Hope In Mercy

Would you bow with me in prayer as we ask God to bless the preaching of his word? Our God and our Father, we thank you. Thank you for your grace and your mercy that ever gives us hope. would you please now father in your grace open your word to us give us understanding that all who hear these words today understand and know more of you God help us we pray now in this our remaining time together to understand your word and to love you more because of your mercy.

We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Have you ever just thrown up your hands in despair and say to yourself, there is no hope for him. There's no hope for him. He's too far gone. Not only is he wicked, but he's so stubborn that there's no way he's ever going to repent.

Maybe you've said that about a son or a daughter. Maybe about someone you work with, with whom you've shared the gospel several times. Quite possibly you've viewed the situation that you've lived with and now tired and despairing you say these words. Maybe it's a homosexual friend or a neighbor convicted of pedophilia. There's no changing those kind of people.

There's absolutely no way. Maybe someone has come to you for help. And as you listen to the mess he's in, because of all his sin, you say to yourself, What could I possibly say to him? There's no hope for him. He's too far gone. How many of you said that about yourself?

I'm too far gone. God can't do anything with me. Maybe you said that about yourself. I don't know. Well, the book of Chronicles was written to a people who were losing hope. Now, let's say something about the book of Chronicles.

Just set the stage here. When you read the book of Chronicles and you read the book of Kings, you tend to think they might be the same, but they're not. The purpose of 1 and 2 Kings which is written right after the nation of Judah was judged with Nebuchadnezzar coming and wiping out their country and deporting all those people eliminating the nation of Judah forever from the map That book was written in order to tell the people of God, this happened to you because of your covenant unfaithfulness.

When you come to 2 Chronicles, though, that book has a different purpose. It tells much the same story, but it's a little bit different in this way. It was written after the 70 years of exile, after they've been in exile, after they've been chastised by God for their sin. Now this book was written to say to them, listen, there's hope. You can have hope. even though God executed his promised judgment on us for our covenant unfaithfulness you can still have hope they had suffered the judging hand of God in the Babylonian exile and thought there's no going back we're too far gone for God to ever deal with us again they could not see that God would ever deal with them since to quote Ezra as he prayed in the book of Ezra, our sins were higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.

And so, what hope do they have? This book was written in order to give them hope. This book was also written for those upon whom the fulfillment of the ages has come, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10. That all the scripture that was written was written not just for those people back then, not just for people that were living in Old Testament times.

They were actually written for us, upon whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. And so it has a great deal to say to us today. And we, like our forefathers of days long ago, also need hope in the face of unremitting sin and guilt. Now we turn to 2 Chronicles 33. It's one of my favorite stories in the entire Old Testament. it's the story of a wicked king by the name of Manasseh a king who gave himself over to every conceivable kind of evil and who led his people to follow in the same wicked ways And as you read the story of Manasseh the question arises what is God going to do with this guy?

What is God going to do with this guy? And the second question is this, is there any hope for Manasseh and his people? Well, let's look at the story of Manasseh. You follow as I read the first ten verses. Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel for he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down and he erected altars to the bales and made Asheroth and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them.

And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be forever. And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnom and used fortune telling and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.

He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. In the carved image of the idol that he had made, he sat in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, in this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all of the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers. If only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them, all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.

Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the people of Israel. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. Now look at Manasseh. He took wickedness to new depths of depravity He became degraded in his sin by practicing and leading the people in disgusting religious rites We can note them in these first 10 verses He encouraged the people to abandon the temple and worship false gods at the high places.

All the way through the Old Testament, you read about these high places. In the culture of that day, these high places were where you would worship the gods. And the people of Israel, God had said, when I build my temple, I'm going to place my name there, and all the nations should come to the temple to worship. But some people were worshiping Jehovah on the high places instead of coming to the temple.

They weren't pure in their worship, and eventually began worshiping other gods as Manasseh led them here, these foreign gods at the high places. So he encouraged the people to abandon the temple and worship false gods in the high places. He worshipped and encouraged the worship of many Baals and Asherahs, a sensual, sex-saturated worship that was public.

