Episode Transcript
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Second Chronicles thirty three. I hope
that you know at least one great story
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of repentance, the Biblical one.
Is Is Sall right, this great persecutor
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of the Church who turned unto the
Lord. Has the Lord revealed himself to
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him and became one of our great
heroes, writer of a significant portion of
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the Bible used by God and in
many great ways. I'm there of course,
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other examples, John Newton, the
great slave traitor and later Christian and
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author of Amazing Grace and other hymns. Tonight I want to add one more
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person to your list of great repenters, really important stories to remember and think
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of often, and that is the
story of King Manassa. Let's give our
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attention to it now. In second
chronicles, Chapter Thirty three, Manassa was
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twelve years old when he began to
reign, and he reigned fifty five years
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in Jerusalem, and he did what
was evil in the side of the Lord,
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according to the abominations of the nations, whom the Lord drove out before
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the people of Israel. For he
rebuilt the high places that his father,
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Hezekiah, had broken down and he
erected altars to the bales and made Asherahs
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and worshiped all the host of Heaven
and served them, and he built altars
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in the House of the Lord,
of which the Lord had said, in
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Jerusalem shall be my name forever.
And he built altars for all the host
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of Heaven in the two courts of
the House of the Lord, and he
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burned his sons as an offering in
the valley of the son of Hinnom and
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used fortune telling and Omens and sorcery
and dealt with mediums and necromancers. He
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did much evil in the side of
the Lord, provoking him to anger,
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and the carved image of the idol
that he made. He said, in
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a house of God, to which
God had said to David and to solemn
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and his son, in this house
and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen
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out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever and
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I will no more remove the foot
of Israel from the land that I appointed
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for your father's I own. If
only they will be careful to do all
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that I have commanded them, all
the law, the statutes and the rules
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given through Moses Manassa led Judah and
the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more
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evil than the nations whom the Lord
destroyed. Before the people of Israel,
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the Lord spoke to Manassa and to
his people, but they paid no attention.
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Therefore, the Lord brought upon them
the commanders of the army of the
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king of Assyria, who captured Manassa
with hooks and bound him with chains of
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bronze and brought him to Babylon.
And when he was in distress, he
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entreated the favor of the Lord,
his God, and humbled himself greatly before
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the God of his father's he prayed
to him, and God was moved by
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his entreaty and heard his plea and
brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.
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Then Manassa knew that the Lord was
God. Afterward he built an outer
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wall for the city of David West
of the Guihon in the valley and for
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the entrance into the fish gate,
and carried it around and carried it around
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o fell and raised it to a
very great height. He also put commanders
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of the army and all the fortified
cities of Judah, and he took away
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the foreign gods and the idol from
the House of the Lord and all the
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altars that he had made on the
mountain of the House of the Lord and
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in Jerusalem, and he threw them
outside of the city. He also restored
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the altar of the Lord and offered
on its sacrifices of peace offerings and of
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Thanksgiving, and he commanded Judah to
serve the Lord, the God of Israel.
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Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at
the high places, but only to
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the Lord, their God. Now
the rest of the acts of Manassa and
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his prayer to his God and the
words of the seers who spoke to him
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in the name of the Lord,
the God of Israel. Behold, they
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are in the chronicles of the Kings
of Israel, and his prayer and how
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God was moved by his entreaty and
all his sin and faithlessness, and the
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sights on which he built high places
and set up the Asherine and the images
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before he humbled himself. Behold,
they are written in the chronicles of the
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seers. So manassa slept with his
father's and they buried him in his house
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and am and his son reigned in
his place. Am and was twenty two
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years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem
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and he did what was evil in
the side of the Lord, as Manassa
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his father had done. AM and
sacrifice to all the images that Manassa his
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father had made and served them,
and he did not humble himself before the
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Lord, as Manassa his father had
humbled himself. But this ammon incurred guilt
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more and more, and his servants
conspired against him and put him to death
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in his house. But the people
of the land struck down all those who
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had conspired against King Amine and the
people of the landmade Josiah, his son,
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King in his place, may God
bless is weird to us. Will
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you can see why I say this
is one of the great stories of repentance
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of all time. I think,
sadly, you've forgotten one. A good
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reminder. Read your old testaments people. There's important things in here. All
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joking aside, and I'm not really
joking, King Manassa a great story of
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repentance because of the degree of his
sins. We all false sin are we
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all sin and false short of the
glory of God. But but MANASSA.
