SPEAKER_01: How's everybody today?
SPEAKER_01: You guys doing alright?
unknown: No, sir.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's good.
SPEAKER_01: Fellowship and pie makes everything better, right?
SPEAKER_01: And and air conditioning.
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: Uh hey, we're a month away from football season.
SPEAKER_01: That needs an amen right there, right?
SPEAKER_01: We're ready.
SPEAKER_01: It's been too long.
SPEAKER_01: Gotta get these sissy soccer people out of the way and we can actually play real football.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Huh?
SPEAKER_00: With a hand.
SPEAKER_00: Did you enjoy the World Cup?
SPEAKER_00: Was it good?
SPEAKER_00: Did they do a good job with it?
SPEAKER_01: It seemed like, yeah, it's amazing how many people.
SPEAKER_01: Janet, my wife, followed people who were who came to America to watch their countries or to watch that, and all of their comments on, you know, the restaurants they went to and the stuff they saw and all that.
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty interesting to get that perspective of people who traveled here for that.
SPEAKER_01: So it was good.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for today.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for a chance to be together and fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the encouragement these guys are to each other this week and every week.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for folks that made the food for us and prepared it for us, and they're a blessing every week.
SPEAKER_01: So we ask that you use this food to the strength of our bodies.
SPEAKER_01: Give us strength to serve you.
SPEAKER_01: We ask now that you be our teacher as we go into your word.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we're uh we're continuing our chronological Bible study.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you guys are enjoying that.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's really fun.
SPEAKER_01: I made the comment on Sunday that, you know, if you read three chapters a day on average, so on average, that's seven times three, it's 21 chapters a week.
SPEAKER_01: That's like 42 sermons I'm leaving on the table that I don't get to preach every week.
SPEAKER_01: So it's fun to be doing it here so I get a second bite at the apple.
SPEAKER_01: And I know Dave is doing that on Thursdays, and some of you guys come on Thursdays.
SPEAKER_01: I'd invite y'all to come again.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this week, he's kind of tag teaming or close, following up after what I'm doing today.
SPEAKER_01: So he does a great job teaching, especially these Old Testament things.
SPEAKER_01: He is really, really good at that.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're not coming on Thursday, y'all give it a shot.
SPEAKER_01: Another meal and uh more fellowship, and you get to hear Dave uh teach you real things instead of me just babble on.
SPEAKER_01: So and it's five bucks, that's right.
SPEAKER_01: So I babble.
SPEAKER_01: Babble on.
SPEAKER_01: Not babble on, babble on.
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has uh eligible when that part of the case.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe one or two, right?
SPEAKER_01: Uh if I'm eligible, everybody in this room is eligible, right?
SPEAKER_01: So I'm the youngest guy in the room.
SPEAKER_01: No, Ed was probably the youngest guy in the room, I imagine.
SPEAKER_01: Looking around, probably so.
SPEAKER_01: Uh he's also the most handsome guy in the room, so it's good.
SPEAKER_01: Let's uh so we're gonna jump in today.
SPEAKER_01: We're going through the kings and the prophets, and it's really interesting how they uh when you read it together.
SPEAKER_01: So you get like these, all these different prophets, and you're placing it in the timeline, following the split of the nation of Israel into two nations and all the struggles and all the different kings and all the other business.
SPEAKER_01: Some of it is interesting because you're dealing with prophets and prophetic messages and all that, but you also have history in here, and uh, and and you it's fun to preach through it, it's fun to it's fun to study it because you get you get all kinds of different things in one path.
SPEAKER_01: So you can get theology or prophecy, like we talked about on Sunday, uh, this past Sunday in the service.
SPEAKER_01: And you also get these stories and these moments, and some of them are incredibly famous in world history, like Sennacherib and his failure when he attacks uh Judah and fails and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you get the flow of these empires, the Assyrian Empire and then the Babylonian Empire and the Medo-Persians and all the all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So you got world history wrapped into this.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so there's just a lot of fascinating things in it.
SPEAKER_01: And in that history, you also get people, you get moments and lives and individuals.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the things we're going to talk about today.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I just was grabbed by this story because it really is an incredible picture of the power of repentance and just how how much grace God has and how gracious his character and his love is.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you think about it, we know some stories throughout Scripture where God shows incredible grace.