That is to say, when you read about Baal, and some of you have heard this a hundred times, but some of you may never have heard it, Baal and Ashtaroth, right? You read that word Ashtaroth? That is Baal's female consort. Baal was a fertility god. And in order to ensure the fertility of your soil, of your animals, and of your wives, you would go to sacrifice to Baal.

And the worship in Baal temples included sexual relations. There were prostitutes at, sacred prostitutes, if you can put those two words together, who were at the temple in order for you to have sexual relations with as part of your worship to Baal in order to ensure fertility. In 2 Kings chapter 23 verse 7, you also read that Manasseh had also included male prostitutes there.

Enough said about that. That's the sort of thing he was encouraging. That's the kind of worship he was encouraging. All right? Sex in the fertility cults of that time was as common as pulling a hymn book out of the rack in front of you. That's how degrading this kind of worship was.

He practiced the violent, cruel, heartless religious rites of Moloch. And that included the sacrifice by the burning of babies before the altar of Moloch. And if you want to know how that was, the idea was there was this idol with hands and they would heat the hands to glowing red and put the babies on them. That's the kind of worship that he was involved in. he even sacrificed his own sons that way.

The worship was so degrading. This worship had been so degrading. That is the reason why God exterminated the Canaanites. We often look at God and say, how cruel for him to have them wipe out all these people. These are the things that those people were doing. That is why God instituted his people as divine agents of his vengeance on these kind of degraded people.

The problem is that Manasseh brought them even lower, even lower in their sin than the original Canaanite people. That is the nature of Manasseh's rule. It was a degraded, he was degraded in his sin. He became darkened in his You notice in verse 3 and in verse 6 that he practiced and led the people in the worship of the stars. So not only is he involved in the fertility cult, he's also involved in worshipping the stars.

And remember from Romans chapter 1 that when you worship the creation rather than the creator, God says it always results in dark and foolish understanding and leads to even more depravity. he was darkened into sin he was darkened in that he practiced divination you notice it talks about in verse 6 it talks about fortune telling, omen, sorcery dealing with mediums and with necromancers priests would, it's called divination because priests would define the will of the gods by slicing open an animal looking at its internal organs and the way they looked and what they did and the way they were shaped and the colors of them, they would divine the will of the gods. This is the way the gods communicated their will. He would seek guidance and counsel from psychics and mediums and witches Manasseh was guilty of sorcery Manasseh essentially said the word of Jehovah is not sufficient to give me counsel I will seek the counsel of other gods by other means.

Not only was he degraded and darkened, but Manasseh became defiant in his sin. When you look at verse 3, what does it say in verse 3? For he built the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down, and he erected altars to the bales and made Asheroth, and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them. And then verses 4 and 5, And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem, Shall my name be forever?

And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. You drop down to verse 7. and the carved image of the idol that he had made he set up in the house of God of which God said to David and to Solomon his son in this house and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel I will put my name forever and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers if only they will be careful to do all that I have commended them all the law and the statutes and rules given through Moses Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. And then verse 10, he wouldn't listen to the voice of God.

Now notice how defiant he is. He defied God by encouraging worship in the high places, keeping the people of God from coming to the one place, the one temple where God had placed his name, where they were to worship. He placed altars for the stars in the temple courtyards and the carved image of the fertility goddess, in the temple precincts itself. He knew the symbolism of this act.

He knew what he was doing. Now, if you don't know the back story to Manasseh, his father was Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the second, only to David in greatness. Hezekiah had accomplished tremendous things, and even greater than David in terms of his faithfulness to God. And his son, Manasseh, is essentially saying, this is what I think of Jehovah and the faith of my fathers.

It's as if he put the idols right under God's nose in defiance of all that God had said And then defiant in that he wouldn heed the warnings that God sent Verse 10 probably no doubt through the prophets that God sent his way in order to warn him of judgment and to call him to repentance. Not only was he defiant and degraded and darkened in his sin, but Manasseh became destructive in his sin. He broke down the barriers of national righteousness, of the iniquity flooded the nation like nothing they had ever seen before.

