Focus Passage: 2 Chronicles 29-33
Judah was warned. The year was 722 BC and the Northern Kingdom was captured never to be seen again. The Assyrians swooped down from the north and after a three year siege destroyed the nation and carried its people off to foreign lands to be assimilated into other nations. 208 years had passed since the death of Solomon and now ten of the twelve tribes were gone. During that time, the people had never worshipped the Lord. They had worshipped the gods of their neighbors like Baal. They had sacrificed their children to Molech. Their evil was so bad, God abandoned them. This is a story to warn what will happen when people forget their Lord. When a nation abandons the true God, they leave themselves defenseless and open to pain.
Hezekiah gives his heart to God 2 Chronicles 29:2-3 At first, Judah was exempt from the destruction of the North. A good king reigned on the throne of Judah whose name was Hezekiah. He began his reign, even as the Northern Kingdom was under siege by reclaiming God’s temple which his father, King Ahaz, had closed down. He also wanted to claim the hearts of the people and so he dedicated fourteen men to teach the people about the God that so many of them did not know. He wanted revival in Jerusalem. He wanted the hearts of the people to be lifted up to the Lord and refused to have empty worship.
In time of danger, God will answer the prayer of the faithful Isaiah 37:14 It has been perhaps ten years since the fall of the Northern Kingdom and Assyria has decided to expand its kingdom again – this time into Judah. They conquer the western part of the nation and then the south leaving Jerusalem as the last bastion of the kingdom of Judah. Yet, instead of fearing the Assyrians, Hezekiah takes the letter and spreads it before the Lord in prayer. Hezekiah and his officers humble themselves before God and seek His protection. Because of their prayer and their submission to God, an angel of the Lord was dispatched who put to death 185,000 troops camped around the city of Jerusalem in a single night.
Forgetting God leads to punishment 2 Chron. 33:10-11 You would think that a miracle like that would cement the people to the temple and to the worship of the one true God. Yet, Manasseh, the son of this Godly king would lead them away from God only fifteen years or so after their salvation. He would rebuild all the false altars that his father had gotten rid of. God sent messengers to warn Manasseh against what he was doing, but the king and the people did not listen to the Lord. The mighty Assyrians came again and they captured Jerusalem and the king. They led him off with a hook in his nose and bound him in shackles. God will not be mocked.
Are halfhearted reforms enough? 2 Chronicles 33:17 God didn’t give up on Manasseh. As a captive, he called out to the true God and was freed by the Lord and brought back to Jerusalem. He then began to prove that his conversion was true as he tried to undo all the evil that he had done and reestablish the worship of the Lord. Yet, the revival was not as full as the revival of Hezekiah, his father. Manasseh allowed the people to continue to sacrifice at the high places. He accommodated the worship of God to the customs of the people. In a sense, he watered down the faith. They worshiped God, but they did so in their own way.
Halfhearted reforms are the beginning of the end. One of the reforms that Manasseh could not make was the reform of his son’s heart. All those years of idol worship had left an impression on his son Amon. The text says that Amon worshiped at the idols that his father had made and that were still up. The watered down religion never touched his heart. He did not humble himself before the Lord, but rejected the Lord and began to re-institute pagan worship the way it was through most of Manasseh’s kingship. The father and son team of Hezekiah and Manasseh ruled Judah at the height of Assyrian power. The revival of Hezekiah brought 100 years of God’s mercy. The halfhearted worship of Manasseh had little impact and the nation was soon on the way to destruction. A nation of halfhearted worship will find that God’s blessings will not last.
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