Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 9

Chapter Nine — Scandalous Grace…Again

How long is this going to go on? All these years and still no king who will do everything right and reign forever! Maybe it will be the next king Joash—he restored the temple and the offerings—but no. He became bad at the end. Then there was Amaziah and he was mostly good, but not the one. Uzziah came next and he was really good! Maybe he would be the one to get it all right. He sought God, and God helped him and he did all kinds of really good things and became very strong and famous all over the world. BUT when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. He tried to offer incense and only the priests could do that, so God gave him leprosy and he could never go in the house of God again. What a disappointment he turned out to be.

His son Jotham was good, but then his son Ahaz was more wicked than all the kings before him. He did not trust God and he worshipped idols and worst of all, he took his sons and had them burned in the fires of an idol named Molech. Molech was a giant idol situated in a valley. Molech’s head was like the head of giant bull and fires were raging around him and inside of him. He was made of bronze so that the fire made the metal extremely hot. When people placed their children on the hot metal with blazing fire, drummers would beat very loud drums to drown out the screams of the children so their parents wouldn’t have to hear them cry. 

The people thought if they sacrificed their children to the idols, then the idol-gods would help them win wars or give them more children. Demons were behind the worship of false gods and they always do just the opposite of the true God. They made people sacrifice their children to a false god,  but the true God sacrificed his own Son for us so we could live forever. 

The prophet Isaiah told the wicked King Ahaz to ask God for a sign about what God was going to do but Ahaz did not want to hear it. That didn’t stop Isaiah! He told him anyway. He said that a virgin would be with child—that would be the sign for the coming of “the one”. Now at last we have a clue what to look for. As soon as a virgin has a baby…wait a minute. That’s impossible…isn’t it?

Isaiah foretells the virgin birth

After Ahaz died, his son Hezekiah became King. King Hezekiah was a very good King because he trusted God with his whole heart and he listened to the prophet Isaiah. He restored the temple worship, and consecrated the priests and Levites and renewed the covenant between God and Judah. During his reign, the people began to celebrate the Passover again like never before. God protected Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem. In fact one night, when their enemies the Assyrians had the city of Jerusalem surrounded, God’s angel went into the camp and killed 185,000 soldiers! So you can see how much God loved Hezekiah. 

One day, Hezekiah had some visitors from Babylon called envoys. While they were there visiting, Hezekiah boasted to them of all his glories and showed them everything in his royal treasuries and in the temple treasuries. If he were living today, he would have posted pictures of everything on Instagram! Do you think that was a smart thing to do? It was not! He was acting like he did all this himself instead of giving glory to God. He was a sinner like all the rest of the kings. But he trusted in God and that is what matters! He was a very good King because he trusted in God and listened to God’s prophet Isaiah. 

Manasseh was the next King of Judah and he was even more evil than his grandfather, King Ahaz! He built altars to many different idols and he also sacrificed his sons in the fires of Molech and made other people do the same. He killed the prophets of God and anybody who listened to the prophets. He even had the prophet Isaiah sawn in two. The Bible says he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. He was so wicked that God let the wicked Babylonians take him captive. They put a great big hook (like a fish hook) in his nose and tied it to a rope and dragged him away to Babylon. Can you imagine how much that must have hurt? 

Manasseh was thrown into a dungeon in Babylon and was very miserable there. While he was there, he began to think about all the terrible things he had done and he cried out to God and repented of all that he had done. Do you think God should forgive a big sinner like Mannaseh? You might not think it would be right for God to forgive such an evil man. But God loves sinners! But God not only forgave Manasseh, he let him go back to Judah to be King again! 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS! 

IT’S SCANDALOUS! …

IT’S GRACE.

Do you ever feel like the sins you do are so bad that God could never forgive you? Well here is the good news: God’s love and mercy are greater than any sin you could possibly do or even imagine! And if you ever forget that, just go back and read about King Manasseh! He worshipped idols, burned children in fires and slaughtered God’s prophets. But when he repented, God saved him. God will save you too if you repent.

When Manasseh came back to Judah to the King again, he got rid of the idols and made God’s law the law of the land. He offered sacrifices to the true God and commanded all his people to obey God. When he died, his son Amon became King and he was another evil King. But Amon’s son Josiah was a good king. 

Josiah was only 8 years old when he became the king. Even though his father was evil, this little boy began to seek God. When he was just a teenager, he began to get rid of all the idols in the kingdom. He went to every town himself to make sure every idol was smashed and burned. You can imagine what the people thought when King Josiah came to their towns. I bet they all came out to watch the big bonfires of burning idols! 

While Josiah was king, the book of the Law was found. That would have been like our Bible today and included all the things written by Moses and Joshua. Josiah read the book and made all the people obey the commands in it. They kept the Passover just like it used to be in the days of Samuel. Everything Josiah did was good. But one day he went out to fight against the king of Egypt. The King of Egypt told him not to fight because God did not want him to fight, but Josiah fought him anyway and he died in the battle. That was very sad, because Josiah was the last good king that Judah ever had. All the other kings after that were evil and did not trust God. 

Evidence of God's Grace to Me: