"Repentance"

Well, good morning, church. It's good to be with you all this morning. Would you turn with me to 2 Chronicles, chapter 33.

2 Chronicles 33 · chapter mention

2 Chronicles 33, that's page 357 in the Pew Bible. As we continue our series in this Old Testament book of Chronicles this summer, we're in chapter 33.

So as we turn there, I wonder, if you were to sum up the Christian life in one word, which word would you choose?

Well, on the one hand, you would be correct if you chose the word Christ, right? Jesus Himself.

Christianity is all about the person and work of the Lord Jesus. But let's say you had to choose one more word in addition to that one.

Which one would you pick to sum up the Christian life?

What did you say, Dorothy? Evangelism.

Let's do it. What else? Anybody else?

Forgiveness. That's a good one.

Faith, love, hope, obedience, good works, suffering, family, is that what you said, Danny?

Failure, yeah.

Well, you know, it's interesting that Martin Luther, when he wrote his 95 Theses, he wrote this.

He said, this is his first of his 95 Theses.

He says, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

Repentance.

Now, there's a word that sums up the Christian life, at least according to Luther and to many saints before him.

Repentance.

Now, I imagine you could attend many religious gatherings, many church services even, and never even hear the word repentance.

You know, we can shy away from language of repentance because the word sort of sounds stuffy and grim and loaded with false guilt and empty religion.

And I think that's a real shame, and it's a loss.

Because the biblical concept of repentance is just brimming with hope.

If we really understood repentance, we'd see that it's like a prison sentence being lifted.

It's like windows being opened and the fresh breeze filling the room.

It's like a new chapter.

It's like a fresh start.

So I wonder, friends, are you in need of a new chapter today, a fresh start?

And perhaps we need to consider afresh the biblical concept of repentance.

Do you know what this word means?

Does it fill you with hope?

Well, that's what our text today is all about.

It's a window into this rich biblical reality of repentance.

Second Chronicles chapter 33 is the story of Manasseh.

2 Chronicles 33 · chapter mention

And as we'll see, Manasseh is notorious in the story of the Old Testament and not in a good way.

So as we turn to this chapter, let's pray and then we'll dive in.

Would you pray with me?

Father, help us to understand what it is your Spirit is inviting us into through this passage,

these great and deep spiritual truths that lead us into your very heart.

God, thank you that your Word is living and active and abundant and overflowing with the revelation of yourself

so that we might know you and be who you've created us and redeemed us to be.

So do that work now, we pray, by your Spirit.

For Christ's sake, amen.

So the first thing we see in 2 Chronicles 33 is our need for repentance, the need for repentance.

Let me read verses 1 through 11.

We'll set things up.

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 Baals and made Ashteroth 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.

And the carved image of the idol that he had made, he set 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 commanded them,

all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.

Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Israel, of Jerusalem, astray,

to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.

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.

Well, as you might have guessed from these verses,

Manasseh is remembered as one of the worst kings in the history of Israel.

He has one of the longest reigns, 55 years,

and for most of that long reign, he undoes nearly all of the good that his father Hezekiah had done.

And now when we look at a figure like Manasseh, it's easy to think, right, that we are so not like him.

We read about his evil and his idolatry, and we can think that we're doing pretty good in comparison, right?

But you know, rather than comparing our outward deeds to Manasseh's outward deeds,

let's press a little deeper into the heart.

And when we do that, I think we see two heart dynamics in Manasseh that are actually true of everyone.

And so through Manasseh, we see why you and I and all of us have a deep need for this thing we call repentance.

And that first heart dynamic is this.

It's that our idolatry leads to the Lord's anger.

The end of verse 6 says,

Manasseh did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

That is, provoking the Lord to anger.

Manasseh, you see, chose to worship things that were not the one true God.

He chose created things, gods of human invention, and worshipped them instead.

And now on the surface, it's easy to think that we're not so silly, right, as to worship statues, literally idols anymore.

