“Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God” (2 Chronicles 33.13.)
Introduction. Manasseh is one of those men who greatly sinned, and yet found great mercy. He ‘shed innocent blood very much,’ but found mercy through the Saviour whom God foresaw should die.
(1) As a Sinner. He sinned against great light, a pious education, and early training. He was the son of Hezekiah, who ‘did right in the sight of the Lord.’ Manasseh pulled down what his father had built up, and built up the idol temples which his father had pulled down. The worst of men are those, who, having much light, still run astray. Such a one was Manasseh. He was a very bold sinner. He set up an idol right in the temple, as if to insult God to his face. He was a desperado in sin. Give me a coward—you give me nothing; give me a bold man, and you give me one that can do something, whether for Christ’s cause or the devil’s. Manasseh was a man of this kind. Yet this man, who had trampled on his father’s prayers, who had stifled the convictions of his conscience, and had gone to an extremity of guilt, was humbled to acknowledge that God was God alone. Let no man, therefore, despair of his fellow. Let no man despair of himself. Don’t give yourself up to Satan when he tells you your doom is cast. Manasseh had the power of leading others. As a king, he had great influence; what he commanded was done. It was the song and glory of the false priests that the king of Judah was on the side of the gods of the heathen. He was their great Goliath. He ‘caused his children to pass through the fire.’ Are there any here who have dedicated their children to the enemy? Even your case is not hopeless.
(2) As an Unbeliever. As an unbeliever of truth, Manasseh must have believed in the all-imaginary deities of the heathens. A man believes that atoms floated through space and came to certain shape, that man came to be in this world through the improvement of certain creatures, and that he is cousin-german to an ourang-outang. Then I may believe that Samson slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass! It requires the hardest faith to deny the Scriptures, because man, in his secret heart, knows they are true. ‘Lie down, conscience,’ he says, ‘or I cannot deliver my lecture tomorrow.’ The unlimited power Manasseh possessed tended to make him disbelieve in God. Unless governed by grace, power leads us to that. He was an unbeliever because he was proud. Pride lies at the root of infidelity; it is the germ of opposition to God. The intellectual will not become as a child to enter the kingdom! ‘I will not,’ says he. Manasseh was an unbeliever because he loved sin too well. Because the thought of God would check his lust, the unbeliever cries out, ‘There is no God.’ You would believe the gospel if you could believe it and live in your sin too. The gospel cries, ‘Down with sin.’ So men cry down the gospel.
(3) As a Convert. Manasseh has just put his name to another murderous edict against the saints of God. But then he is taken captive to Babylon, and shut in prison. And now see what God can do. The proud king is on his knee. He weeps at how he ever could have sinned against a God so kind. Mercy whispers that promise from the murdered Isaiah: “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions.” O! can you conceive the joy of believers on that day? There was joy in heaven too; the bells of heaven rang merry peals the day Manasseh prayed. He believed in God because of answered prayer and because his sin was forgiven. He believed because he had a sense of pardoned sin. The wisest infidel cannot pervert the poorest saint who senses his blood-bought pardon.
Selection from Conclusion. “’Once in Christ, in Christ for ever,/Nothing from his love can sever.’”
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