Well, good morning, church. It's good to be with you all this morning. Would you turn with me to 2 Chronicles, chapter 33.
2 Chronicles 33, that's page 357 in the Pew Bible. As we continue our series in this Old Testament book of Chronicles this summer, we're in chapter 33.
So as we turn there, I wonder, if you were to sum up the Christian life in one word, which word would you choose?
Well, on the one hand, you would be correct if you chose the word Christ, right? Jesus Himself.
Christianity is all about the person and work of the Lord Jesus. But let's say you had to choose one more word in addition to that one.
Which one would you pick to sum up the Christian life?
What did you say, Dorothy? Evangelism.
Let's do it. What else? Anybody else?
Forgiveness. That's a good one.
Faith, love, hope, obedience, good works, suffering, family, is that what you said, Danny?
Failure, yeah.
Well, you know, it's interesting that Martin Luther, when he wrote his 95 Theses, he wrote this.
He said, this is his first of his 95 Theses.
He says, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.
Repentance.
Now, there's a word that sums up the Christian life, at least according to Luther and to many saints before him.
Repentance.
Now, I imagine you could attend many religious gatherings, many church services even, and never even hear the word repentance.
You know, we can shy away from language of repentance because the word sort of sounds stuffy and grim and loaded with false guilt and empty religion.
And I think that's a real shame, and it's a loss.
Because the biblical concept of repentance is just brimming with hope.
If we really understood repentance, we'd see that it's like a prison sentence being lifted.
It's like windows being opened and the fresh breeze filling the room.
It's like a new chapter.
It's like a fresh start.
So I wonder, friends, are you in need of a new chapter today, a fresh start?
And perhaps we need to consider afresh the biblical concept of repentance.
Do you know what this word means?
Does it fill you with hope?
Well, that's what our text today is all about.
It's a window into this rich biblical reality of repentance.
Second Chronicles chapter 33 is the story of Manasseh.
And as we'll see, Manasseh is notorious in the story of the Old Testament and not in a good way.
So as we turn to this chapter, let's pray and then we'll dive in.
Would you pray with me?
Father, help us to understand what it is your Spirit is inviting us into through this passage,
these great and deep spiritual truths that lead us into your very heart.
God, thank you that your Word is living and active and abundant and overflowing with the revelation of yourself
so that we might know you and be who you've created us and redeemed us to be.
So do that work now, we pray, by your Spirit.
For Christ's sake, amen.
So the first thing we see in 2 Chronicles 33 is our need for repentance, the need for repentance.
Let me read verses 1 through 11.
We'll set things up.
Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.
And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.
For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down.
And he erected altars to the Baals and made Ashteroth and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them.
And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said,
In Jerusalem shall my name be forever.
And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.
And he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnom,
and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.
He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
And the carved image of the idol that he had made, he set in the house of God,
of which God said to David and to Solomon his son,
In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel,
I will put my name forever, and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers,
if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them,
all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.
Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Israel, of Jerusalem, astray,
to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention.
Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria,
who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.
Well, as you might have guessed from these verses,
Manasseh is remembered as one of the worst kings in the history of Israel.
He has one of the longest reigns, 55 years,
and for most of that long reign, he undoes nearly all of the good that his father Hezekiah had done.
And now when we look at a figure like Manasseh, it's easy to think, right, that we are so not like him.
We read about his evil and his idolatry, and we can think that we're doing pretty good in comparison, right?
But you know, rather than comparing our outward deeds to Manasseh's outward deeds,
let's press a little deeper into the heart.
And when we do that, I think we see two heart dynamics in Manasseh that are actually true of everyone.
And so through Manasseh, we see why you and I and all of us have a deep need for this thing we call repentance.
And that first heart dynamic is this.
It's that our idolatry leads to the Lord's anger.
The end of verse 6 says,
Manasseh did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
That is, provoking the Lord to anger.
