Sermon Central
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How Gone Is Too Far Gone? Series
Contributed by Jim Butcher on Aug 19, 2022 (message contributor)
Summary: Manasseh does great evil as king. Is he too far gone for God to forgive?
WAS MANASSEH TOO FAR GONE?
1. HIS FATHER SET A GODLY EXAMPLE.
- Sin nature within all of us, no matter how we’re raised.
- Each of us must choose the path we will take. Our parents can’t live for us.
- This is one of the greatest tragedies of parenting. Certainly there are no perfect parents (because we’re all sinners) but there are many good and sincere Christian parents who have children who wander deep into the forests of sin.
- This obviously causes deep heartache for the parents. And rightly so: nothing is more important than our connection to God.
- Guilt sometimes accompanies this for the parent. “What else should I have done?” “Where did I fail?” “Where did I drop the ball?” This isn’t a comforting passage in any traditional sense, but it is a word of hope for those parents: sometimes you can set a solid example and kids go sideways anyway. It doesn’t take away the concern about their souls, but it can take away the guilt that it’s all your fault.
- Of course, there is a corollary to that: sometimes we’ve been hypocrites, our kids have seen that as they were raised in our house, and they have soured on faith because of our poor example.
2. MANASSEH EXCELLED AT DOING EVIL.
- As we unpack these verses, he didn’t just do a little. He passionately pursued evil.
3. GREAT HARDSHIP BROUGHT REPENTANCE.
a. Initially he doesn’t repent.
- v. 10.
b. Harder punishment/judgment changes him.
- vv. 11-12.
- But wait, we say: he only repented because things got bad. Yes, you’re right. But that was God working to bring a change of heart.
- God will often increase the struggle and difficulty we are going through in order to try to get through to us.
- A deacon from my first church used to say, “Sometimes God will put you on your back to get you to look up.”
4. AMAZINGLY, GOD FORGAVE AND RESTORED HIM.
- This is shocking when you consider how much bad he had done.
- This speaks to the radicalness of grace. I don’t think we really understand how wild that grace truly is. In some senses, it offends our moral sensibilities – he deserved punishment! The only thing that really is effective at changing our mind is the realization that we’re in the same boat as well – hopeless sinners.
- To go to the sermon title, it’s verses like this that give us the authority to be able to say that you can’t be too far gone for God’s grace to reach you. Yes, you may have sinned greatly, but God offers great grace.
5. HE DID DEEDS THAT SHOWED A CHANGED HEART.
- It’s important to understand the true nature of repentance – it’s an action, not a feeling.
- There will be deeds of repentance when it’s real.
- We too often preach an “empty belief” in our services today. We say you can become a Christian with no change of heart or change of life. That’s not Biblical.
- It’s not that we are saved by our works of repentance but that our works of repentance show that we’ve truly been saved.
