Well as I said last week we were
going to, as it were, sort of wrap up Niyamaya tonight. I in some way sort of rushed
through Chapter 13 but I just wanted to go back and have a
look at some of the things in Chapter 13. I just love the fact
that Niyamaya typifies the Lord Jesus in so many ways. In the beginning of the book
we have him as a man who speaks to God on behalf of his people. And throughout the book we have
again and again pictures of Nehemiah as a man of prayer, some long
prayers and some very short prayers. And he finishes in chapter 13
with three wonderful prayers. In a sense, there's a great repetition
in chapter 13, verse 14. He says, Remember me, O God,
concerning this, wipe not out my good deeds that I have done
for the house of my God and for the offices thereof. And then in verse 22, he says,
Remember me, O God, concerning this, and spare me according
to the greatness of Thy mercy. And he finishes the book as a
man of prayer, as he began in the last verse of the book. He says, Remember me, O my God,
for good. And it's just a lovely phrase,
isn't it, that he says, remember me, oh my God. Because Nehemiah typifies the
Lord Jesus to us in so many ways, doesn't he? He was a man of prayer
and he deceives on behalf of God's people. And he intercedes
on account of the eternal promises that God has made to his people. And in chapter 1 and in chapter
9 we have the people, Nehemiah and then the people that he has
led into the worship of God, praying those remarkable prayers.
And if you want to see the character of God revealed in chapter 1
in Nehemiah's prayer, he speaks of God as the great covenant-keeping
promise, making promise, keeping God, the God of heaven. He fasted and prayed before the
God of heaven. and he reminds God of his promises,
his promises to scatter the people, his promises to bring the people
back together again. He reveals again and again in
his dealings in Jerusalem, he reveals the character of God. He's a man who has a passion
for the glory of God, passion for God's name, God's reputation
amongst His people and God's reputation in the world. He's a man who has a passion
about God being worshipped, God obviously being worshipped through
the sacrifice, God's people coming to God through the merits of
the finished work and the blood of the Lord Jesus. He's a man
who has a passion for the welfare of God's children. You see, for
him, building these walls was not about just stones and bits
of wood to make up gates. The buildings and all of this
were about the glory of God, about the worship of God, about
the welfare of God's people. He was a man who was sent. by God. His heart was moved,
he was a man who was sent. And he was a man who was willing,
and at the end of the book in chapter 13 we have Nehemiah having
been back in Babylon for possibly 12 years, he has a desire to
be with God's people, around God's temple. to be there. He's a willing man. He does all
this with great willingness and great passion. And he's a man
who leads others to honour God. honour His covenant keeping God,
to worship Him in spirit and truth. And he's a man who leads
others to hear God's Word. In chapter 8 we have that great
assembly and they listen to the Word for six hours a day. They heard it preached and they
heard it explained, they heard it taught. and they are brought
to an understanding of God's Word. And here in chapter 13
we have Nehemiah as a man who is there to the very end. It seems as if he finished his
days in Jerusalem. At the beginning of the book
He meets the King and he comes before the King and he is downcast,
his countenance is sad and the King perceives, he must have
known him and cared about him deeply, that this was a sorrowful
heart. And he said to the king, let
the king live forever. Why should my countenance be
sad when the city, the place of my father's sepulchres, the
place of my father's graves, lies waste, and the gates thereof
are consumed with fire. Nehemiah was a man who stayed
the course. He stayed to the end. He's a man sent by God and he
reveals, as I said earlier, he reveals that God is a covenant
keeping God. And let me remind you again of
those two remarkable verses in Isaiah chapter 42 verse 6. And then it's repeated so that
we'll Get the lesson. It says, I the Lord have called
thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and will keep
thee and give thee, speaking about the Lord Jesus, I will