Manasseh, you see, chose to worship things that were not the one true God.
He chose created things, gods of human invention, and worshipped them instead.
And now on the surface, it's easy to think that we're not so silly, right, as to worship statues, literally idols anymore.
But the reality is today, we still worship created things rather than our Creator.
We take finite things and make them ultimate things in our lives.
Here's maybe a diagnostic question for you and for me.
Is there something in your life other than God that if you lost it, you wouldn't be just sad or heartbroken, but you'd be devastated?
You wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning.
Or maybe a slightly different way of asking that question.
Is there something that so shapes your identity, your sense of self, that if you lost it or if it was threatened, you'd be completely disoriented, completely wrecked?
What's the thing that kind of props you up as you?
Maybe it's your profession.
You know, you've worked a lot of years to get where you are, and now you kind of can't imagine yourself without it.
Or maybe it's a relationship.
Or maybe it's just the approval of others, your family, your children, your co-workers, your peers.
Maybe it's even your sense of being a good person.
You've labored long in your life to be a person of character, of moral worth.
And that is the thing that sort of establishes your sense of self.
Whatever your identity is, whatever it is, that if you lost it, you'd lose yourself, that's your God.
You know, in these modern-day idols of our hearts, they not only kind of shape our identity, they also dictate our actions.
You know, much like previous kings that we've seen in the book of 2 Chronicles, Manasseh probably didn't wake up one morning and say,
you know, I think I'm going to do all the things that are listed in verse 6.
What am I going to do today?
I think I'll sacrifice my children to the Baals.
I think I'll go out and perform some sorcery and start engaging in necromancy.
You know, that's not where it starts, but that's where it leads.
Most of us start by saying, I want to work hard and get ahead.
I want to do what it takes to be successful in my career.
I want to make a difference.
I want to make my mark.
But when the career or the relationship at last becomes Lord in our life, when it becomes our identity,
then we find that we're doing all sorts of things to serve it and to uphold it.
Then we find that we're doing all sorts of things to serve it and to uphold it that we would never have dreamed doing before.
We start out thinking that, you know, well, maybe I'd have to fudge these reports.
You know, that's not where we started, but that's where we end up.
You don't start out thinking, oh, I'm going to compromise on all of my boundaries and personal integrity.
But three, four, five years in, we find we're doing things we wouldn't have considered possible.
And, you know, not only does that place we end up in, not only does that wound our souls very deeply,
it also alienates us from God.
By turning away from the true God to idols, the Bible is very clear that we put ourselves at enmity with God.
We place ourselves under what the Bible calls God's anger or God's wrath.
Again, verse 6 says that the Lord was provoked to anger at Manasseh.
Now, remember, God's anger is not like human anger.
Human anger is what?
It's uncontrolled, it's fickle, it's self-centered, it's destructive.
Human anger rarely does anything good.
But God's wrath, God's anger is nothing like that.
God's anger is His perfectly just, perfectly controlled opposition
to all that dishonors Him and all that defaces the good world that He's made.
God's anger, God's wrath is God's perfect no to evil and wrong.
You see, the great tragedy of idolatry, it's not just the kind of horizontal consequences it creates
between us and the things around us, but it's the vertical enmity it creates between us and God.
In other words, idolatry doesn't just put us out of joint with creation much more tragically and much more seriously,
it puts us at a joint with our Creator.
And that's the first heart dynamic we see in Manasseh is that idolatry leads to this enmity with God.
It leads to God's anger.
The second dynamic that we see, we see in verses 10 and verse 11.
And it's this, it's that there's a refusal to heed God's warnings,
which leads to God giving us over to our sin.
Verse 10 reads,
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to His people, but they paid no attention.
God, in His great kindness towards Manasseh as He's performing all this evil and leading the people astray,
God, in His great kindness, calls out to them through the prophets,
warns them that they're rushing headlong towards a cliff's edge,
but they turn a deaf ear.
They ignored God.
