Episode Transcript
Well, good morning.
It's 10 o'clock.
Let's go ahead and begin our lesson.
If you will, just join me in silencing your noise-making device and that way we don't have any pizza orders during Sunday school.
We're in 2nd Chronicles chapter 33, 2nd Chronicles chapter 33 and verse 14 where we left off last week.
And I'd like for you to also mark Genesis chapter 30.
Just put a bookmark there, or if you're using an electronic device, put a bookmark there, and we'll come back to that later in our lesson.
And just to remind you, and we're glad for our members, our visitors, those who join online, those who will watch this broadcast later on, sometimes in different parts of the world, right now so they don't get to have church with us until they get up which may be in 10 or 11 hours but to remind you we are on our way through 2nd Kings chapter 21 and have paused to look at the newfound faith of the formerly wicked King Manasseh of Judah and as we've seen over the last two or three weeks there are some details captured in 2nd Chronicles 33 that we don't see in 2nd Kings 21.
It's the same way with the Gospels.
You'll get some of the accounts will you get this story in these Gospels and not in this one and so it doesn't mean that there's anything missing from the Bible it's just where God chose to put it and that's where we study it.
So that's what we're doing in 2nd Chronicles 33.
And if you've made your way there and also mark Genesis chapter 30, then we can begin reading.
And I'll read from chapter 33.
I'm going to go ahead and reread verse 14 because we left off in the middle and this is speaking of Manasseh.
Now after this, he built a wall without the city of David on the west side of Gihon in the valley even to the entering in at the fish gate and compassed about Ophel and raised it up a very great height and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.
Now we learned last week that Manasseh built a wall to protect the city of David and this was after he knew the Lord that he was God.
Manasseh had been a wicked king and remember he was on the throne for 55 years so the majority of his rule was done in a wicked fashion that led the people of God away from the worship of the one true God.
Well now he has put his faith in God and contrary to his previously self-serving outlook on Judah, he now sees Judah as a great responsibility rather than as an opportunity to flex his authority.
And as I mentioned last week and as we learned in the Bible, if you humble yourself before God then you will humble yourself before people.
If you have a high view of yourself then you will not only hold the people in contempt but you'll hold God in contempt.
Now let's look some more at this truth as we continue this morning.
A man who has a right view of himself and I believe that's where we find Manasseh at this point in his reign and in his life.
A man who has a right view of himself will not only place himself under God but he will also place himself as a servant to mankind.
Even though I'm teaching Sunday school I'm every bit your servant.
That's what I'm doing up here serving the Lord and serving you by teaching God's Word. 1st Peter chapter 5 verses 5 through 6.
Now if you can't turn there fast enough if you just want to make a note in your notes or listen 1st Peter chapter 5 verses 5 through 6 will show you both of these truths in in one passage where he wrote, "Likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.
Yea, all of you be subject one to another."
Now they're serving each other.
"And be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time.
So verse six says to humble yourselves to God or seven says to, uh, or verse six said to humble yourself to God and then to be subject to one another.
Now, the greatest thing that you could ever say about anyone is that he is a servant of both the Lord and the people.
You may have heard the acronym J O Y joy, and it is very relevant.
It's scripturally based, and it stands for Jesus, others, and you, and that's how you have true joy.
And it's in that order, by the way.
It's not O-J-Y or Y-O-J.
Those don't spell joy.
Matthew chapter 22, verses 36 through 40, Matthew 22, verses 36 through 40, where one asked Jesus, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"
Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind."
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Now there are three objects of love mentioned in that passage.
One is the Lord, one is thy neighbor, and one is thyself.
And nowhere does Jesus say you should not love yourself.
In fact, Paul taught the church about the relationship between Christ and the members of the body of Christ.
And in doing so he wrote about what we are discussing here.
He said in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 29, Ephesians 5 29, "For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church."
Now in the Matthew passage I read it was very clear that loving the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind was the first and great commandment.
Now that's the "J" in joy right there.
Jesus.
