Sunday Morning Service (II Kings 21)

II Kings 21

Audio Access Available Above

“Kings And Foxhole Confessions” • 10.15.17 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service

Intro

- Hezekiah's fifteen years of grace are over. Those weren't his best years spiritually, as evidenced by his self-centered tour offered to the Babylonians or his lack of prayer at Isaiah's word.

- These were the years that his son was being raised in. How might that have affected him? Let's have a look at Hezekiah's son, Manasseh.

Text

• II Kings 21:1 : "Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah." : The new King of Judah is only 12 years old when he assumes the throne. Puberty in authority!

- He will reign in Judah until he is a Senior citizen at 67 years old. In an ironic turn, Manasseh's name means "one who forgets." We use that word to describe our failure to remember.

- The Bible often employs this word to describe a decision to reject something, to walk away from it. That will be a bit of an understatement! Verse 2.

• II Kings 21:2,3 : "And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; he raised up altars for Baal, and made a wooden image, as Ahab king of Israel had done; and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them." : When the author needs a point of reference for comparitive evil, he calls to mind the original inhabitants of the land!

- God told Israel that He had cast them out the "ites" because of their wickedness in Deuteronomy 9:4,5. How could Manasseh bring Judah back to such an abominable place?

- He accomplished this by reversing all of Hezekiah's previous reforms. The high places were back in business. Altars for Baal were erected once again.

- He commissioned a wooden image, an Asherah, to be constructed. These were monuments to open sexual expression which darted the land of Israel during Ahab's time.

- Think about that: Manasseh's reign is associated with the Canaanites and with Ahab! That is some really bad company! But he even managed to outperform them!

- He worshipped all the host of heaven and served them. Jeremiah will begin his prophetic career during the next King's reign.

- In Jeremiah 7:17,18, the prophet declares that the people made cakes for the "Queen of Heaven." Later, in Jeremiah 44, the prevailing wisdom of the age exposed itself.

- The women who listened to Jeremiah decry the false worship of the Queen of Heaven remarked that Judah's demise occurred after they stopped offering to her!

- The seeds of that idolatry began right here when Manasseh opened the door for Judah's eventual fall. But Manasseh didn't stop there. Verse 4.

• II Kings 21:4,5 : "He also built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, 'In Jerusalem I will put My name.' And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord." : He built altars in the house of the Lord, in the very temple, not to the Lord, but to these false gods!

- The author is simply stunned! "He did this where God said He would put His Name!" The world would know of Israel's exclusive relationship to God through the Temple.

- Manasseh marred that image, building the altars in and around the Temple complex. Wherever you looked, you saw the altars of false gods sharing space with the God of the Universe!

- That is an utter contradiction! God will not share His space with any false god, but Manasseh forced the issue. How many believe that they can do the same?

- You cannot worship God and your favorite idol. God will not share what is rightfully His! We want to believe that this is a possibility, but God doesn't do co-habitation or offer time shares!

- Verses 2-5 represent Manasseh's false religious revival, which had been practiced widely in Israel before. Verse 6  and following might have been considered new depths of depravity.

• II Kings 21:6-9 : "Also he made his son pass through the fire, practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. He even set a carved image of Asherah that he had made, in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son, 'In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever; and I will not make the feet of Israel wander anymore from the land which I gave their fathers—only if they are careful to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that My servant Moses commanded them' But they paid no attention, and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel." : Making his son pass through the fire, refers to the sacrifice of his living child, which was the chief practice of Molech worship.

- What more could he have done? Look at this list. He was spiritually insatiable!

- He practiced occultism and sought out spiritists and mediums. This covered everything from astrology to drug induced hallucination. Manasseh opened every door that was presented to him.

- He went so far as to produce an Asherah pole that was set up in the very temple of God! Asherah "worship" was performed by ritual prostitution. Manasseh turned the Temple into a brothel!

- When a person rejects the truth of God and accepts a lie, they are open to anything and everything. Manasseh is a man who is a bottomless spiritual pit because of rejection of God.

- And here is the critical information that he was overlooking: Judah was only allowed to remain in Jerusalem under certain conditions. His idolatry would not come without a hefty price!

- The author quotes from an unknown source, though the sentiment is contained in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. This exact statement however, was given to David and Solomon.

- It may be a widely known set of statements that were orally transmitted, but not written.

- Consider what God was telling them. They had spent years wandering, being led from location to location, but never able to permanently settle.

- By David and Solomon's time, they had settled and God promised that they would never have to wander again on the condition that they obeyed the commands of Moses.

- "Only if they are careful." The word speaks generally of listening, but carries the meaning of guarding something precious. What did they do? Listen to the next words.

- "But they paid no attention!" The NLT prefers the translation, "But the people refused to listen." Judah's spiritual decline wasn't just Manasseh's fault.

- Manasseh could never have stayed in power had the people of God acted as they were supposed to. Manasseh succeeded because the people wanted to live in idolatry!

- Manasseh was their leader, but the people were excellent followers! They had the Word of God, but they chose to forget it as well!

