Episode Transcript
All right, good morning.
It's 10 o'clock.
We better begin our lesson.
Glad to have you all and also the people online.
2 Chronicles chapter 33 and verse 17 was where we stopped last week.
2 Chronicles 33 verse 17.
And we learned about the new hybrid religion the people of Judah had embraced.
Before, they'd been under an idol-worshipping king for decades, and that was Manasseh.
But now Manasseh's humbled himself, and he's put his trust in the Lord.
But the people are not so easily swayed.
Wednesday night after service, Brother Fulton and I were sharing as we often do.
And I mentioned that as afraid as people are of dying and death, when you give them a message that promises them eternal life, most of them would rather reject it than believe it.
It's hard to understand that.
And the people of Judah have foolishly rejected God, the one who gave them life from the dead, if they would just accept it.
And whereas King Manasseh hurled the idols out, remember that's what that word cast out meant, he hurled the idols out and the altars out of the Lord's house, he hurled them out of the city.
The people hadn't done that.
And they kept those idols, whether they were physical or not, they kept those idols and those altars in their hearts.
But on the outside chance they might offend God or offend Balaam, they decided to make a mixture of the religions.
So they continued worshipping in the high places, but they sacrificed only to the Lord their God.
And as we learned and we'll continue to learn none of those actions.
Please God.
You might say, well, at least they sacrificed to the Lord.
Yes, but they did it in a way and in a place that he had not commanded.
In fact, many cults, including some that are religious denominations, their cults in disguise have begun with the word of God.
They start off with this and that attracts people.
They say, Oh, it's Bible based.
Well, a lot of things are Bible based, but that doesn't mean they're biblical.
I start off with the word of God and however, they've not continued in the word of God.
In the midst of their rebellion against God's design for men and women, how he created us, there are churches run by homosexuals, yet those same people will pray and prayer is a wonderful thing, but it's prayer done on their terms rather than prayers done on God's terms.
Other churches will hide child molesters and serial adulterers in their midst.
You just read the newspaper.
I know that dates me right there.
I'll read your newsfeed and you'll see it.
Dallas Fort worth Metroplex.
You don't have to stray outside the state of Texas to see it.
They'll hide those sorts of people.
And yet the leaders of those same churches that are hiding the child molester and the serial adulterer will read the Bible out loud to the people.
Reading the Bible is a wonderful thing, but they do it on their terms.
They'll even exhort people to be saved and so on.
Listen, we either do this God's way or we don't.
That's it.
So two choices we have.
It's not a cafeteria.
We can't add to it or take away from it things that we don't like and still claim He's God.
Now let's reread verse 17 and jump right into verse 18.
If you've just joined us online, we're in second Chronicles 33 17.
Nevertheless, the people did sacrifice still in the high places yet unto the Lord, their God only.
Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer unto his God and the words of the seers that spake unto him.
And in the name of the Lord, God of Israel, behold, they are written in the books of the book of the Kings of Israel.
And it says the rest of the acts of Manasseh.
We've seen that almost every time we've read about the death of a King is the rest of the acts of this King were written here or written there.
And that's a phrase that also accompanies our acts.
Do you think about that?
We have acts that people see and we have acts that we want people to know about.
And then we have the rest of our acts, the ones people don't see or don't know about, or we don't want them to know about.
And regardless of the acts, we can't make them better.
We can't make them worse.
We can't erase them.
They're done.
What's done is done.
They are what they are.
And when an unbeliever is judged at the great white throne judgment based upon his acts, he doesn't get to shade them or color them or explain them away because God will judge them.
He'll judge them by the acts that we know and by the rest of their acts.
All of them.
But the Christian on the other hand, may say something like this.
The rest of the acts of Andy Shepherd are washed in the blood of lamb.
I don't have to be judged.
They're not remembered against him anymore.
And I'm so glad that's the case.
And although Manasseh had become a Christian history would still tell of the rest of the acts of Manasseh, which included the good and the bad as in look back in your text in verse 18, his prayer unto God.
Now that was one of his acts.
That was a specific thing listed here under the title of the rest of his acts.