My mother is in a rehabilitation facility right now for some injuries and illnesses she has and yesterday as I visited her a group of young people came into her room and wanted to sing a worship song and then give the gospel and I thought well I'm all about that come on in and so these precious children and their parents came in and, and sang a song, sang amazing grace.
And then the children presented the gospel.
And the first thing they said was Jesus is God.
So that's what we're looking at here.
The J in joy is thou shall love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind.
And then the second was loving thy neighbor as thyself.
That was also in the Matthew passage.
And that is the O in joy.
That's the others.
You should never love your neighbor less than you love yourself.
You should never love God less than you love yourself or your neighbor.
Or you have everything out of order.
And we see that Manasseh, in his current state, in his spiritual condition, now held the Lord and the people above himself.
His care for the people was shown in building the protective wall.
Now think about a king who is selfish and not selfless.
Where would he build that wall?
Why he'd build it just around the White House, or just around the Blue House in Korea, or just around wherever the president or the king of that country was. to make sure nobody could get to him.
But he wouldn't build a wall around the city, because he really doesn't care about the people.
And I believe Manasseh finally knew what joy was when he began to serve God and serve the people.
Looking back in our text, we're in 2 Chronicles 33-14, if you just joined us on on the air, look in the middle of the verse, it says, "And He raised a captain and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.
That was at the end of the verse.
I'm sorry.
What good is a wall without soldiers to man it and to guard it?
Manassas building program not only protected the people, but also their possessions.
Now that's important too.
This is a mark of a person who cares for his fellow man.
I'm going to give you an example of it because God considers this to be important.
In Exodus chapter 22 verse 5, Exodus 22 verse 5, it says, "If a man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten, and shall put in his beast, and shall feed in another man's field of the best of his own field, and of the best of his own vineyard shall he make restitution."
So bring that down to the Bible shelf where we can get to it.
If I take my ox and I go over to brother Mike's field, and I know where brother Mike has the best sweet corn, and I let my ox have at it and eat all the sweet corn he wants till his belly's and then go back, then I don't go take my field corn and give that to Brother Mike.
Say, "Well, Brother Mike, my ox ate some of your sweet corn."
And I'm not going to give you my sweet corn.
I'm going to give you some field corn.
You can either make fuel out of it or you can grind it up and make tortillas, whatever you want to do, but you're not getting my sweet corn.
Now, see, that would not be caring for my brother or his possessions.
And this is very simple.
That passage means we don't steal animal food from our own neighbor.
We don't steal anything from our neighbor.
And if we take, we give the best back.
We give a dollar for a dollar, but God knew the heart of man.
When he said thou shalt not steal.
Now you would have thanked in Exodus chapter 20, where that commandment is given that that would be enough.
Thou shalt not steal.
And then you make the application.
And that means from anybody for any reason, any amount, but God knew our heart.
Because if a man lets his ox wander into another man's cornfield and eat, that man may very well say, "I didn't steal the corn, it was my ox."
And God foresaw that.
Hey, good fences make good neighbors, don't they?
That's scriptural as well.
Now Judah has a wall outside, not just the palace, outside the city of David, "compassing Ophel," which means a hill, and there are also fenced cities as well.
So there is protection for the cities.
Now go to verse 15 please, it says about Manasseh, "And he took away the strange gods and the idol out of 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 cast them out of the city.
Let's look at the first half.
"And he took away the strange gods in the idol of the house of the Lord and all the altars that had been built in the mount of the house of the Lord."
And in Jerusalem.
Now this was even more important than building a wall and manning it with soldiers because in doing that Manasseh protected the people, He protected their possessions but more importantly here, by removing those things from the house of the Lord, he protected the people spiritually.
He removed all of these man-made abominations that had been put in the house of the Lord, had been used for the worship of their false gods, Balaam, which is plural for Baal, that means they had many false gods.
And Manasseh in doing this went back to the one true religion.
And that was the one given by the one true God.
God doesn't make it hard to know what his will is when it comes to worshiping him.
He puts it in his word for us to read.
And to do that, to bring the people back and lead them into worshiping the one true God in removing these idols and these altars from the house of the Lord."
Manasseh first humbled himself as we read several verses back.
