Dennis Tuuri

Happy is that people that is in such a case a happy is that people whose God is the Lord. That’s the way our responsive reading in the Psalms ended this morning. And that’s what we’re trying to encourage you all to do and to assist each other in doing in this church is to be a happy people blessed by God whose children are as it were given over to the study of God and his word and its application for all of their lives that are taught from the foundation of God’s word from their earliest moments on and that all subjects you teach to them have their foundations in God’s word.

That’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks speaking about the necessity of educating our children of rearing them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. How that involves covenantal child rearing in terms of teaching them the covenant of God, his law, his mighty deeds in history. And today we are going to begin what will probably be a two-message series on Molech worship.

I had intended to complete this today, but because of the importance of this, because we want to be very careful as we develop what Molech worship is from the scriptures and very careful in terms of applying it to our society today, I thought it’d be best to divide it up into at least two messages. We’ll probably conclude this next week instead of handling it all this week.

Now, it’s interesting that this was certainly not planned by me, but in the providence of God, we’ll be speaking about Molech worship the day after the 4th of July, which of course is given over to a celebration of patriotism and the freedom that we have in this country.

It’s certainly appropriate to celebrate the freedom we have in this country. But any Fourth of July thoughts, I think in a godly people today in America have to also include thoughts of repentance for the sins of this nation. It is true that biblical patriotism does not say my country right or wrong. Biblical patriotism does not simply exalt the country above all other things. Molech worship does that as we’ll see as we go through this today and next Sunday as well.

Biblical patriotism recognizes that true godliness for a country is dependent upon righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation, not patriotism. Patriotism then—true patriots today are those people who are praying for repentance on the part of our leaders and the individuals of our country who are involved in tremendous evils. This certainly came out clearly again this past week with the nomination of Judge Bourke to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

And I heard on the radio yesterday that Senator Packwood, a supposed conservative Republican from our very state here in Oregon, to which we have some responsibility, I suppose, although I bet you almost nobody in this church voted for him in the election several years ago. But conservative Republican senator from this state vowed to filibuster the nomination of Judge Bourke unless he affirmed specifically the Roe v. Wade decision, unless he would pledge himself to continue to allow this country to engage in mass murder upon small preborn children. That’s incredible. And it certainly should affect our Fourth of July celebrations. And I hope that you had some time yesterday to ponder the implications of those sort of things going on in our country, the judgment of God against us.

I also want to just refer briefly. There’s an article we have some copies of, I think 15 or 20 copies of downstairs called “Getting Out God’s Vote, Pat Roberts and the Evangelicals.”

This is from the May-June issue of The Humanist, and it’s a very interesting article I think you’ll find that it says that Pat Robertson and the Christian political involvement that we see now on the part of the Christian religious right all comes forth from one man named Rushdoony. They spelled the name wrong consistently throughout this article. And specifically they say he began this subversion process with the writing of his book in 1959, “By What Standard,” which of course was a discussion of Vantillian presuppositionalism, and they see Christian reconstruction and what we espouse primarily in this church, I suppose, as being the very worst kind of enemy this country could possibly have.

You notice if you pick up the article downstairs, it’s got this picture of this guy, I’m sure you can’t see it from down there, but this fellow almost looks kind of like a Nazi, but instead of a head, he’s got a Bible. Mark was over the other day at the 3rd of July celebration we had and said, “I guess they’re calling us Bible heads.” It’s a good term. Well, of course, we are to have God’s word written upon our forehead, aren’t we?

We are supposed to be Bible heads in a sense—supposed to let it determine what we think and what we do as Christians. And I suppose reconstructionists are somewhat different in that they take that seriously applying it to every area of life.

Well, this article and the reason I’m bringing it up now is not simply because of the thing about Bible heads, but you know, they say that this country’s in big trouble unless we read and take seriously the words of the reconstructionists. Because after all, Nazi Germany—Germany did not take seriously Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf. They compare us to the totalitarian state that Hitler engendered. I think we’ll see by the end of this series next week that it is that very idea of Mein Kampf—the totalitarian state produced by Hitler in Germany—that is the essence of Molech worship and it’s that very thing that we’re commanded not to participate in scripture. And so they don’t quite have us right I guess, but hopefully we want to deal with this somewhat slowly as we go through the next couple of weeks and develop an understanding of what the scriptures talk about in terms of Molech worship.

