MANASSEH'S SIN AND REPENTANCE.

(2 Chron. xxxiii:1-13.)

I. The Analysis.

1. Manasseh's life-record (verses 1, 2).

2. The king's great sin (verses 3-10).

3. Manasseh's terrible punishment (verse 11). The king's repentance and restoration.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

The core of the matter in this lesson is in the twelfth verse: "And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers." Two things followed Manasseh's humbling:he got an answer to his prayer, and he got really acquainted with God.

Put, as you truly may, into the word affliction all the meanings of those other words of Scripture, "chastening," "tribulation," and "purging," and think of these experiences not as the accidents and mere chances of the believer's life, but as the sent experiences of the Father's disciplinary dealing, every one a deliberate plan; every one fitted with exquisite skill to the effecting of a certain object; every one held steadily in the Father's hand with His loving faithful finger on the pulse of His child—think of the word affliction that way, and you are in the very heart, not alone of this Sunday school lesson, but of the deepest mysteries of Christian experience.

Manasseh's great ancestor and covenant head, king David, said, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted;" never once does he say, "It is good for me that I have been exalted." David poor, cast out, hunted like a partridge on the mountains of Israel was always a humble, hopeful, holy David. But David on a throne, rich, idle, overfed, was a David ready for any sensuality, any cruelty.

Why are the good afflicted? That problem is as old as Job, and not much has been added to the solution of the problem since Job. It is all answered there at last.

And perhaps the sorest trial of the afflicted is still that to him comes Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamanite, with their little self-righteous theories about the affliction of the good. The affliction itself is hard, but it is as a bed of down compared to Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar. But these, too, must be borne.

Paul calls affliction "tribulation," from the Roman threshing implement. And that means more than that it falls like the blows of a flail. It means that under the blows chaff gets separated from wheat. Paul tells us that the justified man, who has peace with God, and stands in God's grace, and rejoices in the hope of God's glory, comes under the flail and to what end.

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience hope."

Some one has beautifully said that "Tribulation is God's way with us, sometimes; and patience is just letting God have His way; and experience is finding out that God's way was best."

Our Lord calls it "purging"; and He, too, tells us what it is good for. "Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." And the word means both cleansing and pruning. The tendrils reach out after forbidden, or at least unwise things, and the Husbandman severs the outreaching tendril. But the great autumn clusters make it well worth while.

The writer of the Hebrews calls it "chastening," and he, too, tells us why the good are afflicted. It is "for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness." And he says that though, "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

So Manasseh's affliction was his exceeding great blessing.