But the reality is today, we still worship created things rather than our Creator.

We take finite things and make them ultimate things in our lives.

Here's maybe a diagnostic question for you and for me.

Is there something in your life other than God that if you lost it, you wouldn't be just sad or heartbroken, but you'd be devastated?

You wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Or maybe a slightly different way of asking that question.

Is there something that so shapes your identity, your sense of self, that if you lost it or if it was threatened, you'd be completely disoriented, completely wrecked?

What's the thing that kind of props you up as you?

Maybe it's your profession.

You know, you've worked a lot of years to get where you are, and now you kind of can't imagine yourself without it.

Or maybe it's a relationship.

Or maybe it's just the approval of others, your family, your children, your co-workers, your peers.

Maybe it's even your sense of being a good person.

You've labored long in your life to be a person of character, of moral worth.

And that is the thing that sort of establishes your sense of self.

Whatever your identity is, whatever it is, that if you lost it, you'd lose yourself, that's your God.

You know, in these modern-day idols of our hearts, they not only kind of shape our identity, they also dictate our actions.

You know, much like previous kings that we've seen in the book of 2 Chronicles, Manasseh probably didn't wake up one morning and say,

you know, I think I'm going to do all the things that are listed in verse 6.

What am I going to do today?

I think I'll sacrifice my children to the Baals.

I think I'll go out and perform some sorcery and start engaging in necromancy.

You know, that's not where it starts, but that's where it leads.

Most of us start by saying, I want to work hard and get ahead.

I want to do what it takes to be successful in my career.

I want to make a difference.

I want to make my mark.

But when the career or the relationship at last becomes Lord in our life, when it becomes our identity,

then we find that we're doing all sorts of things to serve it and to uphold it.

Then we find that we're doing all sorts of things to serve it and to uphold it that we would never have dreamed doing before.

We start out thinking that, you know, well, maybe I'd have to fudge these reports.

You know, that's not where we started, but that's where we end up.

You don't start out thinking, oh, I'm going to compromise on all of my boundaries and personal integrity.

But three, four, five years in, we find we're doing things we wouldn't have considered possible.

And, you know, not only does that place we end up in, not only does that wound our souls very deeply,

it also alienates us from God.

By turning away from the true God to idols, the Bible is very clear that we put ourselves at enmity with God.

We place ourselves under what the Bible calls God's anger or God's wrath.

Again, verse 6 says that the Lord was provoked to anger at Manasseh.

Now, remember, God's anger is not like human anger.

Human anger is what?

It's uncontrolled, it's fickle, it's self-centered, it's destructive.

Human anger rarely does anything good.

But God's wrath, God's anger is nothing like that.

God's anger is His perfectly just, perfectly controlled opposition

to all that dishonors Him and all that defaces the good world that He's made.

God's anger, God's wrath is God's perfect no to evil and wrong.

You see, the great tragedy of idolatry, it's not just the kind of horizontal consequences it creates

between us and the things around us, but it's the vertical enmity it creates between us and God.

In other words, idolatry doesn't just put us out of joint with creation much more tragically and much more seriously,

it puts us at a joint with our Creator.

And that's the first heart dynamic we see in Manasseh is that idolatry leads to this enmity with God.

It leads to God's anger.

The second dynamic that we see, we see in verses 10 and verse 11.

And it's this, it's that there's a refusal to heed God's warnings,

which leads to God giving us over to our sin.

Verse 10 reads,

The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to His people, but they paid no attention.

God, in His great kindness towards Manasseh as He's performing all this evil and leading the people astray,

God, in His great kindness, calls out to them through the prophets,

warns them that they're rushing headlong towards a cliff's edge,

but they turn a deaf ear.

They ignored God.

And then after that patient calling and beckoning and entreating,

after the many years of God pursuing them,

at last God, in His justice, gives them over to the very gods that they had chosen to worship.