It said he prayed, it said he knew the Lord that he was God and it was then that Manasseh began to protect the people, their possessions and their practice of worshiping God the way he commanded.
Now the first step in protecting the true way was to get rid of the wicked way.
That makes sense, doesn't it?
The way of Balaam.
If you want your infected hand to get well you've got to remove the infection first so the hand can continue the healing process and it doesn't kill you.
But he got rid of the wicked way, the way of the strange gods, the altars, and all of that.
And not only did he take them away but look back in that verse 15 it says, "and cast them out of the city."
Now there's a difference between taking something away and casting it out.
And took away means he removed it.
The Hebrew word for cast is translated in another way in Numbers chapter 35 verse 20.
And it's translated there, I love this, as the word hurl.
Hurl.
Now that's how you cast out an idol, isn't it?
That's how you cast out a strange altar or a bad habit.
You hurl it.
You don't just set it in the second drawer or put a covering over it.
You hurl it.
And that's what Manasseh did to those idols and those altars that God despised.
He didn't just hurl it out of the room.
He didn't just hurl it out of the house or put it in the trash.
The text says he cast it out of the city.
He hurled it out of the city.
Now that was a message for everyone.
He didn't loan those idols, those altars to someone else and say, "Hey, we can't really use these anymore.
Do you guys have a use for them?"
He didn't put them in a storage unit.
He didn't put a dust cover over them in case somebody wanted to resurrect them later.
He hurled them out of the city.
Now think about the implication of what Manasseh did when it comes to our nation.
For the United States of America to please God, whether it be Physical or not, every idol has to be cast out of our country.
The people must love the Lord their God, the one who created them, the one who died and rose again for them.
You know what many religious people do instead?
They simply put their idols in the closet, they hide them under their saddle, they put them in They conceal them from public view.
Maybe they make sure the pastor doesn't see them.
But wherever those idols are, even the ones in your heart and your mind that nobody else can see, they're not hidden from God.
And we have to first cast those idols out of ourselves, out of our homes, out of our churches, and out of nation but sadly we know that the majority of the people will not do that and although people will still be saved in the days to come and that's why we're still preaching the gospel although we know people will still be saved in the days to come we know many more will reject salvation they'll prefer their secular humanism or their religions that depend on the works of the people my in Jesus was the casting out of idols and altars and strange gods.
So for Manasseh there was no room for those idols and altars and strange gods in Jerusalem.
Now look back in verse 16, "And he repaired the altar of the Lord and sacrificed thereon peace offerings and thank offerings and commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel."
It says, "And he repaired the altar of the Lord," which tells us that the altar was in a state of disrepair.
It had been damaged.
It wasn't fit for use as it was.
You know the word "repaired" is normally translated as the word "build."
In fact, more so than any other word or words such build up or built up.
But there is also another English word used by the translators instead of the word repair.
It's the same Hebrew word and it's found in Genesis chapter 30 and I asked you to turn there because I want to look at this passage for just a few moments.
I don't want you to get lost as I make reference to things in the passage so if you have found Genesis chapter 30 I'm I'm going to read verses one through five.
Make sure we're all there before I start reading.
Okay.
And when Rachel saw that she bared Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, "Give me children or else I die."
And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, And he said, "Am I in God's stead who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?"
And she said, "Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her."
And she gave him Bilhah, her handmaid, to wife.
And Jacob went in unto her and Bilhah conceived in Bear Jacob a son.
And of course that son's name was Dan.
Now if you look back in that passage, in verse 3 at the very end, you have the two words "have children."
That is the same Hebrew word as the word translated "repaired" in our 2 Chronicles 33.16 text.
And as you look at that Genesis passage, You may notice that Rachel was without children at that time.
She was barren.
And for her to bear children, there had to be a fruitful womb.
One that was capable of conceiving and growing and giving birth to a child.
In Bilhah the Handmaid, there was that fruitful womb.
Now very practically speaking here, at that time, from an earthly point of view, from a doctor's point of view, say, Rachel's womb was the wrong womb by which she could obtain a child at that time.
That's what a doctor would have said.
Well, it's just not going to work.