Now, why do we even talk about it in the midst of this discussion on rearing our children? Well, for those of you who aren’t aware of some of these quotes, it’s important to recognize what some of the people that we read and respect in terms of theology are saying about Molech worship.

Reverend Rushdoony in his book “Infallibility and Inescapable Concept,” specifically a chapter entitled “Black Man and the Word of God” says this: “Whatever a man makes king or lord over himself is a Molech. This can become—this can be an idol. The state and its ruler or king or himself. Modern statism is clearly a form of Molech worship and state schools receive the sacrifice of children from parents who are lawbreakers before God.”

Very strong language. Again, in “The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum,” Rushdoony writes: “Above all can we retain in membership people to affirm Christ as Lord and Savior and yet turn over their children to a godless school. There was a time when most churches said no. A few still go through the formality of asking members to remember their obligation to rear children in the Lord but it is no longer a ground for excommunication.”

And that’s out of three pages where he talks about Molech worship in “The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum.”

On the other hand, in an article entitled “Misleading Analogies Roadblocks to Reconstruction,” Jim Jordan writes the following. He says: “Offering children to Molech meant killing them and offering their blood in a religious rite of worship to an idol. Christians who send their children to public schools are engaging in an action which is considerably less serious, though still very serious. It is not an act of worship, nor is the child killed. Thus, the analogy is not sound at all points.”

Jordan in that article says there’s some analogous relationships, but you don’t want to reason from that analogy. You don’t want to make it exact. Otherwise, you’d end up making some misstatements. And I’m sure that he believes that Reverend Rushdoony has probably made some slips in his writings.

On the other hand, the Association of Reformation Churches of which Reverend Jordan is still a pastor and ordained by in a resolution passed some years ago on the nurture of children say this: “Whereas public statist education is the Molech, whereas the people of God cannot offer their children to be nurtured by this idolatrous system.”

And then they go on to talk about the need for their churches in their denomination to have church schools. So there is a lot of consideration in much of our reading material that we’re probably all exposing ourselves to equating the public school systems of the day with Molech worship. But we don’t want to jump into that right now. We want to look at what biblical Molech worship was first and then on the basis of that draw some applications for us today.

We don’t want to handle this matter lightly and triffly because it’s going to have a lot of implications for what we do as a church, for our relationship to the state around us and to relationship with other people in the Christian community. So I want to be very careful about this and that’s why we want to take some time developing an understanding of biblical Molech worship, what the scriptures teach about it.

Now, one of the reasons that you’ll read, of course, for Reverend Rushdoony’s statement in terms of Molech worship—you have to recognize that the term itself “Molech” comes from the word for king: Melech. You remember Melchizedek was king of righteousness, and that comes from the two words “king” and “righteousness.” And so the very word itself “Molech” has inside itself the word for king. But you’ll notice it’s different. It isn’t “Melech.” It’s “Molech.” The reason for that—almost all scholars agree—is that they took the vowel sounds out of the Hebrew word “boshet,” which means shame, and inserted those vowel points into the Hebrew consonant form for king, “Melech,” and so they come up with “Molech.” So they really combined the word for king and included the word for shame in the midst of Molech, and then they came up with Molech worship.

Next week I believe we’ll talk about Topheth, which was the place where the burning of the children took place, and I think we’ll see there that most scholars again agree that the vowel points from shame were also included in that word, and so there was also this connotation with shame or very shameful idolatrous actions on the part of the people. But in any event, Molech worship does involve a degree of king worship and we’ll develop that more as we go through the material in the next couple of weeks.

But that’s important to recognize at the outset: the word itself implies worship of the king or the civil ruler, the head of the civil state.

Okay, if you picked up the outlines that I think will be readily available from now on each Sunday that I distribute on the outside table with the orders of worship and as well as the announcements, you’ll see that our four points for this series of two messages are: first of all, implications from the origins of Molech worship. Secondly, implications from the practice of Israel in doing Molech worship. Third, implications from its proscriptions in the law. Now, proscriptions is a word that’s not commonly used today, but it’s a legal term. It means something that is not allowed. It’s—you’re proscribed. You draw a circle around something and you cannot engage in that thing. A prescription means you can do it, prescription, of course, means you got to do it. And so it’s a proscription of the law—Molech worship is proscribed by God’s law. And the third point, we’ll talk about implications from those proscriptions. And the final point we’ll make is applications for our society today.