And that's what we see in verse 11.

Manasseh and the people, they took to themselves the gods of the nations,

and so God gives them over to those very nations.

Manasseh is defeated by the Assyrians and taken away as a captive to one of the Assyrian outposts in the city of Babylon,

which at this point in history, the kingdom of Assyria controlled.

You know, perhaps one of the most terrifying things that could happen to us as human beings

is for God to give us exactly what we want when what we want is something apart from Him.

It led Manasseh to total slavery.

He thought he was choosing to worship the gods of the nations,

and for a while it worked, or so he thought,

but after refusing God's gracious warnings,

God eventually gave him over to those gods,

and now he had no choice.

Now he was captive to them.

So why do we need repentance?

We need repentance because the fallen human heart is at enmity with God.

We worship idols of our own choosing,

and this not only puts us on a direct path to spiritual slavery and self-destruction,

it also puts us under God's just and eternal no,

which is a darkness of separation from God Himself,

who is the only source of lasting joy.

So is there hope for us?

You know, you can live for a long time,

and you can kind of believe in your head and say things like,

ah, I'm not perfect, I'm not a good person,

and you know, what we mean by that a lot of the times is,

ah, I'm just like everybody else, right?

Nobody's perfect.

But you know, we can say things like that

without ever realizing yet

the real gravity of our sin,

the real gravity of our spiritual condition.

But what happens when the curtain is drawn back

and you see yourself for the first time really,

you know, when the lights in the basement of your heart are flipped on

and you kind of see all that's been harboring there

and scuttling around in there,

when you see the depth of your sin and selfishness,

what then?

What then when you realize that you've completely blown it

and that in the face of God's holiness and justice,

you simply don't stand a chance?

When you come to yourself one day and realize

that you've actually gotten everything you wanted,

but you're actually not free,

you're empty,

and you're enslaved.

Is there any hope for us then?

And this is where 2 Chronicles chapter 33

2 Chronicles 33 · chapter mention

becomes a chapter of great hope for us.

For those of us who know how dark our hearts can really be,

because at this moment,

repentance becomes the window

that opens up to the sun.

Repentance presents itself as the fresh start

in the new chapter.

So we've seen in our chapter

the need for repentance.

We now come to the second point,

which is the nature of repentance.

The nature of repentance.

Let's read just the next two verses,

verses 12 and 13.

Verse 12,

Then Manasseh knew

that the Lord was God.

What exactly is repentance?

Well, according to verse 12,

it has two aspects.

On the one hand,

the text says,

Manasseh humbled himself greatly

before the God of his fathers.

You see,

Manasseh came to admit

that he had made a ruin of things,

and he let go

of his self-justification

and his excuses.

He let go of all the ways

he might have tried to minimize

what he had done.

He confessed that he was guilty

and deserved nothing from God.

He humbled himself greatly

before the God of his fathers.

And then secondly,

it says,

He entreated the favor

of the Lord his God.

You know,

it's one thing to admit

that you've blown it.

It's another thing

to cry out for help.

Simply wallowing in the mess

of our own making,

that can be just another form

of self-centeredness,

can't it?

But calling out to another,

calling out to God

for rescue,

that's what genuine repentance is.

It's turning from ourselves

to God.

That's the nature of repentance.

And there are plenty of prayers

in Scripture that show us

what this looks like.

Psalm 51 being

one of the most well-known.

In Psalm 51,

David prays,

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love.

According to your abundant mercy,

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly

from my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions

and my sin is ever before me.

Purge me with hyssop

and I shall be clean.

Wash me

and I shall be whiter than snow.

You know, friends,

the beauty of Scripture,

the beauty of this Word

that God has inspired

and preserved for us

is that you can take

these words,

like the words of Psalm 51,

and you can pray them

as your own.

God's giving you,

as it were,

the very path

to walk on

back to Himself.

How kind of God

to give us this Word.

So you can take these words

and pray them as your own.