And at that time, in a very practical sense, Bilhah's womb was the right womb to conceive and bear a child.
Now we know that Rachel would later have sons for Jacob, but we're learning about the Hebrew word translated as "repair" repaired in our main text.
And that word, the Genesis text, translates as "have children" is what I wanted you to see here.
Now going back, and you can turn back to our main text in 2 Chronicles, now we're going to tie this together.
Judah had been using an altar.
Now when I say Judah here, we're talking about the Southern Kingdom and we're talking about what happened there in Jerusalem.
But Judah, or Jerusalem, had been using an altar in the house of the Lord.
We read about it.
Manasseh cast those altars out, but the altar was the wrong altar.
And the wrong altar was in a religious place, the temple.
The idols were religious, but they were the wrong-- there are no idols that are right for the Lord's house, but it was wrong for them to be there.
The idols were religious and the altar was religious because the people worship the false gods through them, burn incense to them, sacrificed, and so forth.
But faith in the false gods could not produce salvation.
Worshipping the idols, no matter how sincerely they did so, could not produce salvation.
Now let's look at the altar that needed to be repaired.
It was broken. our text tells us Manasseh repaired that altar.
The instructions for the original construction of the brazen altar are found in Exodus chapter 27 and verse 1 and 2.
Exodus 27, 1 and 2, so I'll refresh your memory with what that looked like.
God said, "And thou shalt make an altar of she-team wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad.
The altar shall be four square and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof.
His horns shall be of the same and thou shalt overlay it with brass."
Now if you don't know anything else about the brazen altar, the word brass is what tells you this is not the incense altar.
This is the brazen altar.
The incense altar was made of gold.
And the altar that I just read about was later referred to as the brazen altar.
And let's see what was to be offered upon that brazen altar.
We find it in Leviticus chapter 1 verses 1 through 5.
Leviticus chapter 1 verses 1 through 5.
"For God told Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, if any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, you shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.
If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male, that's key, without blemish, that's key, he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord.
"And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord, and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation."
So there's some more information that tells you this was the brazen altar because that was what was by the door of the tabernacle.
You had the brazen altar, the laver, and then you went inside the holy place, and then on into the most holy after that.
Now most of us have learned if you've been through either the Genesis to Jesus class or the Creation to Christ class, or you've just simply been in church and been exposed to this, most of us have learned that the sacrificing of an unblemished male animal, which we read about there, such as a lamb, an ox, or a bullock, any clean animal like that, was a type of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.
He was a male without blemish.
He was perfect.
And just like the animal here would become a burnt offering, Jesus' blood was shed as well.
These animals' blood were shed and Jesus' blood was shed.
And the one in the Old Testament who offered this animal, this sacrifice, by placing his hand upon the head of that animal was figuratively transferring his unrighteousness to the animal and of course the animals innocence as it were was transferred to the man who offered it.
Now we know that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin but this was a picture that was reenacted every day, even the morning and evening sacrifices and throughout their time if they were in obedience to God's commandments about how to do these ordinances They had a beautiful picture painted for them.
Now we did not physically place our hand on Jesus, but we placed our faith in Him and what He did for us on the cross.
And by faith in what He did for us, we received His righteousness and He took upon Himself our sins.
What a trade-off.
Now stay with me because we're learning about the significance of Manasseh repairing the altar for the house of the Lord.
When we place our faith in a perfect Savior, we're born again and we become the children of God.
Galatians 3.26 says, "For you're all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
That's how that happens.
Now what if Jesus, knowing what we know about the prophecies of the Old Testament would die and all of the things that he would say, what if Jesus had been sacrificed some other way on some other altar than the cross?
It would have rendered all of the Old Testament prophecies about his death and the manner of his death as inaccurate, which ruins the Bible.
And we know that wasn't going to happen.
If Jesus had died on a table, that would have been a broken If Jesus had died of food poisoning on a park bench without shedding his blood, that park bench would have been a broken altar.
The altar had to be a cross, had to be a tree as the Old Testament calls it.
In fact, Deuteronomy 21 verses 22 through 23, just right, 21, 22, 23.