give thee for a covenant of the people for light to the Gentiles. In chapter 49 verse 8 we have
words similar. Thus says the Lord, in an acceptable
time I have heard thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped
thee, and I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant
of the people to establish the earth. to cause to inherit the
desolate heritages. This city of Jerusalem was a
desolate city, but it was a desolate heritage, a heritage of God's
people. And it was a heritage that was
promised to suffer these things, but also it was promised to have
them rebuilt. And it's a place It's a place
where God had ordained in all of the earth to have His character
revealed to His people and to be a place where He would reveal
Himself and He would be worshipped. It's a place where worship was
revealed because His character revealed. And in Nehemiah we
have a great picture of redemption. It's wonderful, isn't it, to
think that in the scriptures we have two great restorations
of God's people, recoveries of God's people. And of course the
first one is that 430 year captivity in Egypt when God planted His
people and promised them a time to be down there. And remarkably,
he also promised the day to take them out. And God says, to the
very day he brought them out. They weren't there a second longer
than he had promised. They were there for his purposes. They were a people who were redeemed
from Egypt. And Egypt in the scriptures so
often typifies the world, that superpower, that powerful Honoured,
wealthy, superpower. God redeemed them. But also He
redeemed these people a second time. We were twice dead, we
were redeemed twice. But He redeemed them out of Babylon
this time. Babylon in the Scriptures is
a picture of false religion. God redeems His people out of
both. They are redeemed people. They
had sold themselves for nothing. As Isaiah says to them, here's
my certificate of divorcement. What have I done to cause you
to treat me so? They sold themselves for nothing
into degradation, into captivity to a great and powerful king. sold themselves into slavery. And they sold themselves into
this place because of their willful, obstinate sin. Their individual
sins and their national sins. The sins of their prophets, the
sins of their priests, the sins of their king. What a picture
it is of us. sold, captive, unable to help
ourselves. Just the instruments of Satan's
use in this world, as Ephesians 2 says. It's extraordinary, isn't
it? How deep the darkness is. And not only that, these are
the people who stood before God at Mount Sinai and said to Him,
You tell us what to do and we'll do it. They entered into a covenant
with God, a covenant where they promised again and again, they
promised to obey God. And they also, as Nehemiah understood
in chapter 10, they were people who entering into that covenant
promise entered into a curse. They were sold and they were
captive to the curse of the law. They were in Babylon, they were
in captivity, they were in slavery because they had broken God's
law. What a picture of these people
in Babylon paint of us. But also we have redemption in
Nehemiah and throughout the Scriptures, greatly pictured in our Lord
Jesus. Great sinners need a great and
powerful Redeemer. People who are captive of a great
and powerful king need someone greater and more powerful to
come and overcome that king and to set his people free. People
who are sold and captive to the law of God, and to the curse
of that law, need someone to come and deal with the curse
of that law, to become a curse for them, and to bear sin's holy
wrath, and to bear it completely, and to bear it away. In Nehemiah
we have a great picture of redemption, a redemption that's promised.
Isn't it wonderful that Jeremiah wrote them a letter in, you can
read it in Jeremiah 29, but they actually had a letter in their
hands from Jerusalem before it fell, and the letter said, you'll
be here for 70 years. But see, it was a letter sent
to the people of God, wasn't it? It wasn't a letter sent to
the king of Babylon, it was a letter for the people of God. That God had plans for them,
God had plans to prosper them and bring them out. And Daniel,
in Babylon at that time, when that 70 years was completed,
he actually went to prayer, because he realized the 70 years was
up. And he prayed like Nehemiah to
a covenant-keeping God. You see, God's promises, God's
covenant leads God's people to be people of prayer. It doesn't say we'll do nothing.