His prayer to God and God here, the name God is Elohim, which is the plural form of L, which means God in Hebrew.
And it tells us that Manassas prayer was to the triune God.
That is the God in three persons, a father, son, and Holy spirit.
The right one, not the one he used to call God who had neither, who was neither father nor son, nor Holy spirit, but was a dead God, but to this God, the God who is in three persons yet one.
And it was Manassas prayer that revealed his heart to God.
In fact, we don't know what the words were he prayed.
I would love to hear those, but we know his prayer was a commendable act and we studied it a few weeks ago.
Look back in the verse and it also says this was recorded and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel.
So those were written down as well in the book of the kings of Israel.
Now seers are the same as prophets.
Second Samuel chapter 24 verse 11 teaches us that.
Second Samuel 24 verse 11, "For when David was up in the morning, the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying," and then it tells what it said in next verse.
The words of the seer are important.
The people who read the words of the seers will know what God told Manasseh to do and what not to do and what was going to happen in the future.
And the words of the seers as written down were not only for Manasseh and the people to read but for the whole city of Jerusalem for the whole nation for the whole earth which includes us as well.
And you notice in verse 18 the seers it said they spake to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel.
Now there are a lot of people who called themselves seers and prophets and the same today.
You have people who give themselves those various names.
Some call themselves pastors and they're no such thing.
They're not fit to lead in a basketball game much much less lead a bunch of sheep in a church.
But you know they still say that's what they are.
And to know if it's important for us to know if a seer, a prophet, a preacher, a teacher is speaking to us in the name of the Lord.
That's important.
Second Peter chapter 2 verses 1 through 2.
Second Peter chapter 2 verses 1 through 2.
He wrote, "But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of."
Well there's quite a bit there in that verse that we could unpack, but let's learn this it's not a matter of whether we will have false prophets it's just when when are you going to come across one when you gonna hear from one or read about one perhaps you're worried that a false prophet has gotten the best of you perhaps that false prophet has you troubled about something and you don't what to do.
They claim that they speak in the name of the Lord, but they're found liars.
How do we find them liars?
We measure what they say against God's word.
If they tell you something that's not in God's word, they're liars.
Their words don't line up with the Bible.
So when it says in our text that those, the things that were written by the seers, the things the seers told Manasseh, that they're written in the book of the kings of Israel, there's a reason they're written and that is so we can see what was said and measured against what these so-called prophets and teachers say today in our time. that's a very basic but these liars these false prophets and teachers will take part of God's Word they'll start right here and you'll say okay good and then they'll twist it and one of the things that makes verse by verse teaching so effective is that it weeds out the wannabe teachers because I'm to tell you and I've told you before and I'm not ashamed to admit it, it takes a lot of work and study to prepare a Sunday school lesson, to prepare a message for the 11 o'clock hour, to prepare a series of lessons to be taught in Genesis to Jesus or to the children.
It takes studying to do that to try to explain to somebody what God's Word says.
And somebody who's just a wannabe doesn't want anything to do with verse by verse teaching.
But another thing verse by verse teaching does is it avoids or it lessens the possibility that the teacher will teach in error.
You can still make a mistake and I have and so has your pastor and when we've been corrected by the Bible we said thank God we have a Bible because I was wrong and I got set straight.
But by and large the verse by verse teaching avoids all that.
So it's hard for a false prophet or a do verse by verse teaching because their doctrine will be upset just like that.
They'll have to cover those verses that they've been avoiding before.
And as you know, we don't skip any verses in here.
We take every verse, every word, every phrase, every doctrine, just as it unfolds, that's why this morning we don't have a special Easter message for everybody.
If you want to hear about Easter, just come to church any time of the year, and We will preach the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We don't wait till today when everybody is Buying eggs and doing all these things that they do with them So we don't we don't stop what we're doing here with verse by verse teaching and go Well, the Easter crowds coming listen, if you're just part of the Easter crowd, you already have that message memorized We don't need to preach it again.
You got it, right?
You need to learn something new.
So hopefully that's what we have for people today if And maybe they'll come back next Sunday too.