And then after that patient calling and beckoning and entreating,
after the many years of God pursuing them,
at last God, in His justice, gives them over to the very gods that they had chosen to worship.
And that's what we see in verse 11.
Manasseh and the people, they took to themselves the gods of the nations,
and so God gives them over to those very nations.
Manasseh is defeated by the Assyrians and taken away as a captive to one of the Assyrian outposts in the city of Babylon,
which at this point in history, the kingdom of Assyria controlled.
You know, perhaps one of the most terrifying things that could happen to us as human beings
is for God to give us exactly what we want when what we want is something apart from Him.
It led Manasseh to total slavery.
He thought he was choosing to worship the gods of the nations,
and for a while it worked, or so he thought,
but after refusing God's gracious warnings,
God eventually gave him over to those gods,
and now he had no choice.
Now he was captive to them.
So why do we need repentance?
We need repentance because the fallen human heart is at enmity with God.
We worship idols of our own choosing,
and this not only puts us on a direct path to spiritual slavery and self-destruction,
it also puts us under God's just and eternal no,
which is a darkness of separation from God Himself,
who is the only source of lasting joy.
So is there hope for us?
You know, you can live for a long time,
and you can kind of believe in your head and say things like,
ah, I'm not perfect, I'm not a good person,
and you know, what we mean by that a lot of the times is,
ah, I'm just like everybody else, right?
Nobody's perfect.
But you know, we can say things like that
without ever realizing yet
the real gravity of our sin,
the real gravity of our spiritual condition.
But what happens when the curtain is drawn back
and you see yourself for the first time really,
you know, when the lights in the basement of your heart are flipped on
and you kind of see all that's been harboring there
and scuttling around in there,
when you see the depth of your sin and selfishness,
what then?
What then when you realize that you've completely blown it
and that in the face of God's holiness and justice,
you simply don't stand a chance?
When you come to yourself one day and realize
that you've actually gotten everything you wanted,
but you're actually not free,
you're empty,
and you're enslaved.
Is there any hope for us then?
And this is where 2 Chronicles chapter 33
becomes a chapter of great hope for us.
For those of us who know how dark our hearts can really be,
because at this moment,
repentance becomes the window
that opens up to the sun.
Repentance presents itself as the fresh start
in the new chapter.
So we've seen in our chapter
the need for repentance.
We now come to the second point,
which is the nature of repentance.
The nature of repentance.
Let's read just the next two verses,
verses 12 and 13.
Verse 12,
Then Manasseh knew
that the Lord was God.
What exactly is repentance?
Well, according to verse 12,
it has two aspects.
On the one hand,
the text says,
Manasseh humbled himself greatly
before the God of his fathers.
You see,
Manasseh came to admit
that he had made a ruin of things,
and he let go
of his self-justification
and his excuses.
He let go of all the ways
he might have tried to minimize
what he had done.
He confessed that he was guilty
and deserved nothing from God.
He humbled himself greatly
before the God of his fathers.
And then secondly,
it says,
He entreated the favor
of the Lord his God.
You know,
it's one thing to admit
that you've blown it.
It's another thing
to cry out for help.
Simply wallowing in the mess
of our own making,
that can be just another form
of self-centeredness,
can't it?
But calling out to another,
calling out to God
for rescue,
that's what genuine repentance is.
It's turning from ourselves
to God.
That's the nature of repentance.
And there are plenty of prayers
in Scripture that show us
what this looks like.
Psalm 51 being
one of the most well-known.
In Psalm 51,
David prays,
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love.
According to your abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me.
Purge me with hyssop
and I shall be clean.
Wash me
and I shall be whiter than snow.
You know, friends,
the beauty of Scripture,
the beauty of this Word
that God has inspired
and preserved for us
is that you can take
these words,
like the words of Psalm 51,
and you can pray them
as your own.
God's giving you,
as it were,
the very path
to walk on
back to Himself.