You know, repentance

isn't some mysterious

spiritual practice

for the religious elite,

right?

It's simply the cry of a heart

that knows it needs

God's forgiveness

and God's freedom.

But you know,

we wouldn't really understand

the nature of repentance

without seeing the very next point

that 2 Chronicles 33 makes.

2 Chronicles begins

by showing us

the need for repentance

and then the nature

of repentance,

but at the heart

of this passage

is the God of repentance.

The God of repentance.

Look again at verse 13.

Manasseh prayed to God

and God was moved

by his entreaty

and heard his plea

and brought him again

to Jerusalem

and into his kingdom.

Then Manasseh knew

that the Lord was God.

Friends, the God

who steps forth

from this chapter

is a God

who is rich in mercy,

who hears the prayer

of every sinner

who repents.

Did you come here

this morning

thinking that God

only hears the prayers

of so-called good people

or righteous people?

I have news for you.

There are no good people.

There are no righteous people.

Listen to what Isaiah 57, 15 says.

The prophet Isaiah says,

For thus says the one

who is high and lifted up,

who inhabits eternity,

whose name is holy.

That's God.

God says,

I dwell in the high

and holy place

and also with him

who is of a contrite

and lowly spirit

to revive the spirit

of the lowly

and to revive the heart

of the contrite.

God doesn't dwell

in the midst of the righteous.

He dwells in the midst

of the repentant

and the humble

and the contrite.

God is an ocean of mercy

towards those who turn to him

in humble repentance.

Do you think

this morning

that he would not accept you?

Do you think

because of what you've done

or who you've been

that God would turn you away?

And the truth is,

friend,

God knows everything about you.

He knows your good deeds

and your triumphs

and your successes,

but he also knows

the dark thoughts

and the selfishness

and the cursing

and the jealousy

and the pride.

Everything you've tried to hide,

your creator sees it all.

But still,

do you think

that he won't accept you

if you turn to him?

Do you think

that there's no fresh start

for you,

no new chapter,

no beginning again,

no healing,

no hope?

Friends,

if that is you,

look again at Manasseh.

What did God do

with this notorious

moral failure?

When Manasseh humbled himself

and turned to God,

did he crash upon

the rocks of God's justice?

Was his soul turned back

and refused entry?

No.

In mercy,

God received him home.

God welcomed him

into the safe harbor

of his love.

The Father embraced him

and reinstated him

as his child.

Friend,

there is room for you

around the table of God

no matter how great

your sins may be.

He has a seat for you

and for everyone

who repents.

I think the most powerful

part of this whole passage

is found at the end

of verse 13

where the chronicler says,

then Manasseh knew

that the Lord was God.

Then,

then,

when he had experienced

God's radical,

scandalous,

prodigal grace,

then Manasseh knew

that the Lord was God.

That's,

when you really see

who God is,

that's where

the godness of God

burns the brightest

in the radical forgiveness

of sinners

through his own

sheer mercy.

So, friend,

if you have not experienced

that radical mercy

in repentance,

you do not yet know

this great God of the Bible.

He is greater

and more merciful

and more kind

than you could ever imagine.

Now,

as we consider

this Old Testament text,

as we consider Manasseh

receiving this radical

grace and forgiveness,

you know,

it's true for Manasseh,

living as he was

under the Old Covenant,

that, you know,

he only knew

at that time

in redemptive history

that God had forgiven him.

But the saints

of the Old Testament

could only see

in the faintest,

dimmest way

how God would accomplish

that forgiveness.

But from the perspective

of the New Testament today,

we see just how radical

God's mercy truly is,

just how central it is

to his own being.

After all,

you know,

you read an Old Testament

text like this

and you think,

well,

what became

of God's just anger

against Manasseh's

idolatry and evil?

Right?

Did God just decide

to stop being just

and righteous and holy?

Did God just sort of

stop being God

in order to be merciful?

And that, of course,

is a great tension

that runs throughout

the whole Old Testament.

How can God be both

holy and merciful?

How can God be both

just and the one

who justifies,

who forgives sinners?

And friends,

that great dilemma

that runs through

the Old Testament

and sits there

like a great question,

begging for an answer,

answer.

Friends,

the answer finally

comes to light

when in the fullness

of time,

God became incarnate

in the person

of Jesus Christ.

Because in human flesh,

God,

in Jesus,

would bear human sin

and He would bear

the wrath

that human sin

deserved on the cross.

God's justice

would be fully displayed

in wrath against sin,

wrath against human sin.

All the punishment

that sin deserved

was poured out

so that in exchange,

God,

while still being just,

could extend

utter free forgiveness

to everyone

who humbles themselves

and turns to God

in repentance and faith

and receives Christ

as their own.

In other words,

Manasseh's sin

and all the saints

of the Old Testament

and your sins

and mine

and the sins

of everyone who repents,

they were paid

by another.

They were laid

on Christ at the cross

and all that remained

for Manasseh

and all that remains

for you

and for me

is God's mercy.

And so repentance

really is a fresh start.

It really is a new chapter.

It really is a curtain

being torn open

to the sun.

And because of who God is,

because of what God

has accomplished

through Jesus,

this fresh start,

this new chapter,

this curtain thrown open,

it's never going to be closed.

I mean,

how many times

have you kind of tried

to make a good start

only to fall down again,

right?

But you see,

this clean slate,

this perfect righteousness

isn't something

you're trying to achieve.

It's something that's given

to you out of God's mercy.

So you see,

when God forgives,

when God hears

and accepts us

in His Son,

in Jesus Christ,

it's permanent

and it's final

and there's no going back.

Christ died

not just for your past sin

or your present sin,

but for all your future sins

as well,

they're all covered

and that ocean

of God's mercy

never runs dry.

You can never hit

the bottom of it.

However deep you think

your sins have carried you,

His mercy is deeper still.

This is the God of repentance.

repentance.

This is the God

of the Bible.

Now before we go

to the Lord's Supper

in just a minute

and receive the bread

and cup

as signs and seals

of God's mercy

in Christ,

why don't we apply

this message

about repentance

in two ways?

And we actually see

these two ways

in the rest of our passage.

First one is this.

If you've turned

from sin

and trusted

in God's mercy

in Christ,

then what this passage

invites us to do

is to bear

the fruit

of repentance.

The fruit

of repentance.

This is what we see

in verses 14 through 17.

I won't read those verses,

but you can scan over them

in that paragraph

in the Pew Bible.

And what you do,

what you see there

is that Manasseh

returns to Jerusalem

and having been put right

with God,

he begins to put things right.

He starts rebuilding

the city,

he starts serving

and protecting the people

the way he should have been,

and most importantly,

he starts restoring

the proper worship

of God in the temple.

He gets rid of the idols

and worships God alone.

And you see, friends,

that's the pattern

for everyone

who experiences

genuine repentance

and the mercy of God.

Your life will begin

to bear the fruit

of that repentance.

When you turn to God

and receive His mercy,

your life will begin

to change.

Now notice,

God's free mercy

comes to Manasseh

before Manasseh

changes his life.

God's heart is changed

by God's grace

and then his life is changed.

In other words,

Manasseh doesn't earn

God's forgiveness

by his good works.

He never could.

Before experiencing

God's mercy, right,

he didn't even want

to listen to God,

let alone serve and obey Him,

but now,

having come to know God

through God's mercy,

Manasseh's life changes.

And so will yours, friend.

God will take your life

and begin to remake it

and restore it.

It won't be all at once.

It will be a process

of growth and change.

Not everything

will get better overnight.

Verse 17 of our passage

actually acknowledges this

when it says that

the people still sacrificed

at the high places

even though they were

sacrificing now

to the Lord only.