That's our also our desire when we have visitors who come in first-time visitors who come in for Whether it's Easter or Christmas or any other Sunday is if they come back the next time they say hey, I like that I learned something from the Bible today if that's important to them, they'll come back But these false teachers and false prophets Don't want anything to do with that.
They And so that's why it was so important for us that these things were written down.
You know, Peter warned that one of the marks of a false prophet, and I just read this passage to you in second Peter two verses one through two, one of the marks of that false prophet is that he denies that Jesus is the son of God, denies the Lord that bought them is what the passage says.
And so that's what a false prophet does is denies that Jesus is the son of God, that he's the way of salvation and that he is the only savior for mankind.
A false prophet doesn't want to teach that he wants you to hang on his words, not on God's words.
And so the message of the false prophet is the one that brings swift destruction, not sure deliverance.
And it brings destruction not only upon himself, but upon the ones that follow the message and what further complicates the matter is that because people who follow that false prophet are religious, then the way of the truth is evil spoken of.
Think about the Jews who tried to worship their own way by sacrificing to the Lord God only, but doing it in the high places.
There was no doubt that there were people in that day who looked at those religious Jews and spoke evil of the truth because of the way those Jews distorted it in the practice of their religion.
What passes off in the world today as Christianity is crazy.
I saw an article about a Catholic man who has been crucified 36 times in his life.
He does this around this time of year in commemoration of Jesus' crucifixion.
There's not anywhere in the scripture that tells us to do that.
In fact, what he does, I suspect, is that he takes the passages that talk about being crucified with Christ, I'm crucified with Christ, literally, physically, as though he is crucified with Christ.
He doesn't understand what it means to be in Christ if that is his expression of that verse.
Listen, Jesus died on the cross for me, so I wouldn't have to die on the cross for me.
My death on the cross could not have even taken away my own sins, much less yours or or anybody else's.
And yet, many will say about this man who's crucified himself 36 times on a real cross, many will say, "Well, he's got to be a Christian to do that sort of thing.
If he is an unbeliever, he could be crucified every day and still die and go believe that the Catholic church is a Christian church.
I say, well, you hear something on the news, you know, the Christian such and such suffered of defeat today because the Catholic church underwent this change or that change or this court decision affected them.
They're not anything alike.
Not if you're a true Catholic.
And I know this, I've, I've got the Catholic Bible at my house.
I've looked at it and boy, just read about the first 25 pages, none of it's scripture.
It's about indulgences and how if you do this particular sin and you do these sorts of penances, you can be forgiven because of the acts that you did.
It's insane.
But people often believe that the Catholic church is the Christian church or is a Christian church and based upon their own writings, their own ordinances, their own indulgences, and so on, they can't be called Christian at all.
If you can say that a piece of stale bread can be the precious sinless body of our savior, because you're a priest who can make it so this not in the Bible anywhere.
You have become a false prophet, a false teacher.
And just like Manasseh and Judah, they too will be held accountable for what the seers spoke in the Bible.
Jesus will take his word and for every religious harlot that stands in the great white throne judgment and says, "Yes, but we did these wonderful works in your name."
He'll say, "I never knew you."
They'll say, "Well, we cast out devils in your name."
He'll say, "I never knew you.
Depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Looking back in our text, it says, "Behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel.
The Acts of Manasseh, his prayer, and a record written down and oh, that Judah and Israel would have learned from them.
That the stiff-necked Jews would have followed their once wicked King as he humbled himself before the God of Israel.
Verse 19 continues about what was written.
His prayer also and how God was entreated of him and all his sins and and the places wherein he built high places and set up groves and graven images before he was humbled behold they are written among the sayings of the seers now this verse is an explanatory verse for verse 18 it gives you some more detail about verse 18 in addition to Manassas prayer to God, which we read about, God's entreaty to him or his answer to him is also recorded.
But how God answers prayer is instructive for us.
Sometimes he gives us grace for a trial and you'll see that in the Bible where he gave the Apostle Paul grace rather than healing that thorn in his flesh.
Other times, God delivers the one who prayed.
He delivers them from their temptations, from their trials.
Sometimes he gives the praying man a choice of two things as he did David.