It says we can now go to a God who's made promises. What remarkable
promises He's made to us, brothers and sisters. It's a promised
redemption. It's now a revealed redemption,
revealed to them and not to the world. And very obviously in
Nehemiah, redemption is pictured as being 100% the work of God. How do you get a king who has
the superpower to give up 40,000 slaves for nothing? Not only to give them up, but
to give them the money to go and build their temple, to give
them the provisions to go and build the wall of their city,
to give them all the provisions they need to build that city
and to provision that city and to care for the people in that
city and to protect that city. God moved the hearts of these
people. All of salvation. It's wonderful,
isn't it? All of salvation is of the Lord. It's a wonderful thing to contemplate,
that salvation is all of God's work, for all of God's glory. And then he moves, he moves the
hearts of kings, he moves the hearts of people, he moved the
heart of Nehemiah to prayer, and then moved Nehemiah to the
king's presence, and then he moved the king's heart with the
queen, who possibly was Esther, sitting beside him. He moved
their hearts to say, you go back and you build. And he goes back
and he builds, and in 52 days they build the walls of Jerusalem. Why? Even the enemies knew why
in Chapter 6, that this was the work of God, all of His work,
His moving of His people's hearts for their good and for His glory,
and it's His provision to do so. And redemption in Nehemiah
has a great purpose and a great result. and that is the worship
of God. The restoration of God's people
and the restoration of the worship of God always go together. But also in Nehemiah we've had
this wonderful picture of redemption's security. The walls, of course,
as we've seen so often, the walls separate and the walls protect. The building of the walls stirred
up the enmity against God's purposes. But all it did was spur God's
people on and cause them to see that He reigns over those enemies. The walls are beautifully pictured
in Revelation 21, aren't they? The New Jerusalem is a walled
city. those beautiful high walls set
on that foundation, the wonderful foundation of the Lord Jesus,
His apostles and His prophets. As Zechariah 2 says, For I, saith
the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will
be the glory in the midst of her. what walls we have, what protection,
what security, what separation we have. God's eternal purposes,
God's eternal purchase of his people, the power of God, the
promises of God, all reveals in the Gospel. The great lessons
that we see in the book of Nehemiah And what is true of redemption for any one of God's children
is true for all. And what's true for the individuals
is true for the individual churches. And what's true for the individual
churches is true for God's church university. We are a redeemed
people. We are a gathered people, gathered
out of this world, gathered out of sin, taken out of the clutches
of the devil who blinds the minds of people, taken out from under
the curse of the law, a people of broken and contrite hearts. In Nehemiah we have those people
who when the scriptures are read, they were weeping, weren't they?
And the people wept. when they heard the words of
the law, when they heard God's word to them, the covenant that
they had promised, the covenant that they had failed, the evidence
of that failure all around them. And God exposes us. He exposes our captivity and
He exposes our redemption. Their people are broken and contrite
hearts. One of the most remarkable words
in the scriptures about the walls of Jerusalem is David's prayer
in Psalm 51. And you probably know Psalm 51
well. If I start reading it you might
be able to follow along with me. But he speaks and calls upon
God. This is the prayer that he prayed
when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone into
Bathsheba. It's a great prayer, a great
psalm of confession, but it's a great psalm of revealing who
God is to his people. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender
mercies. blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have
I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou might
be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. I stopped talking about the activities
in the marriage bed which is undefiled. I was talking about
the fact that sin is an inheritance that we receive through our lineage
back to Adam. Behold, thou desirest truth in
the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness,
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and
blot out all mine iniquities. creating me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from
my presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." He'd seen
what happens when the Spirit is taken away as it was taken
away from Saul. Restore unto me. the joy of Thy
salvation. Salvation is of the Lord entirely. Uphold me with Thy free spirit. Then I will teach transgressors
Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee. Deliver
me from blood guiltness, O God, Thou God of my salvation, and
my tongue shall sing aloud of Thy righteousness. O Lord, open
thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise, for thou
desirest not sacrifice, else will I give it. Thou delightest
not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. do good in thy good pleasure
under Zion build thou the walls of Jerusalem then thou shalt
be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt offering
and whole burnt offering then shall they offer bullocks on
thine altar do good do good in thy good pleasure under Zion. Talking about his church. Build
thou the walls of Jerusalem, then thou shalt be pleased. What
a great picture of our God's activity. This God who twice,
David says in this psalm, is my salvation, my salvation, and
he talks about it being thy salvation as well. See the people These
people have been brought back and in the face of God's law
and God's preaching and God's providence, they are brought
in Chapter 8 of Nehemiah to be a broken and contrite heart. They are brought to see the need
of a Redeemer and they are brought to see the provision of a Redeemer. What a great day it must have
been for Nehemiah And Nehemiah that day, which is the Tertiary,
the governor, and Ezra the priest and the scribes and the Levites,
this is Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 9, taught the people and said
unto all the people, this day is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all
the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he
said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet,
and send portions unto them, for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy unto our
Lord, neither be ye sorry. Then these great words, For the
joy of the Lord is your strength. The joy of the Lord. You see, it was God's pleasure,
as David said, isn't it? He's pleased. He's pleased. in the gathering of His people.