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Wow, the list is a compact
in a way. It covers a short
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space, but every clause is a
new thing, a new problem. There's
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not a lot of detail here,
except that we have him reigning for fifty
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five years and then this great cataloging
of these things that he did. It's
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has a way of reminding us how
much there was. It starts in verse
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too, with the summary. He
did what was evil in the side of
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the Lord, according to the abominations
of the nations whom the Lord drove out
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before the people of Israel. That's
not merely a comparison. He's not merely
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saying it's similar to that. There's
a theological weight to that. God had
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driven Pagan nations out of the land
of Israel so that Israel could be established
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there. So what do you think
is going to happen? If Israel is
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doing the same things that the pagan
nations were doing when they were driven out,
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they will be exiled, and indeed
we are coming to a speedy conclusion
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in the exile. God puts it
on hold here because of the repentance of
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Manassa, but it won't be for
much longer. This point about the nations
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is brought up not only be at
the beginning, but also the end,
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where we read that they continued to
go after these things in the high places.
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They continue to do as the nations
had done before them. The specifics
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of those things are then given in
verse three and following. First of all,
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he rebuilds the high places. This
is an egregious thing, right.
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He's not merely sort of inheriting a
bunch of problems that he can sinues in,
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which would be sinful enough, but
he's sort of going out of his
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way to do the things against the
good example that his father said for him.
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I know we can all sort of
raise our hands and say there have
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been people in our lives who have
shown us the right way and told us
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the right thing and rather than building
on that, we built against it.
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And that's what Manassa does here.
He instead of staying true to the God
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of Israel, remembering all the great
things that the Lord had done for Hezekiah,
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his father, he is now erecting
things and erecting them all over the
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place. He rebuilds the high places, he erects altars to the bales.
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He meets astras in at the end
of verse three. There it says he
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worships all the host of Heaven and
served them. You know, when our
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kids are in school, they learn
about these great pantheons of the Gods,
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right the Greek and the Roman gods. But this is true and all places
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throughout the world, and this time
as well, man is constantly tempted to
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give his hope and his desire,
as we thought about this morning, from
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first John Two, to the things
of this world, the the the created
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things, and raise them up above
God. And that's what Manassa did.
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He worshiped them and served them,
the Sun, the moon, the stars,
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animals, all kinds of things.
He goes farther, though, is
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if that it's not enough. In
verse four he builds holp Altars in the
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House of God. Later we read
that he constructs an image in the House
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of God and altars out in the
courtyard. Can you imagine coming to church
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one day and you realize that pastor
Chopka has set up a giant statue one
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day that we're all or cure to
worship? That's what Manassa did in the
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place of the Lord in the in
the place, and it mentions that several
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times in the chapter. In Jerusalem
shall be my name forever. This is
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the place specially designated by God.
Later we pick up words from earlier,
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in second chronicles, when, or
in chronicles where? Let's see, this
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is in verse seven. God said
to David, into PSALOMN and his son,
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in this house in Jerusalem, which
I have chosen out of all the
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tribes of Israel, I will put
my name forever God, even as solemn
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and dedicated to the house. It
was because God had already dedicated it undo
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himself. God was to live with
them, dwell with them, rule over
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them, not be supplanted by them. This is nothing short of treason in
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political terms idolatry in religious terms.
God tells them, though, that his
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strength in Israel is dependent upon their
obedience. He says in verse eight that
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no more will I will no more
remove the foot of Israel from the land
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that I appointed for your father's,
if only they will be careful to do
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all that I have commanded them,
all the law, the statutes and the
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rules given through Moses. So there's
two covenants in play here. One Covenant
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is the Covenant that God made with
David, in which he promised that a
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rule or a son of his would
set on the throne and rule over Israel
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forever eternity, even but the other
covenant that is a play is that it
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is that is at play as God's
covenant with the People Under Moses and which
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he says, do these things and
you shall live, do these things and
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you will be blessed. Do these
things and you will be able to stay
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in the land. But here we
see them doing none of these things,
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breaking specific and extremely important parts of
the Mosaic Law. God was very,
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very clear about these things, about
worshiping carved images, about worshiping him alone,
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about not depending on witchcraft and sorcery
and necromancy and all the rest.
