Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's time for me to say it's 10 o'clock, so it is 10 o'clock.
We're in 2 Kings chapter 21, verse 15.
2 Kings chapter 21 and verse 15 is our starting point.
We left off here last week, Judah had provoked the Lord to anger by doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
And we used a passage from Deuteronomy.
We went all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 28 to learn step by step how the children of Israel could go from living in peace to provoking the Lord to anger.
And I'll read that verse here again just to remind you, you already have it in your notes, Deuteronomy 4, 28.
Moses said to the children of Israel, "When thou shalt beget children and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image or the likeness of anything, and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger."
So it was interesting to me, and maybe to you, that the two things that would precede the children of Israel corrupting themselves were having three generations of children and being long in the land, those two things.
And how we get complacent in our peace.
God gives us such a good situation, and mankind gets complacent, and then takes his eyes off of God and puts it on himself, and it happens just about every time.
Now at this time that we're reading about, remember that the previous king was Hezekiah, and he was a good king who ruled for 29 years.
And so Judah, under his rule, had become complacent.
In fact, he had become complacent because he let the Babylonian ambassadors come in and see everything that they had, treasures, everything.
And so they began to corrupt themselves, even in his day.
They'd corrupted themselves before Hezekiah came to the throne.
And when they began to corrupt themselves and make idols, they were simply doing exactly what God said they would do after they'd been long in the land and had a bunch of children.
So in our text, God gives us one more thing to consider about this systematic falling away, because that's what it is.
It's so predictable.
Looking in verse 15, we're in 2 Kings chapter 21, verse 15.
If you're just joining us online or in here, and we're glad to have every single one of you.
He said, "Since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day."
Now that's how long the children of Israel had been provoking the Lord to anger.
That's an awfully long time, isn't it?
And although there were times when Israel was more obedient to the Lord than others, more pleasing to the Lord than others, their overall pattern has been to turn their backs on God and to worship idols.
They just keep going back to that.
Their overall pattern has been to walk according to the course of this world, rather than according to God's commandments.
And that's not just Israel's problem.
That's everybody's problem.
But those commandments were the ones their fathers, their forefathers agreed to obey at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Now just how long since God said that Judah had been provoking him ever since the day that their fathers came forth from Egypt, just how long ago was that, considering where we are in our text?
How long was that time period between the Exodus-- not the beginning of the book of Exodus, but the Exodus, when they actually left-- and the reign of King Manasseh?
It's roughly 800 years.
That's a long time to be provoking the Lord to anger, isn't it?
Now what does that tell you about God, though?
He sure is patient, isn't he, Doug?
He sure is.
He's long-suffering.
And I've thanked him many, many times that he didn't zap me.
He didn't just say, that's enough for you, and was patient with me.
And I think you ought to be able to say the same thing about yourself.
God was patient with you.
But it's not like God had just noticed this negative behavioral trend in the generation that lived during Manasseh's reign.
No, they'd been like this ever since they came out of Egypt.
And three days-- in fact, three days after they crossed the Red Sea, they were already murmuring and complaining because there was no water.
And then they murmured because, of course, God gave them water.
And then they murmured because there was no food.
So God gave them food, the manna and the quails.
And then they murmured again because there was no water, instead of saying, you know what, we're thirsty.
But the last time we were thirsty, we complained to God.
He was faithful.
So we don't need to complain.
We just need to trust him.
Lord, we don't have any water.
We know you're going to provide it.
And whenever you do, that'll be good with us.
No, they complained and murmured again.
And so they're murmuring and complaining.
And their general disobedience just continued from one generation to the next.
Now, the Jews under King Manasseh had no right to say that, well, why did God let all that go?
But now he's suddenly deciding to do something about it.
They had no legitimate complaint against God for doing what he was about to do, bringing such evil upon them that it would cause the ears of anyone who hear to tingle.
They had no right to complain about this.
Because God has always had a pattern.
He hasn't tried to trip us up or keep secrets about the way he operates.
He's always had a pattern.
He delivered Israel and blessed them when they turned to him.
He did that every time.
And when Israel turned away from him and turned to idols, then God punished them.
And he did that every time.
Now, sometimes he waited.
He was long-suffering.
But ultimately, when they did not repent, he would punish them.
He would deliver them into the hands of the enemies.
And they'd lose all their stuff.
And sometimes many of them would even die.
And so that's God's pattern.
