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Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends, on this the first day of December!
I wonder what happens in your heart and mind when you hear the word “December”? If you’ve lived in areas of the world where winter is cold, perhaps you think SNOW when you hear “December”? Probably, all of us think of Christmas when we hear “December”. May I give you a word to consider over and over this December? The word is MERCY!
Do you know the difference between MERCY and GRACE? Grace is receiving kindness you haven’t earned or receiving what you don’t deserve. Mercy is withholding the punishment which you have earned, or another way to say it: Mercy is not receiving what you deserve.
This December our world has had almost one full year to call on God for help, turn to God in repentance, and worship God in humility in the face of a global pandemic called Coronavirus COVID-19. But only very rarely, in only a few places on earth, has that been the response of our fellow human beings. Most everywhere, especially among government leaders, God has been ignored and the scientists and pharmaceutical companies have been called upon to find a human solution to COVID-19. God has been patient, extending His MERCY while our world has ignored God, and many times even blamed God for COVID-19!
Everywhere you and I look in our world. . . business, education, health care, politics, entertainment, international government relations, climate change, refugee crisis, the global, unbridled slaughter of unborn children or the enslavement of children or the self-enslavement of millions of people to alcohol or drugs or pornography… God is ignored or worse, God is rejected and abandoned, as our world implodes around us. Yet God continues to extend to every human being amazing MERCY!
Have you considered what you would do to planet earth and the human race if God put you in charge, and gave you unlimited authority and power to execute any judgement you felt was fair in response to the wickedness in our world? MERCY is probably NOT how you or I would respond to the condition of our world, is it? It’s a good thing God doesn’t ask our advice when it comes to justice!
Yesterday we finished the remarkable story of Hezekiah and the many miracles God poured out on his life and the people of Jerusalem during Hezekiah’s amazing lifetime. The final miracle was healing Hezekiah from near death and blessing him with a son soon after. That son was named Manasseh and he would fit very well in December 2020 in every society of our world! He was the opposite of his father Hezekiah in so many ways, but especially in his attitudes toward God! Look with me at 2 Chronicles 33, it’s almost unimaginable: “Manasseh was 12 yrs old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 55 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 erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. Manasseh bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them…He sacrificed his sons in the fire…practiced sorcery, divination and witchcraft and consulted the mediums and spiritists. He took the carved idol he made and put it in the Temple of the LORD…Manasseh led the people of Judah and Jerusalem astray, so they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed…” (2 Chronicles 33:1-9)
I wonder how your heart responds when you hear or read this description of the miraculous son of Hezekiah? Remember, if Hezekiah had died when he was very ill, Manasseh would never have been born! As you look around your part of our world, do you see people like Manasseh? People who grew up in good families, which have a respected heritage, but who have totally turned away from everything good and daily they mock God with their lives and their words? Do you see that like Manasseh, every day they live in the great MERCY God is extending to them?
Isn’t that the story of Christmas my friends? Into a broken, sinful, God rejecting world, God sent His son Jesus to be born in an animal stable, raised first as a refugee in Egypt, then as a suspected illegitimate child of Joseph & Mary in Nazareth, then Jesus was rejected by His own hometown and by the religious leaders of His day, and finally Jesus was hung to die on a cross even though innocent of any wrongdoing. But God’s MERCY!! Mercy is all about LOVE isn’t it? John wrote: “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His only Son into the world, that we might live through HIM! This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:9,10). Paul wrote it this way in Romans 5:8 “This is how God demonstrated His love for us: while we were all yet sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.”
Now those two verses are among many as the ultimate expressions of both GRACE & MERCY! Mercy, because our sin deserves God’s justice punishment of us and that justice is our death sentence, but God in MERCY withheld that punishment! Grace, because instead of killing us, God sent Jesus to die in our place so we could be forgiven and enter into a Father-son, Father-daughter relationship with God forever!
