacy that he had been given for many, many years. And I think this reminds us, listen to me, parents who have children who are wayward right now, so don't stop praying. Don't stop praying. Because there is power in the foundation that you laid in that child, and there may be a day where they come back to it. You see, Manasseh, for a long part of his life, capitulated to the culture that was around him. And God had given them warnings, God had given his people warnings over and over and over again. Do not capitulate to the culture and the civil civilizations that are around you, but the list of transgressions is quite robust for Manasseh. We read it earlier. Let's go over these because some of these may be a little bit confusing. The first thing is that he rebuilt the high places that his father had torn down. Now, I don't know, some of you maybe have read through Kings and Chronicles, and you've noticed that at times it seems like this is okay to go up and worship on the high places. At times it's like, no, no, that's a phopa, don't do that. Well, here was the situation. At this point, the temple had been built, and that was where temple, that was where worship was supposed to happen. And this is why Hezekiah had torn down the high places. And so when Manasseh rebuilt them, this was basically like saying, I'm gonna do whatever I want to. He erected altars to the Baals and the Asherah, which are local fertility gods and weather gods, they worship the host of heaven, which is completely contrary to what Deuteronomy 4.19 said, unless beware you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the hosts of heaven, you will be drawn away and bow down to worship them and serve them. They worshiped the stars. On top of that, he built altars in the temple. Everybody say, yikes. They built altars in the temple. He profaned the house of the Lord. He sought out fortune tellers and necromancers and mediums and had sorcery involved. He was trying to gain power from evil spirits, and maybe worst of all, he sacrificed his own sons in the Valley of Heaven. See, these things are real. These things are evil. And he was influenced by the culture around him. Let me ask you a question. How did God feel about this? Well, the text tells us, the text tells us he did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. I want to lean in on this word provoke for just a moment. How many of you have a brother or a sister? You grew up with uh brothers or sisters in your home. Anybody ever been provoked by your brother or sister? Yeah. I have kids now, they know how to like poke at each other, don't they? They're like, whatever it is that I can possibly make them the most mad, that's what I'm gonna do. My brother, who's eight years older than me, uh, we have a great relationship now. Uh, but he had a few nicknames for me. I can't say any of them in church. There were nogies, there were wedges, all the things. And he would provoke me to anger. Man, he could make me so incredibly angry. And this is what we see that Manasseh did to the Lord, he provoked the Lord to anger. The God who is slow to anger and abounding in loyal love became really, really angry. And what was God's response? Well, we see in 2 Kings 21, I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hear it will tingle. See, under Manasseh's leadership, it's noted that this was the pinnacle of evil in Judah, and it was the primary cause of the exile. This brother was a bad dude, and he led the people into some bad things, and he did not deserve mercy. His actions were selfish and prideful and wicked. He had rejected his spiritual heritage, and in spite of this, did you notice this? The powerful reality that we see today is that God was still speaking to Manasseh. This is a powerful reality. In the depth of his sin, in the depth of leading all of these people into sin, the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people. This is so interesting to me. That in the mess that he had made, in the worship of all of these other deities, in the midst of burning his own sons as a sacrifice, God was still speaking to him. This is amazing to me. And I think God still speaks to us today. But how many of us, just in a moment of honesty, say, it's hard to hear God sometimes? A few years ago, uh we did a staff retreat, and a friend of mine came and led this staff retreat, and he led us in this exercise, and it was like the most awesome and infuriating thing ever. Here's what he asked us to do. He said, All right, I want you to pair up with somebody, and uh he said, they are gonna tell you what's been going on in their life for two minutes. Now, here's the caveat you cannot interrupt them. I want you to just look them in the eye and I want you to listen for two minutes. Okay, sounds good. Then he said, At the end of their time, I want you to pray for them without words. And as an extrovert, this was the most excruciating moment of my entire life. Anyone else in here know how this feels? Yeah, sometimes Allie looks over at me and she's like, Shh, that's enough words for today. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You introverts, you're like, man, that sounds like an exercise we should do in our house all the time. And so that's what we did. I listened. Pastor Daniel was my partner, and he talked about what was going on in his life, and then for two, what felt like originally excruciating minutes. I just want to pray for him out loud. And yet, as I began to do this exercise, the Spirit of God began to speak to me about him. There's power. Some of you guys need to try this in your own home. You see, even in the mess, even in the good stuff, God is a God who speaks. We see this over and over again in the old testament that we serve a God who speaks to us. And it makes me wonder how many of us have walked away from our faith like Manasseh, and yet God has been speaking to us all along. We just didn't have ears to hear. God speaks to us through people, he speaks to us through his word, he speaks to us through visions and dreams. And if we'll put our cell phone down long