BY THE REV. C. C. MACKINTOSH, D.D., OF TAIN AND DUNOON.
“Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign,” etc.—2 Chron. xxxiii. 1.20; 2 Kings xxi. 1-18.
“Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.”—Rom. xv. 4.
MUCH solemn and important instruction is to be learned from the life of Manasseh, and God’s dealings with him.
He was the son of a man who was distinguished for personal piety, and who was eminently honoured of God; one who must have been exemplary as a father and as the head of the household. And it is a high privilege to have such a father, involving in it deep responsibility. But his father was removed when he was but twelve years of age. This, in any circumstances, would have been a terrible blow, but more especially when, at so early an age, he was to occupy the arduous and dangerous station of King of Judah. What particular influences were at work to ensnare and corrupt him we are not informed. But if Hezekiah had been pre-eminent for piety, the son proved pre-eminent for wickedness. “He did evil in the sight of the Lord, like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel,” and the evil is specified with fearful minuteness. He began by insulting his father’s memory and his father’s God, by “building again the high places which Hezekiah had broken down.” And, as though this had been a small matter, he proceeded to establish idolatry, rearing up altars to Baalim, and worshipping all the hosts of heaven; experiencing the vanity of his idols, but endeavouring to make up by their number for their vanity. He profaned the name and the house of God, and set God at defiance, building altars in the house of the Lord and in the two courts of the house of the Lord for all the host of heaven, and setting a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God. He was guilty of the most revolting cruelty as a father, causing his children to pass through the fire in honour of the idol Moloch. He made a covenant with hell, abandoning himself to the most degrading superstition. He made Judah and Israel to sin, and he shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other. And all this was aggravated by his being the son of such a father, and by his being King of Judah, where God was known; by past judgments of God against the wickedness of rulers and people; by his long continuance in sin; and by the solemn warnings which he received and despised—for “the Lord spake to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not hearken.” This whole description presents the character of an outrageous, hardened sinner, past fear, feeling, or shame. And who would expect anything else than that such a heaven-defying sinner, after filling up the measure of his iniquity, would be driven away in his wickedness.
But “the Lord brought unto them the captains of the host of the King of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him: and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God.” He was afflicted and his affliction was sanctified. The severest affliction has indeed no power in itself to bring the sinner to his right mind. No doubt there are some things which a sinner must see and feel in the time of sore affliction; for example, the vanity of the world, the misery of being without true hope in God, the bitterness of sin; but all this may be seen and felt, and yet the heart be the more hardened and closed up against God. The fetters and the dungeon, the change from outward greatness and power to misery, disgrace, and ruin, might have produced in Manasseh the repentance of a Cain or a Judas; but without grace this would have been all. However, in the Lord’s hand, and in connection with His word, affliction proves efficacious for breaking the stubborn heart and humbling the stoutest sinner. And the Lord often makes precious use of it, and begins a precious work with such painful dealing.
How long he may have remained stupified and sullen under the hand of God, a prey to the workings of tumultuous passions, endeavouring as he could to endure what he could not resist, or brought down and terrified without being humbled; what a hell may have been felt in his breast when he had but his own heart to commune with and a God whom he still strove to forget; or what temptations to self destruction he may have been visited with in this situation we know not. But it pleased the Lord in His sovereign mercy, to visit him, and, instead of leaving him under the dominion of a reprobate mind, to let in so much light on his dark understanding as made the existence, the presence, and the nearness of the one living and true God real to him. It was then a truth that God is; the God of the Bible, the Creator, the great and terrible God who had spoken from Mount Sinai—the God of his fathers. He felt His presence; with Him he had to do; against Him he had been sinning and contending for a lifetime. Conscience now awakened from its long sleep; and what a charge had it to bring against him! Sin began to be seen in its true colours. Memory wakened up. His past life was before his view. The instructions received in childhood were remembered by him. The image of his godly father stood before him, and the images of the souls he had slain. What had he been doing on God’s earth till now? Oh! how infatuated had he been! How truly had he approved himself a child of the devil!
Oh, had he but life to live over again, with its precious years to be redeemed for God, its blessed opportunities for glorifying God! But that cannot be. What would he now give to efface the black catalogue of his sins? But there they were in God’s book, and in the book of conscience too, in all their enormity and inexcusableness and aggravations, charged with the wrath of the Almighty. Where shall he look for comfort? The arrows of the Almighty are already within him; he is in the hands of an angry God, a God who has often reproved him, while he has hardened his neck.
