The contrast between the profound sinfulness and subsequent radical conversions of Manasseh and Saul (later Paul), identifying them as "chiefs of sinners" in their respective testaments. It details Manasseh's wicked reign, marked by idolatry and bloodshed, and his eventual repentance and restoration after divine discipline, highlighting his efforts to undo his past wrongs. Similarly, it recounts Saul's zealous persecution of early Christians, his dramatic encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and his transformation into the apostle Paul, a fervent preacher of the gospel. The central lesson emphasizes that God's grace is powerful enough to redeem even the most grievous sinners, demonstrating that no one is beyond the reach of salvation through Christ.
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Thank you so much. Now tonight, may we have a quick review. First night we spoke on the two men that lost the great possession. Adam and Esau. We spoke on two martyrs and two of their comparisons, Abel and Stephen. That night we spoke on the two men that went to heaven without dying. Not a night. We want to see if you can get these two subjects.
Two sheep of sinners. One in the Old Testament, one in the news. May I say there are several similarities between these two as well? I don't want two people speaking one. We want One person is trying to give both names, but let's see if we have a hand. Who is that? Yes, sir? You're right. This is Manasseh and Paul Atas. Did anybody else have that? You have the same?
That's good. Oh, that's fine. Let's turn then to the Scriptures, Second Chronicle, chapter thirty-three. Two chiefs of sinners. I believe when thou shalt shift all the others. For this reason he has such an opportunity. He's such a gaudy heritage. He's such privileges that others didn't have. One lady said to me last night, it's Nebuchadnezzar. So I said, we'll see to all. Not even. But you see, Nebuchadnezzar was a heathen king.
He didn't have the light that Manasseh had, and he didn't sin against the light that Manasseh did. And as you'll see in these scriptures, Manasseh had a wonderful conversion. Now, if you read the Second Kings, chapter twenty-one, if you read the account there, you don't see anything about his conversion. He doesn't mention it. Well, if you can't even see any more of the spiritual side of a man's life, else is how he's converted. You never know that he's converted unless you have this account in the thirty-third chapter of the Second Chronicles, beginning to read at verse one.
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty in five years in Jerusalem. But he did that which were evil in the sight of the Lord, like under the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had camped out before the children of Israel. For he built again the higher places which Ezekiah his father had broken down. And he laid up altars for Balaam and made scrolls and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them. Also he built altars in the house of the Lord, where the Lord has said, In Jerusalem shall my name be forever. And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the true course of the house of the Lord.
And he caused his children to pass through the fire, the valley, the son of Himm. Also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with familiar spirits, with a familiar spirit, and with wizard. He brought much evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. And he set out a carved image, the idol which he had made in the house of God, of which God has said to David and to Solomon his son, in this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name forever. Neither will I any more remove the foot of Israel from out of the land which I have appointed for your fathers, so that they will take heed to do all that I have commanded them.
to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses. So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to Ur, and to do worse than the heathens whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel, and the Lord spake to Manasseh and to his people, for they would not haggen. Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the hope from the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with feathers, and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his daughter, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed under him, and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him against the Jerusalem into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew that the Lord... He was gone. Now after this he built the wall of the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, the valley even to the entering end at the fifth gate, and contested about Ophel, and raised it up at a very great height, and took captains of war and all the then cities of Judah. And he took away the strange dog, and the idols out of the house of the Lord. and all the orders that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem and cast them over the feet. And he repaired the order of the Lord and sacrificed their own peace offering and strength offering and command his Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.
Why wasn't that a commendment and a virtue to God there of a very very wicked name. And of course the other one is Saul of Tarsus. We read about him in verse seventy-one fifteen where he said that Christ is a faithful being and worthy to be accepted by all that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. And we'll talk more about him too after a little while. First, we're going to talk a little bit about Manasseh and why we believe he was the chief of sinners in the Old Testament, how God dealt with him.
And what a wonderful setting foot of the grace of God here. We sang about that tonight, the grace of God. Well, here you see the grace of God in this place in both of these nets. If you want to paint a picture and you need to give them good contrast. And a great contrast is the dark background of these two chiefs of sinners, and then they just meet the grace of God and really shows up. And if a sample is called to save men like that, he can save anybody. No one is to harm for the Lord to save. That gives encouragement for the worse, doesn't it?