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God was very clear that he was
to be king and King alone, and
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that every king, every human king, that would rule under him, would
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give him all glory and honor and
praise and obedience, and the people were
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to follow as well. And here
we see Manassa and all of Judah breakingness
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at at every important level, and
and worse as well. We read,
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and I believe it's a second kings, that he was also a politically brutal,
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murderous and other things. We of
course read here of him burning his
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own sons in verse six. Can
you imagine that? Can you imagine what
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it would take to motivate you to
burn your own children in sacrifice to another
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God. That's what Manassa did.
It gets worse. In verse ten,
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we read that the Lord spoke to
Manassa, as he does. He speaks
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to Manassa, he speaks to the
people, but they pay no attention.
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We have a way of incurring guilt
and then piling it up. We read
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about this when it comes to am
and. In Verse Twenty Three, am
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and incurred guilt more and more.
Right his son, who only reigned two
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years, to very short years,
not the fifty five of Manassa. Em
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and reigns these two short years.
And in these two short years he and
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curl he incurred guilt more and more. The Apostle Paul the beginning of Romans,
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when he's careful to show us how
we are all condemned under the law,
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Manassa and you and me. One
of the points that he makes is
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that he says to the the unbelievers
and the Non Jews, the gentiles of
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the world in particular, he says, do you not know that the kindness
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and forbearance of God was meant to
lead you to per penance and that because
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you're not responding to this, you're
only storing up wrath for yourself. That's
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what happened with ammon. That's what's
happening with Manassa when he's refusing to listen,
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refusing to listen much of the prophets
of the Bible or about this.
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They are God's covenant lawyers, coming
again and again saying thus, Saith the
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Lord, you shall not do these
things. But because you have done them,
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the judgment of the Lord is coming. And it came from Manessa.
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We read that the commanders of the
army of Assyria, they captured Manassa,
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and not to make him a prince
of some I honor in their empire,
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but to subjugate him, to embarrass
him with hooks. They bound him with
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chains of bronze and brought him to
Babylon. We like to we like to
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think of our own sins, often
in relation to other people, and a
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lot of times this is totally an
unhelpful thing, because what you're usually doing
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is trying to get ourselves off the
hook. Well, I'm not that bad,
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or I'm not so bad, or
whatever the case may be. But
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sometimes it is helpful to compare our
sins to other people, and this is
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one of those cases, not so
that we can say, well, at
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least I'm not as bad as Manassa, but so that we might say,
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well, if God can forgive Manassa, God can forgive anyone, the thief
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on the Cross. All of tars
has Jonah, sinking down and being swallowed
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up by the Seaweed and by the
by the fish. There are humans,
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people, some of you even here, maybe all of you here, who've
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done some pretty horrible things. You've
committed the sins of the Ten Commandments,
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not the subtle little ones that are
attached to them, though those are sins
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as well, the ones by implication, the ones that we take from good
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and necessary consequences. But I'm talking
about the big ones. I don't think
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there's anyone here who can walk out
of tonight and say, Oh yeah,
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I've done pretty well. MANASSA's story
tells us that for sinners, all sinners,
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those who commit adultery, those who
commit idolatry, those who commit murder,
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for all sinners, there's forgiveness for
those who repent, and you see
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that in these coming verses. When
Manassa was in distress, he entreated not
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the justice of the Lord, he
was getting that he entreated the favor of
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the Lord, his God, and
he humbled himself greatly before the God of
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his father's this humility is very important
and it's an important part of repentance.