Must he then become a vessel of wrath? Must he spend a never-ending existence in cursing the day of his birth? If, out of the dungeon, he sink into the abyss of hell, he feels that he must carry with him the conviction that he will suffer justly. How often has God called and he refused? how often has God stretched out His hand and he has not regarded? May He not then now “laugh at his calamity and mock at his fear?” But oh! if what he apprehends of the wrath of the Almighty and the agonies of a guilty conscience be so insupportable, what will the full experience of the wrath be?—to lie down in everlasting burnings! See the change which the letting in of the truth on the mind (the truth about God and sin) has wrought in the proud, hardened, remorseless man! See how his knees smite together, and how dismay may be read in his countenance, while he expects almost momentarily the execution of the sentence in force against him!
Is there then no hope? Is he falling into black despair? and is this the terrible sight that our eyes witness, that we may take warning? Is Satan right when he says, “Faithfully has thou served me during a lifetime; now thou art mine for ever. Never did I lose at the eleventh hour one who had served me as thou hast done!”
Adored be the grace that kept Manasseh from despair! The Friend of Sinners was in that dungeon, in the exercise of the love which, in the fulness of the time, was to be poured out on the accursed tree. It was written in His Word, “The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin.” Surely Hezekiah would have sought to imprint these words on the heart of the child: they may have come to his mind now. And it was also written there, “If from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him, if thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” There was, then, nothing too hard or too rich for such a God. How wondrous, beyond conception, the patience that had been exercised towards him year after year! If there were such riches in His forbearance, what untold and unsearchable riches must there be in His saving mercy! Might it not then be that even sins like his might be pardoned, a polluted wretch like him be cleansed, and a rebel such as he had ever been be reconciled? Who could tell what such a God could do? And was there not a prayer suited for such a case as his? “For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity; FOR IT IS GREAT.”
His pent-up feelings gave themselves expression in a new way. Rivers of waters run down his eyes, while he prostrates himself before God. “Behold, he prayeth!” Solemn, blessed sight!—the chief sinner making confession; free confession, no longer wrung from him; confession which must be made, though the Lord should cast him from His sight; full confession, without any reserve or attempt at self-justification; particular confession—his sins crowding upon him or kept before him as past reckoning, in all their aggravations as against light and privileges and obligations and dealings and warnings, as against God—and such a God. Condemning himself as a beast, a devil—as deserving of the lowest hell; humbling himself before God, the Holy One, in whose sight the heavens are not clean; humbling himself “greatly” before the God of his fathers; crying with groanings that cannot be uttered; yet making supplication for mercy and for a heart to turn to the Lord; and making supplication too, that, if it were consistent with the Divine glory, not only might his sins be pardoned and his nature renewed, but that he might be restored to the place and country where he had so long dishonoured God and been a soul murderer, that he might bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and weep in sackcloth before his people, and endeavour to awaken them to a sense of the wickedness of the courses to which he had seduced them.
He prayeth: but oh! how little has he confessed! He must pray again. How faint, comparatively, is his sense of sin, how wretchedly inadequate is his humiliation! He must pray again. How unspeakably precious the blessings which he seeks! How can he rest one hour without reconciliation to God? And dare he after all hope that God will hear His cry; that he shall ever know Him as the God of peace on earth, or stand in His holy place above? Surely not for his prayers’ sake dare he cherish any hope. Yet mercy he will seek, and at His footstool will he now be found.
Behold, then, he prayeth! Amidst temptations and discouragements, he still prayeth; with a deepening sense of sin, of his own sinfulness and desert of wrath, and of the pollution of his prayers, he still prayeth. While there is no present response, while his burden increases and while the hope that had entered his breast is almost ready to expire—for it is hard to pray while there is no present answer—he still waits for God.
And God’s time came, whether after days or weeks or months, for making Himself known as the Hearer of his cry. The Lord “was entreated of him.” For He delighted in mercy; there is forgiveness with Him for “all manner of sin and blasphemy”—for all sin confessed in Christ’s name; and He is the hearer of prayer. He cannot deny Himself. He delivered him from his fears, spoke peace to his soul, and took him out of the fearful pit. He said, “Deliver from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom.” Not only so, but He brought him again to Jerusalem, to his kingdom. This was indeed special mercy—to give him some little time on earth for manifesting the depth of his repentance, and for glorifying God, by making confession and by seeking to turn others from the errors of their ways.
“Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.” When in affliction, He had known Him in His power and holiness and jealousy; He now knew Him in His grace, in which His glory specially appears. “Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy.” And he brought forth fruits meet for repentance, walking humbly with his God, establishing His true worship, and exercising his authority for the suppression of all idolatry. And these efforts were accepted, and, in some measure, acknowledged by God.
Yet we read, after all the reformation wrought by Josiah, “Notwithstanding, the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked Him withal. And the Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem, which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.” Thus Manasseh had sealed the temporal ruin of the land, while he was plucked as a brand from the burning. Thus may a hardened sinner obtain mercy, and souls whom he has tempted and led in the way to destruction be left to perish. An awful truth, yet a truth; and unless this were the case, “who could be saved?” for who, by his sins of commission or omission, has not been in God’s sight a murderer of the souls of others? But what an overwhelmingly affecting consideration to the child of God, that while he has obtained mercy, others, perhaps far less guilty than he, whom he may have been instrumental in hardening, have been left.