And then the verse says, and all his sin, his prayer also, and how he was entreated of how God was entreated of him and all his sin, that is all Manasseh sin is written down.
Now, what a stark reminder that is for us.
God who knew us and who knew our ways before the foundation of the earth did by the blood of his son, wash away our sins.
He washed them away because you might be asking, well, why would the Bible say that all of Manasseh sin is recorded somewhere?
And speaking of those who are members of the new covenant, that's the believers of all ages, God said this in Hebrews eight, verse 12, Hebrews eight, verse 12, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
No more.
Will he remember them?
The writing of them has been sponged away by the blood of the lamb, the precious blood of the lamb.
However, mankind is not so kind.
He's not gracious and merciful.
He can't wash away sins and he can't forget about it.
And thank God my true history is not written down to be displayed for everybody. because I couldn't bear the shame and neither can you.
Manasseh since he was 12 years old until he was humbled before the Lord in fact even before he was 12 but we know he became king at 12 and he ruled wickedly.
Since he was a young boy he had a large sin account and mankind wrote it down.
Some of those sins are listed later in this verse, it goes on to say, and his trespass trespasses very close it's it's sin, but it means a transgression or unfaithfulness.
And it's also translated as the word grievous in the old Testament.
Most of Manassas life was a transgression.
Most of his life was rooted in unfaithfulness.
Because he did not humble himself before God until much later in his life.
So his sin and his trespass were all written down by man.
Some of his sin and trespasses that are listed are these.
Look in the text it says, "And the places where he built high places and set up groves and graven image."
Imagine that.
Every high place that he built was recorded.
He didn't have a secret high place.
They were all recorded.
Every grove, every graven image that he made or used was memorialized on paper or parchment.
When people pass by such a grove they could point and say, "Aha, that evil place was built by King Manasseh.
I know it because it says it right here.
All of these groves and graven images and high places were built in rebellion against the Lord.
But God forgave all of that on account of Manasseh's faith in him.
It says, "This all happened," look back in your text, Before he was humbled, behold, they that is the acts are written among the sayings of the seers.
Unfortunately, we can't wash away the memories that people have of us when we lived in sin.
I'm sometimes embarrassed to think of what my old friends from school heard me say and do. the things they know about me, but then I think about how far God has brought me and how he washed away those sins and he remembers them against me no more.
No matter what man remembers against me, God doesn't remember them against me anymore.
I think of how God took that burden of sin and guilt and shame off of me because I could not bear it.
Verse 20, "So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his own house, and Amon his son reigned in his stead."
And with this verse, we can now return back to 2 Kings chapter 21.
So if you'll go ahead and turn there and we'll remain there after this.
We sure picked up a lot of useful information about Manasseh in 2 Chronicles, didn't we?
Things that had we not known, we wouldn't have had as rich of an understanding of his life.
And in 2 Kings 21, I'll read verse 18, it's basically the same as the verse I read you in 2 Chronicles 33, "And Manasseh slept with his fathers and was buried in the garden of his own house."
Now there's some more information, "In the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzziah, and Amon his son reigned in his stead."
He was buried in the garden of his own house, let that sink in.
I have a few gardens at my house and it would seem strange to me to be buried under my tomato plants when I die.
As some of you all know, I'm going to medical school when I die.
And then they'll probably cremate my remains after they carve me up a little bit and learn hopefully something about the human body and disease.
And if not, it won't matter.
Either way. why was Manasseh buried in his own garden?
Well most of the kings of Judah and Israel were buried with their fathers in some kind of tomb but Manasseh was not.
He was buried in a physical sense, his body, apart from his father's.
But the garden in which he was buried was also called the Garden of Uzziah.
Now there was more than one Uzziah in the Bible, the most notable one at least to me was the one who steadied the Ark of the Covenant as it was about to fall off of a cart and that move cost him his life because he wasn't allowed to touch the Ark.
Even the priests when they carried the Ark they had to put staves through the rings and pick it up that way.
Anybody would have reached it out there and picked it up like an old television, that was it, they were dead.