SPEAKER_01: You know, uh Paul, the Apostle Paul, begins life as Saul, and he's putting people in jail and having them beaten for following Jesus, and we meet him, he is holding the coats of the men who are stoning Stephen for being a follower of Jesus and sharing the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so you think, man, when he meets Saul on the road to Damascus and saves him, that's an incredible turnaround.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and you think about people who are followers of the Lord in Scripture, and you get these incredible turnarounds in God's forgiveness and grace.
SPEAKER_01: You get the story of Samson, you know, and all the mess and all the havoc he wreaked, and how much he was arrogant and walked away from the Lord, and yet at the end of his life, when he repents, God uses him, and the Bible says he killed more Philistines in his death than he ever did in the entirety of his being a judge.
SPEAKER_01: You think about Peter, Jesus is going to the cross to die for our sins, and Peter denies him three times in a public setting.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he literally walks away from Jesus in the significance of that moment.
SPEAKER_01: And some of them were hiding, but some of them didn't.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, they were at the foot of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: John, the apostle, his best friend, you know, one of his best friends in that group of three that he spent so much time with.
SPEAKER_01: And John is there at the foot of the cross and doesn't walk away.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Peter, who's supposed to be bold, who's supposed to be who Jesus is going to use, man, he walks away from the Lord, and then later, after Jesus is resurrected, you see him forgive and restore Peter.
SPEAKER_01: So you have this theme throughout scripture of God's forgiveness and what happens when we repent.
SPEAKER_01: Well, here this morning, we have a king that may be the worst of all of them.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the descriptions about King Manasseh are horrible.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they are they are truly horrible.
SPEAKER_01: But in that, you see a guy who starts out life in completely the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_01: He does everything to the worst degree that you can possibly do it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not making that up.
SPEAKER_01: That's literally what the scripture describes.
SPEAKER_01: And then in that moment where he is at bottom, he cries out for forgiveness and he cries out in repentance, and God restores him because of his repentance.
SPEAKER_01: And it's an incredible picture of the power of repentance.
SPEAKER_01: And so let's just see real quickly this guy, King Manasseh.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king and reigned 55 years in Jerusalem, which is an incredible, an incredibly long amount of time, and especially in the chaos of all this period where the nation is split.
SPEAKER_01: He did what was evil in the Lord's sight, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that God had dispossessed before the Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about the specificity of that.
SPEAKER_01: All those people were doing child sacrifices and all that other business.
SPEAKER_01: God told the children of Israel when they went into the land of Canaan, you're going to destroy all of them, you're going to kill all of them, you're not going to follow their gods, you can't even let your kids marry their kids.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was like, and here he says he's imitating all of them.
SPEAKER_01: He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had torn down and re-established the altars for Baal's.
SPEAKER_01: He made Asherapoles and he worshipped the whole heavenly hosts and served them.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in 2 Kings it describes the same thing, and it says there that he did that, these Asherapoles and all that, he did it just like King Ahab did.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the last guy on the planet you wanted to be compared to was Ahab.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the Bible says about Ahab, he did more evil in God's sight than all the other kings before him.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's a pretty bad description.
SPEAKER_01: And so he starts off life being compared to that, and then it gets worse.
SPEAKER_01: He built altars in the Lord's temple where Yahweh had said, Jerusalem is where my name will remain forever.
SPEAKER_01: He built altars to the whole heavenly hosts, or the stars and star worship, that kind of deal, in the courtyards of the Lord's temple.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a significant thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that he made altars to other gods.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is pointing out the significant spiritual rebellion that he did it in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: Like that was worse.
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to go build them out there, but to do them in the temple on purpose where God had placed his presence and his name there was particularly horrible.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it says it twice about him in just this passage.
SPEAKER_01: If you go to verse 6, he practiced witchcraft, divination, and sorcery and consulted mediums and spiritists.
SPEAKER_01: He did great, a great deal of evil in the Lord's sight, provoking him.
SPEAKER_01: Like how bad is that?
SPEAKER_01: He is provoking God with his arrogance and his evil.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just you, it's hard to get worse.
SPEAKER_01: It says, He caught he set up a carved image of the idol he made in God's temple.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's pointing out in specificity twice now the same thing that his spiritual rejection and rebellion before God is that he does it specifically in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: And again, it reminds us of how significant that is when it says, about which God said to David and his son Solomon, I will establish my name forever in this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: I will never again remove the feet of the Israelites from the land where I stationed your ancestors, if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them through Moses, all the law, statutes, and judgments.