And at the same time, as Pharisees do, men don't quote religious men. They're religious, as you'll see. Well, religion is not the answer. The answer is found in that person, and that person is our Lord Jesus Christ. That's where you find the answer to the need of the human wicked heart. All the heart is wicked. Think of what the heart is capable of doing. Now here's a man, a young man. Notice that there's privileges in this portion. I go back to the previous chapter, chapter thirty-two, verse thirty-two.
Now the rest of the act of Hezekiah, and of his goodness, behold, are written in the vision of Isaiah, the prophetess under Pima, and of the book of the king of Judah and Israel. And Hezekiah slept with his fathers. and they paid him the cheapest of the sepulchres of the sons of David. And all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him all at his death. And Manasseh his son reigned in his death. Now here was a boy that had a great and a gaudy father. One of the greatest kings in Judah, Ezekiah, known for his great fear of the Lord and honoring the Lord and living for God and casting out what was evil and purifying things.
A great man of God. God became. So he had a wonderful father, a father that opened the temple doors. A father cleared out all the rubbish. A man that was the Levites back in the office. He restored the worship. He lit the lamps in the temple. He stamped on idolatry. This type of a father, I'm sure, prayed for this boy, this boy that would follow him. This boy that was born after you remember God has said to a Hezekiah, sets your house in order, you're going to die.
You remember how he prayed, he turned his head to the wall, he wept, and he prayed, and God says, I'll give you fifteen years. And that means for those fifteen years, Pesachai wouldn't have been born. Right? So he's a child of grace. You see, God extended a man's life in order that this boy might be born. He's sitting on the phone. And what an age that's got his life at twelve years old. The age when the Lord Jesus went up to the temple with his family. The age when the Lord Jesus raised Jerry his daughter, an age when many people trust the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you're young, you're right. Corpse is usually set. And this is when he started to reign. Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign. Think of the light he was raised in. He lived near the temple. He knew the great prophets of God who were present in that day. with all these wonderful privileges. And yet, turn it back on it. I wonder if there's someone here tonight. You've had their godly father, a godly mother. You've had known some godly preachers and godly people that love the Lord and have a real heart to God and live godly lives.
And you turn your back on all that. You've gone your own way, like Manasseh. We'll go on a little more. Notice how early he began this rebellion for years. And I'll tell you the evil he did he did with both hands. Like someone said, he did with both hands earnestly. What his father built up, he tore down. What his father had torn down, he builds up. He talked about a rebellious young man. Here was a generation gap, if you like.
We have rebellious youth today, but here was a rebellious youth. There's hope. Doesn't matter how rebellious anyone is. The grace of God can reach him. And if you look at these verses going right down from verse three, you'll see the catalogue of sins that are piling up there. How, as I've already said, he... toward down what his father built up and rise of earthen. And then how despised and disrespectful he was, and he filled all of it in the house of the Lord. Back the villages. He had no fear of God.
He had no respect of the things of God. He had no fear of God. He even carved an image and set it up in the temple, the holy temple of God. Any ordinary person raised in an atmosphere, he was raised on a good enough way to do it. But he was a bold and a rebellious sinner. Not only that, but he practiced hedonism and superstition, spiritualism and witchcraft. Notice all that's been here. Verse six, when he calls his childish children's heads through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom, of Edenism, all the absurd times are used in Chapman with Christ.
Like we have so much of today in that one of the times, my friends, the Lord's coming is near. There's so much worship, even of Satan today, evil spirits, are working very, very openly in many areas. And that's, we spoke that night about the rapture and the catching up. And you remember when the Enoch was taken, they, they, he could not be found if he had a church party up for him. He lied that their church parties up from the one way he had gone.
And say, when the Lord Jesus comes to take us up, I'm sure we'll have a church Friday night looking for us all along, wondering what's happening to all these people. They won't smile at us because we'll be with the Lord. But all this type of thing that you see here will become very prevalent. In the last day shall be getting used to the soothing spirit. And that's what he did. Familiar, he was, he dealt with a familiar spirit and wished it. He wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord. What a sinner he was. Set up this idol in the temple of the Lord.