He is pleased in the separating of His people. He is pleased
in the bringing of His people together to worship, to worship
at a temple, to worship through a blood sacrifice. He is pleased
to see His people separated from the world, separated from sin,
separated from Satan, separated by grace. electing grace, redeeming
grace, calling grace, keeping grace. We have seen, as we talked last
week, that Nehemiah shows us again, again and again, the dangers
of compromise. The walls are walls that are
built by God and then those walls are built, those walls that speak
of his character, those walls that speak of the person of his
son, that separate his people from the world. We know what
the world's religion says about the Lord Jesus and we know what
the promised effect of the world's religion is. Just go onto any
building site, turn on your television, read in the papers, you will
see and hear the name of God blasphemed, not because of clever
atheists and evolutionists. but because of people who claim
to speak in God's name and make our God and our Saviour out to
be a failure. Someone who tries. Someone who
loves, but the love is ineffective. Someone who died, but the blood
is not sufficiently precious to get them out of hell. Someone
who tries. to get people to worship him,
and he fails because the world ignores him. Our God is a big
God. Nehemiah's God was a big God. Nehemiah was led by this God
to come back to Jerusalem and they saw, they saw the glory
of God revealed in this building, they saw the glory of God revealed
in his words and in his worship. And compromise, when there is
compromise, The walls of Jerusalem are down and the Tobiahs and
the Sambalats and the enemies can come and go as they please. And when the walls are down,
the Eliashibs and others can have compromised relationships
with these people. And where do they bring them?
Where did Tobiah end up? Thabai ended up in the one place
that Thabai wanted to be. He ended up living in the very
courts of the temple, and the things that were thrown out were
the things that were emblematic of the sacrifice of the Lord
Jesus. The Lord Jesus is thrown out
and trodden down. The enemies will take their place.
But just for a time, just for a little time, God will send
his Nehemiahs to his people. He will send the comfort of Nehemiah
to his people. The other thing, of course, that
Nehemiah shows us, and it's something that I really do believe is only
ever revealed by the grace of God in the hearts of his people,
is that these are a people who had lived by this stage for the
best part of a thousand years under God's law at Mount Sinai. They were the descendants of
the people who promised. They said, you tell us what to
do and we will do it. They were a people who had seen
in the most graphic ways possible the picture of the Old Testament
law and its curses upon them. God was true to his promises. The stories are abbreviated in
the scriptures. and mercifully so, but there's
enough to read in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and in Lamentation to
know something of the horrors of that broken law and God's
curse upon these people. You can read about the promises
in Deuteronomy 28 and 29. You can read about the fulfilment
of those promises in Lamentations and other places in the scripture.
It's horrible to think of gentle women, gentle young women eating
their babies. They were promised. These people
had witnessed it. What great evidence they had
before them. Like the Holocaust survivors
of today, these people were just no further away from those events
historically than the people of the Holocaust are today. And
they want the world to look back to what happened in Germany with
repulsion and disgust and a determination for it never to happen again. And yet these people had seen
things equally graphic. The law had promised their punishment,
their banishment, their captivity and their slavery for disobedience. And now these people were gathered
together They were gathered together to hear the Word of God. They
were gathered together in Jerusalem where the temple was built under
Cyrus' decree and with his money. The walls were now built with
the money and the help and assistance of our exercise. And here they
are finally with those walls built. They have this great momentous
event in Chapter 8. And here they are in chapter
8, you can read the words. So they read in the law distinctly. They set up a platform for Ezra
to open the book and he opened it in the sight of all the people,
verse 5. He opened it and all the people
stood up and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And the
people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands and they
bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to
the ground. And then there's a list of these people, the Levites. And these people read and they
caused the people to understand the law, and the people stood
in their place. And so they read in the book
of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused
them to understand the reading. So they had it read, they understood
it, they had the sense of it, and they had it read and understood
distinctly. Not only did they have all those
benefits of the law, they actually wept under its revelation of
their sin and their disobedience to God. You can read about that
in verse 9. The people wept when they heard
the words of the law. And remarkably, they got together
and they did what happens in churches all over the world today.