SPEAKER_01: So again, he is saying, To do that, you are you are rebelling and rejecting the very name and person of God, to go into the temple where he has put his imprimatur on and to put a false God worship structure and idol in that place.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't get worse than this.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is awful.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the next sentence says, So Manasseh caused Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to stray so that they did worse evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: So he is affirming a second time he was worse than the pagans that God pronounced judgment on.
SPEAKER_01: So all the Hittites and the Amorites and all that other business that they killed them all and threw them out of there and all that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's an incredible description.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you start putting some feet to that.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as you continue the story, here's what it says in verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they didn't listen.
SPEAKER_01: So God called him to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: He sent prophets to speak to him.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't just immediately judge him.
SPEAKER_01: In his grace, he reached out to Manasseh, and Manasseh again did not listen to the Lord and rejected him.
SPEAKER_01: So the Bible says in verse 11, so he, God, brought against them the military commanders of the king of Assyria.
SPEAKER_01: Now this is, I mean, this is pitiful.
SPEAKER_01: You had his father with the whole battle against the Assyrians, and God defeated the Assyrians.
SPEAKER_01: But this guy is so bad, God brings the Assyrians back, and this time has victory over Israel in judgment for this king.
SPEAKER_01: Now, listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: This I've done some research on this.
SPEAKER_01: This is horrible.
SPEAKER_01: It says, they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon in prison.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is some pretty terrible, like they're speculating, trying to go back into history and figure out.
SPEAKER_01: And the Assyrians were horrible.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were, I mean, they were horrible.
SPEAKER_01: The way they tortured people and all that.
SPEAKER_01: Man, there's descriptions of them putting rings in his nose and and and all that.
SPEAKER_01: There's descriptions of they hook him in his shoulders and they tug him with these chains that way.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they hang stuff on him and they hang these shackles on him.
SPEAKER_01: So it pulls, I mean, there's all kinds of terrible descriptions about what they did.
SPEAKER_01: That's the level of judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all get that picture?
SPEAKER_01: That's that's terrible, right?
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord, nobody in here is quite this bad.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of the guys who are skipping today, we might put them in that category, but you guys are better than that, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so here's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12, when he was in distress, he sought the favor of Yahweh his God, and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his ancestors.
SPEAKER_01: He prayed to him, God, so that God heard his petition and granted his request and brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, God rescued him from captivity and brought him back to his nation and to his people.
SPEAKER_01: So Manasseh came to know that Yahweh is God.
SPEAKER_01: After this, he, Manasseh, built the outer wall of the city of David from the west of Jehan to in the valley to the entrance of the fish gate.
SPEAKER_01: He brought it around the Ofel, he heightened it considerably.
SPEAKER_01: He placed military commanders in all the fortified cities of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: He removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord's temple, along with all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the Lord's temple and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city.
SPEAKER_01: Like he didn't just like was embarrassed and took them down.
SPEAKER_01: He built the altar of the Lord and offered fellowship and thank offerings on it.
SPEAKER_01: Then he told Judah, the nation, to serve Yahweh, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He had led them away, and now he's leading them back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty incredible, and I forgot to run through the scriptures, but you got the sheets there in front of you.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a dramatically powerful story right there.
SPEAKER_01: So here's three things I want you to see from this today.
SPEAKER_01: The first one is this.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no sin is too great for God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: No sin is too great for God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: If there was ever a guy who had run too far, it was this guy.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't get worse than these descriptions.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we belabored through that, right?
SPEAKER_01: You always have to be careful when you're sharing your testimony.
SPEAKER_01: Like you don't want to elevate sin and make it sound all that kind of a deal, right?
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes it you you need to get a picture of that because we have these questions, man, can God use me anymore?
SPEAKER_01: Have I messed up to a point where I've disqualified?
SPEAKER_01: Or we always have people that we run into that when we share the gospel or we're working with them and they come to church and they're searching and they'll say things like this, I've heard it a hundred times if I've heard it once.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Pastor, you don't know what I've done.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was bad.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you you're a you're a godly man, you you don't need to hear what I did, and you you probably never heard of some of the stuff that I did.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, I'm a lawyer, I've kind of gotten around.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You know, but I don't need to know either.
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, they'll say, I just don't know how God would forgive me.
SPEAKER_01: And you say, Listen, you cannot outsend God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: The thief on the cross next to Jesus, God saved him right there on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: This guy, God heard his prayers from where he's in prison, hooked with hooks and whatever terrible experience that was.
