Title Molech's sacrifice (Leviticus 20:1-8)
“Whether he is a descendant of Israel or a sojourner who sojourns in Israel, if he gives any of his children to Molech, he must be put to death, but the locals will stone him with stones” (Leviticus 20:2).
Today's text speaks about the sacrifices of the Gentiles who sacrificed their children to Molech.
'Molech' was a god worshiped by the Ammonites. His face was shaped like a bull and his body was a strangely shaped bronze shape of a human. After the Ammonites heated the bronze image of Molech, they placed a child on the palm of the hand and performed a sacrificial ceremony.
Think for a moment about the horrific sacrifice of one's beloved child on a hot fire. Is this really something humans can do? If there is a god who is not God, it is clearly a wrong god, and it must be very foolish to believe and follow such a god. Nevertheless, we can learn from the Bible that there were people who worshiped this god Molech in the age of the divided kingdom, not only among the Ammonites, but also among the people of Israel.
Why do people do these terrible things? It is because they do not know God. They commit such terrible things because they say, 'If you are ignorant, you are brave' because they distanced themselves from the knowledge of God and the knowledge of God's Word.
God tells the people of Israel, "Cleanse yourselves and be holy" from the Gentiles who worship these idols. He says, "Keep my ordinances and do them." He says that keeping God's word and doing it is the way to keep ourselves holy from the sin of idolatry.
If you and I today don't know God, we have no choice but to do things that God hates and hates without knowledge of God's Word. Therefore, we must diligently seek to know God as the prophet Hosea said, “Let us know the Lord, let us strive to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3).
In order to keep myself holy today, I hope that you and I will meditate on the word of God more deeply and put it into practice in our lives.