Put your little full colon in there.
Deuteronomy 21 verses 22 through 23 It says, "And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day.
For he that is hanged is accursed of God.
And that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord hath given thee for an inheritance."
And in 1 Peter 2 verse 24, and if you'll put the little letter "a" after 24, that means I've read the first part of the verse.
We're being honest here.
We didn't read the whole verse.
1 Peter 2, 24a is what shows us where that prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross because he said about Jesus, "Who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree."
Not on the park bench, not on the table, but on the tree.
And because Because Jesus was hung on the altar he foreknew--the tree, the cross--and the one of which he prophesied and of which Isaiah and David and all of these by divine inspiration pointed to, any other altar would have been an altar of disrepair.
It would have been a broken altar.
And although Manasseh cast out the idols and the altars of Balaam, the altar of the Lord still needed to be repaired.
Now I don't know if one of the legs came off, one of the horns came off, or if it was just filthy, I don't know.
But for the sacrifices on that altar to represent and to foreshadow the sacrifice Jesus would make, everything had to be done according to the pattern that God showed Moses in the mount.
So a repaired altar--remember the word repaired means have children.
It's the same word, same Hebrew word. a repaired altar could figuratively birth children in this way.
As people believed-- now these people sacrificing upon the altar--as they look forward, believing on that Savior who would be represented by these sacrifices that were made on that repaired altar, then many children would be born. for you're all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
The altar can't bear children unless it's repaired.
This altar could not be used in the temple when Manasseh was king if it had not been repaired.
So although we didn't go way off into the ocean on this, I think we went deep enough where you see the significance of this word "repaired" and I hope it helps you understand the significance of repairing the altar one as it is.
You know if a man were content to use the altar of disrepair, the broken one, then he also may be content to put his faith in a broken Savior, which is not a Savior at all.
That would be a sinner like Muhammad or Buddha or some mythological God who never existed at all.
But upon this repaired altar, Manasseh, through the priests-- look back in your text--it said, "and sacrificed thereon peace offerings and thank offerings."
Only upon a repaired altar, one that could bring forth children as faith in Jesus' death on the cross brings forth children of faith, those peace offerings and thank offerings could only be altered or offered upon that altar.
Imagine if the builders of the brazen altar who had specific instructions from God on how it was to be built and in what order.
Imagine if they had just stopped short of finishing it.
Let's say they put the wood together and say, "Well, you know, Otis, that looks pretty good.
I think, I think God will be happy with that.
We don't need to use all that gold.
That altar will hold and do what we need to do."
Or maybe they just got tired.
They said, "Man, this is a lot of work and we still have to melt all this gold and, and, and, or excuse me, this brass and put it on there?
So let's say those men turned in that incomplete altar and Aaron who should have said, "No, that's not going to work."
If he had said, "You know what?
That looks good enough.
That's a good looking altar, fellas.
That would have caused the death of them and many Israelites because God would not have accepted it."
How do you you offer thank offerings on an incomplete altar, on a broken altar?
In the same vein, how could someone truly have peace with God or offer prayers of thanksgiving to Him while denying the salvation that's available through His only Son?
Do you know that happens every day?
All of these interfaith so-called meetings and prayer meetings where you'll have someone from Islam and someone from, say, a Protestant church and a Catholic church and a Baptist church and on and on and on.
Get together.
Listen, they're not praying to the same God.
Any of them who are unbelievers are just shouting empty words into the air.
It says back in our text that he commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.
Now Judah could follow Manasseh as he follows God.
Let's contrast this command from Manasseh with what was written about him all the way back in verse 9.
If you just look back up in verse 9 of the same passage, we're in 2 Chronicles 33.
"So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel."
So Manasseh had previously made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, to go astray.
But his newfound faith meant that he turned from serving idols to serving the living God and that he commanded Judah to do the same.
Now I say he commanded Judah to do the same because we're going to see that he didn't lead Judah to do the same. look back down in verse 17, please.
"Nevertheless," that means after all of that, "nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high places."
Now friend, this is unfortunately the price of a wicked reign.
The king's heart may be turned to the Lord, but the people's may not.