I believe that we’ll probably only get through the first portion of that series of those four points today. Point number one: implications from its origin. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to look through biblical references to Molech worship in the history of the people that were peculiarly identified with Molech worship, which were the Ammonites. And that’s what we’ll do now.

In 1 Kings 11:7, there’s a discussion of Solomon and how Solomon took foreign wives to himself, of course, and because of his interaction with those foreign wives fell into idolatrous practices. And specifically, it says in 1 Kings 11:7: “Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon.”

And so 1 Kings 11:7, as well as other verses of the scriptures, identifies Chemosh with Moab and Molech with Ammon. And so we see that the people that particularly worshiped Molech and particularly engaged in Molech worship were the Ammonites. And so I think it’ll help us today to go through a brief historical account of the Ammonites and what they did in terms of their interaction with Israel as a nation as well.

So that’s what we’re going to spend most of our time on today: discussing the Ammonites who were the primary practitioners of Molech worship.

Now first of all, some of you will remember that the Ammonites were, of course, the race, the group of people that came forth from their father Ammon. And Ammon, of course, was one of the two sons that Lot’s daughters had through their incestuous relationships with him after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know the story. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God. Lot and his two daughters take off. His wife goes back—she turns to a pillar of salt and that’s it for her. Now we’ve got his two daughters and him. They go to a cave, and in that place where they flee to, his two daughters get him drunk with wine and seduce him and then have two children. And those two children are Ammon and Moab.

And you’ll remember that what I just read from 1 Kings 11:7 talks about those two abominations that Solomon practiced: Chemosh from Moab and Molech from Ammon. Ammon and Moab. So that’s the origin of the Ammonites—it’s in a succession relationship, a violation of God’s law of course, and a violation of the whole biblical foundation of marriage, which is to covenant together with another person, to leave your household, and to establish another household in the main apart from the household of your parents.

The word “Ammon” in itself implies inbreeding, okay? The girl said that she now had a child or a son by her father. The implications of inbreeding right in the name “Ammon” itself. Inbreeding, as we know, produces very often genetic deformities and other medical problems, and there’s a reason for that. I don’t believe we’re to avoid incestuous relationships because these things might happen. I believe that the genetic problems we have, the medical problems with incestuous relationships are direct result of God’s judgment upon people who violate the very nature of marriage that is given to man for his good.

Well, that’s the beginning of the Ammonites. And then in Deuteronomy 23, we find a reference that the Ammonites and Moabites shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord—even to their 10th generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever. So Deuteronomy 23:3, we have a prohibition against the inclusion of the Ammonites or Moabites into the congregation of the Lord for at least 10 generations.

Now, the reason for this as stated in the text is that God says: when you came out of Egypt, these people—God had instructed the people of Israel not to attack the Ammonites. Okay? They were still somewhat of the same lineage because they were, after all, children of Lot who was related to Abraham, who was the father of the Israelite nation of course. And so he said, “These are your relatives. These are to a certain extent people that I’m having dealings with in a special way. I’m going to guard them as you go into the land. They’re not totally given over—they’re not totally pagan in that sense. They’re somewhat related to you and I don’t want you to attack them.”

So God gave them a special provision of grace in terms of his covenant people not attacking them and rooting them out of their land on their way to their own land. They dwelt by the way east of the Jordan River—that’s where their land was. They’ve been given a wide berth then. Israel been instructed to give the Ammonites a wide berth and go around them and not provoke them.

But the Ammonites did not—God says in Deuteronomy 23—meet the Israelites with bread and water or with peaceful relationships. They actually rejected that grace that God had given to them. And in fact, the Ammonites, it says in Deuteronomy 23:4, hired Balaam to curse the Israelites, bring God’s curse upon them instead of God’s blessing.

Now, in the historical account of that, it only talks about the Moabites, but apparently the inspired word of God in Deuteronomy 23 says that the Ammonites were part of that plot as well. And so, because of that—because instead of accepting God’s grace that had been extended to them through this provision for Israel, to avoid conflict with them—instead of responding to God’s grace, the Ammonites rebelled against it and actually sought to put the Israelites to the sword themselves.

And so I think that’s very important for beginning to understand the Ammonites who are the worshippers of Molech and epitomize Molech worship as it were. The important thing to remember there is that they rejected the special provision made for them by God and became enemies instead of part of the extended grace, the covenant community of God. They were as it were enemies almost in the camp—okay, somewhat related to the people and so almost in the camp. I think that’ll be important for us to remember as we go through this study.