How kind of God
to give us this Word.
So you can take these words
and pray them as your own.
You know, repentance
isn't some mysterious
spiritual practice
for the religious elite,
right?
It's simply the cry of a heart
that knows it needs
God's forgiveness
and God's freedom.
But you know,
we wouldn't really understand
the nature of repentance
without seeing the very next point
that 2 Chronicles 33 makes.
2 Chronicles begins
by showing us
the need for repentance
and then the nature
of repentance,
but at the heart
of this passage
is the God of repentance.
The God of repentance.
Look again at verse 13.
Manasseh prayed to God
and God was moved
by his entreaty
and heard his plea
and brought him again
to Jerusalem
and into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew
that the Lord was God.
Friends, the God
who steps forth
from this chapter
is a God
who is rich in mercy,
who hears the prayer
of every sinner
who repents.
Did you come here
this morning
thinking that God
only hears the prayers
of so-called good people
or righteous people?
I have news for you.
There are no good people.
There are no righteous people.
Listen to what Isaiah 57, 15 says.
The prophet Isaiah says,
For thus says the one
who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity,
whose name is holy.
That's God.
God says,
I dwell in the high
and holy place
and also with him
who is of a contrite
and lowly spirit
to revive the spirit
of the lowly
and to revive the heart
of the contrite.
God doesn't dwell
in the midst of the righteous.
He dwells in the midst
of the repentant
and the humble
and the contrite.
God is an ocean of mercy
towards those who turn to him
in humble repentance.
Do you think
this morning
that he would not accept you?
Do you think
because of what you've done
or who you've been
that God would turn you away?
And the truth is,
friend,
God knows everything about you.
He knows your good deeds
and your triumphs
and your successes,
but he also knows
the dark thoughts
and the selfishness
and the cursing
and the jealousy
and the pride.
Everything you've tried to hide,
your creator sees it all.
But still,
do you think
that he won't accept you
if you turn to him?
Do you think
that there's no fresh start
for you,
no new chapter,
no beginning again,
no healing,
no hope?
Friends,
if that is you,
look again at Manasseh.
What did God do
with this notorious
moral failure?
When Manasseh humbled himself
and turned to God,
did he crash upon
the rocks of God's justice?
Was his soul turned back
and refused entry?
No.
In mercy,
God received him home.
God welcomed him
into the safe harbor
of his love.
The Father embraced him
and reinstated him
as his child.
Friend,
there is room for you
around the table of God
no matter how great
your sins may be.
He has a seat for you
and for everyone
who repents.
I think the most powerful
part of this whole passage
is found at the end
of verse 13
where the chronicler says,
then Manasseh knew
that the Lord was God.
Then,
then,
when he had experienced
God's radical,
scandalous,
prodigal grace,
then Manasseh knew
that the Lord was God.
That's,
when you really see
who God is,
that's where
the godness of God
burns the brightest
in the radical forgiveness
of sinners
through his own
sheer mercy.
So, friend,
if you have not experienced
that radical mercy
in repentance,
you do not yet know
this great God of the Bible.
He is greater
and more merciful
and more kind
than you could ever imagine.
Now,
as we consider
this Old Testament text,
as we consider Manasseh
receiving this radical
grace and forgiveness,
you know,
it's true for Manasseh,
living as he was
under the Old Covenant,
that, you know,
he only knew
at that time
in redemptive history
that God had forgiven him.
But the saints
of the Old Testament
could only see
in the faintest,
dimmest way
how God would accomplish
that forgiveness.
But from the perspective
of the New Testament today,
we see just how radical
God's mercy truly is,
just how central it is
to his own being.
After all,
you know,
you read an Old Testament
text like this
and you think,
well,
what became
of God's just anger
against Manasseh's
idolatry and evil?
Right?
Did God just decide
to stop being just
and righteous and holy?
Did God just sort of
stop being God
in order to be merciful?
