3505. A Miracle of Grace

A Sermon Published On Thursday, March 30, 1916.

So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel. And the Lord spoke to Manasseh, and to his people; but they would not listen. Therefore the Lord brought on them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord, his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his forefathers, and prayed to him; and he was entreated by him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God. {2Ch 33:9-13}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2385, “Another Lesson From Manasseh’s Life” 2386}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3505, “Miracle of Grace, A” 3507}

   Exposition on 2Ch 33:1-19 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3089, “Sermon on a Grand Old Text, A” 3090 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on 2Ch 33:1-20 Isa 1:2-19 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2378, “Pardon for the Greatest Guilt” 2379 @@ "Exposition"}

   {See Spurgeon_SermonTexts "2Ch 33:11"}

   {See Spurgeon_SermonTexts "2Ch 33:12"}

   {See Spurgeon_SermonTexts "2Ch 33:13"}

1. Manasseh was born three years after his father’s memorable sickness. You will remember that Hezekiah was struck with a mortal disease, and Isaiah, the prophet, came to him and said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’” He appears to have been startled and appalled at the news, and gave vent to his feelings with bitter tears. Evidently he was afraid at the time to face death. He had probably been indulging a worldly spirit; and besides this, it lay as a heavy burden on his heart that he had no son whom he should leave as his successor in the kingdom. In deep distress of soul, accordingly, he turned to the wall and prayed to the Lord. With pitiful weeping and earnest pleading he besought that his life might be spared. His prayer was heard, his tears were seen, and his petition was granted by God. His days were prolonged by fifteen years. In the third year of those fifteen years his son Manasseh was born to him. Had he known, I think, what kind of a son would have risen up in his place, he might have been content to die, rather than to be the father of such a persecutor of God’s people, and such a setter up of idolatry in the land. Alas! very often we do not know what we pray for. We may be covetous of an apparent blessing which would prove to be a real curse both to ourselves and to thousands of others. You prayed, mother—yes, prayed fervently—for the life of that dear babe whom God was pleased to take away from you. You cannot know what disposition the child would have shown, what temptations would have befallen him, or what consequences would have come from his life. Could some parents have read the history of their children from the day of their birth, they might rightly have wished that they had never been born. We had better leave such matters with God, and submit to his sovereign will. He knows better than we do, for he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working. Thank God, these affairs are not in our own hands. They are in far better and wiser keeping than ours.

2. Manasseh’s mother was named Hephzibah, a beautiful name. I wonder whether Hezekiah gave her the name because she was his delight, or because his gratitude inspired it, since he was then himself delighting in his God. I can scarcely think that at such a time he would have chosen one who had not also chosen God; therefore, let us think of her as a godly woman. But in that case she could have had little enough delight in her son; and sometimes, I should think, when she saw him pursuing the people of God with the sword, and sinning with a high hand, she must have been ready to say, “Call me no more Hephzibah, but call me Marah, for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me.” It is not always that the thing which makes us glad today will make us glad tomorrow. Let children be accounted an inheritance from the Lord. They are the joy of our hearts and the flowers of our homes. But what will they be to us when the carefree, guileless, sportive days of their childhood have run out? Unless God sends his blessing with them, the increase of our families may be the sorrow of our lives. Evil passions and propensities develop themselves in our children with their growth, and if the grace of God does not subdue their sinful disposition, we may have to rue the day that they were born.

3. Manasseh’s name means “forgetfulness.” I hope his father did not forget his training, and leave him to those young courtiers who always hang around kings’ palaces, and are pretty sure to instil into a young prince’s mind more vanity than virtue, and solicit his favour and patronage for the popular party. There was a superstitious section in those days, cultivating idolatry and pouring contempt on the Evangelical brethren, whose cause his father, Hezekiah, had espoused so earnestly and defended all his days. That new religion, imported from among the heathen, had its gaudy attractions. Was there not a great deal to please the eye in its pageantry, and much to charm the ear in its worship? The beautiful artistic work in the statuary of its idols, and the fine display of pomp in all the ceremonies—did not these appeal to a cultivated taste? The old-fashioned puritan order of worshipping at one temple, where the service was simple, and where there was scarcely anything to be seen, except by the priests themselves, was becoming old fashioned. Would it not be better to go with the times, take up with Baalim and Ashtaroth, do homage to the sensuous proclivities of the common people, and make friendly alliances with nations holding other creeds? I should not wonder that they talked to the young man in that fashion, and he—oblivious of what God had done for his father, and forgetful that in the long history of the house of Judah the people had always been afflicted when they turned aside to idols and that they only prospered when they adhered to the living God—fell into the snare, and sinned with a high hand.

