welcome to 10 minute Bible talks Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work I remember watching a commercial back in the 1990s it was put out by the Canon camera company and it launches big advertising campaign and their star that kind of a celebrity they had on it was the tennis Legend Andre Agassi and the slogan that they were using for this big ad campaign what image is everything in that phrase cut for the feeling that time but made a capture the feeling of all times right because I think people have always been and probably always will be consumed with their image today we have more and more opportunities to work on our image more and more tools at our disposal to help us present the kind of image that we want to put forward we live in what you might call a self-editing world in which we can control what people know about us and therefore what they think about us that my wife is a beacon
 music fan and Brad Paisley who's one of the country music stars how to song with a line in it I'm so much cooler online it isn't it true that online we edit our image like think of dating out sir I really any place that we can present ourselves we come across better online than we do in person or another way that people kind of a self at it is in the resume I see somebody went to a college and flunked out and then went to a different college and graduated that colors they want out of this probably never going to show up on their resume and of course we know that there are people who have been found cheating on the resume like coaches or a political candidate that they've lied on their resume and made themselves look more accomplished than they really are is urge to self edit it's not entirely new it in the ancient times your genealogy was kind of like your resume what all that mattered was what family you are from what Clan what what's your
 pedigree that's the way a person will recommend themselves to the world so we are brush photos but people back in the first century they are brushed their resume so King Herod he's the ruler in Jesus day he was consumed with his image so he doctor his own genealogy and what he did as he removed the names of people that didn't fit with the story that he was trying to tell about himself a story of his own personal greatness now you might say that Matthew who wrote the Gospel of Matthew when he was putting together the genealogy of Jesus was guilty of the same thing what I mean is that when we read the genealogy that Matthew presents were not reading every name of every person in the ancestry of Jesus dating all the way back to Abraham we're reading the names of the people that Matthew thought were important to include we're reading those names that Matthew fought revealed something important about who Jesus is and
 his mission is still at Herod self edited his own genealogy to emphasize how great he was Matthew edited Jesus's genealogy to show how gracious he is greatness versus graciousness from the very beginning of the story in the very first chapter Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is a friend of sinners who in the genealogy in the list of names he's driving home the point of Matthew 1:21 she will give birth to a son and you were to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins in order to catch the grace communicated in this genealogy I just want to pick one person from the section that we have today and that demonstrates this true that Jesus is gracious so the person in Jesus's genealogy we're going to look at today is Manasseh he's the son of Hezekiah and Manasseh was the king of Judah for 55 years
 as we study manasa is there's a wrinkle in a story that's hard to reconcile he's considered to be one of those two evil Kings of all and yet toward the end of his life he gives his heart to God and his story of Manasseh is a story of radical Redemption manasa is this very evil King who's in Jesus's family tree he finds forgiveness and God late in his life but the damage she caused by his sin was so profound that his legacy is still that of evilness let's look a little bit more at him his story is told in the book of kings and Chronicles and that's where all the stories of the kings of Judah and Israel are told so many as it comes to the throne and becomes king at twelve years of age when his father Hezekiah dies Manassas made it his mission to undo all the reforms that his father had put in place so his father has akaya had destroyed the shrines of pagan worship but manasa rebuilt them and he also add
 Triumph even more Gods manasa desecrated the temple by putting altars for idol worship in their he sacrificed think about this he sacrificed his own son burning them to death in the worship of the idle Molek manasa murdered so many people that in 2nd Kings it says manasa also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end-to-end me manasa was a tyrant in the Jewish talmud it claims that Manasseh murdered the great prophet Isaiah by sawing him in half it would be easier if that was the only story that we had about Manasseh then we could just conclude he was evil and he faced God's judgment but Redemption is often messy a Grace as often as scandalous because Grace forgives people that we aren't sure should be forgiven 2nd Chronicles 33 says but manasa led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray so that they did more
 evil than the nation's the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites I mean this guy's evil can we just curse the man and move on no God can redeem the most hardened heart the consequences of sin May remain with the grace of God is beyond anything anybody deserves so you read this and 2nd Chronicles 33 the Lord spoke to Manassas and its people but they paid no attention so the Lord brought against them the Army commanders of the king of Assyria who took manasa prisoner put a hook in his nose bound him with Braun shackles and took him to Babylon in his distress you sought the favor of the Lord is God and humbled himself greatly before the god of his ancestors and when he prayed to him the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God
 so did you hear that man has repented and he got right with God and God ended up restoring his kingdom to him and so what you see is that Manasseh begins to Institute the religious reforms he begins to undo some of the evil things that he had done in the first place he tore down all the shrines the false god he took out the altars to the false gods that he had put it in the temple so is his conversion seems real I mean is having a real change a real impact in his life but even though manasa had a personal conversion he was never able to leave Judah totally out of the sand that he had previously LED them into because all the people they didn't follow him and his reforms they continued their idolatry and women acidize his son does evil in the eyes of the Lord is tragic figure in scripture although he repented of his sin he was unable to undo all the damage that had been
 I'm done and yet he is someone who shows that no matter how much sand we've committed no matter how evil we are God still can change us that God can still forgive us if there's no sin so great that God's grace won't forgive it and it just reminds us don't give up on anyone maybe there's somebody in your family or I may be as even describing you or somebody at work or whatever who just seems so hard and tore God so uninterested in the things of God and they've done such an incredibly evil things then maybe just have written them off like God wouldn't really have anything to do with him God could never save them. I could never change them God wouldn't want to forgive them that's just not true God loves to forgive Sinners there's no one who's committed some sin so great that God's grace cannot forgive it and that's why I manasa is in Jesus's family tree it's wise in this genealogy of Matthew one because it's a reminder that's what Jesus is about
 is this is on a mission to forgive Sinners that means that Jesus can forgive my sin and means that I shouldn't give up on anyone because Jesus can forgive their sin you see this genealogy is full of Center and that means it's full of Hope for people like you and me
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