And we'll one day know the answer to why Manasseh was buried in his own garden, but I don't have, I mean we could speculate, it doesn't do you a lot of good, I can't base it on any exposition of a text as to why he would be buried there.
And it said, "And Amon and his son reigned in his stead."
Now this shows us once again that no matter how bad the king is or how good the king is, he will one day be replaced after he dies.
He's going to die and be replaced.
You know I worked at Target when I was a teenager.
That was a good job, by the way, back before they were woke and didn't have any of that.
That was a very good job.
They didn't sell alcohol, and I thought, well, that's not why I went to work there, because they didn't sell alcohol.
I went to work because it was a bicycle ride from my house across University Avenue, and if I could survive that ride, then I got to go to work. we had lanes, cashier lanes up front, you know, one and two and three all the way down to about 20, 25.
And you know what would happen when lane one, when the cashier would get off?
He or she'd shut the light off and somebody else come and take their place and turn the light back on.
Business would continue.
And that's the way it happens in government, too. that throne of Manassas, he died and he was replaced.
Now when the United States has a really good president, which occurs from time to time over history, the people in that day would love to have kept that president on the throne for the rest of their lives.
And it was formally an unwritten agreement among presidents that they would serve no more than two terms, but in 1947 that was made law after Franklin Delano Roosevelt got through putting a chicken in every pot and served three terms.
That was it.
That was enough.
And so the 22nd Amendment was passed to keep a person from being elected as president more than once, more than twice.
So every eight years or sometimes less time than that, the current president is replaced by another one.
And sometimes that next president is better and sometimes he's worse.
But every president is replaceable.
In North Korea, one of the most severe dictatorships Kim Il-sung was replaced by his son Kim Jong-il.
And Kim Jong-il was replaced by his son Kim Jong-un, who is the current, as I'll affectionately call him, the current pot-bellied dictator of North Korea.
And it was normal that Manasseh would be replaced.
There was nothing strange about a king being replaced on his throne.
And it's both exciting and stressful at the same time to be part of a nation or a kingdom that is continuously controlled by a different leader.
We have a good president, we think, "Oh, he's gonna have to get off the the throne out of the White House one day.
Who's gonna replace him?
Who's gonna run against him next time?
Will it be somebody good or just as good or better or worse?"
And there's always that uncertainty.
Even when the leader of your choosing is in the white house or on the throne.
Sometimes he makes decisions that we don't like.
Let me tell you about a kingdom with a King who will never be replaced.
It's the kingdom of God and Jesus is its King.
You think about what's happening with Manasseh and now Amen, replacing his father.
Jesus is the founder of his kingdom and he will always be on his throne.
Revelation chapter 11 verse 15.
Revelation 11 verse 15.
And the seventh angel sounded and there were great voices in heaven saying the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.
Now we will never read these words, Jesus slept with his fathers and his son Michael reigned in his stead.
We'll never read those words.
He'll never be replaced.
An earthly king may die for his kingdom.
People in his kingdom may kill him.
In fact, his own sons may kill him as we've seen, but his death will not be the basis for the establishment of his kingdom.
How does a dead king, a dead earthly king, ever start a kingdom?
That's the end of a kingdom when the king is dead.
You've got to have a new king.
In fact, the death of an earthly king is what causes him oftentimes to lose his kingdom to another such as the Assyrians and Babylonians and so forth.
However, Jesus' death, the shedding of his blood, is the basis for his kingdom because those who put their trust in what he did for us when he died that death and rose again from it, Those who trust in that are citizens of the kingdom.
Jesus has no term limits.
There is no 22nd amendment that limits his number of years on the throne.
It is an eternal throne.
The Revelation passage says he reigns forever and ever.
Now verse 19, Amon was 20 and 2 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 2 years in Jerusalem.
So he was 10 years older than his father was when his father began to reign.
His father was 12 when he started his reign and Amon is 22.
And the fact that he reigned only two years tells us a lot about him, doesn't it?
That's not very long.
His dad was on the throne 55 years.
So this is going to be a short reign.
He was 24 when his reign was over.
And what we know about Jewish kings and probably most other kings in the world, but definitely the ones we read about in the Bible is that they don't retire and step down.