In the book of Judges, we have the account of the next person we’ll talk about. Having talked about Ammon and then talked about their rejection from the congregation of the Lord for 10 generations, we’ll now talk about a series of historical personages that had relationships with the Ammonites.

The first people we’ll talk about is Jephthah, the Israelites’ judge of Jephthah. We read about that account in Judges 10 and 11. And we read in Judges 10:7 the following: “The anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, into the hands of the children of Ammon.”

At the time of Jephthah, the children of Israel were in subjection to the Ammonites. And the scripture passage goes on to say there that the reason they were in subjection to the Ammonites is because they had rejected Jehovah as God and had instead served the gods of these other foreign nations, including the gods of the Ammonites.

So the people of Israel, the covenant community, were in subjection because, and as a result, had to serve the gods of these other nations because they voluntarily chose to worship them to begin with. Okay. Ammonite tyranny then was preceded by Ammonite worship at the time of Jephthah. That’s important to remember. We can think of obvious implications for our country today.

Hey, Senator Packwood didn’t lead an invasion force into this country saying “abort your kids or else.” He’s the result of a long series of ethical choices made by this country to depart from the God of scripture and to turn to other gods. Because we turn to other gods—and I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here, and I’ll talk about this more next week in terms of specific evidences of this—but because we’ve turned from Jehovah God and accepted the gods of our political system instead—Molech worship, king worship, state worship—now the state requires more and more of us. And the same thing is figured here in the history of Jephthah and the people of Israel. They’re in subjection to Molech worshippers because they chose to worship Molech. Okay? He says, “Fine, you’re going to worship those things. I’ll turn you over to them and you’ll know what true tyranny is.” That’s very important for us to recognize in this history.

God then raises up though a deliverer, a judge, Jephthah. And the people go to Jephthah, and he leads them against their fight with the children of Ammon and of course delivers them from the Ammonites. So there’s deliverance there.

Jephthah of course—you remember—for his vow that he made: that if God would deliver him and would deliver the people of Israel from the Ammonites, he would sacrifice whatever came out of his door first, come out his door to meet him when he went home. And of course that happened to be his daughter. I don’t believe—we won’t get into this now—but I don’t believe that his daughter was killed. I believe his daughter remained a perpetual virgin and served at the sanctuary of God.

But in any event, that’s how we remember Jephthah. But it’s important to remember that Jephthah delivered them out of the hands of the Ammonites, who were Molech worshippers, and the people had to repent from that Molech worship to affect that deliverance.

Now, the next historical personage we’ll talk about is King Saul. Again, this is a very important period for understanding Molech worship and the Ammonites. We’re told specifically in 1 Samuel 11 that Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh Gilead and all the men of Jabesh sent into Nahash: “make a covenant with us and we’ll serve thee.”

So you’ve got the people here, the covenant community, specifically at Jabesh, being threatened by Nahash, the Ammonite—okay, the king of the Ammonites. Now Saul at this point in time has been chosen by God, but he hasn’t been enthroned as it were by the people yet. There hasn’t been that formal ceremony of making him king. And he’s out plowing, and he sort of becomes king and then he sort of goes back to his own thing, which is kind of interesting.

So this is really the first act that he engages in militarily after his selection by God to lead the people of Israel and to deliver them. A king now in the same fashion as the judges would deliver them from their enemies. Saul now would deliver them from their enemies as well. So that’s the historical context. And then we have this Nahash the Ammonite coming up.

Now it’s interesting that they say, “Well, make a covenant with us and we’ll serve you.” They weren’t supposed to do that, of course, but I suppose they figured it’s better to serve this guy as slaves than to be killed. Better red than dead, I guess, is what they figured.

Well, Nahash says, “Okay, fine. I’ll make a covenant with you, but here’s the deal. I’m going to gouge out your right eye, okay? And then you’re going to serve me forever. And as long as you’ll do that, fine. Come on out. We’ll make a covenant together.” They say, “Well, now wait a minute. That’s not quite what we had in mind. Let us send for reinforcements here first for deliverance, and if we don’t get any help, then we’ll go out. Then we’ll come down to you, and you can go and do what you want to with us.”

So we’re in real bad shape here.