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Everything Manassa has been doing up to
this point has not been humble, it's
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been prideful. He has been setting
the rules, he has been deciding how
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things will go, where his power
goes, to whom it goes, why
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it goes. Manassas the one who's
been deciding who to worship and who not
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to worship, who to serve not
to serve, what to do what not
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to do. God Says No carved
images, no graven images. He says,
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well, I make my own decisions. God says, you worship no
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other gods but me. Manassa Says
No, I want to do what I
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want to do. This is the
essence of sin. It's choosing our will
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over and above God's. The finally, by the goodness and grace of the
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Lord Manassa, this Manassa humbles himself
greatly before the God of not the nations
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but of his father's. He prayed
to him and God was moved by his
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entreaty and heard his plea and brought
him again to Jerusalem, into his kingdom.
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Then Manassa knew that the Lord was
God. This sounds to me like
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a conversion, part change. That's
what repentance is. It's changing and moving
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from one thing to another, and
you see that in the coming verses.
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If the first thing where to learn
about repentance from this chapter is that there's
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always a time for repentance until there
isn't. But there's always over time for
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repentance while God is still offering it, while we're still alive and breathing,
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even when it gets as bad as
Manassa's situation. Manassa didn't sort of give
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himself over to the fate of the
Gods. He didn't look at God's judgment
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and say, well, this is
good, it's going to be forever.
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I clearly deserve this and that's the
way it's going to be. He could
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have said that and there would have
been some truth to that. You could
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have said to him, yeah,
maybe, Manessa. But instead he reached
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out to the Lord, the God
of his father's, because the god of
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his father's had promised mercy to all
who would trust him for it, and
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God was moved of course he was
moved. That's who God is. He
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heard Manassa's prayer. There's always a
time to repent until we die. The
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second thing to known about repentance to
think that we learn in this chapters that
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it is a true turning. Manassa
is not just sort of throwing up words
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to God and kind of hoping something
will stick. and well, that works.
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So and move about his life.
Now you see a change happen and
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that's true repentance. True repentance isn't
just saying I'm sorry, it's doing something
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different. And boy does he do
something different. His Chap the chapter start.
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Sorry, the verse is starting at
Verse Fourteen. is how the chapters
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for the good kings usually start.
And such and such a king to though
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what was right in the side of
the Lord and he built the wall and
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he fortified the city and he protected
the people and all those kinds of things.
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For MANASSA takes a while. Maybe
for some of you it's taken a
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while. That's true here. That's
okay. In a way, God is
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good, Merciful. Manassa gets to
work. He builds an outer wall for
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the city of David. He's he's
spilds it far. He builds it high,
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he strengthens it, instead of ignoring
and and sort of spiritually depleting the
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resources and perhaps physically to the resources
of Judah and Jerusalem. How he's building
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it up, he's strengthening it,
he's protecting it against the nations. Instead
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of inviting them in, he takes
away, in verse fifteen, the foreign
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gods, the idol from the House
of the Lord, the altars that he
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had built up on the mountain of
the House in the Lord in Jerusalem.
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mean he threw them all outside the
city. He restored the altar of the
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Lord, offered on it, sacrifices
to God. An amazing thing. Do
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you know how hard it is?
Perhaps you do, but you know how
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hard it is to go to people
after spending all of your time and your
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resources and energy building something you shouldn't
have and to say I'm sorry and deconstruct
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it? If that's hard on a
one to one basis, can you imagine
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doing that as a king, all
of your public works projects that you've been
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spending most of your royal career,
so to speak, a building to give
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glory to yourself, now having to
take down one after another? After another,
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and that even while we read in
verse seventeen that the people still sacrificed
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at the high places, but to
the Lord they're God. A good reminder
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there in verse seventeen, that God
doesn't want us to worship in any old
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way with it. We want he
wants to be worshiped how he wants to
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be worshiped. We worship according to
his will, not our imaginations, not
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our desires. It's not good enough
that they're worshiping him and that they're at
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the high places. The high places
need to be gone. They need to
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get themselves to the temple anyway.
I mentioned this in part to point out
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the political pressure that was on Manassa, to show you the level of repentance
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or the level of turning that we
see him going to. I think it's
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fairly safe to say that verses fourteen
through seventeen would not have been an easy
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thing to do. Would have been
very difficult, embarrassing, maybe even especially
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after coming back from exile. Who
knows what was going on while he was
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gone. Nevertheless, he does it
and he does it because his heart has
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been changed. He knows now,
knows an intimate and personal sense, that
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the Lord is God. The last
thing I want to mention that I think
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this teaches us about repentance is that
when we come to know the Lord and
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to truly trust in him for forgiveness, as Manassa does, and truly trust
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and unrepent of our sins, it
doesn't necessarily mean that everything here on earth
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is going to get fixed up and
a nice little bow put on it.