4. I shall introduce him to you first as a loathsome monster of guilt; then, secondly, I shall show you how the hand of God followed him until he became a pathetic spectacle of misery; after which—blessed be God!—we shall have to mount into a clearer atmosphere, when we point him out to you as he became afterwards, a miracle of grace; and in conclusion we shall have to admire him as a delightful picture of genuine repentance.

5. I. We must begin by considering him as:—A LOATHSOME MONSTER OF GUILT.

6. I cannot imagine that any one of my hearers can have been so great a sinner as Manasseh. I shall not attempt to draw a parallel between him and anyone else. Still, I should not wonder if some of you may be led to draw some such parallel for yourselves. If you do so, I pray the Lord to give you such a sense of your own guilt as shall constrain you to seek pardon.

7. Deep was the crime, and daring was the impiety of Manasseh, in that he undid all the good work of his pious father. What Hezekiah had painfully accomplished at the loom he began to unravel as fast as he could. What the father built up for God, the son pulled down; and what the father had cast down because it was evil, the son at once began to reconstruct. I must confess I have known sons to do the same. Because they have hated their father’s piety, since it has been a restraint on their sin, they have vowed that if it ever came into their power to do as they liked, there would be a change in the household. As I passed a certain house this week a friend said to me, “Many a prayer meeting has been held in that farmhouse. People used to come for miles around there to meet and pray.” “Is that a thing of the past?” I said; “are no prayer meetings held there now?” “Oh! no,” he replied; “the father died, and his reprobate son inherited the property. A prayer meeting, indeed! No. He defied his mother to attempt such a thing; and after having stripped her, and stripped the little estate of all there was that was worth the having, he has gone away, and has not been heard of for many a year. As far as he could, he tore down everything that belonged to his father that reminded him of his God.” Mr. Whitfield used to tell of a wicked son who said he would not live in the same house that his father had inhabited, for he said that every room in the house stunk of his father’s religion, and he could not bear it. There are men who after such manner devise mischief. But ah! young man, you cannot sin in that atrocious way without incurring extraordinary guilt. It will be remembered that you sin against the light; it will be remembered at the last great day that you were prayed for—that you were instructed in the right way; nor will you sin so cheaply as others—others, did I say? I mean such as, when they transgress, only follow a bad example, and run in the path which their parents taught them. Oh! how I grieve over ungodly young men who treat their father’s God with dishonour and despite.

8. Manasseh’s sin was aggravated by the fact that he chose to follow the very worst examples. Though he had in his father one of the best patterns of purity, that would not do, but he must look elsewhere to see whom he could imitate. Whom, do you think, he chose? Why, Ahab—the Ahab of whom God had said that he would cut off every one of his house, and not leave one remaining; a threat which had been executed, for the blood of Ahab had been licked by dogs in the field of Naboth, and Jezebel, his wife, had been devoured by dogs. Yet this young man needed to choose Ahab to be his pattern, so he set up Baalim, even as Ahab had done of old. The same folly I have known to be committed by young men in these days. It may be there are those here who have not found anyone whom they could imitate, until at last they sought out some licentious individual, perhaps, of years gone by, whom they have elected to be their leader. Why, half the youth of England, at one time, used to be infatuated with Lord Byron. The glare of his genius blinded them with respect to the terrible hue of his character and the atrocity of his conduct, so they followed headlong in his track, because, truly, he was a great man and a poet. Affecting wit, they defy pure morals. Alas! for the men whose sentiments, whose language, and whose actions betray the hardihood and the daring of vicious characters they are prone to emulate! Though they know better, they deliberately choose the worst models that they can copy from. What extravagance man will perpetrate in sin!