SPEAKER_01: God saved him from that and restored him, and he served as the king of Israel for 55 years.
SPEAKER_01: So this didn't happen in year 54.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of years after he repents where he is restored and God uses him.
SPEAKER_01: God rescues him from being carted off in captivity by this evil pagan people.
SPEAKER_01: And so here you have this incredible picture that you cannot outgo, uh, out move God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't matter what it is.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just look at these things.
SPEAKER_01: He defiles God's temple and in effect shakes his fist in the face of God.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the worst sin.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can do some terrible things to people, but the worst thing you can ever possibly do is to shake your fist and tell God no in this kind of obnoxious, evil, disrespectful, blasphemous way.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you and there's a a lot of times when we have that conversation with somebody who says, you know, I you don't know what I've done, I've sinned, I can't, you you that a lot of times they have an innate sense that that's the worst thing of all the things they've done that they could do.
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times when they struggle coming back to the Lord, they struggle because of this very type of action.
SPEAKER_01: They know God can forgive stuff, and they know people have done bad things and got forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: But they have an innate sense in that moment of conviction where they know they have thumbed their nose in the face of God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
SPEAKER_01: And they think, how could God forgive me when I have personally rejected him?
SPEAKER_01: And yet you get as detailed a description of that in a person who repents, and when they truly repent, God forgives and restores and brings them home.
SPEAKER_01: The evil that he did beyond measure.
SPEAKER_01: It says in here in one passage I may have skipped over in verse 5, he literally sacrificed his sons by burning them.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's his own children.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you can't describe this stuff when it says that he is worse than the kings that that were in the nation that they cast out.
SPEAKER_01: It's terrible.
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, you know, you're compared to the most evil people in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And yet God loved him and forgave him.
SPEAKER_01: And what that tells us is the power of repentance, and that it doesn't matter how far we run from God, he is there, and he hears a true prayer of repentance, and God forgives.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever those sins and however terrible they may feel, Jesus paid the price for them on the cross at Calvary.
SPEAKER_01: And there is no sin that can outsend God's grace and the extent of his forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And that matters for someone who has been who has not trusted Christ to know that they can and to know that his arms are wide open for them.
SPEAKER_01: It's also meaningful for Christians because we deal with a lot of folks.
SPEAKER_01: Man, life gets in the way and they make some mistakes and they regret this and that, and they get on a path and then become the prodigal son or Samson or whatever example you want to give, and then they struggle coming back to church and coming back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, I know I'm saved, but I just don't know how God can't use me anymore.
SPEAKER_01: I get in the way of people.
SPEAKER_01: They don't want to face that conviction because of the weight of that sin.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, here what you have is God's forgiveness and restoration.
SPEAKER_01: If God will forgive this guy and let him become one of his followers, we know that God will forgive his children, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so God's grace and the magnitude of his grace is only limited by his omnipotent power.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, if he's omnipotent, he can forgive anything he chooses to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: And his heart is to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus was sent to be our Savior to accomplish that salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's important, and sometimes we don't say that enough, that God's forgiveness is profoundly beyond anything we can imagine.
SPEAKER_01: And repentance leads us to God's grace and forgiveness, regardless of the extent of how far we've walked away or how much we've sinned.
SPEAKER_01: If you repent, God will forgive.
SPEAKER_01: And this is an incredible example of that.
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about what is forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: What is that true repentance?
SPEAKER_01: Again, God gives us details in this man's life so we can understand what they are.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, I love this phrase.
SPEAKER_01: It says that in uh in verse 12 that he earnestly humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, he he knew it was bad, and he got serious with it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he got on his face before God, and however he was able to do that, and he acknowledged his sin and he humbled himself before God.
SPEAKER_01: Think about the power of that.
SPEAKER_01: Here was a man who defiled the very temple itself, shaking his fist in the face of God.
SPEAKER_01: And when he came and understood where he was and what he had done and all of that, he humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he earnestly humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: We looked a little bit a few weeks ago at Jonah.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't any Jonah wussy half repentance deal right here.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You think about it, if you remember Jonah, he says basically, I'll do what I committed to do.
SPEAKER_01: I'll do what I vowed to do.
SPEAKER_01: And as soon as he got out and halfway preached that pitiful message of revival that he did, and revival breaks out, he gets mad, people are getting say, There was no repentance in that.
SPEAKER_01: This is not that picture.