As Manasseh, even from a young age, systematically set about to undo every good thing his father Hezekiah had accomplished in leading the people to build a God honoring society, God withheld His justice punishment and did not strike Manasseh with some terminal illness. Instead God continued to provide Manasseh life, breath, health, each new day, and the privilege of being the leader of God’s people in and around Jerusalem, even though every day Manasseh abused that mercy and lived in total rejection and mockery of God! If you and I lived in those days our heads would be spinning as we watched the stark contrast between the character and leadership of a father Hezekiah and his son Manasseh!
Finally, God’s patience ran out, but even in judgment, God extended mercy! Rather than killing Manasseh, God allowed a foreign army to invade and take king Manasseh prisoner, giving him more time to reflect and repent. Listen to this graphic description: “The LORD spoke to Manasseh, but he paid no attention. So the LORD brought against Manasseh the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prison and put a hook in his nose, bound him with shackles and took him to Babylon.” ( 2 Chron. 33:10,11) Do I hear you cheering God’s justice and judgment on ungrateful, wicked Manasseh?
But here’s an important question for us to consider my friends, as we look all around our world: What is God’s objective, His hope, His ultimate purpose for extending MERCY to our wicked, God rejecting world? WHY does God not simply destroy us all and start over? Why is God so patient that He waits weeks, months, years, decades, centuries… generation after generation, in His great MERCY, giving our human race the chance to change, to turn to Him? What is the purpose of MERCY? In one word it’s POTENTIAL!
Into every human being God has placed the POTENTIAL for change! The potential to recognize how wrong they are and the understanding that God can change them IF they will TURN to God. That is the potential to REPENT! The potential for God to then do His life transforming, miraculous work of REGENERATION. It means ‘born again’, which means God births in a repenting person a new, holy, spiritual nature which can live in a glorious, exciting, daily relationship with Holy God! I have experienced this new birth, have you, my friend?
Have you ever seen a person you think is so evil, so wicked that you conclude God’s MERCY is wasted on them because you simply cannot imagine they have any potential for turning TO God and trusting God to transform them into a God honoring person?? Manasseh was that type of man. I would guess the day he was hauled off in a cage like an animal, cheers went up all around Jerusalem, from the older people who remembered what life had been like when his father Hezekiah had been their leader!
Has that ever happened to you? A new boss at work, a new coach for the team, a new bully in the playground… and life turned really bad for you? But then justice seemed to be served, and the bad boss was fired, the terrible coach was replaced, the bully moved away! With God there is always hope for change my friends, please don’t give up if you live in a part of the world that seems beyond hope.
Look closely at how God’s MERCY finally awakened Manasseh’s POTENTIAL: “In his distress, Manasseh sought the favor of the LORD and he humbled himself greatly before the God of his father. When Manasseh prayed to Him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to Manasseh’s plea; so God brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Than Manasseh knew that the LORD is God.” (2 Chron. 33:12,13)
Unfortunately, we have no further explanation of how this amazing transformation took place or how God rescued Manasseh out of the dungeon of his captivity and returned him to the palace in Jerusalem. What we do have is the closing verses of 2 Chronicles 33 which give us detail of how king Manasseh reversed his horrible legacy and previous policies by leading the people of Jerusalem in repenting, turning to God, and tearing down the idols he had led them in constructing.
I urge you to read those verses carefully as a graphic description of the power of God in changing a wicked man into a God honoring man who then led his people to reverse his many years of terrible leadership. With God, there is ALWAYS hope in His MERCY my friends! What might God be preparing to do in your country, your community, your family and might YOU be a key to that transformation? What does God want to teach all of us through His remarkable work in the life of Manasseh?
I’ve found another new song that seems to fit Manasseh and us so well. Here are some of the words to this song “His Mercy is more”… and remember we now have an audio Bible link at the bottom of this page so you can click directly into hearing 2 Chronicles 33.
“What love could remember, no wrongs we have done?
Omniscient, all knowing, HE counts not their sum.
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore,
Our sins they are many, His MERCY is more!
What patience would wait as we constantly roam?
What Father so tender is calling us home?
He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor
Our sins they are many, His MERCY is more!
Click to read today’s chapter: 2 Chronicles 33. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
NEW FEATURE: Click here to listen to a dramatized reading of 2 Chronicles 33.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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