9. But this Manasseh sought out for himself unusual and outlandish sins. Bad as Ahab was, he had not worshipped the host of heaven. That was an Assyrian worship, and this man needed to import from Assyria and Babylonia worship that was quite new. He set up the image of Asherah, which you may, perhaps, have seen on the slabs that have been brought from Nineveh: a tree bearing souls, intended to represent all the host of heaven. He carved this in the house of God, and set it up for worship. We read in the prophets that the people used to stand in front of the temple and bow before the rising sun, worshipping the hosts of heaven. He was not satisfied with common sin. We have known sinners of this class; they are not content merely to sin as others do; they are ambitious to invent some new sin. Like Emperor Tiberius, who offered a prize if someone would find him a new pleasure, they want to discover a new kind of impiety, which shall draw attention to themselves. They must be unique in whatever they attempt; even if it comes to being exceptionally wicked. Such was Manasseh. He could not be satisfied to run in the race with others, and mix with the bad fashion of his times; swiftly as they would fly, he must outdistance them all.

10. Beyond this, he insulted God to his face. Here, perhaps, his sin culminates. It was not enough to build idol temples for idol worship, but he needed to set up the idols and their altars in the Temple of Jehovah. Such arrogance, as we think of it, makes our blood run cold. And ah! one trembles to tell it, not a few men have thus invoked on their bodies and their souls the curse of the Almighty. So desperately have they been set on transgression, that they have lifted their hand and defied their Maker. Had he not been God—the God of all patience—he would have resented their defiance, and have suddenly struck them down to hell; but being God, and not man, he has borne with them. He is too great to be stirred by their insults. He has ignored it, and let it lie still, winking equally at their ignorance and their presumption, for a while, until their iniquity shall be full; and then, in his justice, he will visit it on their head. There are not a few in our great city who continually do all that they can to provoke God, and to show how little they reverence him; how utterly they ignore his claims on their homage. They will go out of their way to introduce blasphemies into their common conversation, and to express their disgust and contempt for everything chaste and beautiful, sacred and godly. Such was Manasseh. He set up the altars of the false gods in the house of the living God.

11. Is his character not black enough? No, we have not laid on the thickest touches yet. We are told he made his children to pass through the fire; that is to say, he passed them between the red-hot arms of Moloch, so that they might belong for ever as long as they lived, to that fiendish deity. If we do not assert that men do this nowadays, they fall little short of the same cruelty and crime. Many a man teaches his child to drink strong spirits; trains him to habits which he knows will lead him to drunkenness; does his utmost to pass the child through the red-hot arms of the spirit-fiend, the Moloch of the present time. Many a man has taught his child to blaspheme. If he has not deliberately purposed it, he has actually accomplished it, fully conscious that he was doing so. What was his example but a deliberate lesson? Indeed; there are people who seem to take delight in the sins of their children, laughing at the iniquities they have instructed their own sons to perpetrate. Do I address a father who, for many years, has never attended a place of worship on the Sabbath—who has often gone home reeling drunk, and, though somewhat reformed himself, sees his own son plunging into every vice that he himself was once enslaved to? Let me ask you, Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder? You have passed your children through the flames; why do you marvel that they were singed, and that the smell of fire is on them? Oh! it is a crying sin that men will not only go to hell themselves, but they need to drag their children with them! Many a man has not been satisfied to be ruined, but he must ruin some young woman who, perhaps, once had religious convictions. He becomes her husband, and forbids her to attend the house of God. As for his children, they may, perhaps, be sent to the Sunday School to get them out of the way in the afternoon, yet any good they might learn there is soon dissipated by the scenes and sounds they witness and hear under the roof of their home. Why, multitudes in this city—we know it, and they must know it themselves—are ruining their children, deliberately contriving their perdition. Is this a small sin, an insignificant mistake in their training? I do not think so.