Now why was this the case?
Well Manasseh reigned for so long and led more than one generation of people to worship Balaam and the children of those people from early in his reign knew nothing else than the worship of false gods.
And God commanded sacrifices to be made at the altar that he commanded.
He did not command sacrifices to be made in the high places.
And here's what the people of Judah did instead.
So we know they still sacrificed in the high places.
It says in verse 17, "Yet unto the Lord their God only."
Ha!
So they made themselves a hybrid religion.
Now we got a bunch of that going on today, don't we?
They made themselves a hybrid religion.
They worship God but they also sacrificed in the high places.
They didn't want to offend God.
They didn't want to offend Balaam.
But in doing so, they offended God.
They displeased God.
He said, "I am the Lord and there is no other God beside me."
So any hat tip, any salute to some other religion when you become a Christian, those two don't go together.
That's bitter and sweet water.
That's darkness and light.
When man tries to worship God the way man wants to, all sorts of religious malpractice takes place, doesn't it?
There's one way to worship God.
The Bible says that's in spirit and in truth.
You worship him in spirit and in truth. and the truth is not what the encyclopedia says or what we decide is true that day.
It's not, "Well, we follow the science because the science is true."
There's the truth.
We worship Him in spirit and in truth.
You cannot worship God apart from His Word.
If you say, "Well, we don't really read the Bible in our church but we do have a lot of singing and praying and all sorts of encouragement and exhortation."
You're not worshipping in spirit and in truth.
The truth is found in his word and it was in the days of the Jews in Manassas kingdom.
It was found in God's Word, not in a high place.
Today, not in a magazine.
Not in the words of charlatan preachers.
Churches may have some differences in their styles.
Some may say, "Well, we have a guitar."
And others may say, "Well, we just use a piano.
We use a piano and an organ, or we don't have instruments."
Some may kneel when they pray.
Some may sit when they pray.
Some may stand when they pray.
But among all those places, and among all those worshippers, there has to be the common ground of the truth of God's word.
When people say, "Well, we just want to come together and just have unity."
What is your unity based upon?
And I'm going to tell you, this decision, this series of decisions Manasseh made was not popular with Judah.
Because here they have a king, and they've known him for generations.
He's the only king many of them have ever known.
And yet he says, "I command you now to worship the Lord your God."
Instead of saying, "You know what, king?
You're in charge.
You're right.
That's what we should do.
That's what we're going to do with God's help."
They said, "We're not going to do it."
And it's sad that he made that bed.
And as I close, I'll just speak to you who are listening.
Perhaps you came to faith in Christ early in life, in your middle age, or in your older age.
And if you're a Christian, then you so desire those around you, in your family, your friends, your coworkers, and the stranger in the land, to come to faith in that same Christ, that they may know the salvation that you know and that brings you peace.
And yet you say, "Andy," and I've talked to some of you, "I can't get my son, my friend, my dad to listen to me.
I want to talk about Jesus to them and they say, 'I don't want anything to do with that.'"
And although that's not okay, it's the way it is.
And it puts you in a position of helplessness as a human, but as a Christian it puts you in a position of power because you can turn that over to the Lord.
You give that to God.
Don't you stop praying for that lost person.
You tell them, "I love you, and I know you don't want to listen to what I have to say, but I love you and I want to see you come to faith in Christ, and I'm going to pray for you and you can't stop me.
You don't have to listen to me, but you can't stop me from praying for you."
And I don't know whether Manasseh bathed himself in prayer.
I expect he did if he became a Christian and prayed for Israel.
But don't you stop praying just because they say no to the gospel.
Let's be dismissed.
Father, we're so thankful for your word.
We're thankful for every ear who heard, every eye who saw today.
And Lord, I pray that you would remove anything that was said by frailty of the flesh and that only truth would resonate in their hearts, that it would build up the Christian in the most holy faith, and that it would draw the sinner to you, seeking salvation through your son.
And as we worship this next hour and study your word, Father, I pray that you would give our pastor the same grace and the same liberty as you gave me this morning, and that your church may glorify you in Jesus' name, amen.