And that, of course,
is a great tension
that runs throughout
the whole Old Testament.
How can God be both
holy and merciful?
How can God be both
just and the one
who justifies,
who forgives sinners?
And friends,
that great dilemma
that runs through
the Old Testament
and sits there
like a great question,
begging for an answer,
answer.
Friends,
the answer finally
comes to light
when in the fullness
of time,
God became incarnate
in the person
of Jesus Christ.
Because in human flesh,
God,
in Jesus,
would bear human sin
and He would bear
the wrath
that human sin
deserved on the cross.
God's justice
would be fully displayed
in wrath against sin,
wrath against human sin.
All the punishment
that sin deserved
was poured out
so that in exchange,
God,
while still being just,
could extend
utter free forgiveness
to everyone
who humbles themselves
and turns to God
in repentance and faith
and receives Christ
as their own.
In other words,
Manasseh's sin
and all the saints
of the Old Testament
and your sins
and mine
and the sins
of everyone who repents,
they were paid
by another.
They were laid
on Christ at the cross
and all that remained
for Manasseh
and all that remains
for you
and for me
is God's mercy.
And so repentance
really is a fresh start.
It really is a new chapter.
It really is a curtain
being torn open
to the sun.
And because of who God is,
because of what God
has accomplished
through Jesus,
this fresh start,
this new chapter,
this curtain thrown open,
it's never going to be closed.
I mean,
how many times
have you kind of tried
to make a good start
only to fall down again,
right?
But you see,
this clean slate,
this perfect righteousness
isn't something
you're trying to achieve.
It's something that's given
to you out of God's mercy.
So you see,
when God forgives,
when God hears
and accepts us
in His Son,
in Jesus Christ,
it's permanent
and it's final
and there's no going back.
Christ died
not just for your past sin
or your present sin,
but for all your future sins
as well,
they're all covered
and that ocean
of God's mercy
never runs dry.
You can never hit
the bottom of it.
However deep you think
your sins have carried you,
His mercy is deeper still.
This is the God of repentance.
repentance.
This is the God
of the Bible.
Now before we go
to the Lord's Supper
in just a minute
and receive the bread
and cup
as signs and seals
of God's mercy
in Christ,
why don't we apply
this message
about repentance
in two ways?
And we actually see
these two ways
in the rest of our passage.
First one is this.
If you've turned
from sin
and trusted
in God's mercy
in Christ,
then what this passage
invites us to do
is to bear
the fruit
of repentance.
The fruit
of repentance.
This is what we see
in verses 14 through 17.
I won't read those verses,
but you can scan over them
in that paragraph
in the Pew Bible.
And what you do,
what you see there
is that Manasseh
returns to Jerusalem
and having been put right
with God,
he begins to put things right.
He starts rebuilding
the city,
he starts serving
and protecting the people
the way he should have been,
and most importantly,
he starts restoring
the proper worship
of God in the temple.
He gets rid of the idols
and worships God alone.
And you see, friends,
that's the pattern
for everyone
who experiences
genuine repentance
and the mercy of God.
Your life will begin
to bear the fruit
of that repentance.
When you turn to God
and receive His mercy,
your life will begin
to change.
Now notice,
God's free mercy
comes to Manasseh
before Manasseh
changes his life.
God's heart is changed
by God's grace
and then his life is changed.
In other words,
Manasseh doesn't earn
God's forgiveness
by his good works.
He never could.
Before experiencing
God's mercy, right,
he didn't even want
to listen to God,
let alone serve and obey Him,
but now,
having come to know God
through God's mercy,
Manasseh's life changes.
And so will yours, friend.
God will take your life
and begin to remake it
and restore it.
It won't be all at once.
It will be a process
of growth and change.
Not everything
will get better overnight.
Verse 17 of our passage
actually acknowledges this
when it says that
the people still sacrificed
at the high places
even though they were
sacrificing now
to the Lord only.
