Usually, the story goes something like this….
Once there was a good king named Hezekiah who tried his best to follow and do what God wanted him to do. Hezekiah listened to God's prophets and he followed the law. He trusted God to save Jerusalem, his people and himself, and God listened to his prayers and did a great miracle in defense of the city.
One day the prophet Isaiah appeared and told Hezekiah that his days were now numbered and Hezekiah was going to die. Hezekiah did not take to this announcement very well and pleaded with God to grant him more life. God in his mercy did. In fact, God gave him fifteen more years. Later Hezekiah had a son. This son, named Manasseh, turned out to be the worst king Judah ever had. He worshipped idols, sacrificed his own son, and well…was a bad king. Manasseh was twelve when he became king. So, the worst king Judah had was born during the extra time God gave Hezekiah in answer to Hezekiah's prayers.
Obviously, the moral of the story is that God's plans are better than ours, and are beyond our understanding. Too often when we meddle with God's plans the perfect result God had planned is ruined because of the choices we make.
Ok. But that’s…..you….ummm…you missed the best part!!!!
Ok, we need to go back to the beginning. After the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Judah split in two, a ten tribe (Judah)and a two tribe (Israel) split. When you read through the history of the two kingdoms (found in 1st and 2nd Kings and Chronicles among other places) two things stand out. The first is that the kingdom in the north, the Kingdom of Israel, never had a good king. Not a single head who wore the crown in the north followed God and his commandments. The second is that the kings of the south, direct descendants of King David, were not as good of a group as you might have thought.
One of the good ones was Hezekiah, Manasseh's father. Hezekiah did almost everything right. But right there at the end, is this funny little story about asking for his life to be extended and God granting his request.
But this is not about Hezekiah, it's about Manasseh. How one of the best kings of Judah produces a son who gets called the worst king of Judah I don't know. What I do know is that 2 Kings 21 gives us a list of what Manasseh did wrong.
Where should we start…He abandoned the practices of his father and copied what the people Joshua drove out did. He rebuilt the high places, shrines to false gods and idols located on the high ridges of the hills and mountains. He built altars to Baal and put up an Asherah pole. In this, he followed what King Ahaz did in the north, and Ahaz might be the worst king the north ever had. Right in the temple, he built altars to the stars. He sacrificed his own son by casting him alive into a furnace built to honor another idol. He practiced what we would call black magic, consulting mediums and people who said they could communicate with the spirits. He then took the Asherah pole he had carved and put it into the temple.
At this point, God had enough. He sent prophets and warned the nation that Jerusalem and Judah were going to be punished so severely that everyone who heard about it would have tingling ears. In other words, they were going to serve as God's example of what happens when you do the wrong thing. The people did not listen, and the Bible records they did more evil than the nations God had destroyed to give them the promised land.
Like I have written before, this is where the story ends when we tell it in Sunday School. It’s a straight morality play, designed to let everyone know what happens when you try to change God's plan or when you persist in doing wrong. But God does not always like to end his stories the way we like to teach them.
There is another part to this story that I am embarrassed to say I did not know until about ten years ago.
In 2 Chron 33, we read that God did exactly what he said he was going to do. The Assyrians came and they captured Manasseh. Putting a hook in his nose, they chained him up and took him back to Babylon. The king was now a captive. Yet still, the story does not end.
Here, we read something incredible. "He sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly." What? No way! The idol worshipping, child sacrificing pagan king turned to God? Really? And still the story does not end.
"And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea." And…" he brought him back to Jerusalem and so his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God…he got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple…he restored the altar and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it and told Judah to serve the Lord."
Words fail at this point. Anything we want to say, anything words of explanation or expansion simply subtract from the story. Of course, we still have to try.
No one is past redemption. No one. As someone who is keenly aware of his sins and his failings, as someone who most of the time errs on the side of focusing too much on how I see myself rather than how God sees me, this is a powerful story. Manasseh had to know, had to hear the words of his father every time he walked through the palace or entered the temple. He knew who his father had been and he knew what his father had done. He surely knew what he was doing was not what his father had taught him. But he did these things anyway and then paid the price.
And then God reached down and did that thing God does. Praise God. We know the lesson here, this is not a story about sin. It's not a story about a sinner. It’s a story about grace and mercy and God.
**It is also a reminder that God's plans are not always as obvious as we think they are. Do you think God knew Manasseh was going to be a horrible person? Do you think God knew Manasseh would one day turn to him? Do you think this was God's plan all along? To have yet another example of grace and mercy we can point to? I do.