So as he has done, so will he do.
There's no reason to expect that God's going to operate any differently in our case today, in the case of the United States of America.
And listen, it kind of depends on what news you read as to how good the news really is, doesn't it?
You can read one news writer, and then you can go to the other side and read another.
And so don't believe your eyes all the time.
Remember, people don't just get better.
People are sinners.
I don't care whether Republicans, Democrats, Green Party, Independent, or non-affiliated.
People are sinners who need to be saved by the grace of God.
And God's long-suffering, but he's not going to put up with this disobedience for much longer.
I don't know how much longer that is, but he does.
Now let's look in verse 16, back in our text.
And it said, "Moreover," now I want to just tell you about that word before we move on.
"Moreover," if you look this word up, it signifies an accumulation, an addition.
And it is also translated as the word "also."
In fact, we first see the word in Genesis 3, verse 6.
Genesis 3, 6, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also," or moreover, "unto her husband with her, and he did eat."
Now from reading this verse, we can make a couple of deductions.
Number one, when Eve took of that fruit and ate it, that was a sin all by itself.
It didn't need anything else to go along with it.
That was a sin.
If that was all she did, that would have affected herself and mankind from that point onward.
Every child to whom she gave birth would be tainted with that sin.
But the second thing is, and this is where the "moreover" or the word "also" comes in, knowing that her first action of taking and eating the fruit were sins, she added to her sin by committing another one.
And that other one was, she gave of that fruit to her husband.
So the word "also" teaches us that this action of giving that fruit to her husband so he could eat it too and sin against God, that that sin, that action, was an accumulation.
It was added to what she had already done.
So applying this principle of accumulation, that word "moreover," applying that principle of accumulation to Manasseh, then we understand that the things that are told to us in verse 16 will be in addition to what was in verse 15.
It's cumulative.
Manasseh did badly in verse 15, and verse 16 adds to what he did in verse 15.
It aggravates it.
He keeps the sins from verse 15 in his account, and he adds the sins of verse 16, like direct deposit.
Those go in there too.
And that's how to understand the word "moreover" in context.
So it said in verse 16, "Moreover, Manasseh shed innocent blood very much."
Now let's look at that.
Whether the shedding of that innocent blood was done by his own hands or not is really irrelevant, because he was a king.
In fact, most likely, the shedding of innocent blood was done by those who were under his command.
After all, the king doesn't want to dirty his hands, in most cases.
He'll hand that assignment off to somebody else, to his executioner, to his captain of his army, to his tough guy, whoever it might be.
But if he orders the shedding of innocent blood, he is just as guilty of the shedding of that innocent blood.
Example, this happens more than you might imagine, in fact.
One person in a marriage wants to get rid of their spouse.
And we'll use the husband as the example here.
And he wants to be rid of his wife.
So he consults with a hitman and tells the hitman that he wants his wife to be killed.
And he pays the hitman some money up front.
So the hitman finds the wife.
He doesn't take the husband with him.
He finds the wife, and he kills her, and then collects the rest of the money from the husband later on.
And when the police finally track down the husband and say, we want to talk to you about the death of your wife, she's been murdered, what's he going to say?
He's going to say, I never touched her.
I wasn't there when it happened.
I didn't do it.
Well, in the Texas Penal Code, there is an offense called criminal solicitation.
And it's made for felons like that.
And I'm going to read to you the elements of the offense of criminal solicitation.
It says a person commits an offense if, with intent that a capital felony or felony of the first degree be committed, he requests, commands, or attempts to induce another to engage in specific conduct that under the circumstances surrounding his conduct, as the actor believes them to be, would constitute the felony or make the other party a party to its commission.
Let me simplify that for you.
That's a hitman.
That's the conspiracy.
It includes the person who paid him off, and it includes the hitman as well.
Nobody is free from that.
So if you hire somebody to kill somebody else, and you think, well, I'll get by with it because I didn't do it.
I just paid him off.
You're going to go to the same penitentiary they will if they get caught.
And the punishment for this is up to a first degree felony, which means up to life in prison and a $10,000 fine.
So whether a wicked king or a wicked husband, one is guilty of shedding innocent blood, whether it was done by his own hand or by the hand of another at his request.
Now, the word innocent here does not mean without sin, because nobody is innocent in that respect.
God doesn't take somebody who's unsaved and say, well, they're innocent in my eyes.
They're not.