enough, guess what? He'll speak to our hearts. Maybe like Manasseh, he's trying to warn us. Be careful of that Instagram algorithm because it can lead you down a place that you don't want to go. Be careful of that online gambling that you have started to do. It can lead to an addiction. Be careful of that relationship. God is speaking to you because he's saying that relationship is not gonna lead you to streams of living water. He's been trying to get your attention, and ultimately, here's what Manasseh learned that there are consequences for our sins. The text tells us that there was absolutely consequences for him. He was carried off with hooks and he was carried into exile, but it wasn't just him. It was actually his kids and his grandkids and the people that he had been entrusted to oversee, that they also suffered the consequences of his sin. And this is the point in the story where it seems like all is lost. It seems like there is no hope in the midst of this time because Manasseh had walked away from his spiritual heritage. He had ignored God's voice, and he was living in the consequences of his own sin. And then there's this incredible hinge moment. This moment that we see that tells us this profound truth. It's the same profound truth that we see all throughout scripture that God's mercy was greater than Manasseh's deepest rebellion. This is the story that we see over and over and over again. Outside of Jesus, every figure in the Bible needs the mercy of God. Look at what happens in Manasseh's deepest, darkest moment when he was in distress. When he was at his lowest. He entreated the favor of the Lord. Did you notice this? His God. He returned back to what his daddy had been teaching him for a very long time when he was young, and he humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he didn't know where else to turn, he turned to his God, the big G God, the God who offers mercy. And God was moved. This is powerful, church. He was moved by his entreaty and he heard his plea and he brought him again to Jerusalem. What was the key ingredient for Manasseh's turn? Did you notice it? He humbled himself. This is a word that we need to lean in on for just a moment. Manasseh humbled himself greatly. This is a word that we are often familiar with, but in most cases we don't think of it as a positive word. We think of humble men, especially in West Texas, as weak men. We think of humble men as pathetic men. We think of somebody who is humble as being meek, but in the fulcrum moment, in the hinge moment of Manasseh's life, the old Manasseh died that day. The prideful Manasseh, the arrogant Manasseh, this is what we see, and it is the profound truth. In your rebellion, God has been there all along. He's been speaking to you, he's been calling you back because God's mercy is greater than your deepest rebellion. His mercy is great, friends. And though you may have walked around, walked away from what you were taught at an early age, all it takes is this moment, just like Manasseh had, where you can pray and entreat God's favor, and he is happy to give you the mercy that we see all throughout scriptures. You see, this is the moment where everything changed. This is the way of the upside-down kingdom. It is not the powerful who receives the mercy, it is the humble. And there would be another king who would come hundreds of years later. This is the different kind of king, the king that we want to emulate. There was a king who would come, the king who, though he had created the world, came as a humble servant. Philippians 2 describes Jesus in this way, who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Not because you deserve it. You see, just like Manasseh, we have put idols in our own heart. We are the temple now, but we've put idols in our own heart. Instead of judging Manasseh, we should simply humble ourselves before God and receive the mercy that He offers to us. It's the mercy that Jesus purchased on the cross today. And I don't think it's an accident that some of you are here today in a similar way to what Augustine received. Some of you have heard the good news of the God who offers mercy, and today is your day. And so I want to take a moment today and finish our time by simply giving you that opportunity to receive the free gift of salvation. And if this is you today, in just a moment, I'm going to ask you to be bold. I'm going to ask you to stand and say, I want to receive that free gift today. I want to repent and turn and begin to live a different way. Because this is exactly what happened to Manasseh. He changed his life. And if you read the rest of his story, he began to bring reforms about. He began to live in a different way. And this is some of your story today. So I'm going to ask you just to bow your head with me before we finish our time. If today you come to this church and you say, I need the mercy of God, I've walked in my own way. I've walked in a way where even when God was speaking to me, I didn't want to hear it. I've walked in pride, arrogance, and I'm dealing with the consequences of my own sin. I'm ready to entreat the favor of God, though I don't deserve it. You can do that today. And if that's you, I want you to do something for me right now. I want you to just be real bold and just stand up right here in this room. If that's you, just go ahead, stand up right now. See, God is rich in mercy. And we entreat him. Hope. Life. Some of you, this is a moment. It's a hinge moment in your life. You'll come back to this day forever. Why don't you just pray this prayer with me? God, today I repent of the way that I've lived. God, I'm sorry that I have made idols in my own heart, my own body. Lord, in the deepest part of my distress today, I turn to you. And I receive the free gift of salvation and the forgiveness of my sins. Thank you that Jesus came and took my place on the cross. That he came as a humble servant. And today would you help me through the power of the Holy Spirit to live in a different way? So God, I honor you today in my life. We ask these things today in the name of Jesus. Amen.