12. Moreover, Manasseh proceeded further, for he made a league with demons. There were, in his day, certain people who professed to talk with departed spirits, supposing that the devil had the means of communicating with them about things to come. Now, whether this fellowship with familiar spirits is a delusion and a lie, as I suspect it is, or whether there may be a mystery of Satan involved in it, I do not know; but it was certain that Manasseh tried to get as near the devil as he could. If he could get him to be his friend he was well content to make a covenant with hell, so that it might serve his purposes. Let him have good luck; little did he care for God. He would consult a wizard. Superstition led him to that, but he utterly despised the good Word of God. And there are some who have done this—some here, perhaps. I will not suppose they have lent themselves to those silly superstitions, or resorted to those deceitful or deceived mediums who perform in the dark. I should think, in these modern times of popular education, anyone is fit to be confined in a lunatic asylum who is beguiled by that snare. Intelligence should protect you from imposture. But there are those who, if the devil would help them, would be glad enough to shake hands with him, and say, “Hail-fellow, {a} well met!” If they do not entertain the devil, it is no fault of theirs. They have set the table for him, and furnished the house, and made themselves quite ready for any evil spirit that chooses to come to them. Oh! what iniquity this is! They will not have God; they will have Satan. They cast off the great Father in heaven, but the arch-enemy of souls—they make a covenant, and contract a league with him.

13. Could sin go much further shall this? It could, and it did; for this man led the whole nation astray. Being a king, he had great power, and he used his authority and exerted his influence to induce his subjects to follow his pernicious course. I often wonder what will be the horror of a man who has lived in gross sin when, in the next world, he meets those whom he betrayed and seduced into iniquity, when he begins to see, in the murky gloom of that intolerable pit, a pair of eyes which somehow or other seem to hold him fixed and fast. He recognises them; he has seen them somewhere before, and those eyes flash fire into the soul as though they would utterly consume him, and a voice says, “A thousand curses on you! You are he who led me first into sin—enticed me from a virtuous home, and from godly associations, to become your partner in iniquity. A curse be on you for evermore!” What company they have to keep in that place of torment! How they will gnash their teeth at each other in dreadful rage, each one charging the other with being his destroyer! Oh! there is remorse enough in store for a man who ruins himself, but who can tell the pangs that shall scourge his soul who betrays his fellow creatures, and precipitates them into everlasting ruin? Truly, dear friends, we stand aghast at the picture of such a man as Manasseh, he set no bounds to his sin. He sinned with both hands greedily, and when the messengers came from God to tell him about it, he was angry with them. Tradition says that he sawed the prophet Isaiah in two for daring to reprove him. But it is not from tradition, but from revelation, we learn that he made Jerusalem to swim with blood from one end to the other, putting to death all those who would not go in his ways and follow his devices. Persecution of the saints of God is a scarlet sin, that calls aloud to heaven for vengeance. Manasseh was guilty of this, among other crimes. I am sick at heart, and my tongue is weary of the story. Let me turn to another branch of the narrative.

14. II. This terrible monster of iniquity presently became:—AN EXCEPTIONAL SPECTACLE OF MISERY.

15. A few words will suffice to describe it. The Assyrian king sent his captain, one Tartan, who besieged the city until it was devastated, and the king fled. It would appear that he hid himself in a thorn-brake, and was dragged out from it, and fettered and manacled with heavy irons. There remains a representation at the present time of some Jewish king—we cannot be sure it was Manasseh—who was dragged before the King of Babylon. At any rate, it represents what was done to Manasseh, whether the same treatment befell any other Jewish king or not. He has two rings—a ring on each ankle, and a heavy bolt between them, and his hands are fastened in the same way. He is brought before the king at Babylon. There he seems to have been cast into prison, and kept in confinement. The cruelties of the Assyrian monarchs are attested by the memorials on their own palace walls; therefore, I can fully credit the story told by Jerome, that this Manasseh was himself put into a bronze vessel, and subjected to the most intense heat, the Assyrian king abusing him for having passed his own children through the fire in the same way. That he was kept for many a long month in a dark and dreary dungeon, with only sufficient bread and vinegar given to him to sustain his life, appears certain. He must have been wretched to the nth degree: his crown gone, his kingdom devastated, his subjects put to unheard-of miseries, we are told that the judgment which God executed on the land was such that it made the both ears of him who heard of it to tingle. The king must, therefore, have experienced some indescribable afflictions from the hands of the tyrant of Assyria. Ah! sinner, though you harden yourself in your transgressions, you will not go unpunished. A bitter end awaits you. Reckless as you are, young man, your father’s God will not always be mocked. You have persecuted your wife and your friend, but their unhappiness will return before long to your own bosom. There will come an end to your arrogance, and a beginning to your punishment. Oh! I wish your iniquity would come to an end soon, and that it might end with your conversion. If it does not come to that end, your outlook is gloomy indeed, for your total destruction will complete the course you are running.

