Knowing God through His Word … Day by Day

In the passage for today, 2 Kings 21, we read of Manasseh.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and all that he did, and the sin that he committed, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

And if you read more about Manasseh in 2 Chronicles, you see that there is “more to the story.”

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, imitating the detestable practices of the pagan nations whom the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites. He rebuilt the pagan shrines his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He constructed altars for the images of Baal and set up Asherah poles. He also bowed before all the stars of heaven and worshiped them. He even built pagan altars in the Temple of the Lord, the place where the Lord had said his name should be honored forever. He put these altars for the stars of heaven in both courtyards of the Lord’s Temple. Manasseh even sacrificed his own sons in the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom. He practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the Lord’s sight, arousing his anger. Manasseh even took a carved idol he had made and set it up in God’s Temple! Manasseh led the people of Judah and Jerusalem to do even more evil than the pagan nations whom the Lord had destroyed when the Israelites entered the land. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings. (2 Chronicles 33).

A. W. Pink shares this insight:

Surely if any man had sinned away the day of grace—Manasseh must have done so! Surely if the intrinsic evil of any offences renders them unpardonable, those committed by this man must have been such. Surely if there are some crimes too high for the mercy of God to reach unto, it must have been those perpetrated by this Satan-controlled king.

Surely if one may sink too low for the Holy Spirit to deliver him, it must have been this wretch, who so grievously provoked Jehovah. Ah, read the sequel, “But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and cried out humbly to the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request for help.” (vv. 12, 13).

If, then, the case of Manasseh demonstrates that the unpardonableness of sin lies not in the enormity of it abstractly considered—then the history of Saul of Tarsus makes it equally evident; that it is not because the crimson of certain crimes is of too deep a dye for the atoning blood of Christ to cleanse it.