HIS EYE IS ON HIS APPLE ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 22

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” “Like father, like son.” “Like mother, like daughter.” How long does it take for a phrase to be used in successive generations of a society before it is believed as truth? I remember hearing someone use that expression back in the early 90’s, and I thought how awful this would be for a child to hear and believe this if one or both of his or her parents were wicked. As my dad would say, “That’s baloney!” Sometimes the apple rolls far from the tree! Applied most often now to someone with obvious failings, the saying is known to be related to the problem being passed along from parent to child. Ironically, Ralph Waldo Emerson used this phrase for the first time in 1839 to describe that tug that often brings us back to our childhood home, so it really had nothing to do with the way it is used today.

As they struggle from childhood to adulthood, some adolescents falsely ponder: “Maybe this is who I am. My father was like this, so maybe it’s just who I am; therefore, I cannot change.” What or who defines any individual? Is it the environment in which he grows up? Is it the circumstances in which he was born? When we all stand before God one day, no one will be able to stand upon sinking-sand-excuses like: “This is just the way I was raised. I just followed in the footsteps of the parents You gave me.” What influences make a person who they are and result in the things they do?

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king of Judah. He reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. Manasseh was the worst king in Judah’s history. Manasseh was a “bad apple”. Manasseh did evil in the sight of the Lord provoking Him to anger, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel. He:

-   Rebuilt the high places

-   Erected altars for Baal

-   Made an Asherah

-   Worshiped all the host of heaven and served them

-   Built altars in the house of the Lord where the Lord had said He would put His name

-   Made his sons pass through the fire

-   Practiced witchcraft, used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritists

-   Set the carved image of Asherah in the house of the Lord. (He set an idol of a Canaanite goddess in the temple where the Lord had set His name. Asherah was believed to be the mother of 70 deities, including Baal.)

-   Misled the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel (Their idolatry exceeded the idolatry of the Canaanites from whom they took the land!)

-   Shed much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another

Manasseh engaged in every form of occultism we still see around us today: black magic, fortune-telling, demon contacts, and wizards. According to the world’s thinking, this man must have had a wicked father, right? Wrong! His father was Hezekiah who began his reign at age 25 and reigned for twenty-nine years. Many remember King Hezekiah for his well-known prayer when he was on his deathbed—a prayer that the Lord answered by giving the king 15 more years to live. Hezekiah was a good king who obviously had a close relationship with God. 2 Chronicles 31:20 says he did what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God. If Hezekiah was asked, “Who’s your daddy?” he would have had to answer, King Ahaz—another wicked king of Judah. So, we have Ahaz, Hezekiah, then Manasseh—a rose between two thorns, to be sure!

Hezekiah was more zealous for the Lord than any of his predecessors and reigned during the ministries of Isaiah and Micah, the prophets who ministered to Judah. Hezekiah had to do a major overhaul in cleaning up after all the damage from his wicked father’s reign. Pagan altars, idols, and temples had to be obliterated. The bronze serpent Moses had made in the wilderness had to be destroyed because the people had made it into an idol to worship. The very temple in Jerusalem had to be cleaned out and reopened. Hezekiah’s wicked father actually had its doors nailed shut. The Levitical priesthood had to be reinstated along with the national holiday of Passover. There were major reforms to be made on Hezekiah’s watch. The result? Revival came to Judah.

Hezekiah put God first in everything he did, and the Lord blessed him for it. 2 Kings 18:6-7 says that the Lord was with him and he was successful in whatever he undertook. In 701 BC, Hezekiah, and all of Judah, was threatened by the Assyrians (the world superpower at the time who had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel). Like Goliath facing David, the Assyrians taunted the living God whom Hezekiah served. Hezekiah reacted by sending word to the prophet Isaiah. The Lord gave word through His prophet assurance that Judah, in His strength, would stand firm against the Assyrian threats. Hezekiah is found in the temple praying thus: “Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God.” (2 Kings 19:19)

Answer—That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! (2 Kings 19:35) The rest of the Assyrians flew the coup, so to speak, defeated by the Lord of Hosts! 2 Chronicles 32:22 says, “the Lord saved Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem…He took care of them on every side.”

Later, when Hezekiah became very ill, the Lord told him it was his time to die. “Set your house in order, you’re coming home!” Hezekiah prayed that the Lord would be merciful to him remembering all that he had done in His name. Even before the prophet Isaiah left the house, God sent word to tell Hezekiah his prayer had been heard granting him fifteen more years to live. Isaiah applied a poultice, and Hezekiah was healed!

Grand victory! Mountaintop experience! However, we can now see what Hezekiah could not. When the Babylonians (never, ever trust the enemy!) heard Hezekiah had been sick, they sent him a gift. In foolish pride, Hezekiah showed the enemy all his treasures. One commentator said he paraded his whole arsenal in from of the enemy. Isaiah said, “Man, you should not have done that. One day all that you just showed the Babylonians will be taken by them along with your own descendants!”

After Hezekiah’s miraculous recovery, sometime during those next fifteen years, Hezekiah fathered the next heir to the throne. His name was Manasseh which means, “causing to forget”. Manasseh, as we have seen, was one of the evilest kings ever to reign in Judah. Tradition has it that he was the one who had Isaiah, the friend of Hezekiah, murdered.

