Leviticus 20:1-9--Punishment for Child Sacrifice

Leviticus 20:1-9
English Standard Version
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Punishment for Child Sacrifice
20 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, 5 then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.

6 “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 9 For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.

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We're still in the section of Leviticus where God is calling His people to be holy and separate from the Canaanites in the land they are about to enter.  As mentioned last time, one of the things the Canaanites were known for was their worship of the god Molech and their offering of their children and making them "pass through the fire" and we also get phrases like "a fire in my belly" (something you are passionate about) from the idols of Molech that had a fire in the belly of the statue where the infants and young children were sacrificed.  God calls out this as an especially heinous sin against those who were innocent and unable to defend themselves and as I said before, I don't think of abortion as any different--just the means of the "fire" now is usually chemical instead of combustion.

Anyone who made child sacrifices to Molech, even if they were strangers or sojourners who did not know the Law of the LORD, was to be put to death for this crime.  They were to be stones.  God seems to indicate that He will not have mercy on such a person, and something strange is said there--God promises that such a person will be cut off from His sanctuary and from the people of God.  Why does that matter if the person is stoned to death?  Wouldn't he already not be able to worship God in the Tabernacle or be around the people of God?  I think this is telling us something more about how we see in Ezekiel and in Revelation that the real temple that everything here was modeled after is in heaven and that such a person is going to be cut off eternally from the presence of God and the presence of God's people and will be cast out of God's kingdom.  Now, we know from the New Testament that our identity and status before God can change once we are saved, but this should tell us that anyone who is genuinely "in Christ" and a genuine "child of God" should have nothing to do with child sacrifice, infanticide or abortion of any kind.  Period.  Full Stop.

God than says that he will not hold the community guiltless for allowing such an abomination to happen in their midst, and that God will do His part to punish the offender even if the congregating does not do its part in executing the death penalty.  God will get justice for these innocent children and anyone who whores (His words) after Molech.

God then again repeats the prohibition of whoring after mediums and necromancers.  This is the third time God has spoken to this topic in just a few verses--the first being a prohibition of seeking after fortune tellers and divination from those with "wisdom" from the spirit realm, then a prohibition against the occult and the mediums and necromancers that try to harness the power of the spiritual forces of Satan and his demons to perform spells, curses, and hexes or otherwise alter the laws of probability either in your favor or against your adversary.  God now puts this in the same camp as whoring after idols and false gods because it's all one in the same--they are looking for answers or power from another source and giving worship to these other spirits.  These people too are deserving of being stoned and cut off from the presence of God and the people of God forever, and no one that calls themselves a "child of God" can accidently get mixed up in any of this--this is a choice to reject God and His ways.  Do not get near it, do not dabble in it, do not meddle with it, and do not even become curious about it.  STAY AWAY FROM IT as we said before!  There is no such thing as an "acceptable" or "good" amount of black magic, fortune telling, astrology, consorting with mediums or the occult.

The last category that we'll talk about next time is sexual sin which was also usually closely associated with worship of the false gods of the Canaanites, but it is also another high-handed sin and is reason to be cast out of the covenant community if someone who claims to be a child of God gets involved in such things--and we'll see that's exactly what happened in 1 Corinthians when Paul heard about someone in the church at Corinth having an affair with his step-mother and Paul said that even the wicked Gentiles don't stoop to that level.  God appears to deal with us a little differently now as we are part of a kingdom that is not of this world and the punishment was one of excommunication and not stoning to death, and we do see that the man eventually repented and was able to once again join the church again (we'll see that in 2nd Corinthians when we go back and study that (that might be the next thing after Leviticus).  So some of you may want to ask then if God required the death penalty at this time and didn't seem to require it later, what changed and does that mean that God no longer approves of the death penalty?  We'll probably talk about that a bit more when we get to book of Romans, specifically chapter 13 where Paul talks about the kings (civil government) being given the authority to use the death penalty to compel the people to be moral and punish those who are either immoral or rebellious against the king and his authority.  It seems that there is now some "separation of Church and State" in the New Testament that the role of the Church is not specifically to be in charge of civil law and order, but that people would be transformed through the gospel and the preaching of the Word and that their behavior would come into conformity with God's Law by an internal change instead of means of an external threat of punishment or death for non-compliance.  That does not speak to the issue of if God still wants or allows certain crimes to be punished by death--He just may have changed who His agents of justice on earth are now, and while it seems strange to say so, God uses the wicked kings and governments of this world to accomplish His purposes, many times without their knowledge that they are doing God's work.

That may be a weird place to end up, but I know some churches and some individual Christians that have problems with this portion of Leviticus because they are against the death penalty.  Remember to do your best to set any agenda you have aside and not set your views above the authority of the text.  It is a fair question to ask though if this was only for those people at that time, or if it is for all people at all time, and to ask "What is the same?" and "What is different?" now.  We should also be willing to analyze if what is different is good and obedient to Scripture or is a difference because our culture has become more ungodly and more lawless (more rebellious) and we've become okay with that.  Avoid building a me-centric theology based off of if you feel good about what God says or if you think or feel that's the kind of thing God calls you to do--you are then setting yourself up as the arbiter of truth and putting your own opinions above those of God.  The same goes for glorifying the opinions of any man--even really smart theologians.  Academics love to be worshiped with worship that only goes to God--they want you to buy their books, give money to their organizations and make their name famous.  There is only one Author of one Book that I'm concerned about and He owns all the resources He has put into my temporary custody and He is the only one worthy of praise.  Don't get mixed up in the Western form of idolatry where we worship celebrities (even celebrity pastors, podcasters, or Christian authors).