And that's not all. I want you to turn to the second Kings if you have your Bible. Twenty-one. There's two or three things there. I just want to point out, in Matthew, to show you how wicked this man was. Verse nine of second, James twenty-one. Manasseh said, just enter that verse just a little bit. Manasseh said, to do, that is the children of Judah, to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel. He made them sin worse than that he the nations did. It's bad enough to do a thing yourself, but he's an uttered to do it.
All the guilt of his men, There's a great greedy preacher up in eastern Canada, and one of the things that haunts this man of God is when before he was saved, he got a young and nice boy from a respectable family, got him down behind the railway station and poured a few drinks into him. And the man is trying not to be a drunkard, a hopeless drunkard. And this man, he just feels so bad how he let this man into that place. It's a terrible thing to go into sin yourself as when you take others with you. And when that's when you're doing your life, this type of a life.
We the leading people upward, or we're leading them downward. We have a tremendous influence on a lot of people. And then, verse sixteen of this chapter, more, the Nasser shed innocent blood very much. is a real murderer till he has filled Jerusalem from one end of another beside his sin where would he make Judah the sin in doing that which is evil in the sight of the Lord. And verse eleven, but Manasseh, the king of Judah, had done these abominations, had done wickedly above all the Amalite dead, which were before him.
and have made Judah alter the sin with his idols. What a monster sin of this fellow was. And now God speaks to him. We saw back here in, while you are here in second Kings, we're looking at the tenth of church twenty-one, and the Lord speaks by his servant the prophet. Yes, that's wonderful that the Lord would even bother with a man like this. He spoke to him by the prophet. Now he didn't listen to them. Maybe the Lord has been speaking to you by his preacher today, and you're not listening. The Lord says, all right, well, you won't listen to my servants.
And he spoke to him through the word of God as well. Notice in verse ten here, second chronicle thirty-three. And the Lord speaks of Manasseh. The Lord himself directly speaks to him. And he won't listen. All right, the Lord says, you don't want to listen. Then I get another way to speak to you. How humble you are, humiliate you are when you enter a place where you've been in pain. Wherever the Lord brought upon them that captured the horse of King Lucilia, which took Manasseh among the thorns who was hiding.
Found him with feathers. Put him in chains. He's carrying him with that man. He's talking down the cliff. And I tell you, he was down there. He was a miserable man. But you won't listen to me the other way. I'll get your attention. My the Lord is long-suffering, isn't he? Not really that any should carry, but that all should come to his attention. And when he was down there in that prison in the former man, Jesus taught the Lord his God. Now if I had been the Lord, I'd say, now you just stay there for a while. And you just cry out for a while. You just complain a while. It's good enough for you. You deserve it.
You have it coming to you. You have done so much evil that I want to leave you there a good long while. Now you have made your bed and you lie in it. Good enough for you. Isn't that how we're treated in it? That's what he deserved. I'm not going to listen to you for a good while. You can keep on. All the torture you brought people through, all the wickedness you have done, all the evil you have brought upon others, all the dishonor you have done to me. Oh, how gracious the Lord is. Know this. He bestowed the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him, and he, the Lord, was entreated of him.
I tell you, whether to repent and sin, it doesn't matter how wicked you've been, how awful you've been, if you cry to the Lord and all sin, fear it is, he'll hear you. And that's what the Lord did. He heard us. And he took him out. He brought him again to Jerusalem. Back to the place where God had put his name. And I'll tell you, then and after news of the Lord, he was gone. You see, this man had genuine repentance because it came out. After he got back there, then now he's got to build up the faith he's going down.
He started to make restitution if you like. He started to put things right he made wrong since the evidence of real salvation. When a man is really saved, he has put things right in as much as he can that he did wrong before. That's what he did. Not only that. Notice verse fifteen. And he took away the strange guard on the idol. Things were cleaned up. The word of God says that any man being Christ is a new creation. He won't think that's the way all things become new. When the Lord really changes you, then it's a change. That's a wonderful change for the better.
You're never the same again when the Lord saves you. May I ask you tonight, have you had this wonderful transform and change in your life? Has the power of God had an effect on you? Are you different? Have you been made new? Have the old things passed away? Are you a new creation? Do you have a love for the Lord Jesus? Have you turned from the old way? That's the evidence. And that's why this is such a wonderful conversion. He took away the green sores.