16. Perhaps I am addressing someone who has been living in heartless sin until he has become entangled in helpless misery. In this crowd you seem as if you were singled out, for your heart is ready to break with anguish. Your property is lost, your health is broken up, your character is blasted; you are a mere wreck, a waif, adrift on the dark sea. There is no one to have compassion on you. You are a castaway. Even your old companions have forsaken you. The devil himself seems to have cast you adrift. You are abandoned, and you might cry out and sound your own death knell. “Lost! lost! lost!” Well, now, I have a message from God to you. I am come to speak to you, in the name of the Lord, about this man Manasseh, in the hope that it may be also concerning yourself true—that after having been a prodigy of sin, and a spectacle of misery, you may now become as, in the third place, as Manasseh became.

17. III. See now that Manasseh becomes:—A MONUMENT OF GRACE.

18. Oh! I do not wonder at Manasseh’s sin one half so much as I wonder at God’s mercy. There was the man in the prison. He had never thought of his God except to despise his prerogative, and offend against his laws, until he was locked up in that dungeon. Then his pride began to break; his haughty spirit had to yield at last. “Who is Jehovah, that I should serve him?” he had often said. But now he is in Jehovah’s hand. Lying there half-starved in the prison, a crushed man, he begins to cry, “Jehovah, what a fool I have been! I have stood up against you until at length your sovereign power has arrested me, and your infinite justice has begun to avenge my crimes. What shall I do? Where shall I hide from your wrath? How can I escape? Is it possible to obtain your pardon?” He began to humble himself; God’s Spirit came and humbled him more and more; he saw how foolish he had been, how wicked his character, how cruel his conduct, how abominable. So he spent his days and nights, in weeping and in lamentation. It was not the prison he cared so much about. His soul had gone into iron bondage. Then it suddenly flashed across his mind that perhaps God might have mercy on him, so he began to pray. Oh! what a trembling prayer that first prayer was. I think Satan said to him, “It is no use your praying, Manasseh. Why, you have defied the living God to his face. He will tell you to go to the idol-gods you have served, go to the images you have set up, and bow before the hosts of heaven you have been accustomed to worship, and see what they can for you.” No; but in this awful despair he felt he must pray; and surely the first prayer he breathed must have been, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” And in his deep abasement, he still continued to pray and plead with God. And that dear Father of ours who is in heaven heard him. If ever you can bring him a praying heart, he will bring you a forgiving message. As soon as he saw his poor child broken down, and confessing his wrong, he took pity on him, heard, and answered him, and blotted out his sins like a cloud, and his transgressions like a thick cloud. I think I see Manasseh, with his morsel to eat, never enough to assuage his hunger, and his little drops of vinegar, saying to himself, “Ah! I do not deserve this!” He would thank God even for that starving allowance in the depths of his cell, feeling that it was mercy that let him live. “Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?” And so it came to pass that he was delivered.

