FBC Morning Light – February 24, 2023

Well, a good Friday morning to you. Hope your week has gone well for you and you're looking forward to a good weekend. Hopefully if you have the traditional Monday through Friday schedule, you'll have a day off tomorrow and Sunday as well, Sunday the Lord's Day, a day for you to get together with God's people, to learn of God, hear from His word, worship Him together.

It can be a great weekend. I hope it will be for you. Before we get to the weekend, though, we still have to get through Friday, and this morning I want to look at a passage again in the book of Leviticus, this time in chapter 20.

You know, in the ancient culture, especially among the Ammonites, there was a god that they worshipped named Molech. He's referred to here in Leviticus chapter 20, and the worship of Molech was prohibited for God's people, of course.

I mean, that's prohibited in the Ten Commandments when God says, you shall have no other gods before me. But there's one particular way of worshipping Molech that God absolutely prohibits and finds particularly abhorrent.

It's put this way in verse 2. He says, whoever of the children of Israel or of the strangers who dwell in Israel, who gives any of his descendants to Molech, he shall surely be put to death. The one who gives one of his descendants, one of his children, to Molech, that person shall be put to death.

Now why is that? Why would there be capital punishment for giving one of your children over to Molech? Well, it wasn't exactly the idea of sending your child to become a nun or a priest in the religion of Molech.

That's not what was going on. What he's referring to is the practice of child sacrifice. People would... I mean, this has been practiced in cultures all over the world. Pagan cultures from ancient history and in some cases even still today in rare and distant places where a child, usually an infant, is taken and slain and then burned as a sacrifice to the God, to somehow appease the God, to gain the God's favor or whatever.

Now, even in our broader culture, that would be considered absolutely abhorrent, and the idea of having a religion that would sacrifice children to the God, I mean, that's just appalling. People would say, oh man, that has to be outlawed.

You can't allow for that kind of thing to go on in our culture, in our society. We can't do that. What kind of a culture would we be if we allowed parents to take their children and sacrifice them to the God of their religion?

Are we hearing ourselves? Are we listening to ourselves? Is that not what our culture has not only winked at, but sanctioned? One of the most appalling things that I saw in the recent State of the Union address were images of some of our politicians—I think they were all from one party—who were wearing pins on their lapels that said, no, it wasn't the flag of the United States, it wasn't their state flag that they represented, but they were wearing pins on their lapels with the word abortion—abortion !—as if they were proud to be supporting of abortion.

What is that, anyway? What exactly goes on in an abortion? One who is supposed to be a medical professional goes into the body of a mother and kills the child in her womb. He is a priest to Molech. What of the parents?

What of the mother that would do such a thing? I realize that in many cases the circumstances that cause a mother to go through such a procedure are complex and they're complicated and there's all kinds of emotions going on, but it doesn't really in the end make a difference.

As hard as it must be for a mother to bring a child to term, it's essential that she does.

So.

She must not allow herself to be the god to whom she sacrifices her child. I remember hearing not too long ago, one of the rock stars in the rock group Fleetwood Mac—woman, I think her name was Stevie Nicks, if I got that right.

If I didn't, then forgive me for that. She made a comment, and I'm paraphrasing, she made a comment that she was so glad that she got the abortion or abortions—I can't remember if she had more than one or not—but she was so glad that she aborted her baby when she did, because if she had not done so, then her career with Fleetwood Mac would not have occurred.

The stellar success of the group would not have occurred if she hadn't aborted her baby. In other words, if she had not sacrificed her child to the Molech of success, then she wouldn't have experienced such success.

I'm sorry, but this whole practice that we have accepted in our nation of killing babies in the womb is really just a modern version of the ancient practice of killing them outside of the womb and then burning them on a funeral pyre.

It's not a whole lot different. But I am so glad that I serve a God who says, that is abhorrent, that is abhorrent, value that life. Make whatever sacrifice you have to make for the sake of that life.

Why?

Because life is precious, and God, the Creator and Giver of life, values it supremely, and so should we. So may this be a challenge to us, and give us a perspective on how to look at this plague that is upon our nation.

Our Father and our God, I pray that we would realize just how grievous this practice is that's going on in our land. We're thankful for decisions that have been made recently to curb it to some extent, but nevertheless, those actions have simply brought out the hostility of so many, and the display of their willingness and love for the slaughter of children.

Father, I pray, have mercy on us as a nation, and I pray that this practice of child sacrifice would be eradicated from our land. Only by your mercy will that ever happen. We pray to that end, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

Well, all right. Well, listen, have a good weekend, would you, and gather with God's people, worship the Lord, and enjoy that gathering of worship on the Lord's Day. Have a good day.

God bless.