Wicked leadership doesn’t stop with the leader. This is one reason the church is to expose false teachers. The purity of the church depends upon exposing error wherever it is found. Manasseh led Judah to forsake the Lord by worshiping idols. Their sin was so great that God declared He would wipe out Jerusalem just like He had done to the northern kingdom of Israel. (2 Kings 21:13-15) I will make them an object of horror among all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem. (Jeremiah 15:4) God would, because of Judah’s sin initiated by Manasseh, bring judgment resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and exile of the people. Leadership is a heavy burden of responsibility to bear.

In God’s grace and mercy, He continued to reach out to those who stubbornly would not listen just as He did with Manasseh. Through His prophets, God called Manasseh and the people back to Himself through repentance time and time again. But they refused.

Once again, the Assyrians formed an army against them. This time Scripture says that it was God who sent them. (2 Chronicles 33:11) Manasseh was captured with hooks (thongs put through the nose), bound with bronze chains, and taken off into captivity in Babylon. There, he humbled himself and sought the Lord. When he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. (vv. 12-13)

A repentant Manasseh was restored to his kingdom and rebuilt Judah militarily and instituted religious reforms. (2 Chronicles 33:15-16) We can rejoice in what God did in the heart of Manasseh. Manasseh’s story doesn’t, however, end with his conversion. Another lesson we can learn from his life is that while all sin may be forgiven when one repents, that forgiveness does not necessarily alleviate the natural consequences that flow from disobedience. As their leader, Manasseh was never able to lead Judah back out of the sin he had led her to in the first place. Continuing in her idolatry, she inherited yet another evil king when Manasseh died.

Manasseh’s son Amon was a wicked king who failed to humble himself before the Lord as his father eventually had. The Scripture says he multiplied guilt. He met his end at the hands of his servants who conspired against him to put him to death in his own house. The people of the land killed all the conspirators against King Amon and made Josiah, his son, king in his place.

Josiah had a wicked daddy and a wicked grandfather. When his father was assassinated, he became the youngest king to ever reign at only eight years old. Josiah did right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of his father David, nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left. Josiah:

-   (In the eighteenth year of his reign, 26 years old,) he raised money to repair the temple. At that time the high priest, Hilkiah, found the Book of the Law. When the high priest read it to Josiah, the king tore his clothes (a sign of mourning and repentance).

-   Called for a time of national repentance. Had the Law read to the people of the land and made a covenant with the Lord to walk after Him and keep His commandments, His testimonies, and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in the Book. All the people joined the covenant.

-   Instituted many reforms—cleansed the temple of all pagan worship, demolished all the high places of the land where idolatrous worship took place, restored the Passover, removed mediums and witches from the land.

Scripture testifies, “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.”  The judgment God had promised to come upon Judah due to Manasseh’s evil was delayed because of Josiah’s godly life and righteous rule.

Josiah’s life shows us what a powerful influence one can have even at a very young age when that life is submitted to the Lord’s will. We must never fail to remember the life of Josiah to the children among us as a testimony to the work God can do through the lives of His youngest servants. Josiah was fully committed to God, and the Lord blessed him for his faithful obedience. The Word of God had been lost to the people at that time. Josiah’s heart was immediately convicted because his people had failed to honor God’s Word. Josiah committed himself to making God’s Word known to the people. The Lord’s response to Josiah says it all: “Regarding the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,” declares the Lord. “Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.”

As we continue to look at the idolatry, particularly found in Judaism in ancient days, we will see that their error was in the assumption that because they were part of Israel’s national privilege, they were assured of salvation. John the Baptist warned: “Therefore, bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:8-10).

Salvation is not determined by one’s ancestry. Some wrongly believe that because they grew up in a Christian home, they are assured of the blessing of salvation. Many Christian parents agonize in guilt over one of their children not trusting in Christ; but they have no control over this matter. Parents are called to obediently live out their faith before their children understanding that salvation is of the Lord. Growing up in a Christian environment does not guarantee salvation. Likewise, growing up in a pagan environment does not guarantee that one will be doomed to unbelief. Romans 9 assures us that children of the promise will be saved.

Another lesson we are able to learn from looking at the thread of idolatry throughout the history of Israel is that it is an impossible sin to overcome without the Lord’s deliverance. Some children are raised in homes full of idolatry. But God…saves whom He wills to save. How many times have you given a biblical presentation of the gospel to someone who replies, “Look, I was born into this religion, and I will die in this religion. Every generation as far back as our family goes has been part of this religion. I’m good.” That stubborn rebellion that refuses to study the Scriptures for oneself to know what the will of God is will end up in hell with all those who went before him. We will all die once, and after that comes judgment. We will not stand before God as a family, as a husband and wife, as a parent and child or as a whole denomination. We will either stand individually with Christ or alone apart from Him.

Psalm 17:8a—Keep me as the apple of the eye. Deuteronomy 32:10—He found him in a desert land. And in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye. (NKJV) Zechariah 2:8—…for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye.