Read 2
Chronicles 32-33 & John
18:24-40
To discover:
As you read note the desirable
qualities Hezekiah and Manesseh display.
To ponder:
Believers are not guaranteed
freedom from hardship. “After all Hezekiah had so faithfully done” Assyria
still invaded. And at such times it is our response that makes the difference.
Hezekiah acted wisely, blocking springs and streams so the enemy army couldn’t
get water, fortifying Jerusalem and the city of David within it, and appointing
military officers over the people, perhaps to help them fight if they needed
to. Most significantly, he pointed them all to the LORD. His words encourage us
as we face the forces of evil. We can be “strong and courageous” because there
is a “greater power with us” than with any who oppose us. They are “flesh” but
God himself is present to help us and fight our battles. So we should gain
“confidence” as Hezekiah’s hearers did.
The
pressure however increases as later Sennacherib besieges Lachish
and sends his officers to Jerusalem
with a message. They explicitly say the people cannot be “confident” in God,
misunderstanding Hezekiah’s reforms to mean that he had offended God by
removing the means of false worship! They also declare, as do further letters
from their king, that their conquering of other lands proved that “no god”
could deliver a people from them. This of course sets them up to be proved
wrong, and for the LORD to be seen as the only true God by delivering Judah
(see 32v19).
The
author is almost blasé about the ease of God’s response. Hezekiah and Isaiah
“cry out in prayer to heaven” where God dwells, and he sends an angel who
annihilates the entire enemy force, and causes Sennacherib to be assassinated
in “the temple of his own god” – displaying which God really rules. We
therefore read “the LORD saved” Hezekiah and Jerusalem,
and “from the hand of all others…taking care of them on every side.” The
response of the people was to bring offerings by way of thanks. The response of
the nations was to honour God’s king.
Like
Sennacherib, Satan uses others to ridicule faith, suggest sin, death and false
worldviews are undefeatable, and so knock our confidence in God bringing doubt.
But our confidence can remain for God’s Christ has promised God is with us, and
those who oppose him will be overcome and destroyed, and their gods shown to be
nothing (Matt 25v41). God will save and care for us.
But,
again, this doesn’t mean we will be free from hardship. Hezekiah almost died
from illness. However, God healed him in answer to his prayer. But he then
responded with pride. 2 Kings 20 suggests this was the pride of showing off his
wealth to the Babylonian envoys (also 2 Chr 32v31). It is not clear how God’s
“wrath” was then expressed to him and the people. It is possible this was it
was in Sennacherib’s attack, which took place “in those days” (32v1-23, 24).
Whatever, when the king and people repented God forestalled his wrath for the
future – ie. the coming exile.
This
lesson in repentance is taught to the extreme by Manesseh. After Hezekiah’s
general greatness is recounted, we read how the general mark of his son
Manesseh’s reign was “much evil,”
provoking the LORD to anger. Not only did he reverse Hezekiah’s reforms
but embraced the most depraved practices of the nations (33v1-9) causing the
people to do “more evil” than those “nations” themselves. In grace God warned
them through his prophets (33v18), but they ignored him. So Assyria
attacked and took Manesseh into exile with a hook in his nose like an animal
and shackles like a slave. Astonishingly, Manesseh then sought God’s favour and
humbled himself in repentance. And in answer to Solomon’s prayer when the
temple was dedicated (2 Chr 6v36-39, see also Deut 30v1-10), God brought him
back and Manesseh knew he was God. He then acted like a righteous king, rebuilding
the city of David, eradicating
false worship, restoring the worship of the temple, and urging the people to
serve God – although they continued to worship him at the high places.
This is an
astonishing example of God’s limitless grace, and the possibility of repentance
no matter how far we fall. Indeed, we are urged to that repentance all the more
when considering that Amnon, Manesseh’s son, did not repent, only “increasing”
his guilt. However, to the original readers, Manesseh’s experience patterns theirs,
teaching that having returned from their exile, they are to know the LORD is
God, restore the worship of the temple and urge one-another to faithfulness.
Having experienced our own redemption through repentance from our captivity to
sin and exile from Eden, we are
therefore urged to do the same.
Praying it home:
Praise God for the ease with which
he can deliver those who look to him. Pray that you would respond to his grace
as Manesseh did.
Thinking further:
None today.
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