We want to bind people, don't we? If we can only get them under
control, bring them under a sense of guilt and conviction and get
them under some sense of control and get them to do, do, do, do. Obey the law and you will please
God. You've heard it, brothers and
sisters. You can now do some things under the Law of God which
will change God's verdict about you on the Day of Judgement. I am quoting from people. God is pleased with you when
you obey the Ten Commandments. God will honour you when you
obey the Ten Commandments. God will reward you for going
back to the Law. These are the people. They heard
it in chapter 10. They do some remarkable things. They knew how serious it was.
In chapter 10, verse 29, they clave to their brethren and nobles
and entered into a curse and into an oath. And they did what
the people of Sinai did, to walk in God's law, which was given
by Moses, a servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments
of the Lord, our Lord, and His judgments and His statutes. And it goes on to detail the
things that they're going to do. Number one on their list
is that they're not going to allow their sons and daughters
to marry foreigners. And it goes on to talk about
the other things they're going to do. They promise to tax themselves. to charge ourselves yearly for
a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our
God." And it lists all the things that they're going to provide
for the house of God. Great promises. Worthy promises. I will, I will, I will. And the priest, the son of Aaron,
shall be with the Levites, when the Levites shall take tithes.
They will put taxes upon themselves. And the Levites shall bring the
tithe of the tithes into the house of our God, to the chambers
and into the treasure house. For the children of Israel and
the children of Levi shall bring the offering of the corn and
the new wine and the oil under the chambers where the vessels
of the sanctuary are, and the priests that minister, and the
porters and the singers, and then this great promise, and
we will not forsake the house of our God." Me and I, it goes away. just for 12 years. Chapter 13, what had they done? What had they done? They had
broken every single promise, publicly and collectively. Everywhere where we read in the
scriptures, I will, I will, I will. We find man failing, failing,
failing. There's only one I will that
is ever honoured in all the scriptures, and that is the I wills of God
himself. We do so often think that if
we actually make ourselves covenants, we make promises saying, I will
do this and I will be reformed and I will do these things, then
out of that will pop goodness and righteousness. It never, ever has happened.
The Scriptures are just full of pictures, aren't they, of
people promising to do things. You remember at that Last Supper,
all 11 of them said, don't you worry, that Judas might have
gone, I'm here for you, I'll stand up, don't you worry, no
matter what happens. Peter says, the rest of that 10 over there,
they're a doubtful lot, but me, I'll be there, I'll be there
to death with you, the Lord Jesus. I will, I will, I will. And he
failed, he failed, he failed. The law does not bring righteousness. The letter kills. It's called
in Romans 7-2 a law of death. In Romans 4-15 it's works wrath. It's administration of death
and condemnation. It's a yoke of bondage. The early church was attacked. And the attacks on the church
have continued ever since. It was sufficiently effective
to turn many of the churches that the apostles were pastoring
away from the grace of God, and away from looking at the Lord
Jesus, and away from trusting Him to do what He's promised
to do. In that great Jerusalem Council
in Acts 15, These men, Peter and the other apostles, who'd
lived under that law, who'd sought righteousness by that law, had
come by the Gospel to see that the law doesn't bring righteousness
and the law doesn't bring obedience. The obedience that comes from
law keepers is an obedience of wickedness and self-righteousness,
and ultimately an obedience in the eyes of men, which is hatred
of the Lord Jesus. They want to establish their
own righteousness. But also, as Peter says when
they have this situation brought before them in Acts chapter 15,
he says, now why for do you tempt God? To put people back under
the law is to tempt God, to test God. And he calls the law to
put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our
fathers nor we were able to bear. No one could bear the guilt of
that law. The law was there just to reveal
sin. The law is there to magnify sin. The law is not there to bring
righteousness. If righteousness comes by the
law, says Galatians chapter 5, then Christ died for nothing. Salvation, as we see in Nehemiah,
