By: Joel Ramirez
Few figures in the Old Testament carry as heavy a spiritual weight as Manasseh, one of the last kings of Judah. His story is one the most sobering in all Scripture and not because repentance failed him, but because the repentance of one man was not enough to undo the spiritual damage done to an entire nation. In looking at Manasseh’s life, we find a mirror held to our own hearts, asking us a question that is as urgent and relevant today as it was almost 3000 years ago. Are we truly worshiping God as He has asked, or are we worshiping Him as we see fit? The account in 2nd Kings chapter 21 is a heart breaking read. Manasseh, the son of the righteous Hezekiah, becomes king at the age of 12 and rules for 55 years, the longest reign in Judah’s history. Yet the length of his reign is almost an indictment in itself, because those 55 years were filled with an especially evil spiritual rebellion. 2nd Kings 21:3-4 “For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. He built altars in the house of the Lord, which the Lord had said ‘In Jerusalem I will put My name.” He practiced witchcraft, consulted mediums and most chilling “made his son pass through the fire”, 2nd Kings 21:6. This was a form of child sacrifice to the pagan god Molech. He even placed a carved image of Asherah in the very temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, the place where God Himself had said He would put His name forever. The Lord’s judgement is direct and devastating. 2nd Kings 21:11 “Manasseh has done these abominations, having done wickedness more than all the Amorites did who were before him, and has also made Judah sin with his idols.” Because of Manasseh, God declared that He would wipe Jerusalem clean “as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down” 2nd Kings 21:13. The judgement on Judah was set. If we stopped at 2nd Kings, we would leave Manasseh as an enemy of God and nothing more. But God’s Word does not stop there, and neither should we. In 2nd Chronicles 33, we are shown the rest of Manasseh’s story. 2nd Chronicles 33:11-13 “Therefore the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze chains and took him to Babylon. When he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.” This is not a small thing, that a man who had done more to drag God’s people into idolatry than almost anyone in the nation’s history, was heard by God. God restored Manasseh. God’s truth is that there is no sin so great, no life so broken, that genuine repentance cannot reach the throne of God. Manasseh is proof that God’s mercy is not limited to those who have not strayed too far. God’s mercy is so wide spreading that it extends even to the worst of us, if we will only humble ourselves before Him. And Manasseh didn’t stop at words. When Manasseh returns to Jerusalem, we see in 2nd Chronicles 33:15-16 “he also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, as well as all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city. He also set up the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thank offerings on it, and he ordered Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.” This is the action of a changed man acting with sincerity of a changed heart. But this is where the story cuts closest to the bone, that even Manasseh’s genuine repentance and reform could not fully undo what had been done. 2nd Chronicles 33:17 “Nevertheless the people still sacrificed in the high places, although only to the Lord their God.” Read this carefully. The people were still worshiping God, but they were doing it in the high places. The high places were the pagan sites, the locations associated with Baal worship and the idolatrous rituals of the surrounding nations. Manasseh’s decades of corruption had so thoroughly woven false worship into the fabric of daily life that even after the king repented and commanded reform, the people continued to worship in the ways that God had never asked for and had never approved. This is a failure that reaches directly across all the centuries to us today. The people believed that they were honoring God. They were not burning incense to Baal but were instead burning it to the Lord. They were doing it their way at the locations and in the manners and patterns borrowed from pagan worship rather than the way God had commanded it. They were in effect saying that what matters is that we mean it and that God will surely accept our devotion because it comes from our hearts. This is not a new temptation. We see that in Genesis, Cain brought an offer that was not what was required by God. Another example found in Leviticus 10:1 is that of Nadab and Abihu who “offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them.” Yet again, we see Saul who kept the choicest livestock from the Amalekites as a sacrifice only to be told by Samuel in 1st Samuel 15:22 “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” We must ask ourselves in genuine humility how often do we assume that God will receive our worship simply because we are sincere. Sincerity, while precious, is not alone the standard. God has not left us without instruction. Jesus Himself said in John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Worship offered in an emotional fervor but without truth from what God has actually revealed is not the worship that God seeks. The people at the high places meant well but they were still condemned. So how do people arrive at such a place? Almost always, the answer is that they have not studied to know what God requires of them. The people of Manasseh’s day had lived for 55 years under a king who had filled their world with the sights and sounds of pagan worship. The Word of God had been crowded out. When Manasseh called them back to the Lord, they were willing but no longer knew what true worship to the Lord was. The familiar patterns of the high places were all they had without any further learning or being taught. The apostle Paul teaches of this danger as well in Romans 10:14 “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” Yet Paul puts the responsibility on the learner. 2nd Timothy 2:15 “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” Ignorance may be understandable, but it is never safe. God has not hidden what He requires of us. He has told us plainly that we must repent and be baptized for the remission of our sins, Acts 2:38. That we must continue to grow in faith, in love, and in the knowledge of Him, 2nd Peter 3:18. These are not hidden teachings buried in difficult passages. They are the clear, repeated call of the Gospel. But they can only reach us if we are diligently searching the scriptures daily. Manasseh’s story ends with grace, a real grace for a real man who humbled himself before our merciful God. We can never forget that. But the story of his nation ended in captivity. The judgement God declared in 2nd Kings 21 was not reversed by one man’s repentance, because the people had been so thoroughly shaped by decades of false worship that even their sincere efforts to return to God were corrupted by what they had absorbed. We live in a world of high places. We are surrounded by voices telling us that worship is whatever moves us, that God only asks for sincerity, that what matters is how we feel and not what God has said. Manasseh’s people believed the same thing and it cost them everything. Let us love God enough to learn what He asks of us. Let us seriously heed the call in 1st Thessalonians 5:21 “examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.” And let us come to God not in the ways that feel comfortable or familiar, but in spirit as well as in truth.