- They knew that their safety, their growth, their stability was based upon their obedience, but they made their choice. It's baffling but unfortunately all too common.

- God's people today are powerless, not for a lack of knowledge, but for a lack of concern!

- They are happy with "high place" Christianity, which is self-absorbed individualism that requires only what they are willing to sacrifice to God, ignoring the command to love others and Him.

- When the King found nobody to push him back, he seduced the children of Judah to do more wickedness than any of the nations that God had kicked out!

- Judah exceeded the wickedness of the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites! What an indictment! To some extent, it would be fair to say that they did even worse.

- The Canaanites were not covenant nations. They had never been delivered by the God of Israel. They had not been given Israel's laws.

- To our knowledge, they didn't have great moral leaders like Moses, Joshua, Samuel or David.

- No, Judah's folly is far worse because their fall was from a greater height! And yet, once again, God didn't let their past teachers stand alone. He sent more servants! Verse 10.

• II Kings 21:10-15 : "And the Lord spoke by His servants the prophets, saying,  'Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations (he has acted more wickedly than all the Amorites who were before him, and has also made Judah sin with his idols),  therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Behold, I am bringing such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. So I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become victims of plunder to all their enemies, because they have done evil in My sight, and have provoked Me to anger since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.’'" : God has taken credit for talking to Judah through His Word, through Moses and here, through His servants the Prophets!

- Imagine the difficulty that their job entailed! They had to speak out against the King of Judah! What we have before us is the substance of their divinely inspired rebuke.

- Manasseh established a new spiritual low. Consequently, what he was about to hear would be unthinkable! "Their ears will tingle!" The idea comes from vibration, a shuddering.

- What they hear will cause them to shudder in terror! God was going to employ the same standard of judgment that he used with Samaria and the house of Ahab!

- Both of those standards called for a complete wiping away of the respective houses!

- God was going to allow them to fall before their enemies because of all that they had done, from the first day to this very day!

- As you listen to that, consider the truth of Israel's existence in the land. Their distinction as having been "God's people" has never been denied here.

- Yet, as we have studied and as God testifies Himself, they are God's people not by virtue of their own righteous character or their ability to follow His law.

- They are God's people by His choosing of them. Their record, according to this verse, according to the history that we have taken time to study, has been tenuous from the very beginning!

- Certainly, there have been stand out personalities and men that have held a Godly line in their days, but the people had provoked God to anger since day one! What has kept them?

- God's patient lovingkindness and mercy! Never forget that! It is the same virtue that covers you by virtue of the blood of a better covenant! Back to Manasseh. Verse 16.

• II Kings 21:16: "Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the Lord." : Man, there is a moreover!? Additional to what we have already seen, Manasseh shed an enormous amount of innocent blood!

- Given it's proximity to the announcement of God's prophetic program, we can deduce that the author refers to the murder of those that opposed his religious beliefs.

- In fact, Jewish tradition holds Manasseh responsible for the execution of Isaiah the Prophet.

- There isn't consensus as to the particulars, but tradition has it that Isaiah hid from Manasseh in a cedar tree. When Isaiah's position was discovered, Manasseh order the tree cut down.

- Hebrews 11:37 mentions servants that were sawn in two. Isaiah might have been one of many that endured the same fate.

- Every prophetic voice from one end of Jerusalem to the other was silenced by Manasseh's tyranny! The land that belonged to the Lord was no longer safe for those that would speak for Him!

- At this point, I'd ask you to turn over to II Chronicles 33. Manasseh has ignored every one of God's divine measures of discipline. As a measure of last resort, God allowed a more dire action.

• II Chronicles 33:10,11 : "And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they would not listen. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze fetters, and carried him off to Babylon." : Hezekiah's latter reign was free from the Assyrians, but God brought them up again to deal with his son.

- God made every attempt to speak to Manasseh, to reason with him, to offer him the chance at repentance, but neither he nor the people would listen!

- God's patience and kindness is always His first line of attack! His inaction is not impotence or indifference! It is loving and hopeful! Amazingly, there are some that out last His initial lovingkindness!

- Manasseh would choose the hard way at the hands of Assyria. The KJV tells us that they took him among the thorns, which the NKJV interprets as hooks.

- It is possible that Manasseh hid himself among the thorns AND that the Assyrians put their nose hooks in him and led him away to Babylon. That was standard procedure and a great picture!

- How many have chosen a life of sin and found themselves hiding, but in a place of self-induced pain, only to be led out into greater pain than what they went in with!?

- At this time, Assyria, though waning in power, still had control over Babylon. Esarhaddon was the only Assyrian King to act as governor of Babylon. That was where Manasseh was headed.

- For years, this was a stumbling block to scholars who considered this an error. That is until the Essarhaddon prism was discovered, which mentions Manasseh by name!

- Manasseh was one of 22 Kings from the region that had been carted off to Babylon. According to the prism, they were Esarhaddon's palace work detail.

- This was the lowest moment in any of the lives of David's descendants. Gratefully, Manasseh had the right response! Verse 12.