You see,
there were lingering
consequences of Manasseh's
old life that he still
had to contend with.
It didn't all magically
get better,
but all the same,
Manasseh,
for the few years
that he had left,
was a new person
in a living relationship
with a living God
and his life
was bearing fruit.
It was not too late
for Manasseh
to begin a new life
with God
and it's not too late
for you or I either.
So I think this paragraph
of our text
begins to ask us
some questions.
The Holy Spirit
begins to invite us
to ask,
how is God calling
you and me
to bear
the fruit of repentance?
How is he calling you
to live your life
in response
to God's free mercy?
Is there an idol
that you need
to get rid of?
Is there an act of love
that you need to begin?
Which of the virtues
is God forming
in you at the present?
How is he making you
more like Christ?
How is your life
becoming more and more
of a living offering
to him,
to God,
in service to others?
That's the first application.
For those who have
turned to God
in repentance,
bear the fruit
of repentance.
Not to earn God's mercy,
but in glad response
to it.
Now we see
the second application
in the final part
of our passage
to the end of the chapter,
verses 18 through 25.
And again,
we won't read those verses,
but you can scan over them
in the passage
in front of you.
And these final verses
speak to those
who have not yet
turned to God
in repentance.
And what these verses
are all about
is the urgency
of repentance,
the urgency of it.
These last couple paragraphs
tell us about
Manasseh's son,
his son named Ammon.
And they tell us
how Ammon
followed in his father's
evil and sin,
but then refused
to follow in his father's
example of humble repentance.
repentance.
And the end for Ammon
is very tragic.
After reigning
for only two years,
the kingdom slips
from his grasp,
his servants conspire
against him,
and his reign
and even his life
is cut short.
Now friend,
unlike Ammon,
you may live
for many,
many, many,
many more years,
but that does not
change at all
the urgency
of spiritual things.
Don't let another day
go by
without heeding
this invitation,
this call
to turn to God
and receive his mercy
and his fresh start.
Think about it.
what will your idols
ultimately give you?
Where will they lead?
Only farther away
from the God
who made you,
from the God
in whom
is the only source
of lasting peace
and purpose
and joy.
So humble yourself
before him.
Admit that you've
sinned against him,
you've turned away,
and you've turned
a deaf ear to him.
Confess your helplessness
and entrust yourself
wholly
to the mercy of God
displayed in Jesus Christ
for you.
What exactly
do you wait for
to take such
an amazing offer
to come with nothing
and receive everything
for eternity?
Why not let
your fresh start,
your new chapter,
begin today?
Jesus says
to everyone
who comes to me,
I will in no way
cast out.
No matter how far
you've been running,
no matter how deep
you've fallen,
the Lord Jesus
is ready to receive you.
He's ready to magnify
the glory of his mercy
in your life
and establish
and restore you.
This is the urgency
of repentance.
Entrust yourself
to him.
Let's pray.
In our busy,
noisy,
distracted lives,
we have a rare moment
now
to be quiet
and to reflect
in the presence of God.
So let's take a moment
of quiet
and reflection
in God's presence.
If you're a Christian,
if you've turned
to God in Christ,
if you've received
his mercy,
how is God calling you
to bear fruit?
Let's ask him now
to show us,
ask him now
to show you
and to give you
the strength
by his Spirit
to live
out of this mercy
you've been given.
If you're not a Christian,
then,
friend,
the door stands open
to you.
God's abundant mercy
is ready to receive
all who repent.
If you're ready
to hear that call,
you might pray
something like this,
Lord Jesus Christ,
I admit
that I'm weaker
and more sinful
than I could ever admit.
But through you,
I'm more loved
and accepted
than I could ever dream.
Thank you
for paying my debt
on the cross,
taking what I deserved
in order to offer me
complete forgiveness.
Knowing that you've been
raised from the dead,
I turn from my sins
and receive you
as my Savior and Lord.
Amen.