He filled up the house of the Lord at verse fifteen. He retained the altar. He sacrificed the altar. He had cheated for it, not content offering. He sang, if it were, thank you, Lord, for sailing on gold. Thank you, Lord, for making me whole. Thank you, Lord, for giving to me thy great salvation from which it took me. He offered thanks, Father. And if anyone is going to thank the Lord, those who have been saved by his grace. Can you thank him tonight for craving you, for lifting you, changing you? And not only that, but he became a witness. First in verse eighteen, notice his prayers.
He is a prayer. And it also says he commanded Judah to serve the Lord. That's something, isn't it? That shows the evidence of this man's salvation was absolutely real. Thank you. Because when the Lord really reaches down, he doesn't work in the heart of a man like that. So you have a wonderful conversion here of the wicked man that became afterwards and that praise of the Lord after he has been brought down. Now friend, it's so much better for it to come as easy.
Now let's turn to Acts chapter nine to see about this Saul of Tarsus. Acts chapter nine. Because I can only briefly touch on a tremendous conversion like this. The Saul of Tarsus in a sense was similar to Manasseh. He started out job, persecuting, putting the Christians in prison, tearing down what the Lord Jesus had been building up to his service.
He was sinning with the Lord. With both hands, yet I think he was doing the will of God. Paul accomplished understand was just a little man, but he was a giant, intellectual giant. But there was one thing he wanted to do, he wanted completely right out of existence in the name of Jesus. He wanted to get rid of all the Christians. He had great animosity against the Lord. So did Manasseh. Manasseh sought to tear down the whole true worship of God in Judah.
showed it all the time. And he was very successful. He was clear in the land that they were all around Jerusalem until at last he got permission from the high priest to go all the way down to the mass at some hundred and sixty miles there to find the Christian, to put him on an impressive. You remember previously to this he had stood by and witnessed the death of the first month of Stephen. They came and they were down their clothes, or the young man whose name was Saul. And Saul was just breathing out threatenings against the Lord, against the church of God.
And as he was going down, getting close to the masters, suddenly he was smitten to the ground. That's what he would have said in Acts nine. Verse three, and as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly they shined round about him a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecute thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecute him. It is hard for me to kick against the quicks. And he trembling in that stone and said, Lord, What will thou have it to do?
The Lord said unto him, I rise and go into the city, and it shall be told me what thou must do. Verse eight, he saw the world from the earth, and his eyes were open. He saw no man, but they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. So here you have a man that's patted out with his awful persecution. Here he is prostrated before the Lord. So Lord had to lay him low, but he did not have that. I tell you, when you resist the power of God and the grace of God, sometimes God has to take severe measures to bring us to himself.
Very painful measures. And afterwards all how thankful we are for it. But you don't have to be so truly severe, unless you can come so easily. The Lord Jesus invites you to come. He says, them that come unto me, I will know why I've cast out. He has come unto me all ye that labor and every lady, I'll give you rest. All things already come. All you have to do is come as a sinner and admit it and acknowledge your sin and say, Lord, save me a sinner. You can come without having to be put through all this. But if you resist and you continue to resist, God may put you through some of this.
And isn't it gracious here on this experience? The Lord speaks to him. Soul, soul. One of these double calls. Here's the Lord speaking to a man that's been so much set against him. Again you see the marvelous grace of God. The Lord Jesus has been so persecuted to his people of him. He that has done it unto all these little ones, my little one has done them to me. And Paul has persecuted so many of his people. And now the Lord reaches down to him in grace and he speaks to him so, so What are you persecuting me for?
What have I done to you? I've never done anything else but good things for you. Now what are you persecuting me for? Did you ever accept this thing? Why have you never accepted all Jesus? What are you resisting him for? What are you going your own way for? Why are you so obstinate? What are you so self-will for? The Lord wants you eternal good. He died. He shed his lust in order to bring you to heaven.
What more can he do? I suspect that those people in Damascus and the people that knew Saul had passed with none of them ever suspected that man would ever be converted. I don't suppose to have any hope for a man like that. There's no one too far for him. Doesn't that give you encouragement? You have people that do have no hope for if I'm getting saved, my friends, keep praying and keep working.