I don't know if you know much about the Netherlands or Holland. My family came from there. My grandpa came from the Netherlands at the beginning of the 20th century. I think it was even before then. But if you look at the Netherlands, most of that country is below sea level. I don't know if you knew that.

But the Dutch have spent centuries reclaiming land from the ocean. They have kept expanding their nation by claiming land from the ocean. They build dikes. They drain. If you fly over the Netherlands, you will see all these canals crisscrossing all over the country. You ever know why windmills are associated with the Netherlands?

Those are their pumping stations. They're constantly pumping water out of their land. it's a land that's below sea level protected by dikes and canals and pumping stations the point I'm trying to make simply is that the survival of that nation depends on the strength of their dikes and if those break down the nation disappears, the country at least disappears and this is the way Manasseh was as the king he broke down all the barriers and iniquity flew and flooded that nation as never before as he tore down all the restraining systems and the flood of iniquity overtook the kingdom. All his actions demonstrated a contempt for God and all his commandments.

An absolute contempt for God. This was not a quiet rebellion, but a public insult hurled into the face of the Most High. That's how bad it got. That's how bad he was. Now some may be here saying, boy, I'm glad I haven't sunken that far into depravity. Well, we need to be reminded, as the Apostle Paul does, about ourselves in Romans chapter 2.

So turn there for a moment so that we get a balanced perspective here You know it too easy for us to look down our noses at the people of old and say I would never do that I would never do that What wrong with those people Why don they get it Listen to what Paul says to Romans 2 now. In Romans 1, Paul has labored the fact that the people who don't have the Bible, that people who don't have the special revelation of God, that people who have not heard of God and of Jesus are all condemned. And they are all condemned because the light that they do have, which is in nature, they squash, they hold it down, they rebel against the very little revelation of God that he has, the kindergarten level of revelation they have, they forget it, they suppress it, and turn in their darkened understanding to all kinds of evil.

And so now Paul in chapter 2 talks to people who do have the Bible, who do know what God says, who have the light of revelation in the scriptures, and he says to them, don't think you can get yourself off the hook. Here's what he says to them. Chapter 2, verse 1. Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, in other words, yeah, you're saying about those people who don't have the Bible, Yeah, look at them.

Look how rebellious and depraved and degraded they are. We're not that way. We have what God gave us. This is what he says to those kinds of people. Every man of you who judges for passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

Do you suppose, oh man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, you who look down your nose at those people like Manasseh, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed? You've got an impenitent heart yourself. and on that basis, the wrath of God, you're storing up wrath.

Drop down to verse 17. But if you call yourself a Jew, the one who has the word of God, and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you're instructed from the law, and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in need, darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth. You then who teach others, do you teach yourself?

While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, dishonor God by breaking the law. For as is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. You may not murder babies, but you hate the fact that you have children who are inconvenient and get in the way of your desires.

You may not practice sexual religion, but what did you view this week on your computer and what was on your mind concerning some of the women at work? You may not be going to psychics for guidance, but how many of your decisions have been made without reference to God's will as it's revealed in the scripture? you may not be involved in violent and brutal acts but how many of you have harbored hate in your heart for someone who crossed you how many of you have just said i'm not going to have anything more to do with that person i'm done i'm out of here i'm leaving forget you how many of you are guilty of that you see and the lord is provoked to anger at such contempt whether in action or only in heart. God is provoked because he is holy and he cannot and will not overlook any contempt.

He will not overlook any of those sins. Did Manasseh go too far? Have we all gone too far? Well, let's keep reading the story. Let's pick it up in verse 10. the Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people but they paid no attention therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon and when he was in distress he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers he prayed to him and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom, then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.

You can have hope because of God's mercy. You can have hope because of God's mercy. Now let observe the mercy of God to Manasseh God displayed his mercy by warning him and his people He did it through prophets who came with words from God telling him that he was wrong that he was sinful that he needed to repent And even though the Lord was provoked to anger, he yet takes pity and he sends warnings and he offers to relent from sending destruction and judgment.

