SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
Manasseh: The King with a Nose Ring
Introduction: The story of Manasseh, king of Judah, is an incredible story of rebellion, repentance, and restoration. Rarely has anyone fallen as far into sin and depravity as this man fell. Rarely has anyone been rescued and restored as thoroughly as this man. But it is also true that rarely have the lasting consequences of sin been so obvious as in the story of Manasseh, the King with a Nose Ring.
We have enjoyed two very encouraging studies on the life of Hezekiah, three weeks ago and again last week as Kevin Rudd brought a great message on trusting in God. But Hezekiah was an island in a sea of sin and unfaithfulness and idolatry. His father Ahaz was the worst of the kings of Judah, and his son Manasseh started out on a path that initially surpassed even Ahaz in respect to evil. It’s hard enough to explain how such a wicked person as Ahaz could have such a godly son as Hezekiah, a topic we addressed earlier. But even more amazing to me, how could such a godly person as Hezekiah have as wicked a son as Manasseh? I want us to begin this morning by considering the troubling topic of …
Second Generation Fallout[i]
Consider the following scenario: A couple gets married. They not only fall in love with each other, but they also love Christ and desire to serve Him with all their hearts. They progress in their spiritual growth by becoming involved in a local church, giving generously and consistently, and serving in various capacities. As several children come along, they dedicate those children to the Lord and begin to build into each one, praying that God will get hold of their little lives and use them for His glory. They make sure their children are involved in Sunday School and attend AWANA. When the time comes they choose the option of sending them to Christian schools.
Time passes. Childhood runs its course, leading to the teen years with all the inevitable adjustments and struggles. The family gets busier than ever, walking gingerly through the minefields of time demands, financial pressures, sports and academic activities, and relational skirmishes. Nothing blows apart, thank goodness … and before they know it, the kids are out of high school and pursuing college, career, and marriage.
Mom and dad wind up together and alone, again, breathing big sighs of relief (“We made it!”) and still very stable and strong in their Christian walk. But what about the now-grown kids? Ah, there’s the rub. Somehow, between learning, on the one hand, how to ride bikes, memorize the multiplication tables, and perfect their skills on the piano and, on the other hand, earning a degree, getting married, and buying their own home, God got pushed way down their list of priorities. In fact, disciplines like prayer, church attendance, tithing, serving, and serious Bible study got lost in the shuffle. They didn’t abandoned God exactly, but He certainly is not the focus of their lives.
Does this sound familiar to some of you? The fact is, the scenario I have just painted would be a welcome one in some homes, because some of you have children who are not just apathetic to spiritual things, but openly antagonistic. They are pursuing an agenda in life that is totally contradictory to all they were taught. The simple fact is that a cultured, godly home is no guarantee that a child will follow the Lord.
I come from a remarkable family, for which I take very little credit and express tremendous gratitude. Last weekend we attended an Andrus family reunion down in the Branson area. There are 56 living descendants of my mom and dad, and all 56 were in attendance. Dad will be 87 next month and Mom is 84. They have five children, of which I am the middle one, in case you hadn’t guessed. There are five children, 13 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren, plus all the spouses.
I added up the years of marriage in our family–326 years without a single divorce! (There have been a couple of attempted murders but no divorces). The fellowship and fun and joy in the Lord which we experience in the Andrus clan is pretty amazing, and it reminds me that while the sins of the fathers may be visited upon the 3rd and 4th generations, so too are the righteous deeds and faithful prayers of godly parents. My mom and dad had the privilege last weekend of observing four generations of a righteous legacy! But even in this unusual extended family, spiritual commitment is not uniform. There is one family that does not share our common faith commitment to Christ.
The loss of faith from a godly parent to a child is what we might call Second Generation Fallout. And while there are certainly exceptions, a huge percentage of families suffer from one form of it or another. And it has always been so. Adam and Eve surely wept over Cain’s murderous act against his brother. Noah was grieved because of his son Ham’s shamelessness. Isaac and Rebekah must have tossed and turned through sleepless nights over their twin boys–Jacob and Esau. Eli the priest was embarrassed more than once because of his two immoral sons. David, who loved the Lord dearly, found himself at a loss to understand Absalom. Solomon’s son Rehoboam was a national disgrace. And the list continues, even to the present day.
Is Second Generation Fallout inevitable? Is there nothing we can do to prevent a child from becoming a Manasseh? My answer is yes and no. There is no way to guarantee that a child will not fall away, because every individual has a will, and every child must choose for himself whether he will follow Christ or follow his own ways. (Someone has observed wisely that God has no grandchildren, only children). But, on the other hand, there certainly are steps we parents can take to incline our children’s hearts toward God. I do not have time to make this a sermon on parenting, but I would be remiss if I did not suggest a few practical principles:
1. Teach personal responsibility. Let your children know they are personally responsible before God for their behavior and their beliefs. We live in a time when passing the buck has become an art form and seeing oneself as an “innocent victim” is very much in vogue. Teach your child to be willing to stand alone, if necessary, in order to do what’s right.
2. Emphasize the erosion principle. Evil is getting increasingly worse but also more cleverly disguised. Make sure your kids understand that. Explain how easy it is to get used to sin and to shrug it off rather than confront it.
3. Spend time with your kids. Some kids aren’t a lot of fun to be around, at least at certain stages of their development. But they need to be with mom and dad–not just to eat together but to talk and play and travel together. It is amazing how powerful first-generation presence can be when it comes to curing Second Generation Fallout.
4. Pray for your children. My parents pray for every one of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren every week, plus the in-laws. Our family’s day is Wednesday–we know we will be lifted before the throne of grace every Wednesday. I personally attribute a huge proportion of the blessings I have received to the prayers of my parents.
I don’t know how many of these simple things were neglected by King Hezekiah in his rearing of Manasseh. He was undoubtedly a very busy man. Throughout history king’s kids have been indulged and pampered, particularly if next in line to the throne. Furthermore, Manasseh became king at age 12. If his father died at that time, some of Manasseh’s most formative years were spent without his father’s influence. Whatever the reasons, when it comes to Second Generation fallout, Manasseh broke all the records.
The depths of human depravity
I am not inclined this morning to itemize Manasseh’s evil deeds. We have been through this enough with previous kings, so let me just read, without comment, his biography, in the words of 2 Chronicles 33:1-10:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He built altars in the temple of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, “My Name will remain in Jerusalem forever.” In both courts of the temple of the LORD, he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his sons in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, practiced sorcery, divination and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger.
He took the carved image he had made and put it in God’s temple, of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. I will not again make the feet of the Israelites leave the land I assigned to your forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them concerning all the laws, decrees and ordinances given through Moses.” But Manasseh led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed before the Israelites.
The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.
The chronicler doesn’t tell us how God spoke to Manasseh, but the author of 2 Kings fills in some of the gaps for us. Listen to 2 Kings 21:10-16:
The LORD said through his servants the prophets: “Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and hand them over to their enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their foes, because they have done evil in my eyes and have provoked me to anger from the day their forefathers came out of Egypt until this day.”
Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end–besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the LORD.
The historian Josephus states that godly prophets, priests and people were martyred every day in Jerusalem. According to Jewish tradition, the aged prophet Isaiah was placed in a hollow log and sawn in two by Manasseh’s order. Well, Manasseh could silence God’s prophet, but he could not silence God’s Word. God’s Word overcame him in judgment. And even today, if we refuse God’s Word and ignore His prophets, we shall discover that God’s Word is fulfilled in judgment in our own lives. And that brings us to …
The inevitability of God’s discipline
I return to the 10th verse of 2 Chronicles 33: “The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So .…” A logical inference is about to be drawn here. Because they paid no attention, God’s judgment was certain: “So the LORD brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.”[ii]
Can you imagine the disgrace this meant for a man who was ruler of one of the most powerful countries of his time? Historians tell us that the hook in the nose was attached by chain to hooks in other prisoners’ noses, so that no one could escape without ripping his nose apart, and probably someone else’s. The nose is a very sensitive part of the body, and a hook in the nose was an ideal way to keep prisoners compliant. The bronze shackles were insurance that he would not escape. And he was taken to Babylon–not the capital city of Assyria, which was Nineveh—but the capital of another defeated people–perhaps just further humiliation.
Manasseh had no reason to be shocked by his destiny. He had been warned again and again by God’s Word and God’s prophets. A leader of God’s people, or even an ordinary member of God’s family, cannot sin with impunity. But thankfully, that is not the end of our story. I turn your attention thirdly to …
The awesomeness of God’s grace
I don’t use the word “awesome” lightly here. There is only one person in the universe who deserves the term–and that is God Himself. And to me His grace is the most awesome thing about an awesome God. Here is a principle I wish to illustrate by the life of Manasseh: “No matter how far a person has fallen, so long as there is breath in his body, he is not beyond the possibility of repentance and restoration.” Paul called himself the chief of sinners, and not without exaggeration. But he repented. Actually, he declined to even speak of his repentance because that might reflect some glory back on himself; rather he said, “I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.”
St. Augustine was no saint as a young man. In fact, in his Confessions he describes himself as powerless in the grips of sexual promiscuity. In fact, he once prayed, “God, give me chastity and continence, but not just now.”[iii] But one day God sovereignly gripped his heart through the words of Romans 13: “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”(Romans 13:13-14) This was exactly what he needed, and he wrote, “Instantly, as the sentence ended–by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart–all the gloom of doubt was vanished away.[iv] ” And Augustine became the greatest figure in the early Christian church between the apostle Paul and Martin Luther.
John Newton was a slave trader, an immoral, evil man who by his own admission had tried just about every sin known to man by the time he was in his early twenties. But he repented, and God saved him, and he wrote the most beloved hymn in the English language as his own personal testimony, Amazing Grace.
I suppose every generation has had its St. Pauls and Augustines and John Newtons. But I’m not sure there has ever been anyone quite like Manasseh when it comes to restoration from the depths of sin. I love verses 12 and 13 of 2 Chronicles 33; in fact, if it weren’t too long to fit on a headstone, this should be his epitaph:
In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God.[v]
Repentance was a process for Manasseh. He didn’t immediately bow the knee to God. David Roper writes,
. . . for twelve long years he languished in that Babylonian dungeon with a ring in his nose and chains on his hands and feet. You see, that is the end of the process God uses in our lives to bring us around. He will speak to us softly, and then with more insistence. Then he hems us on every side, with every witness to the truth that he can bring to bear. And then if we refuse to listen … he lets us have our way. He takes his hands off us, we reap what we have sown, and we become a slave to our own passions and desires. Thus we are brought to the end of ourselves. That is what happened to Manasseh.[vi]
Manasseh’s repentance came toward the end of his life–not exactly a deathbed conversion, but close. I must say I don’t understand deathbed conversions. I believe in them, but I don’t understand them. Why should God accept an evil person, at the very end of his life, when he has little time left to serve God or make up for the evil he has done? I wouldn’t. But that’s what’s so amazing about grace. It is, by definition, undeserved. God is in the saving business. He will save anyone who is savable. He won’t violate His own character, and He won’t violate someone’s will. But He will accept anyone who turns to Him in sincere faith.
I shared at Men’s Fraternity on Wednesday morning a story I will never forget. When I was a pastor in Wichita there was a lady in my church who had an unbelieving husband. He was a retired colonel and a very earthy, crusty old man in his early 80’s. He was the kind who didn’t hesitate to cuss in front of a pastor. I got a call one day that he was in the hospital and very ill. I went to see him, and I shared the love of Christ with him. To my amazement he responded. He was too sick to talk, but he nodded his head eagerly when I asked him if he wanted to receive Jesus as his Savior. I prayed and asked him to pray silently. When he finished there was a glow about him that was stunning. I saw him the next day and the transformation in his countenance continued to be amazing. He died the following day–with no chance to share his faith, no opportunity to be baptized or receive the Lord’s Supper or even attend church as a believer. But one could not look at that man’s face and have any doubt that he had experienced forgiveness for his sins.
My point, of course, is not that it’s OK to wait until your deathbed to receive Christ. You don’t know when that will be, and even if you did, and were thus able to confess your sins at the 11th hour, you would have wasted the privilege of walking with Christ through this life–a terrible waste. Rather my point is this–that no matter who you are, or how old you are, or how many years you have wasted so far, God is willing to forgive you and adopt you into His family if you truly repent.
God graciously gave Manasseh a short time near the end of his 55-year reign to correct some of the awful things He did. God restored to him at least a few of the months, maybe even years, the locusts had eaten. Listen to verses 15-16 of 2 Chronicles 33:
He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the LORD, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. Then he restored the altar of the LORD and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.
But that’s not quite the end of the story. There is one more point that we must observe from Manasseh’s life:
The lasting consequences of sin
The principle we must keep in mind here is that God forgives the guilt of sin; He does not erase consequences. God can and will forgive a life of drunkenness, but the drunk does not receive a new liver when he receives a new heart. God can and will forgive teenage promiscuity, but the teenager does not become a virgin again. God can and will forgive murder, but the victim is still dead. God can and will forgive the gossip, but the words cannot be retrieved. Sin leaves scars–always and without exception.
One of the consequences of Manasseh’s sin is that the people didn’t turn around quite as thoroughly as he did. Yes, he “told Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.” But he discovered that it’s a lot easier to lead people in the wrong direction than in the right one. The very next verse gives us a hint about the difficulty he faced. It says, “The people, however, continued to sacrifice at the high places, but only to the LORD their God.” In other words, the pagan altars Manasseh had built continued to be used. True, for a while they were used only for worship of the true God, but the problem was that as soon as Manasseh was off the scene and his son Amon became king, the people went right back to their idolatry.
A second major consequence of Manasseh’s sin is revealed in his son Amon, who succeeded him when he was 22 years old. He had grown up during his father’s pagan years, and even though his father repented, Amon did not. One of the saddest things I see is the heartbreak of many parents who come to faith in Christ after their children are fairly well grown. Often those children do not follow their parents in repentance. Amon did not.
A third consequence is seen in the collapse of the nation of Judah. In two weeks we are going to come to the final message in this series, which will be the epitaph of the whole nation. Judah lasted for 56 more years after Manasseh, and there were six more kings during those 56 years. But God traced the fall of the nation to Manasseh’s wicked years. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah:
Then the LORD said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel (two of the most remarkable intercessors in the Bible) were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people. Send them away from my presence! Let them go! And if they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ tell them, ‘This is what the LORD says:
Those destined for death, to death;
Those for the sword, to the sword;
those for starvation, to starvation;
Those for captivity, to captivity.”
“I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,” declares the LORD, “The sword to kill and the dogs to drag away and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah did in Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 15:1-4)[vii]
It was too late to reverse the trends in society and in his own household.
A final consequence of sin for Manasseh was a permanent stain on his reputation. The conclusion to his story is found at the end of 2 Chronicles 33:18-20:
The other events of Manasseh’s reign, including his prayer to his God and the words the seers spoke to him in the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, are written in the annals of the kings of Israel. His prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty, as well as all his sins and unfaithfulness, and the sites where he built high places and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself–all are written in the records of the seers. Manasseh rested with his fathers and was buried in his palace. And Amon his son succeeded him as king.
Though he repented, he was still known chiefly for his sin. I think of a modern-day Manasseh named Chuck Colson. No matter how much good he does, and no matter how many prisoners he helps set free, spiritually speaking, he will always be known for saying that he would walk over his grandmother to help Richard Nixon get re-elected. He will always be suspect in the eyes of some for his sordid political life, as though his faith is just another political maneuver. He’s learned to commit that to the Lord, but it is still no doubt painful.
For my conclusion this morning I’m going to invite a dear friend to come and share his story. Nap Easterbrook has been part of our fellowship for a long time. He and Phyllis came to the church just a few months after I did, so I’ve known them for almost 18 years and had the privilege of observing their walk with the Lord. Nap, come and share with us what God has laid on your heart.
Thanks, Mike, for this privilege. After a full career in the U.S. Navy, ending in 1977, I felt God calling me into ministry. I graduated from seminary and accepted the pastorate of an evangelical church. But 20 years ago I allowed sin to get a grip on my life to such an extent that I lost my church, my family, and for a while, my dignity. There is no point in rehearsing the details; suffice it to say that I was no better and no worse than Manasseh. I didn’t have a prisoner’s nose ring, but God would have been justified had He given me one.
My story is not primarily a story about sin, but rather a story about God’s grace. Nonetheless, wearing the shackles of lust and self-interest highlighted several years of rebellion against God and persistent disobedience. Responding slightly to the early promptings of God’s Spirit, for a while, I even believed that I had somehow committed the unpardonable sin, only to learn later that this too was just one more example of my perverse selfishness. Eventually I came to my senses and realized that as hard as it would be to come back to God and confess my sin, it was the only way to be restored to the joy of my salvation. Going back to the church and the people I had hurt and confessing to them was really hard, but some brothers in Christ were there to help me do it, and that was the beginning of the way home.
God listened when I called upon Him, just as He listened to Manasseh. To me that is simply amazing; to this day I can’t understand it, but I know it’s true. He gave me a new spiritual family, but not overnight; over many years He restored my relationship with my children and extended family; He brought a level of reconciliation with my former wife I never thought possible; He gave me new and fulfilling ministries; He has allowed me to participate in the rescue of others through counseling; He has trusted me with His Word and encouraged me and my wife Phyllis to abide in an intimate relationship with Him; and He has blessed all six of my children through their own trust and reliance on Him. Recently, for example, He even allowed my wife and me to introduce our 12-year-old granddaughter Samantha to who Christ is. She did not understand the meaning of the gold cross around her neck or Christmas or Easter; she never had opened a Bible or attended a Christian church.
Listen to these words from her father, my son, just last Wednesday: “Dear Dad and Phyllis, I just want you to know how much your visit over Labor Day meant to Samantha. She is still talking about it and wants to know when we can come see you. She reads her new Bible every single day now. I’ve got to keep up with her. Your prayers have really moved her and got her on fire. She has so many questions. I feel inadequate to answer them all, since I myself have not been the faithful practitioner of my faith for so many years now.” Then he goes on to say, “I find that as I answer her questions, I start to reaffirm my own belief. The Lord is at work and I know it. We attended Grace E-Free Church again last Sunday, even stayed for Sunday School. Love Eric.” To encourage you parents and grandparents here today, the events just described are some of God’s specific answers to years of passionate and specific praying.
But there’s another part of my faith story that also parallels that of Manasseh. As marvelous as God’s grace has been to me, I must tell you that the consequences of sin are very real and lasting. There are people who left God’s church because of me and have never returned. There are family members and friends whose lives were disrupted and seriously damaged. There are years that were wasted and cannot be recovered. There are ministries I can no longer pursue. There have even been emphatic physical and emotional consequences.
The last thing I would want today is for anyone to hear my faith story or Manasseh’s or King David’s, for that matter, and think, “No matter what you do, God is going to be there for you. So, go ahead and sow your wild oats; just come back before the harvest.” It doesn’t work that way. God says in Romans 6:1, “Now what is our response to be? Shall we sin to our heart’s content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God? What a ghastly thought! We who have died to sin or ignored his call to faith and repentance – how can we live in sin a moment longer?” The experience of many is that they do not choose to come back. Worse, they may lose the opportunity to come back, because of circumstances over which they have no control. And even those who do, come back with scars–ugly scars. They are like holes in the board after the nails have been removed. Or even like scar tissue that forms after the surgery and continues to cause great pain, although the original disease is gone.
We all carry scars from our past. My personal scars are now a reminder not only of how far I fell, but also of God’s awesome mercy and love in lifting me up. His grace is truly amazing. It is all of Him–He is the victor, and I delight at this point to follow His command “to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with my God” – His Spirit within makes this possible. I am truly learning to live each day now praying for, expecting, and experiencing God’s blessings in my life and the lives of others.
Father, thank you for your amazing grace. Amen.
DATE: September 15, 2002
Tags:
Second Generation Syndrome
Depravity
Discipline
Grace
Consequences
Nap Easterbrook Testimony
[i] Much of this discussion is borrowed from Chuck Swindoll’s article, Second Generation Fallout, in the newsletter of First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, dated November 7-13, 1993.
[ii] Archaeologists have found the name, “Manasseh, King of Judah,” recorded in Assyrian inscriptions of both Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, the two Assyrian monarchs who were contemporary with Manasseh.
[iv] James Montgomery Boice, Romans, Vol. 1, 12.
[v] One of the OT Apocryphal books is called The Prayer of Manasseh. It purports to be the prayer referred to in 2 Chronicles 33:18, but it was written in about 100 B.C., well over 500 years after Manasseh’s death. After praising the righteous character of God, the prayer continues:
You have ordained repentance for a sinner like me,
For my sins are more numerous than the sands of the sea,
My transgressions are multiplied, Lord, they are multiplied!
I am unworthy to look up and see the height of heaven,
For the multitude of my iniquities.
I am weighed down with many an iron fetter,
So that I bend beneath my sins,
And I have no relief,
Because I have provoked your anger,
And done what is wrong in your sight,
Setting up abominations and multiplying offenses.
Now therefore I bend the knee of my heart, begging you for kindness.
I have sinned, Lord, I have sinned,
And I know my transgressions.
I earnest beseech you,
Forgive me, Lord, forgive me!
(From The Apocrypha, an American Translation by Edgar J. Goodspeed, 371-372)
[vi] David Roper, Manasseh, the Prodigal King, sermon preached April 9, 1972, Discovery Publishing, catalog #0468.
[vii] 2 Kings 24:3 says the same thing.