• II Chronicles 33:12,13 : "Now when he was in affliction, he implored the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed to Him; and He received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God." : Manasseh was in "great distress." The word refers to being in a narrow and cramped place. It was at that time, that he turned to God for help. He "implored" the Lord his God.

- He called out to the Lord and kept bowing his knee before the God of his Fathers.

- He called upon the heritage that he had once dismissed in the favor of idolatry. He invoked the covenant that God had made with the people of Israel, that he had broken.

- His actions are reflective of what Solomon had prayed at the dedication of the Temple three hundred years earlier in I Kings 8:46-50.

- When a person was carried captive for their sins, if while in captivity, they return to God, Solomon called upon God to respond. When Manasseh took God at His Word, He responded!

- God listened to his prayers, revealing this by allowing him to return to his Kingdom from the land of Babylon. This was the proof that finally convinced Manasseh!

- The NLT puts verse 13 like this: "Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!" This is what it took for Manasseh to turn his life to God.

- We might say that one could do things the "easy way." One could hear the gospel for the first time and realize that the Lord Jesus is the only true way to God the Father.

- They could simply acknowledge that fact, repent from their sins and begin a life of devotion to Jesus Christ. Or, they could do things the Manasseh way.

- Manasseh turned his back on the rich heritage that was given to him, preferring instead to indulge his flesh through idolatry.

- He ignored every other disciplinary tactic and was consigned to a life that suddenly dropped out from underneath him. At his most desperate moment, he turned his face to God.

- It works, but there is a lot of life that is lost in the process! I pray that you or the ones you love won't have to follow the Manasseh way.

- The good news of course, is that God still hears those in the deepest, darkest places and He is as much the Savior there, as He is anywhere else!

- Manasseh is free. He has had a "jailhouse conversion." What fruit will that produce? Will he return to his old ways or will he forge a new path? Verse 14.

• II Chronicles 33:14-16 : "After this he built a wall outside the City of David on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, as far as the entrance of the Fish Gate; and it enclosed Ophel, and he raised it to a very great height. Then he put military captains in all the fortified cities of Judah. He took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem; and he cast them out of the city. He also repaired the altar of the Lord, sacrificed peace offerings and thank offerings on it, and commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel." : Upon his return, Manasseh looked at his Kingdom with a greater sense of honor.

- He built up the city's defenses in all directions and put the military into their stations.

- That was important for the nation, but not as important as what he did next. He took away the foreign gods and idols from the house of the Lord. Essentially, he reversed all of his previous actions.

- He repaired the altar of the Lord, made sacrifice and commanded Judah to follow suit!

- Manasseh didn't just mouth a few words and walk back to Jerusalem ready to re-engage his old life. He proved the validity of his confession by the priority of his actions!

- This is an excellent picture of true repentance! Repentance begins with an acknowledgment of one's sins. Generally, there is an outpouring of emotion as one understands the depth of sin.

- Next comes the determination to make a break from the attitude or action that caused the sin to flourish. From there, regardless of the cost, the person who is repenting acts to reverse his way!

- He went back determined to be as influential in his allegiance to God, as he had previously been to the idols he had followed! This brings us back to II Kings 21:17.

• II Kings 21:17,18 : "Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh—all that he did, and the sin that he committed—are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Manasseh rested with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza. Then his son Amon reigned in his place." : Manasseh began horribly, but ended wonderfully. I can't help by think that Hezekiah's final prideful years contributed to those early years of Manasseh's failure.

- It may also be that Manasseh's late return proved to be too little to late at least for his own son Amon who ascended the throne after him. Verse 19.

• II Kings 21:19-23 : "Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Meshullemeth the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. So he walked in all the ways that his father had walked; and he served the idols that his father had served, and worshiped them. He forsook the Lord God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord." : Amon's reign was only two years long and they were filled with evil that was reminiscent of Manasseh's early days.

- Unlike Manasseh, there is no "missing part." In fact, the author of II Chronicles can only add that he transgressed more and more! (II Chronicles 33:23)

- Manasseh's example led Amon to follow in his old ways. Thankfully, the people of God made a different choice. Verse 23.

• II Kings 21:24,25 : "Then his servants conspired against him, and killed him in his own house. But the people of the land executed all those who had conspired against King Amon. Then the people of the land made his son Josiah king in his place." : Historically, this conspiracy might have been connected to the shifting geopolitical landscape. Some believed in Assyria, others in Egypt's Pharaoh.

- Ultimately, it seems that Manasseh's influence upon the people bore fruit. Having had a taste of the goodness related to their revival, they couldn't stomach another return to idolatry.

- We certainly can't endorse the way they went about it, but when the smoke cleared, God gave them a King that would match their heart's desire for righteousness in King Josiah.

Conclusion
- When Manasseh forgot the Lord, he opened every spiritual door and found himself among the thorns, hooked by his own devices. When he was in captivity, God set him free.

- That story is a reminder that there isn't a life that is too lost that God cannot find!