Here is the mercy of God, even though he is provoked to anger, even though he is rightfully, righteously angry at the horrors of sin that Manasseh does and promotes. Nevertheless, he shows his mercy even when he is angry. He takes pity and sends warnings by means of the prophets in order to call him and the people to repentance. That is God's mercy. To hear from him a message that says repent or die.

You know, God had every right not to send any message and just wipe them out. But he did not. Notice that God displays his mercy in Manasseh's misery. This is the mercy of God. What a sorry spectacle. The king dragged away by troops of another nation with hooks in his nose and in bronze shackles.

What humiliation for his family. What humiliation for his nation. This pitiful man, a descendant of David and Solomon, the son of one of the most powerful kings that ever ruled, Hezekiah, now shuffling off in bonds. Consider this. If you want to get kind of an idea of it, think of your husband. or your dad, arrested, handcuffed, shuffling off in an orange jumpsuit with all the neighbors watching.

Right? And yet, this is God's mercy, because God at times hands men over to the consequences of their sins. And those consequences sometimes become instruments of God's mercy. which is what you see happening in verse 12. And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers His misery led to his repentance Here is your friend a guy who lived for himself and lost his family as a result But now he comes to you and you introduce him to Jesus.

He may never have come if he had not suffered the misery of his sin. He may never have once considered Christ if it were not for the misery that God visited on him for his sin, the consequences of his sin. C.S. Lewis once wrote, pain is God's megaphone to speak to a deaf world. Pain is God's megaphone to speak to a deaf world. Sometimes it takes the worst circumstances before someone becomes willing to listen to God.

This is God's mercy in what he did to Manasseh. And then finally, you see God displaying his mercy in hearing Manasseh and converting him. until Manasseh says the Lord is God. That is to say he is God. None of these others that I have worshipped before are God. The Lord is God. Jehovah is God.

Listen carefully. Don't forget this. If you forget anything from this sermon, don't forget this. The God who cannot tolerate sin cannot turn away from a broken sinner. That's true. The God who cannot tolerate sin will never turn away from a broken sinner.

Even more breathtaking than Manasseh's wickedness is Manasseh's repentance. After leading his nation astray, after giving his heart to pagan gods and actually putting his trust in them, he declares the Lord is God. Jehovah is God. What is amazing is the demonstration of God's mercy to Manasseh. What an amazing thing to see. What an amazing thing to see.

Now listen. God bestowed his mercy because of his promise. bestowed his mercy because of his promise. Turn back in 2 Chronicles to chapter 6 In chapter 6 you find Solomon prayer of dedication for the temple that he has just built It is a fascinating story. It's a fascinating narrative, this prayer. There is one theme through this prayer that may surprise you.

Do you ever hear people talk about the God of the Old Testament? Right? I was watching an episode of the West Wing the other day when President Bartlett and the Republican candidate for president are sitting in the White House talking, and the Republican candidate is saying how he doesn't believe the Bible anymore because of the horrible things that God does in the Old Testament.

And President Bartlett responds with, well, I've always been kind of a New Testament guy, as if the two are opposed to one another, as if the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New. watch what this God is like as Solomon prays to him at the dedication of the temple. Okay? We're not going to read the whole thing. It's really a long prayer.

But beginning in verse 18 of 2 Chronicles 6. But will God indeed dwell with men on earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built. This is Solomon speaking. yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea oh Lord my God listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you that your eyes may be open day and night toward this house the place where you have promised to set your name that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offered toward this place and listen to the pleas of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place and listen from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

Verse 24, if your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you and they turn again and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them again to the land that you gave to them and to their fathers. Drop down to verse 36. to which they have been carried captive, and repent, and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly. If they repent with all their mind and with all their heart in the land of their captivity, to which they were carried captive, and pray toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you.

Do you see the theme of forgiveness here? He says, Lord, if we have sinned and these horrible things happen in accordance with the covenant that you have made with us and we turn to this temple, this place where you've placed your name and pray, forgive. Solomon pleads for that. In the next chapter, and again, this is a verse we're familiar with, but notice what it says in chapter 7, verse 14.

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Manasseh only repents because of the promise of God for his mercy. Listen to me. Manasseh would never have repented. He never would have humbled himself if it were not for the promise of God.

Listen. Listen carefully. the law of God which threatens punishment for sin would never have brought Manasseh to God the law of God can never do that the law of God can only convict and tell us we're sinners but it is the promise of mercy that draws sinners to God the law brings down the crushing weight of our guilt but the promise of God's mercy is what moves us to look to God and to ask for mercy. It is that which does it.

Never forget that. Don't forget that with your children. Your laws will never remove them to repentance. Only mercy does. Remember that with your friends when you're angry and you want to bring the law of God down on them. The law of God has its purpose.

It brings conviction. It shows us our guilt. It condemns us. But it's only the promise of God of mercy that moves a sinner to turn to God Without mercy without the promise without the promise there is no mercy Only the promise of mercy can move a sinner to repent There is hope in mercy. And so Manasseh does what Solomon says and what it says in 2 Corinthians 7.14.

He turns in repentance because God promises mercy. you can have hope because of God's mercy promised in Jesus Christ our hope is found in Jesus remember that the Bible is a story of God's dealing with men and we're in the beginning chapters of God's story of mercy Manasseh's story is just one of the many introductions to God's mercy to us this story foreshadows what is yet to come in the story of mercy the temple pictures Jesus the temple was the meeting place between God and man This is where God placed his name. And if you wanted to meet with God, you had to come to the temple. If you wanted to deal with God, you had to come to the temple.

If you wanted God to hear you, you had to come to the temple or pray toward it. Jesus is that temple. You come to God through Christ. He is the fulfillment of this picture of the temple. Not only that, the temple was the place of atonement. As Jesus is the atonement. listen God makes the promise of mercy for degraded depraved defiant destructive sinners explicit in Jesus the apostle Paul himself knew this in his own degraded depraved defiant way he was a sinner against God and this is what he writes in first Timothy chapter 1 verses 15 through 17 here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, what reason? The reason that He was the worst. But for that very reason, 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. now to the king eternal immortal invisible the only God be honor and glory forever and ever amen so we find that there hope in mercy and that mercy is found in Jesus And God will never turn you away if you come to Jesus Never Let's continue with our story.

You can have hope because God's mercy brings a better life. God's mercy brings a better life. Verses 14 through 20. Afterward, he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon. Remember now, he's been returned to Jerusalem. in the valley, and for the entrance into the fish gate, and carried it around Ophel, and raised it to a very great height.

He also put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities in Judah. And he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built on the mountains of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem. And he threw them outside of the city. He also restored the altar of the Lord and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving.

And he commanded Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel. Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the Lord, their God. Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the Lord God, of the Lord, the God of Israel. Behold, there in the chronicles of the kings of Israel and his prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty and all his sin and his faithlessness and the sites on which he built the high places and set up the Asherim and the images before he humbled himself.

Behold, they are written in the chronicles of the seers. So Manasseh slept with his fathers and they buried him in his house and Ammon, his son, reigned in his place. Look again at Manasseh. God restored the land just like he said he would in 2 Corinthians 7.14, or 2 Chronicles 7.14, which is what the building of the wall is all about. And the army commanders, they are starting to return to greatness.

God restored a repentant sinner. Verse 13. God changes those who repent. Look at the evidence of a changed life, of a changed heart. He destroys all those things. He tries to make it right.

He's willing to right the wrongs that he has done. He's willing to right all the wrongs that he has done. Now, he is not entirely successful in that, is he? Because the people still kept worshiping Jehovah in the high places. At least they weren't worshiping false gods there. So their worship wasn't exactly the way it should be.

However, we prove our repentance not by our success in returning things to the way they were, but in the willingness to make them right In the willingness to make them right He even shows a willingness I believe he shows a willingness to help others by using himself as an example Do you note that the acts that he did was recorded in this thing, the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and also the Chronicles of the Seers? We don't have those texts anymore. They were something that those folks had back then.