19. The King of Assyria, for State reasons which I need not mention, determined to put this king on his throne again. He thought that he had broken him down, and humbled him enough; that he would make a good viceroy and a faithful lieutenant, and that he would be afraid to rebel again, so one bright day he opened wide Manasseh’s dungeon, and told him he was going to send him back to Jerusalem. And when he told him that, then Manasseh knew that Jehovah, he was God. This conclusion was forced on him by the mercy he obtained. “Who,” he would say, “but the Most High God could have brought me out of this horrible pit, have released me from the power of this tyrant king, or moved his heart to relent, and have compassion on me?” As he rode back to Jerusalem, how his heart would be breaking with gratitude! I think I see him when he first got within sight of the walls of that temple which he had so recklessly profaned. Surely he threw himself on his face, and wept much, and then arose and blessed the name of the Lord who had forgiven all his trespasses. And when he entered Jerusalem, and the people gathered around him, what must the greetings have been? Where are those courtiers who had been his companions, who led him into sin? Do they come whining around him? What a rebuff they will get! How will he exclaim, “Go away. I am another man. I do not want your company or your counsel.” Are there any of those poor people standing in the background—the people who used to meet to pray and worship Jehovah, faithful among the faithless found—such as had been accustomed to hide away their Bibles because they were hunted and harried from one retreat to another—a small remnant, who had escaped the fangs of the persecutors—did they come forward? How he could look at them, and say, “Ah! you servants of Jehovah, you are my brethren. Give me your hands; for I, too, have found mercy from heaven, and I am, like you, a child of God.” I warrant you there was singing in Jerusalem that night among the feeble band of the steadfast believers; and there must have been music in heaven too, for the very angels must have rejoiced in a conversion that seemed so unlikely, so incredible.

20. “What, Manasseh saved? Manasseh—that bloodhound—is he transformed, by the renewing of his mind, into a lamb of God’s flock? What he, the red-handed persecutor—has he become a professor of the faith he once destroyed?” Ah! yes. Well might Bishop Hall say, “Who can complain that the way of heaven is blocked against him, when he sees such a sinner enter? Say the worst against yourself, oh clamorous soul! Here is one who murdered men, defied God, and worshipped demons, yet he finds the way to repentance. If you are vile as he, know that it is not your sin, but your impenitence, that bars heaven against you. Who can now despair of your mercy, oh God, who sees the tears of a Manasseh accepted?” I remember an old lady who would not travel by railway because she thought that some of the bridges were in bad repair, especially the Saltash bridge, near her own house. Over that bridge she could not be persuaded to pass, for fear her weight should break it down, although hundreds of tons of weight were carried over it every day. At such folly everyone can smile. But when I hear any man say, “I have committed so much sin, that God cannot pardon it,” I think his folly is far greater. Look at this huge train that went over that bridge. Behold Manasseh laden with ponderous crimes! See what a train of sin there was behind him! Then look at the bridge, and see whether it trembles by reason of the loaded teem of sins which is rolling over it. Ah! no, it bears up, and so it would bear the weight if all the sins that men have done should roll across its arches. Christ is “able to save to the uttermost those who come to God by him.” I do not know where to cast my eyes for the person to whom this message is directed. That he is somewhere in this assembly I entertain no doubt. Do I speak to some sister who, in an unguarded hour, left the path of virtue, and since then has pursued a course of shame? Please accept the message. I deliver it to you. The greatest sin, the utmost guilt, the most incredible iniquity, the most abominable transgressions, can be forgiven, and shall be blotted out. The Redeemer lives; the sacrifice has been offered; the covenant is sealed. Turn now to the Lord with purpose of heart. Confess the sins. Repudiate yourself. Trust in the infinite mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, his Son. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn to the Lord, for he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

21. IV. Our closing reflection is that Manasseh became:—A PICTURE OF TRUE REPENTANCE.

22. At once he ceased to do evil. He went immediately to the temple and pulled down the idols. How I would like to have been with him, and have had a hand in demolishing them. Down went the images; then over went the altars; every stone was dragged right out of the city, and flung away. May God grant that every image in England may yet be pulled down, battered to pieces, and the small dust of it flung into the common sewers. May what is an utter abomination before heaven stir a righteous indignation on earth. Oh! that our land may be so godly that no respect for fine arts may permit her to tolerate foul impieties! Manasseh made haste to undo the mischief he had done. This is what every converted man tries to do. All the evil he has ever caused he tries to stop; he takes vengeance on his former devices; against them he lifts both his hands, raises his voice, and exerts his influence.