You see,

there were lingering

consequences of Manasseh's

old life that he still

had to contend with.

It didn't all magically

get better,

but all the same,

Manasseh,

for the few years

that he had left,

was a new person

in a living relationship

with a living God

and his life

was bearing fruit.

It was not too late

for Manasseh

to begin a new life

with God

and it's not too late

for you or I either.

So I think this paragraph

of our text

begins to ask us

some questions.

The Holy Spirit

begins to invite us

to ask,

how is God calling

you and me

to bear

the fruit of repentance?

How is he calling you

to live your life

in response

to God's free mercy?

Is there an idol

that you need

to get rid of?

Is there an act of love

that you need to begin?

Which of the virtues

is God forming

in you at the present?

How is he making you

more like Christ?

How is your life

becoming more and more

of a living offering

to him,

to God,

in service to others?

That's the first application.

For those who have

turned to God

in repentance,

bear the fruit

of repentance.

Not to earn God's mercy,

but in glad response

to it.

Now we see

the second application

in the final part

of our passage

to the end of the chapter,

verses 18 through 25.

And again,

we won't read those verses,

but you can scan over them

in the passage

in front of you.

And these final verses

speak to those

who have not yet

turned to God

in repentance.

And what these verses

are all about

is the urgency

of repentance,

the urgency of it.

These last couple paragraphs

tell us about

Manasseh's son,

his son named Ammon.

And they tell us

how Ammon

followed in his father's

evil and sin,

but then refused

to follow in his father's

example of humble repentance.

repentance.

And the end for Ammon

is very tragic.

After reigning

for only two years,

the kingdom slips

from his grasp,

his servants conspire

against him,

and his reign

and even his life

is cut short.

Now friend,

unlike Ammon,

you may live

for many,

many, many,

many more years,

but that does not

change at all

the urgency

of spiritual things.

Don't let another day

go by

without heeding

this invitation,

this call

to turn to God

and receive his mercy

and his fresh start.

Think about it.

what will your idols

ultimately give you?

Where will they lead?

Only farther away

from the God

who made you,

from the God

in whom

is the only source

of lasting peace

and purpose

and joy.

So humble yourself

before him.

Admit that you've

sinned against him,

you've turned away,

and you've turned

a deaf ear to him.

Confess your helplessness

and entrust yourself

wholly

to the mercy of God

displayed in Jesus Christ

for you.

What exactly

do you wait for

to take such

an amazing offer

to come with nothing

and receive everything

for eternity?

Why not let

your fresh start,

your new chapter,

begin today?

Jesus says

to everyone

who comes to me,

I will in no way

cast out.

No matter how far

you've been running,

no matter how deep

you've fallen,

the Lord Jesus

is ready to receive you.

He's ready to magnify

the glory of his mercy

in your life

and establish

and restore you.

This is the urgency

of repentance.

Entrust yourself

to him.

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

In our busy,

noisy,

distracted lives,

we have a rare moment

now

to be quiet

and to reflect

in the presence of God.

So let's take a moment

of quiet

and reflection

in God's presence.

If you're a Christian,

if you've turned

to God in Christ,

if you've received

his mercy,

how is God calling you

to bear fruit?

Let's ask him now

to show us,

ask him now

to show you

and to give you

the strength

by his Spirit

to live

out of this mercy

you've been given.

If you're not a Christian,

then,

friend,

the door stands open

to you.

God's abundant mercy

is ready to receive

all who repent.

If you're ready

to hear that call,

you might pray

something like this,

Lord Jesus Christ,

I admit

that I'm weaker

and more sinful

than I could ever admit.

But through you,

I'm more loved

and accepted

than I could ever dream.

Thank you

for paying my debt

on the cross,

taking what I deserved

in order to offer me

complete forgiveness.

Knowing that you've been

raised from the dead,

I turn from my sins

and receive you

as my Savior and Lord.

Amen.

Amen.