But it's interesting to me that his prayer is recorded in the Chronicles of the Seers. Isn't that interesting? Manasseh offered that prayer while he was in captivity. He must have given that prayer to the prophets for them to record. He must have given them that prayer. And although we do not have those records, it nevertheless shows a willingness to teach the next generation.

He wants them to know the mercy of God. you see God's mercy brings a new life to you life as it should be now for us who've been joined to Christ who live under the new covenant the better life does not necessarily mean restoring everything to the place where it once was but under Jesus we are promised something better than what you had before so let's just say here's your friend he was an abusive man who has lost his family because of his abuse. He did horrible things. And he lost his family.

And God, in years later, converts him, reaches him with the gospel of grace. And God will give him a better life. But that doesn't mean his family will be restored to him. Not necessarily. Doesn't necessarily mean that. But it does mean that he'll have a better life.

Because now he can live life. A life that is a life of peace. A life that is free from anger. and manipulation and playing the power broker and the ability to know the joy of serving others, whereas before he never would have thought of that. It also means he'll have a whole new family that will love him. I love Jesus' promise in Mark chapter 10 where he says, I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. and in the age to come eternal life.

Do you see what Jesus is saying? You may lose everything, but you gain this family. You gain a family who love you. You gain a family who look out for you. You'll gain a family. Someday he's going to receive an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

An eternal glory that far outweighs them all. All those are his now. You see, the better life we receive by God's mercy goes far beyond what we experience under sin. You see, not only your sin, listen carefully now, not only your sin, but your repentance will have consequences. We always want to talk about the consequences of sin, and we should. but never forget that repentance has consequences too and they're better they're better consequences well there's one last thing we need to see here let's look at it the last few verses beginning in verse 20 so Manasseh slept with his fathers and they buried him in his house and Ammon his son reigned in his place Ammon was 22 years old when he began to reign and he reigned two years in Jerusalem and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord as Manasseh his father had done Ammon sacrificed to all the images that Manasseh his father had made and served them and he did not humble himself before the Lord as Manasseh his father had humbled himself but this Ammon incurred guilt but this Ammon incurred guilt more and more And his servants conspired against him and put him to death in his house But the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Ammon.

And the people of the land made Josiah his son, king in his place. Recognize that there yet remains a state of hopelessness. After all this talk about hope, remember there is a place of hopelessness. Now, some would tell you that your past or your present environment produces such a state of hopelessness. We've been told today, if you grow up in a house of abuser, you will be an abuser.

If you are living in a particular environment, you will certainly be determined by that environment. You are doomed to become what your environment produces in you. And at first glance, that may seem to be the case with Ammon, because it says he did all the evil that his father had done. He no doubt saw those things that his father had done. And there is no way that we can say that our environment and our family and everything else influences us.

It certainly does. It can influence you. But this text also indicates that Ammon hopeless estate was the result of his refusal to humble himself before the Lord See he still responsible And even though he had the opportunity he did not humble himself and repent In fact his pride resulted in greater guilt He increased the misery of his life and that of his people.

He died at the hands of conspirators who, by the way, also were judged by their actions. What do we need to know? As long as you live, as long as you have the ability to hear the voice of God in scriptures, you have hope. There is always hope. Hope remains for those willing to repent and call on the mercy of God. But if you refuse, there is no hope.

If you refuse to repent, there is no hope. There is a hopeless estate, and that is the state of remaining unrepentant and stubborn in your sin. Hope remains for those willing to repent and call in the mercy of God. I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 11. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Let me ask you, do you think you beyond the you in a position that beyond the reach of God mercy It does not matter how low you sunk Manasseh stands as a testament to the richness of God grace You cannot exhaust the depths of that mercy if you repent. There is hope for any who would look to Christ, for it is Jesus who came to save sinners. never forget the God who cannot tolerate sin cannot turn away from a broken sinner Father thank you for your word of hope thank you for the hope that we find in your mercy make us a people who continually flee to Christ for mercy knowing that our Father will never turn away from a person with a contrite heart. And that the only thing He requires is that.

God have mercy on us as we seek Jesus. Help us to do that always. In His name we pray these things. Amen.