is of the law. Promises to obey the law are
just turned into more open sin. The law's role is to show us
the depths of sin that we might be found looking away from ourselves
and looking away from our performance and looking to another. Before
I close, I'd like us to look to another, because there's a
beautiful word about our friend Solomon in verse 26. You see, sin is sin, and sin
is wrong, and sin brings harm, and sin is what we all do all
the time. Sin is what we inherited from
our father Adam and in Adam we all sinned, in Adam we all died. And he talks about Solomon's
sin, a sin that was similar to the sin that was going on in
Jerusalem. But then he has this word about
Solomon. Solomon, a sinner. Solomon, an
open sinner. Solomon, a sinner against God. Solomon, a man who brought reproach
to his people, to his family, by his sin. But look at these
words in verse 26. Solomon, who was beloved of his God." See, salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is not looking to us
and the things that we do. Salvation is an inheritance that
we receive. Salvation brings with it and
appreciation of the Saviour in the most remarkable ways, we
need a Redeemer and we have a great and mighty Redeemer. We have
a great and mighty Redeemer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm just
trying to find my place here. These words reveal the Gospel. Nehemiah prays that God would
remember him on the basis of the greatness of his mercy. Solomon was a recipient of mercy. Brothers and sisters, we are
no better than Solomons, but if we're recipients of the mercy
of God, if we're recipients of the love of God, then we are
right. God will be as a wall around
his people. No harm will befall the righteous,
the righteous in God's sight. Before I finish, I'd just like
you to recall with me another wall builder. We don't have many
pictures of wall builders in the Old Testament, but there
was another wall builder, and he was building his walls probably
just a couple of hundred years before Nehemiah came back to
build walls. The man is Manasseh. He's the son of Hezekiah. Hezekiah who was greatly blessed
of the Lord and had a son who was one of the most evil kings
in all of Israel. He built altars to the host of
heaven He caused his children to pass through the fire in the
valley of Hinnom. He actually burnt his children.
They made these idol gods and they put hands there and then
they put one of their babies in the hands of the idol with
a fire burning underneath. And as the baby screamed to death,
they thought that the screams of the baby appeased the gods. This is what he did. He also
observed times and used enchantment and used witchcraft and dealt
with the familiar spirit and with wizards. And he wrought
much evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.
He set up a carved image, an idol, which he had made in the
house of God, which God has said to David and Solomon, his son,
this house in Jerusalem, which I have chosen for all the tribes
of Israel, will I put my name forever. and goes on to list
his sins. And then, remarkably, he is sent
to Babylon. The Lord spoke, they ignored. Macnasa ignored and wouldn't
hearten to the word of the Lord. And he was bound in fetters,
verse 11 of chapter 33 of 2 Chronicles, 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 fathers, and prayed
unto him, and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplications,
and brought him again. into Jerusalem and into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord,
he was God. Now after this, he built a wall
without the city of David on the west side of Gihon in the
valley, even to the entering of the fish gate. Same wall that
Nehemiah rebuilt a couple of hundred years later. And he repaired the altar of
the Lord. It's remarkable, isn't it? Manasseh
is pictured as a great testimony to the grace of God. The grace
of God that saves to the uttermost. The grace of God which reveals
the greatness of the Lord Jesus. How did Manasseh get into heaven? Not because of his good taste.
repentance. Manasseh was carried into heaven
in the arms of the Lord Jesus. His sins, those wicked, evil,
horrible sins, sins which we might think that we haven't committed,
if only we knew how bad ours were. Manasseh is a great picture
of grace. Manasseh is a great picture of
salvation. The Church of God and the bride
of the Lord Jesus, loved from before the foundation of the
world, cleansed and without sin before God from before the foundation
of the world, chosen and loved the ones for whom He is betrothed,
the ones for whom He has redeemed, the one He's coming back to marry,
to take to that new walled city, that new creation, all for the
glory of the praise of His grace, that He might be worshipped and
He might be seen as glorious. Let's pry.