Speaker: Bonnie
Date: 1.18.09How can I hope to summarize the brilliance of your covenant class minds in a paragraph or two? Such great thoughts this week . . . as always, thank you for terrific interaction.
Here are some impressions I took away—can’t wait to see what you’re thinking.
It’s intriguing to me that Manasseh took the throne at such a young age, 12. His father, Hezekiah, made some mistakes but overall was deemed a Godly ruler. I’m guessing a lot of outside pressure pushed Manasseh into compromise a little bit at a time. Judah was a vassal state of Assyria and would have been paying heavy taxes to that empire as well as feeling the pressure of forced allegiance. Whatever the route, he ended up being an “evil” king.
I liked the way the class unpacked the possible parallels between the journey of Manasseh and our own spiritual lives. 2 Kings 21 says Manasseh built pagan altars “in the temple of the Lord” after he made some unholy alliances with “nations the Lord had already driven out” before the Israelites. Some of you talked about how we have similar pockets of resistance (or insurgents) in our own spiritual land. We make friends with them—after all, God has driven out most of the junk in our lives. What’s wrong with a little stronghold or two? Maybe it’s pride, rejection, sarcasm or our desire to be right . . . whatever. It works for us. We built our altars to these things in the temple of our hearts.
Manasseh’s allegiance to things ungodly slowly overtook him. It spilled over on others and a nation went awry. Eventually, Scripture says, Manasseh was “looted and plundered” by his foes. The Assyrians led him into captivity with a ring through his nose. (Cool thing: archeologists have actually unearthed remnants of a statue of an Assyrian king leading someone into captivity by a hook through the lip.) So, who’s our foe? That same little friend of ours—the one that wants to put a hook through our nose and lead us into slavery.
No wonder God fights so hard against sin in our lives! He knows it will destroy us.
When Manasseh is in prison, probably at his lowest point, he cries out to God for deliverance. God hears. God hears Manasseh. God hears us. That is our hope.
Tom and Barry already gave me some great feedback . . . I hope they’ll write it here for everyone. Let the sharing begin.
1 comment:
I have two thoughts, first, that our whole conversation reminded me of Romans 12:1, to make our lives a living sacrifice, so it is daily act to keep destroying the altars that we have left.
The second thought was that Hezikiah was such a holy man and Manasseh grew up in that atmosphere and yet, was the most evil king that Isreal had ever seen. hhhmmm..
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