God is not sure, listen, yet there's still good hope. When the Lord Jesus spoke to the Lord, Saul, why, first of all, he said, Lord, you are done. He brought them right down, yet he was right down. And he recognized the Lord Jesus. He was blinded by that light that was brighted, and the new day's sun, he tells us. And then that rose with the mask of this proud fair tree was humble right down into the dust where he took the low place at the dinner and said, Lord. And that's the only way to be saved. Yes, if he come there, come right down before the Lord and take the humble place and acknowledge him as the Lord.
not just Jesus. And then for the Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh. The Lord who came down and as a dead went to the cross and died for you and for you again. That's the only thing. And the first thing you say that to him is called and who would want and acknowledge him as well. He said, what do you want to do? Before that, he ran his own foot. He was out to live, to convene for himself, to be an outstanding religious leader in Judaism. Hardly he thought he could bring, and some of us thought he could bring the Messiah to come because he so savagely lived for God and time to fulfill the law, trying to do this extra for him to live with all these natural years.
all over the last week. But now he met him. Lord, we have met the Lord Jesus. We have met the risen Christ. Soon after. And it happened to him. This man who was never the same again. The dream that he had before, the bishop by which he persecuted the saints, was completely turned over to the Lord Jesus Christ to be used for him. And the church has never had a greater apostle than Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. That's the greater God and the power of God.
So operating on a man's life is completely changing. Then tonight if he could do that for Manasseh, I believe the chief of Timothy in the Old Testament, completely revolutionized his life to turn him from a sinner into a state that swayed and that met others now in the ways of God. That to take a chief of tenderness in the New Testament. Take that man who is so obstinate and so much against the Lord and the people as a change him. And you read some of the letters of Paul afterwards. How do you write to those different Christians How he loves them.
How he plays for them. Day and night. How he's just living for them. Willing to spend and be spent for them. What's happening? The grace of God has changed that. Christ has come into his life. He's a new man. No longer living for him. He says no. For me to live is Christ. And to die again. By one object in life and then to believe in. I want nothing in life enough to be excessive of him. Hey, whatever I do that I do has done to him. At the end of his life journey, Paul came to the end of the road. He said, I fought the fight.
He fought and took, he kept the faith. Now, he said, that made up for me a kind of life to do. He was looking forward to it. He spent many, many years serving the Lord. And what a joy he counted that. And now he looks forward to going to see this one he's met on the road to the master. Marvelously with God. Reaching the worst. Tonight he can reach you. Now you may not be an outstanding sinner like these two we have mentioned. You may not be openly against the Lord.
like they were you may not have gone to the extent of murdering like they did but I'll tell you this you still need to be saved you need to be saved just as much as they did and if you're not saved you need to be saved now the Bible says behold now is the accepted time salvation. And right now, you can receive the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior. Before the choir sings, so let's just bow in a brief with a prayer.
Our loving Father, we thank you tonight, as we've seen a little bit about thy wonderful power and grace. We thank thee, the Lord is able the saves of the uttermost, all that come unto God by him. We thank him for the marvelous transformation that took place in Manasseh's life. And in Saul and Tarsus, the man that became the great apostles of the Gentiles, writing all these letters to the Christians after his wonderful Christ.
How we thank him. And we pray that same grace and power might be made known to some light here tonight. Lord, at this closing invitation, hymn goes out, may someone right there in their heart, in their feet say, Lord Jesus, come into my heart and save me, and make me a new person. We pray in our Lord Jesus' presence. flowing before, flowing today, flowing today, why come to the sun's journey, the water has not grown, fire and water
away, flowing today falling to Him. Living and serving, calling, calling, calling, of his calling from weary to rest. Calling today, calling today, bring him my burden and I shall be blessed. he will not turn me away, falling to death, falling to death, giving us in glory, his heavenly glory to Jesus is
waiting for him through his voice. Here is today, here is today, day who will be on his day shall rejoice, with me a life and a grace. calling today calling today the word of god says both now thyself of tomorrow Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Today you'll hear his voice. Pardon us your heart.
This is the only moment you may have. As we just close in prayer, when you take this moment and trust the Lord Jesus right now, Father, we thank you that Jesus is still tenderly calling. Thank you that the door is still open. The Lord Jesus said, I am the door by me. If any man enters in, he shall be saved. And we pray someone will enter in that door right now. Use thy word to thy glory. Pray us back again for a long night. Take each one home in safety. We pray in our Lord Jesus' precious name.
We're going to be back at the door. You're not saved, but you're interested. and also if you want to help.