They're guilty.
So that's not what this word innocent means here in our text.
It means that the person is without guilt or blame in an earthly sense.
For example, if you have a robbery and you talk to someone who may be a suspect but did not commit the robbery, then the person who's not committed the robbery is not guilty of the robbery.
It makes sense, doesn't it?
He's innocent of the robbery.
He's blameless for that robbery.
And there were certain offenses for which a king, any king, not just Manasseh, could have rightfully called for the execution of the person who committed it, the death penalty.
But that person would have to be found guilty first in any sort of system of law.
Now, where there's lawlessness, Kim Jong-un doesn't really care whether you're guilty or not.
He just orders your execution.
And that's a rogue country.
But any country that has any justice system at all that works would first have to find someone guilty before that person is condemned.
Now, in fact, God gave the children of Israel a law pertaining to those who accidentally caused the death of another person.
And sometimes-- and boy, it's just so sad.
But sometimes we'll read in the news about a parent or a neighbor, maybe, who backs their car up and backs over a little child and kills him.
And they never saw the child.
Sometimes-- and boy, if you have little brothers, sisters, grandkids, don't ever let them play hide and seek behind a car.
I don't care if anybody's in it or not.
Do not.
Because they'll look at that as a hiding place.
And that's a good way for them to get killed.
But sometimes that happens.
And it's a horrifying event for everybody.
But there was no criminal intent, no criminal responsibility on the part of that driver.
And even so, that sort of thing will sometimes arouse anger in the family members or friends or even people who read about it in the news.
But under those circumstances, while we wouldn't put that parent to death, even though he or she caused the death of the child, that same sort of thing happened in Israel from time to time, where someone would be accidentally killed.
And whether they're accidentally killed or murdered, they're just as dead, aren't they?
And so those emotions that people have are often the same.
And so the families of these who were accidentally killed would want that revenge.
And in fact, God addresses it in Deuteronomy chapter 19, Deuteronomy 19, where Moses teaches the children of Israel about the cities of refuge.
Now, you may remember being taught that at some point.
It'd been a while since we've talked about the cities of refuge in here.
But I want you to listen to verse 4.
This is Deuteronomy 19, 4.
And the person who accidentally kills someone here is called a slayer.
And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither.
That's to a city of refuge that he may live.
Whoso killeth his neighbor ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past.
OK, so the city of refuge was made for the person who ignorantly killed his neighbor.
He didn't mean to.
I'm not talking about somebody who got out here and got drunk or high and got behind a wheel and ran over someone and said, well, I didn't mean to.
No, that's different.
That person did know what they were doing when they drank or smoked that crack or whatever they had.
But this is somebody-- in fact, God is so good, he gives us a good example of what this is.
So somebody doesn't think they can commit a murder and go to a city of refuge.
They don't get to do that.
But verse 5, Deuteronomy 19, 5, gives an example of a person who kills another person ignorantly without hating him.
We're learning about innocent blood here.
"As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbor to hew wood," that's to cut wood, "and his hand fetches a stroke with the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slipeth from the helve and lighteth upon his neighbor, that he die.
He shall flee unto one of those cities and live."
So you get the picture?
Two fellows are out cutting wood.
They both have an ax.
And one of them starts to swing his ax.
And that head comes off the helve.
It comes loose from the handle and goes flying and maybe hits his buddy in the head or in the chest or whatever, and it kills him.
And there was no hatred, no malice, no planning of any kind to cause this person's death.
But it still happened.
So God said, when that happens, as long as that person goes to a city of refuge-- and there were six of them, I believe-- then he's safe.
The avenger of blood, the person who wants to take revenge on him, can't touch him there.
Now, if he leaves that city of refuge, he's on his own.
And there's a lot more to that, that teaching.
But I wanted to give you enough help to understand the shedding of innocent blood.
Now, in that same chapter, Deuteronomy 19, I'm going to move down to verses 9 through 10, because you're going to hear the word "innocent" here.
We had to set the stage first.
Verses 9 through 10, it said, "If thou shall keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God and to walk ever in his ways, then shalt thou add three cities more for thee besides these three."
These are cities of refuge.
"That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee."
So God said if you were to shed innocent blood, including the blood of one who had accidentally killed someone but was in a city of refuge, that would be shedding innocent blood if he was in that city of refuge.
He said you do that, that blood's going to be on you as a person, as a nation.
So there are two things we notice from that verse.
One, if the neighbor who ignorantly killed his neighbor when the axe head slipped off the axe were to be killed inside a city of refuge, that would be innocent blood being shed.
Now, of what crime was he innocent?
Was he innocent of killing the person?
No, the person died.
The crime of which he was innocent was murder.
He didn't mean to.
He didn't do anything that he knew might cause that person's death.
This was a total accident.
And the second thing is if that man's innocent blood were shed, then blood would be upon the children of Israel.
If the avenger of blood, as the Bible calls him, were allowed to go into the city of refuge, if he came to the gates and boy, he had his stick with him or his spear and said, I'm looking for old Andy Shepherd.
His axe head flew off and it killed my brother and I'm going to kill him.
And if the officials there said, well, go on in.
He's right down there, Second Street, Fourth House on the right.
And he'll be out in his front yard with a Diet Coke.
Go get him.
Well, those enablers would have blood on their hands too.
And so the avenger of blood would have blood on his hands.
So when we understand what God taught concerning this city of refuge and the shedding of innocent blood and the blood being up on Israel when such a man was killed, then we can understand how Manasseh would be to blame when innocent blood was shed by those under his command, even though he did not physically partake in the killing.
Now, go back to our text here.
It says in verse 16 that he shed innocent blood very much.
Very much.
Now, we have two English words that come from the two Hebrew words here for very much.
And they mean exceedingly and multiply.
So you have very exceedingly, and you have much, which is multiply.
That's what those two words are, exceedingly and multiply.
So that means that this shedding of innocent blood happened on a regular basis.
Manasseh, boy, this is what's scary.
He was on the throne for 55 years, if you remember that.
And if he continually shed innocent blood exceedingly, multiplied, then lots of people died under his reign.
Innocent people.
These weren't condemned criminals.
These were people who were innocent of the thing for which Manasseh had them killed.
And looking back in your text, he did this till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.
Now, that word filled is also translated as the word accomplished and as the word replenish and a few other words that show an abundance of something or an overflowing of something.
In fact, we see the same word used to describe the wickedness of the people in Noah's day before God flooded the earth.
And that's recorded in Genesis 611.
Genesis 611, and you're going to hear the same word filled as you did in our text.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
So there wasn't any part of the earth where man was that was free from violence.
There wasn't any part of Jerusalem in our text that was free from the shedding of innocent blood.
He did it everywhere.
You know, wicked leaders are often filled with paranoia.
Now, paranoia is an unreasonable fear, and it takes all kinds of forms from people like me who are just a little bit suspicious of other people when they just come up to me and want to be my friend or when they walk up to me at a gas station and they don't have a car.
And I know what's going on.
I'm about to get asked for money.
So that's not paranoia.
Paranoia is if I'm standing up here and we dismiss and Jeff and Billy start talking and I say, they're talking about me again.
That's paranoia.
Yeah.
Because I know they love me and I love them, but I doubt a whole lot of their conversations involve what Brother Andy's doing.
You know, that's OK.
But wicked leaders are often filled with that paranoia, and they don't trust anyone.
And they use their power and their authority and their brute force to make people comply with them.
Even those who are closest to them are in grave danger of losing their freedom and their lives.
I mentioned Kim Jong-un, the little dictator from Korea, North Korea.
He had his uncle executed for alleged treason.
And they don't know if he committed treason or not.
So he said, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another-- now look down again in the text, it said, beside his sin, wherewith he had made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Now remember, we learned about the word "moreover" at the beginning of this verse.
And this last phrase here that I just read you helps you to understand that Manasseh's sin of shedding innocent blood was beside the sin, wherewith he made Judah to sin.
In other words, it was a cumulative.
It was in addition to.
He didn't get to roll all that up into a package deal and say, God, that's just one sin.
Oh, no, it was multiplied.
These sins stood out separately, so much so that the divinely inspired writer of this passage used the Hebrew words for "moreover" and "beside," both words.
And it's easy to overlook the word "beside" in studying this passage.
But I did not overlook it.
I'm interested in every word and why it's there.
I want to know why it's there.
And you would not guess where the word "beside" came from in the Hebrew language.
That's why this is so fun to me.
You know, I had a pastor a long time ago who made the comment that he just couldn't stand it when these preachers would say, in the Greek it says this, or in the Hebrew it says that.
And I thought, boy, that is part of our scholarship as pastors and teachers is we don't have to know Greek and Hebrew.
It would certainly help.
But we certainly need to be interested in what it says, because that's what this was written in.
And as you learned last week, if you were here, there's some Aramaic in there, which is very close to Hebrew.
But we ought to be interested in what the original languages say, because that's where the meaning of the words come from.
They don't come from what we think the translation means.
It comes from the original language.
So this word "beside" is normally translated as the word "staves," S-T-A-V-E-S.
Now, you learned about staves when you learned about the construction of the tabernacle, the tent of the wilderness, as it was called.
And it's also translated as the word "branches."
That's right.
The word "beside" is translated as the word "branches" or as the word "staves."
And the idea behind these words is that each sin stands apart by itself.
Let's take a tree.
A tree consists of many parts.
So when you-- it's a beautiful time of year right now, because the dogwoods and the pear trees bloom first, at least around here.
Unless you've got one that blooms before, then you can tell me after church, I'll take the correction.
But that's the ones I notice, because that tells me that the crappie are moving up in the shallow water, and I can get to them.
I'm 5 feet 9 inches.
I can't wait out to 7 feet of water.
I got to wait till they get up in about 3 feet of water.
That's why I get so excited.
But they're beautiful.
But when you see a tree, you normally say, well, look it.
That's a pretty tree right there.
Or that tree is blooming.
Or that tree fell down.
But there are so many parts of a tree.
The main parts, of course, being the roots and the trunk and the branches.
But you have all these other parts and things on the inside.
And you can talk about the bark.
And you can spend a long time talking about trees if you'd like to.
But just as the roots are many, they are also separate.
Try to get rid of a tree out of your yard, and you'll find out what that means.
They're just roots after roots.
And just like the branches are many, they are separate.
And understand that sins are like branches.
Each one of them stands alone.
Even though the branches are from one tree and the sins are from one center, listen to Job chapter 13, verse 23.
Job 13, 23.
He said, "How many are mine iniquities and sins?
Make me to know my transgression and my sin."
So the way Job would know his transgression and his sin singular is by knowing how many iniquities and sins there are.
That would help him to understand the depth, the extent of his sin.
In Luke chapter 7, verse 47, Luke 7, 47, Jesus was explaining to the disciples the case of a woman who anointed him with that expensive ointment from that alabaster box.
And he taught them during that time, he taught them the parable of the debtors.
And then he said, "Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much.
But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."
So both Job and Jesus describe sins as many, just like a tree has many branches.
And seeing the branches as many and seeing our sins as many, we get a sense of just how cumulative our sin is, or we ought to.
We see how much weight our sin carries.
Can you imagine a tree that just kept growing branch after branch after branch and just never stopped growing, and at some point those branches are going to break.
Something's going to cause those branches to break.
Either the dead weight, the ice gather on them, or they get starved of water or nutrients, and they just break.
And at some point, a strong wind could hit those branches and cause them to break.
You know, one of the reasons I prune my trees-- yes, I do it myself.
Why?
I'm not going to dish out the money.
As long as I can climb on a ladder and operate my saw, I'm not going to pay for it.
But the reason I prune my trees, not just cutting the outer branches, but the inner canopy, is so the wind can blow through them.
So when we have a strong wind storm or an ice storm, there aren't as many branches.
It's not like a sail, because it'll push that tree over.
That wind will.
If you never trim your trees and you have wet ground-- you've all seen that in East Texas.
Ground gets wet, boy, it pushes them over, root ball and all.
And so our sins, which are many, have us in that same kind of shape right there.
We can't bear even one of them, much less the many, many branches of sin that we produced.
Now, we're learning about this word "beside."
We're getting a good look at it when we get back to our text.
So when you think of the burden that Jesus bore on the cross, think of the sinner whose sins, like many, many branches, weigh him down like a tree with too many branches.
And now it's just yours.
Now, you think of the billions and billions of sinners who've been born ever since Eve had Cain.
And the weight of all of those sins upon all of those sinners all placed on Jesus.
Now, I couldn't even bear my own sins, just like that tree with too many branches can't bear its own branches.
What if you put all of the branches of all the world on that tree?
Could that tree bear those branches?
No, it would just crush it.
But Jesus was able to take all of those sins, my sins, and beside mine, Doug's, and beside Doug's, Luke's, and so forth and so on, and bear them.