They died and when they died they were normally replaced by their sons and it says in verse 19 about Amon and his mother's name was Meshulameth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah and that means this lady was Manasseh's wife.
The the name Haruz and the town of Jotbah is in this verse.
So that's all the light we have on it.
Look down in verse 20.
And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord as his father Manasseh did.
And why did we see this coming?
And looking at this, let's look at this from Amon's perspective, okay?
You have a 22-year-old king on the throne raised under his father Manasseh who spent most of his life being an unbeliever.
If you look at this from Amon's perspective, he was brought up by an idolater.
He was brought up as an idolater.
His mother and father taught him.
During the formative years of his life He was taught to worship Balaam and to reject the Lord his God.
And based upon his age when he took the throne and the numbers we have, the figures we have about Manasseh's age and duration of his reign on the throne, we can deduct that Manasseh was 67 when he died.
He was 12 when he took the throne, he reigned 55 years.
So Amon was born when Manasseh was about 45.
And Amon's formative years were spent learning idolatry.
You know bringing our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord provides them with the best opportunity and circumstances to become Christians.
Now our children don't become Christians because we brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
It their faith in God.
And bringing our children up according to the course of this world gives them the worst opportunity and the worst circumstances under which to become Christians.
It doesn't mean they can't, because nothing is impossible with God.
Some of you may say, "Man, I was brought up rough, rough.
I was brought up by unbelievers.
I was brought up this way or that way. and I'm a Christian and that's the grace of God right there.
That's what that is.
But Amon's situation was slightly different.
He was brought up according to the course of this world and his father did not become a Christian until later in life.
And after he humbled himself before the Lord, I'm sure Manasseh longed for his family to be saved.
I feel sure he prayed for Amon to know the Lord his God.
I don't have it in writing here but I feel sure that he would we know he was a praying man we know he prayed to the Lord he humbled himself before the Lord and there's no reason that he wouldn't have also prayed for his house for his country to know the Lord.
And I know people who became Christians later in life, perhaps after their children were grown.
And now those adult children like Amen see their father or their mother having become this new person.
They talk differently.
They walk differently.
Their priorities are different.
They love God's word and to the, and it makes things very difficult between the Christian parent who's a new Christian and the lost adult child.
And maybe Manasseh tried to witness to his son.
And maybe his son said, "Ha!
Who do you think you are?
What a hypocrite!
You're just a hypocrite.
I know all about you and all your evil ways."
And maybe you're in that position.
Maybe you were lost and raised children according to the course of this world and and you're frustrated that your adult child or children refuse to heed the gospel or your maybe your parents or your sister or brother whoever it might be but I'll tell you don't give up when they say I remember when you used to do this and this and this just say yes sir I did and I'm sorry for the effect that God has washed away my sins and he can wash yours away too.
I did wrong but Jesus died on the cross to save me from the penalty of those sins.
And the difference you see in me now versus then ought to show you that God can do what we think is impossible.
But alas, we must now deal with wicked King Amon on the throne.
Verse 21, "And he walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols that his father served, and worshipped them."
You know, on the one hand, you feel sorry for Amon because he honored his earthly father in the way that he thought was right, and that way was simply by walking in his father's ways.
On the other hand, Amon is an adult and for some time he has been responsible for his own actions.
He is also a king and he is obligated to rule over the nation of Judah righteously.
But in either case, we're not surprised at all that he walked in all the way that his father walked in.
I'll close with this.
I was sharing with another Christian one day about how he was raised by an alcoholic parent and this man determined he would never bring shame to his children when he became a father someday.
Well you know Amon could have adopted that attitude as well.
He could have said I watched what my father did and I'm not doing that.
I know what God's Word says and I'm gonna refuse, I'm going to claim God's word and refuse to walk in that way.
But instead, aim and obey the devil rather than God, because that's the easy thing to do.
And with that, we'll close father.
Thank you for your word.
Thank you for the Holy spirit who teaches us the truth.
And father, I pray that we would determine in our hearts today that we're going to walk in it in Jesus name.
Amen.
