Sermon Tone Analysis

Do you KNOW God?

What does it mean to truly KNOW God?

How does one come to KNOW God?

It was AW Tozer who said that what a person thought about when they thought about God was the most important thing about them.

Sometimes we think that we KNOW someone, but really all we have is knowledge ABOUT that person.

One of my sons just started taking an interest in baseball cards, which I was also interested in as a youth.

If you aren’t familiar with baseball cards, the photo of the player is one the front, but on the back you find all kinds of information about that player - height, weight, right or left handed, birthplace, and then a whole table of statistics: Runs, HR, RBI, ERA, etc...

By reading the back of a ball card, one can learn a lot about a player and even begin to think that they know that player, but they have never even met them.

And then there are those that do get introduced to their favorite player, at a fundraiser, contest, or autograph event, and they get their signature, and a handshake and maybe a photo with them…but then they walk away and they can say that they met that player…but they still cannot claim to KNOW them in the true sense of the word KNOW.

So what about God?…We don’t have a trading card for Him…He has given us something much, much better - His Word.

Yet many have read the Word, studied the Word, and memorized the Word…yet they still don’t KNOW God.

Do you KNOW God?

What does it mean to truly KNOW God?

How does one come to KNOW God?

And if we do know God, what difference has that made in our lives?

At what point does our knowledge of God move from the theoretical to the experiential?

When does it become a personal, intimate relationship?

In one sense, God is beyond our capacity to understand fully...He is infinite and we are finite.

In fact, the Bible seems to say that, at some level, we CANNOT know God:

Isaiah 40:14–18 (NKJV)

14 With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, And taught Him in the path of justice?

Who taught Him knowledge, And showed Him the way of understanding? ....18 To whom then will you liken God?

Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

We learn by comparison…we can understand one thing because we already know of another thing that it is like..but not so with God - there is nothing to compare Him to - God alone is PEERLESS!

Yet there is also a sense in which the Bible calls us to KNOW Him:

Psalm 100:3 Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

Philippians 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,

Do you KNOW God?

Do you know that the Lord is God?

That’s the question that this passage is asking us.

Today, we will study the life of a king of Judah, named Manasseh.

And we will observe a man that began his life in wickedness but because he experienced the power of redemption, he came to know that the Lord is God.

I.

The King’s Disobedience

II.

The King’s Discipline

III.

The King’s Deliverance

I want to invite you to set aside distractions and your busyness for a few moments and let’s walk together through this passage.

Allow the Spirit to have His way and to do His work, and let’s pause and drink deeply from the well…let us KNOW that the Lord is God.

May we all leave changed - different from when we walked in.

<PRAY>

I.

The King’s Disobedience

Notice two things about Manasseh’s actions:

1- that Manasseh’s actions were “evil in the sight of the Lord”.

God alone has the authority to define what is evil, not us.

Absolute truth vs. relativism

2- Manasseh’s evil actions were the same abominations as the Canaanites that God had driven out of the land during the campaigns of Joshua and the Israelites.

“anti-God”

“high places” is a phrase we read often in the OT

It is almost always associated with pagan, cultish practices, idolatry, and even child sacrifice.

High places were condemned as illegitimate worship locations and sinful by God:

Deuteronomy 12:2–4 (NKJV)

2 You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.

3 And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.

4 You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things.

2 Chronicles 33:6–9 (NKJV)

6 Also he caused his sons to pass through the fire in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom; he practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft and sorcery, and consulted mediums and spiritists.

He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.

7 He even set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever; 8 and I will not again remove the foot of Israel from the land which I have appointed for your fathers—only if they are careful to do all that I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses.” 9 So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.

When we read verses 7-8, we are reading excerpts from 2 Samuel and from Psalms where God is making a conditional promise to Israel.

God is saying I will dwell with you at the temple as long as you are “careful to do all that I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses.”

And did Manasseh obey this and keep his end of the conditional promise?…let’s see:

Child sacrifice

Soothsaying (prediction of the future using sorcery or witchcraft)

witchcraft & sorcery (demonic activity)

mediums and spiritists (attempting to speak to the dead/demons)

Pagan idols in the temple (abomination)

Besides all the idolatry and witchcraft and killing his own sons, Manasseh was bloodthirsty - he slaughtered his own people without cause and made Jerusalem a blood bath.

Manasseh was a murderer - the Jewish historian Josephus stated that daily executions were ordered by him.

Tradition says that Manasseh was the king who murdered Isaiah the prophet by having him sawn in half.

2 Chronicles 33:9 (NKJV)

9 So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.

Everything rises and falls on leadership - Manasseh seduced (to wander, go astray, stagger, deceive oneself) the people of his kingdom to turn away from God and do even MORE evil than the Canaanites which God had destroyed....

and in doing so he deceived himself.

Know That the Lord is God!

I.

The King’s Disobedience

II.

The King’s Discipline

I am in awe of God’s response - He could have brought immediate judgement (and I think we would have been rooting for that)…but God’s grace is truly amazing!

Even after all of these horribly bloody acts, God still calls out to Manasseh and the people of Judah to turn to Him.

Instead of fire and brimstone, they receive an outpouring of God’s mercy!

We look at our world today, we see many modern-day Manasseh’s...with all the blood-thirst and wickedness and child sacrifice and idolatry and yet God still calls out to them…to America, to Russia, to China…to the Middle East…God calls out to these world leaders.

How do we know this?…they are imprisoning and killing Christians!

Those are God’s martyrs (which is the word many Bibles translate “witnesses”) and in order to know that they are doing criminal activity in those nations, the national leaders have to know what Christianity is so they can stop it!

We pray for the persecuted church, we want that to stop, but God is using that oppression to call out to those that are doing the oppressing…The Lord is speaking to the modern-day Manasseh’s just as he spoke to the original Manasseh- what a merciful and gracious God!

God is also calling out to you.

Have you made the personal choice to believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for your eternal life?

God is calling out to you right now…it’s a lot easier to talk about the world leaders and the those from 650 BC…but what about you?

Here you sit at UGBC in 2023…having never yet placed your faith in Jesus…yet God still calls out to you to do so.

You might say, “Well, I’m no Manasseh…I’m not a blood thirsty, maniacal killer!”

That may be true, but that’s not what God sees when He looks at you.

When God looks upon those that have not believed, He sees a sinner in need of a Savior.

God loves you! (did you know that?)…God loves you right now and He is calling out to you.

Are you listening?

(we would have liked to see Manasseh listen, but what about us?)

Do you know that you are a sinner?