And the cross Jesus bore on his way to Calvary, in fact, teaches us about the burden of sin that he truly bore.
You might see that cross and say, boy, I bet that was heavy.
Oh, it wasn't near as heavy as our sin, not even close.
And one group of Manasseh's sins, like individual branches, were beside his sin, wherewith he made Judah to sin.
Now, go back in your text, it says, and this is how he sinned, "in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord."
Clearly stated here, doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
That's why we have to study our Bibles.
If you just went up to the man on the street and said, "Do you know what's evil in the sight of the Lord?"
Why, most people would say, "Well, murder.
You know, hurting people."
Yeah, that's right.
But then when you got down to their pet sins, they'd say, "I don't know about that."
Well, we do, because we have it in God's Word.
We don't have to doubt it.
We have to study our Bibles to find out what's evil in God's sight, just like the children of Israel.
And that's why God gave them those commandments.
So when they said, "Hmm, is that evil in God's sight?"
Well, just go right over here, your copy of the commandments, and look it up, and it would tell you.
Now, it doesn't seem that hard, does it?
Last week, Brother Fulton and I were sharing about a prison missionary that I heard speak at Willow Springs Baptist Church there outside of Athens, where our pastor once pastored a long time ago.
And the missionary's name was Brother Steve Weist, and he grew up in a Catholic household when he was a little boy.
And when he was a little boy, he was real interested in his religion, and so he wanted a Bible.
So his mother said, "Go see the priest."
So he went to the priest, and he asked the priest for a Bible, and the priest said, "You don't need a Bible.
We'll tell you what it says."
And just like we learned last Sunday, what that priest did is he caused his parishioners to be dependent on him for their salvation.
And that priest caused Brother Weist to be dependent on him for his knowledge of the Bible.
And I don't believe that priest was a Bible teacher at all, so it wasn't like he was getting any help from him.
But after all, the Bible tells us how to be saved, and you ought to want to see what's in the Bible and to understand it, not have somebody tell you about it, but not give you one.
And so what that priest did was to tell Brother Weist what was good and evil in his sight, in the sight of the Catholic Church, rather than showing him what the Bible said was good and evil in God's sight.
Because that's what we all need to know.
Now verse 17, "Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and all that he did, and his sin that he sinned, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?"
Now when we first began studying the books of the kings, we came across this phrase, "Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?"
And what we learned was that that didn't mean that everything that king did would be written in 1 or 2 Chronicles.
That is not what that meant.
The word "Chronicles" are a lot broader than that.
They were...
The Chronicles consisted not only of what we have in the Bible.
In fact, not everything Jesus did was written in the Bible.
You remember what John said?
If it were, the world couldn't hold all the books.
So not everything the kings did was written in the Bible, but all the things that are written in the Bible that said... where it says the king did this or that, they did it.
Because the Bible says so.
So there were other logs and diaries and historical writings that contain the acts of the kings.
You know, maybe daily things that we wouldn't really care about.
Now, we are about to...
Next Sunday, we're going to go into chapter... or excuse me, into verse 18, where we read about Manasseh's death.
And then we go to the next king.
But what we're going to do is pause before we get to his death.
And we're going to do that because we have some more information at our hands about King Manasseh.
And I don't mean from some other history book.
I mean from the Bible.
And as we often find in the Chronicles, you have parallel verses that tell about the same time period, the same king, even some of his same actions, as we have in 1 and 2 Kings.
And so we're going to pause here and take our study to 2 Chronicles chapter 33 because the first nine verses of that chapter are generally the same as the first 17 verses of this book.
But what comes after what we just read today and before Manasseh's death is what we're going to study.
And I think you're going to love it.
And you might read ahead and you might not, but whether you do or don't, you're going to say, "Wow, I didn't see that coming.
It's going to be good."
So until then...
All right, let's pray.
Father, thank you for everyone who came and everyone who tuned in.
They're all precious to us.
And thank you for their hunger, for your word.
And pray they've been taught today that your spirit has done the work, taking your word through your servant, explaining it, and building us up in the faith and our understanding of your word.
As we go into the next hour and we sing and pray and encourage one another as our pastor preaches, Lord, and we hear again from your word, help us to absorb that truth and to live by it, and that it may be our peace, and that we would not seek peace from this world, and that we would look at things from your perspective, Father.
Thank you that we have a Bible.
And we just look forward to what you're going to do in this next hour.
In Jesus' name, amen.
