God's Favor

Introduction

Some of us feel far from God.

Far from the person we wanted to be.

Far from family.

Far from our own true selves.

And though we long to come home, we know that we cannot pave that road with our own effort.

The Bible has a single word for the road back.

That word is grace.

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables paints that word in unforgettable color.

It is the story of a man named Jean Valjean and of the great conflict between Law and Grace.

Jean Valjean did not begin as a hardened criminal.

He was a poor peasant who once stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving children.

For that theft—and for several attempts to escape—he spent nineteen years chained to the oars of a galley ship.

Year after year the cruelty of prison life beat into him bitterness and rage until his heart turned to stone.

When he was finally released, society branded him forever a dangerous man.

Every door slammed shut.

Every innkeeper turned him away.

Law had done its work: it punished, but it could not heal.

One winter night, homeless and shivering, Valjean knocked at the door of Bishop Myriel.

The old bishop welcomed him, spread a warm table, and offered him a bed.

But in the small hours, Valjean—still a creature of fear and scarcity—crept from the house and stole the household silver.

Caught by the police and dragged back at sunrise, he braced for condemnation and a return to chains.

Instead, the bishop did something astonishing.

Placing the silver candlesticks into Valjean’s hands, he said quietly,

> “My friend, you left the best behind. I gave you the candlesticks too.

Use this silver to become an honest man. With this I have bought your soul for God.”

That one sentence of grace undid nineteen years of shame.

Jean Valjean staggered away a free man in more than the legal sense.

Grace had struck the deepest chord of his heart.

From that night on, Valjean lived under a new name and a new mission.

He became a factory owner, a mayor, a rescuer of orphans—each act a ripple from the bishop’s grace.

Even when relentlessly pursued by Inspector Javert, the embodiment of Law, he kept choosing mercy: paying the legal defense of the poor, sparing the very man who hunted him.

Grace was not a single act of pardon; it became the lifelong power of transformation.

Years later Paris erupted in revolution.

Valjean’s beloved Cosette loved a young revolutionary named Marius, certain to die on the barricades.

Valjean went to that smoky, gun-blasted street not to kill but to save.

When Marius was struck down, Valjean hoisted the unconscious young man on his shoulders and disappeared into the foul sewers of Paris.

For three days he wandered through pitch-dark tunnels, knee-deep in filth, every step an echo of Christ carrying His cross.

At one point he whispered a prayer:

> “Lord, let this young man live; if need be, take my life.”

In that prayer the bread thief became a Christ-figure, offering himself so another could live.

By the end of his life, Jean Valjean died quietly, the silver candlesticks glowing near his bed—everlasting reminders of the night grace claimed him.

Law had once chained him; grace had set him free and taught his heart to love.

The same grace that found Jean Valjean is the grace that found King Manasseh, and it is the grace that seeks each of us today.

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Our Scripture reading tells Manasseh’s story:

> “In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly… And when he prayed, 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.” (2 Chronicles 33:12-13)

Manasseh became king when he was only twelve.

Imagine that—absolute power before his voice had even settled.

He could not handle it.

He tore down his father Hezekiah’s reforms and rebuilt pagan shrines.

He set up Asherah poles—sexual idols—inside the very temple of God.

He practiced sorcery and witchcraft.

In horrifying devotion to foreign gods he even sacrificed his own sons in fire.

Finally he rebelled against Assyria and was dragged away to Babylon with a hook through his nose.

This is what sin does.

It promises freedom and delivers bondage.

It promises sight and leaves us blind.

It promises glory and leaves us with a hook in the nose.

But in exile something broke open.

The Scripture says, “In his distress he humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors and prayed.”

And God—who never despises a contrite heart—was moved.

He listened.

He brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem, back to his throne, back to Himself.