We do not know how many years he lived after his return from Babylon. We cannot doubt that he loved much, and, even while rejoicing in the grace that could gloriously pardon and transform such a sinner, sorrowed much. Nor would he feel it necessary to conceal his sadness; for his case was an extraordinary one—all the land ought to know what reason he had for being of a sad countenance; and it is probable that it was by his own desire that he was buried, not in the sepulchres of the kings, but in his own garden.
The lessons to be learned from this subject are such as these:—
1. The wickedness of the heart
The wickedness of the heart—not of Manasseh’s heart only, but of ours—no outward means, or privileges, or providences, will of themselves avail to change it. We learn, too, how “one sinner destroyeth much good”—a lesson specially applicable, indeed, to one in a station of much influence, but also generally applicable. It is easy to do evil in this evil world; but it is hard to do good; it is a continual working against the stream.
2. Be anxious to improve the time of affliction
Be anxious to improve the time of affliction. Has it surprised you in your sins? Oh! entreat the Lord to have mercy upon you, lest you should be taken away with a stroke, or lest, while outwardly delivered, you be left more hardened than before. On the other hand, is it as a child you are corrected? Receive the evil of affliction as from a loving Father, who chastens you for your profit.
3. Let us learn the superabounding character of the grace of God
Let us learn the superabounding character of the grace of God; its power to take away the stoniest heart, its riches to make the guiltiest sinner white as snow. Who would not have said, “What an awful reckoning with his Judge awaits the man!” yet the Lord had mercy on him. The last was made first. Beware, then, of self-righteousness. God saved Manasseh for His name’s sake; and if He saves you it will be for no other reason. Have you been preserved from open sin? give God the glory: but take care lest you stand on your good character in the presence of your Judge, and it fare with you as with the Pharisee in our Saviour’s parable. But turn not His grace into lasciviousness. Manasseh’s case, like that of the dying thief, is an altogether singular one. How few hardened sinners are converted, how few who lose the time of youth are converted! “To-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts.” And let us not despair of the salvation of very unlikely characters. Is there one over whom you have been grieving, whose case you have been trying to keep on your spirit at a throne of grace, but of whom you are ready to lose hope altogether? Think of Manasseh. Think of the grace in which there are exceeding riches. Faint not in prayer. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.” There are last which shall be first
4. Let us improve the subject, as a remedy against despairing thoughts in regard to our own salvation.
Let us improve the subject, as a remedy against despairing thoughts in regard to our own salvation.
There may be many of my hearers who have no felt need of such an exhortation, because they have light views of sin, of God and of salvation. The Lord look down in mercy upon them, and awaken them to a sense of the straitness of the gate ere they be left without for ever. There may be others who have a constant feeling of uneasiness and insecurity arising from an unpurged conscience, while at the same time they cleave to sin and feel as though it were hopeless to expect to be delivered from it. When conscience at any time speaks louder than at other times, the tempter whispers, “There is no hope;” and, loving their idols, they continue to follow them. Oh! this is an awfully dangerous condition. If there is any one of my hearers who realises it as his own, I would warn him against the snare of the devil. There is no hope if he continue to drown the voice of conscience, and to refuse to know the worst of his case; but there is hope in the blood and grace of Christ; and if he perish, it will not be because Christ’s blood could not cleanse him, and because Christ’s grace could not humble and sanctify him, but because he would not prove Christ, and would choose death. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
But the child of God, the Christian, needs this exhortation too. He may now have “peace;” he may come yet to be in deep waters. “When God giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? and when He hideth His face, who then can behold Him?”
There was an eminent saint, an eminent minister of Christ now in glory, who in his dying sickness was sorely exercised in regard to the state of his soul. The enemy thrust sore, and he was brought very low. His sins possessed him, God’s face was hid from him, and hope had well-nigh expired. While in this anguish of spirit, one night he dreamed a dream. He was not one of those who put any trust in impressions or in dreams apart from the law and the testimony. But God can still make use of this means for instruction and for admonition. He dreamed that he saw heaven opened, and a company approach and go in, and the door was shut. In this company he beheld Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and many of the Old Testament saints, and some whom he himself had known; but he could not get in along with them. There was a pause; and again the door was opened, and again a company approached, and in this company he knew many; but he could not get in along with them, and he began to tremble exceedingly. A third time the door was opened, and another company approached, and they went in one after another; and terror began to seize upon him, and his knees smote one against another; when all at once, looking round, he saw Manasseh—Manasseh who had made Jerusalem to stream with blood: “and,” said the dying saint, “I crept in at Manasseh’s back.” Thus he found peace, and thus he died, having nothing to trust to but this—but it was enough—”This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” even the chief.