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For us, there are real consequences
that Manassa continues to face. It's hard.
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It's true that the Lord is good
to him, the Lord Blesses Him,
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the Lord preserves Israel yet a little
while longer, but we see ongoing
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struggles, not only in the peace
of people continuing to sacrifice at the high
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places, but in the following story
about his son am and. It's likely
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that Manassa went most of his kingship
living in this sinful way and that it
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was just at the end. We
know this from some dating in second kings
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and other places, that his repentance
was likely at the very end, which
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is good, which is a blessing, but it also meant that his son,
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amine the time he got to twenty
two years old, been being catechized.
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According to the bales so nash rooms. He'd been living out the liturgies
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of worshiping at the high places and
seeing the idols and going to the altars,
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seeing where his father had put his
confidence and Amine. He didn't get
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what Dad was going, what dad
was doing. This repentance, this change,
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all of these things. No,
Ammin he decides to go into the
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old sinful paths. He did what
was evil in the side of the Lord,
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as Manassa his father had done,
and he sacrifices to the images that
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Manassa his father had made and he
served them. He did not humble himself
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before the Lord, as Manassa had
done, and in this he incurred guilt
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more and more. God punishes him
for this. Instead of establishing strength and
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power as he, I suppose he
thought he would have of after his father's
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long reign, he dies quickly the
hands of his own servants. And after
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that it's not as though the servants
were attained maintained power, but they're struck
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down and basically there's political turmoil until
Josiah's made king. I point this out
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to point that, just to point
out that just because we repent, it
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doesn't mean that everything is fixed.
It doesn't mean that the mistakes we've made,
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in the people we've heard, the
things we've done will all be okay.
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But we repent anyway. Why?
Well, you might say, it's
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because it's the right thing to do, and that's true, of course it's
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the right thing to do. Always
better to do some of the right thing
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than none right but there's more to
it than that. We do it knowing
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that not everything is going to be
fixed by our repentance, because ultimately,
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we're not trusting in our repentance to
fix things, are we? That's not
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what repentance is. Repentance is trusting
and the God of our fathers, trusting
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him to fix everything, trusting him
to work all things for good, to
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take the evils that we experience,
as well as the evils that we commit,
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and make them perfect and use them
for good, use them to glorify
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himself and bring about his holy will. We don't depend on our own repentance
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to make all things right. We
depend on God, the king, the
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King of Israel, of Abraham,
of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses,
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of David. We look to the
Lord and to his law and we
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say guilty has charged. We have
not comet kept Your Commandments. We have
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not kept your laws, we have
not kept your holy statutes. We just
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as much as Israel we have no
right to either that earthly land or to
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the heavenly land and a kingdom in
the age to come. But we repent
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knowing that God will give to us
not his justice in that moment, but
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will give to us his favor and
his mercy. He does that in particular
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through Jesus, who fulfills the law
that God gave to Moses, the fulfills
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the promise to be David's, a
greater son, Jesus, who comes to
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rule, even as he ruled over
Israel then and rules over Israel now.
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US, his people who believe and
trust in him and belong to his kingdom
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by faith. We don't repent because
we think that we can somehow, by
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our actions, make everything perfect again. Often it does solve problems and brings
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restoration and forgiveness and healing here and
now, and it's a joy when it
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happens. But when it doesn't,
we don't give up and we don't stop
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ourselves short of repenting saying well,
I know it's not going to do any
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good anyway. No, we do
it because we trust in the Lord.
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We trust in him to be king
over his people and to bring all things
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into perfection, to provide for us
forever and ever through his son, who
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rules and reigns over us even now. So when you look at your sins,
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when you face the darknesses of your
heart, do not give up,
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do not grow hard in your hearts, do not die in your sins,
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but be like Manassa. Give yourself
over to the Lord, seek his favor.
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He will forgive you. Let's pray