23. Nor did this suffice; Manasseh immediately began to do good. Very speedily he began to repair the altar of the Lord, and to restore the services of God and the ordinances of the Temple to their original purity, according to the divine statutes. So when a man is truly converted, he will be anxious to join himself to the Lord’s people, and support the institutions of his house. Nor did Manasseh smother his gratitude, but he presented thank offerings to God. He was not unmindful of the devout acknowledgments that were due for the great mercy he had received. Like that other great sinner, whose gratitude is recorded in the gospel—the woman who brought an alabaster box of ointment, very precious, and broke it—like her, I think, he loved much because he had had much forgiven.

24. And, then, being established in his kingdom, he proceeded to use his high influence for holy purposes. He ruled his subjects in the fear of the Lord; and made the law of his God to be the law of the land, renouncing all strange gods, and adhering rigidly to the book given by inspiration. Oh! that God would incline the heart of some penitent sinner here at once to produce this fruit of conversion! What a change there would be in his house! What a difference his family would see! What an altered man he would appear in his daily vocation, whether he is an employer or an employee! He would be seeking the conversion of those whom he formerly led astray. Those he once scoffed at, and called by evil names, would become his choicest companions. One says, “Can God do this?” Oh! my dear hearers, the God who can forgive great sin can also change hard hearts. Cry to him. If you are unsaved, may his Spirit lead you to seek salvation now. Do not wait for tomorrow’s sun. If you are saved yourself, may that blessed Spirit lead you to pray for others, and seek their present and eternal welfare. Watch and pray. Let your own faith in God stimulate you to believe that all things are possible. Never give them up, never give them up. Are you a mother—you do not know how prevalent your intercessions may prove. I wonder whether poor Hephzibah was alive when Manasseh was converted? She had grieved over him, doubtless, in his young days. Well, if she did not live to see the fruit of her prayers, yet her prayers lived, and her tears were repaid with rich interest. There is many a mother’s son whose heart will be turned to God long after his mother’s bones have been laid in the churchyard. The vision is for an appointed time; though it delays, wait for it. Your son will yet be brought to glory through your prayers. Pray on, brothers and sisters, pray on for those whose sins and sorrows lay heavily on your heart. Pray on, and God will hear you. Oh poor sinners, the mercy of God is the antidote for man’s despair. Believe in his mercy. Look for his mercy. Cast yourselves on his mercy, and you shall find his mercy to everlasting life. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.

{a} Hail-fellow: An intimate or familiar associate. OED.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Mr 10:46-52}

Let us listen to the record of one of our Lord’s most striking miracles.

46, 47. And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, “Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me.”

If he could not see, he could hear, and he made good use of his hearing. If you do not have every spiritual ability, yet, soul, do you use such ability as you have? You can hear the gospel. Then search into the Word, and labour to understand it. Are you doing that? Alas! men talk about what they cannot do, but they are not doing what they can.

48. And many charged him that he should hold his peace:

“Hush! Be quiet! Do not disturb him! Hear what an eloquent sermon he is delivering.” Indeed, but he thought of his poor blind eyes, and of the only hope he now had before him of having them opened.

48, 49. But he cried a great deal more, “You son of David, have mercy on me.” And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Be of good comfort, rise; he calls you.”

How soon they changed their tune. The very people who would have kept him back now help him on. Ah! when Christ speaks to his people, if they have been indifferent about the good of men, they also grow warm in heart, and they are ready to help and take interest in the case.

50. And he, casting away his garment,

Throwing off his old beggar’s cloak.

50, 51. Rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said to him, “What do you wish that I should do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.”

He knew what he wanted, which is more than some people do. It is better, however, to know what is needed by the soul—even the salvation of God.

52. And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you whole.” And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.

Christ’s cures do not take many minutes. When he comes to save, he saves men at once. He says, “Light be,” and there is light.