SPEAKER_01: This guy got on his face before God and he humbled himself in every way that he could humble himself before God, and God forgave him.
SPEAKER_01: It did not matter how much.
SPEAKER_01: He had defiled the very temple of God and the promises to God's people.
SPEAKER_01: And when he humbled himself before God, God forgave him and stepped into his life.
SPEAKER_01: So true repentance.
SPEAKER_01: Part of that is he earnestly humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: The next is he cried out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: When he was in distress, he sought Yahweh, it says.
SPEAKER_01: And in that moment, when it says he sought the Lord, he is seeking God because that's the only hope that he has.
SPEAKER_01: And he is serious about it.
SPEAKER_01: And when we seek the Lord, we've got to seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We we kind of play these games sometimes, and too often our repentances look like this wimpy version of Jonah and not like the real version of Manasseh.
SPEAKER_01: We saw in that Jonah deal, and go back and read it again, it didn't change his life, it did not fix him.
SPEAKER_01: He is still in that journey, he's still got those struggles.
SPEAKER_01: And this guy, God, gets him out of captivity and restores him and forgives him.
SPEAKER_01: And he reveals himself to Manasseh in such a way that look what the scripture says.
SPEAKER_01: So Manasseh came to know that Yahweh is God.
SPEAKER_01: God revealed himself personally to Manasseh because Manasseh was seeking the person of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so true repentance is that understanding, Lord, I'm coming back to you because you're my only hope, and you're the one that I have sinned against, and you're the one for whom I need to ask for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, I'm humbling myself before you because you are God.
SPEAKER_01: And he does that, and that leads to his forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, he sought God's favor.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean, like he goes, Lord, I'm really sorry about that, but man, life is good when you're blessing us, so bless me again.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's looking for here.
SPEAKER_01: He is looking for God's favor in terms of forgiveness and rescue and minister to him.
SPEAKER_01: I'm seeking your person.
SPEAKER_01: Reveal yourself to me here.
SPEAKER_01: That's what that means.
SPEAKER_01: He's looking for grace, is what he's looking for.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that word is often translated, grace is often translated in favor.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph, the Bible says, found grace or found favor with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: When the when the angel goes to Mary and talks to her and he says, Oh favored one, it means grace.
SPEAKER_01: And so what he's looking for there is God's grace, God's forgiveness, God's presence, God's ministry to them, to him, because he has nothing else but to seek the face of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what repentance is.
SPEAKER_01: Now let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_01: With everything we know about Jesus, do you think God is ever going to reject someone who comes to him humbly and seeks him and asks for his grace?
SPEAKER_01: Never.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus came and died on the cross for us to be able to answer that prayer just like that.
SPEAKER_01: It's incredible when you talk about salvation.
SPEAKER_01: You never get a picture in Scripture of anybody who loses their salvation.
SPEAKER_01: It's not there.
SPEAKER_01: Every person, when God saves, he saves them from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet, regardless of what they've done, and he saves them forever.
SPEAKER_01: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him will never perish, but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_01: When you give your life to Jesus, Jesus didn't die to give you 10-year life that depends on whether you can get it together or not.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus wouldn't shed his blood, he wouldn't give up his holiness, taking our sin on the cross for something as pedestrian as that.
SPEAKER_01: When the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, the creator God of the universe, the one who's omnipotent, the one who was there at the beginning and created all of us, Jesus by whom the whole world consists, when he went to the cross and he conquered death and sin, he conquered it.
SPEAKER_01: It is gone.
SPEAKER_01: He defeated it.
SPEAKER_01: And when you give your life to him and you repent of him, the Jesus that comes into your life is the Jesus who conquered death and sin.
SPEAKER_01: The Alpha and the Omega, as it says in Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And so here's what happens.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to get a picture of who God is, that this man with this horrible thing, when he comes and he asks for forgiveness, God forgives him and restores him and uses him again.
SPEAKER_01: It does not matter what's going on in your life up to this point.
SPEAKER_01: You have a future in Jesus when we come to him in repentance.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just a powerful message.
SPEAKER_01: And to the extent that I don't tell us enough that as a church, I ask for your forgiveness because that's the incredible picture of the gospel right there.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does that true repentance mean?
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
SPEAKER_01: You get, you humble yourself before him, you seek him, and you cry out to him, and you ask for that grace that he gives us.
SPEAKER_01: It should change us when we are forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Again, you compare this to Jonah.
SPEAKER_01: There is not a lot of change going on because there's not a lot of earnestly humbling going on in that story.
SPEAKER_01: Now God keeps working with him, but that's God's, even that's God's grace, trying to get him there and trying to work with him.
SPEAKER_01: Right here, Manasseh, man, he restores him because that repentance was real.
SPEAKER_01: And God's grace, when he gave it, Manasseh embraced that and recognized who God was.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what he says again in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: So Manasseh came to know that Yahweh is God.
SPEAKER_01: And why does he know that?
SPEAKER_01: Because he knows that God reveals himself and he revealed himself in his grace, and Manasseh experienced that grace and forgiveness, and it changed his life.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what happens after his repentance.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's not this Wussie Jonah stuff.
SPEAKER_01: What happens is he goes to work.
SPEAKER_01: That repentance, there's no more of this, God can't use me and I can't, whatever, and none of this excuse business.
SPEAKER_01: When God restores him, he gets busy and he gets to work.
SPEAKER_01: He goes back and starts rebuilding the city and rebuilding the walls around the city.
SPEAKER_01: And then it says in this idea that he eradicated the evil that he had done.
SPEAKER_01: God gives us the details of the evil, and then God gives us the details of the actions after repentance.
SPEAKER_01: He removed the foreign gods, he removed the idols from the Lord's temple, along with all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the Lord's temple and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city.
SPEAKER_01: There was no leaving a loophole to go back.
SPEAKER_01: When he repented, he repented and he had walked away from that.
SPEAKER_01: And when he walked away from it, he went back and dealt with it and got rid of it and eradicated it from his life.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what repentance is.
SPEAKER_01: When we repent, it's none of this back and forth business.
SPEAKER_01: Man, when we repent, we turn away from our sin and we turn to the Lord and we're pursuing God and we are done with what we have repented of.
SPEAKER_01: And you see an incredible picture of what that looks like here.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks offerings on it.
SPEAKER_01: If you've been forgiven from what he was forgiven for, it should vault your worship in a way that is profound.
SPEAKER_01: When you come to worship and you come to the Lord, you are coming as a forgiven child of God.
SPEAKER_01: God has given us his favor and his grace, and we are worshiping him and we are thankful and we are turning to him because of what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's what worship is.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is not a style, it's not songs out of one book and not another book.
SPEAKER_01: It's not how we dress, it's not whatever.
SPEAKER_01: It is coming before the presence of God because we have been cleansed and we have been cleaned and we are worshiping him because we have the privilege to be in God's presence because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: That's what worship is.
SPEAKER_01: And in modern American church, I mean everybody needs to go on a mission trip.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody needs to go on a mission trip.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just do.
SPEAKER_01: Because we live in this culture and we got mindset and we get in groupthink of all this, and everybody's got an opinion about everything that goes on in church.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're all worried about what we want, how we want it to be, and how we grew up in it, and what make ministers to us and what we like and all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And you go to Central America or you go to South America or you go to Africa or you go somewhere where God's grace has saved people, man, I'm telling you, it is different.
SPEAKER_01: They worship like Christians are supposed to worship because there is a freedom and there is a focus and they are worshiping on God because of his grace and his forgiveness, and they ain't coming to church demanding that it look like they want it to look.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Church is not customer service.
SPEAKER_01: It's coming to Jesus because we have been cleansed and forgiven of our sin.
SPEAKER_01: And we are grateful for what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: I remember it's fun, one of the guys in my first church, you learn these things when you're pastoring, right?
SPEAKER_01: So it's really a shock when you come out of a place like where I came out of where God is moving and these incredible things are happening, and you're baptizing a thousand people a year, and every service has got 30, 40 people coming down the aisle.
SPEAKER_01: And then you go to a normal church, good church, normal church.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a negative thing, but you know, we're not having 30 people, a service come down the aisle and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And you get, man, you get used to, I mean, that's the thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: And you come out, so here I'm in Perigo, I'm pastoring.
SPEAKER_01: Great people, great church, not a negative story.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'm I'm trying to work through all this, and God, you're still the same God, and how's it work?
SPEAKER_01: And you do all this, and so we're trying to fix some stuff around a church and all that.
SPEAKER_01: And we had a team go to Central America and worship, and they're down there, and then they're in a in Central America, they're in Guatemala, and they're in a kind of a block building, and it's hot, and they're on the edge of like Amazon forest or whatever, rainforest and all that.
SPEAKER_01: And and so the sound is a problem.
SPEAKER_01: So, what they did was they took egg carton type things and they attached them to the block walls to try to create some acoustic whatever, right?
SPEAKER_01: And man, they're worshiping and it's awesome, and people are getting saved, and our people are working with the people in that church we had helped plant, and it was incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And they come back and they're affected by all that.
SPEAKER_01: And so, one of the guys who went, who was a great leader in the church, you guys would love them.
SPEAKER_01: Like they should retire and move here and join our church.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, great folks, and just a wise guy, one of the guys who've been around forever, great Sunday school teacher, you know, and he's in that, and he's just come back from this mission trip, and you got all that going on, and we go into a planning meeting and we're working on some of the things we need to do to the church.
SPEAKER_01: And that church had acoustic problems in that sanctuary, just all kinds of different deals and kind of a problem.
SPEAKER_01: And and so he's sitting in this and I'm watching him, and he's about to come unglued, and he's the most gracious guy you've ever been around.
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, he just unloads and he says, What is wrong with us?
SPEAKER_01: I just came from a church where they took egg cartons and they fixed it because it's all about what Jesus is doing, and they're not wasting money on this jump.
SPEAKER_01: They're trying to reach people, get them saved.
SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with us?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, you're gonna preach on Sunday, brother.
SPEAKER_01: Have at it, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it's just an illustration of we all get that way.
SPEAKER_01: We don't mean to, we don't mean to, but when you're in a culture and you work in a thing for so long and you're spending time doing this, and you get trapped in the tyranny of the urgent, we forget.
SPEAKER_01: We forget what's happened to us when we got saved.
SPEAKER_01: And this guy, as bad as he was, we were headed to the same hell he was until Jesus saved us.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It's the same amount of forgiveness that God gives us that he gives to Manasseh.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we worship, we come and we focus on him and we are drawn to him because of the incredible magnitude of the grace that he has done.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And it's just good to be reminded, and that's part of what keeps us on track.
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, he calls the people around him to serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Part of his sin that's delineated is leading people away from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And part of the result of his spiritual walk with the Lord and knowing that God is God and that Yahweh is his God, is he is driven to go and get all those people he led astray and lead them back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the natural result of a Christian should be drawing other people to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It is that message of God is God, and the message of God's forgiveness and sharing our testimony.
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't you, wouldn't you, can you not wait to get to heaven and hear Manasseh share his testimony?
SPEAKER_01: Like at least tell me what the hooks are about, right?
SPEAKER_01: But to hear him share that testimony and to know that passion that's driven by that kind of forgiveness where he is worshiping in thanksgiving, he cannot help but draw everyone back to the extent of his power as a person, as a king, as a forgiven man to get everybody back to serving the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: He is working and doing everything he can do to get that way.
SPEAKER_01: And you think about what would the church look like if that's how we served from that place of forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01: This is not about information, it's about life change that comes from the incredible forgiveness of God when we have repented before Him in a biblical way and made Jesus the Lord and Savior of our life.
SPEAKER_01: And we are living in the gratefulness of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: Let me pray for you guys today.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we love you and we thank you for today.
SPEAKER_01: And I we just, just as we're amening together and we're focused on this together, I we're just grateful beyond what we can describe or time even allows us in a week of Tuesdays to say thank you for salvation in Jesus and for what that salvation means to us, and for how you would give us your favor and your grace when we had sinned and rejected you and walked away from you.
SPEAKER_01: And we are overwhelmed and grateful for salvation that comes through Jesus and what that means to us in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray, Father, that the nature of this will not critical about this or that, but but attaches us back to that same sort of experience that is described here in the life of Manasseh, that thanksgiving for your forgiveness and your grace and what that means in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: So I pray, Father, these men, you'll encourage them with that.
SPEAKER_01: Give them that sense of being drawn to you and focused on you and that sense of gratefulness that draws us close to you.
SPEAKER_01: I pray you'll you'll give that and stir that in their heart today.
SPEAKER_01: And they'll walk with you in this grateful thanksgiving way we see here.
SPEAKER_01: And that that will spill out of their lives onto the people around them, and they will take that gratefulness and show that gratefulness and that thanksgiving in a way that it just it flourishes and it and it just leaks out on everyone they come in contact with today.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we are so grateful for salvation in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: In his name we pray, and everybody say it.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, good to see you guys today.