Now, the gouging out of the right eye is important, of course, because the right eye is a place of insight, of man’s sight. It’s a blessing by God. Okay? And so what we have here is Nahash the Ammonite, worshipping a different God of course, coming into the people and wreaking God’s judgment against the people for having turned their back upon worshipping the true God of scripture. And so it’s a judgment by God against the people of Israel again, just the same as in Jephthah’s time, that the Ammonite oppression was the judgment of God.

Now Nahash—I should point out here—means serpent. That’s what the word comes from: the root word for serpent. And so we have here in a sense a reminder of the serpent in the garden and the need for Adam to go out and to defend his family against that serpent. And now Saul is going to come forth coming out and doing battle with the serpent as it were and with the Ammonites to deliver God’s people.

Now that’s real important. Remember we said two weeks ago that we want to teach our children the history of God’s word first. That this is providential history recorded for us and should be then our pattern as we interpret history as we go through the ages. And what this scripture teaches about, particularly in the Old Covenant, of course, is the coming covenant mediator who would be the one who epitomizes all of history in terms of God’s covenant dealings.

So in the Old Testament, when we read kids’ Bible stories to our kids, we want to look for indications of God’s making covenant with his people. We want to look for the covenant mediator being revealed through these Old Testament figures. And certainly here in the deliverance of the people by Saul against Nahash, the serpent, we can teach our children about how that prefigured the coming of Jesus Christ who would deliver his people once and for all by taking upon himself a foot wound as it were and then in that process delivering a fatal head wound to the serpent Satan.

So it’s important to recognize those sorts of patterns as God-inspired patterns to teach our children about the covenant. So we have here the important correlation then of the Ammonites, the people that worship Molech, with the very epitome of evil: Nahash, this serpent-king as it were of the Ammonites. So the Ammonites were seen as bad people.

Now it’s interesting too though that—remember Saul is the first king and we’re told specifically in 1 Samuel 12:12: “and when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you said unto me nay but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king.”

The Nahash account is significant because of course it pictures the covenant mediator, but it’s also significant because it tells us the basic reason why the people of Israel had gone into asking for a king and wanted a king instead of a judge. That reason was a change in faith. Okay, they no longer wanted God as king over them. This passage says we want a king like Nahash over here. Nahash is the king of the Ammonites.

And remember the Ammonites are Molech worshippers, king worshippers. The Ammonites worship the deified state, the head of the state, the king and the system itself. Israel rejected the kingship of God and turned instead to Molech worship as it were. We want a king like the nations around us.

Now, remember we talked about kings several months ago—that God didn’t give him a king like the kings around us. Saul was originally given by Israel as a king restrained by his law, and that restraint stays in place for a while. Saul is a good guy here and he does deliver them from the hand of Nahash. He routes the Ammonites, and after the routing of the Ammonites, the kingdom is then renewed at Gilgal.

And Gilgal, you remember, was the place where the people of Israel, when they went back into the land, were circumcised after the 40 years in the wilderness. And God says after the circumcision, “I’ve rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” And so Saul here delivers the people of Israel from the hand of Nahash, from the hand of the Molech worshippers, as it were, and the Ammonites. He says, “I’ve rolled away the reproach of my people.” He gave his people a king, but he didn’t give him a Molech. He gave a king that already had the proscriptions in terms of his activities in the law itself in the book of Deuteronomy, which we pointed out several months ago when we talked about kings.

It couldn’t be like all the rest of the kings. It was okay to have a king. It was not okay to have a Molech. See the difference? But they wanted originally—before God corrected them with giving Saul—they wanted a Molech, a king like Nahash, king of the Ammonites, king of the Molech worshippers. Worship the king as the epitome of the political state.

So the restoration of Saul’s history with the Ammonites is important for us to remember then that the Ammonites were indeed king worshippers and that idea of worshiping the king, the political state infected Israel. You know at that point in time God corrected that infection and gave him a godly king. At first Saul—he would soon fall of course and become an ungodly king. And then we had a godly king given back to them by God in the person of David. And David also of course has to deal with these Ammonites.

When Saul routed them, he didn’t kill them altogether. He—it says that he routed them so that no two of them were left together. They were hiding individually out there somewhere. But he did route them pretty completely from the land, but they were still in the land to a certain extent.

Well, in the time of David in 2 Samuel 12:31, we’ve read this verse before too, in this congregation, we see where David was warring with the Ammonites and what he did to the Ammonites after he had subdued them. It says in verse 31: “he brought forth the people that were therein. These were Ammonites. Put them under saws, under harrows of iron, under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln. And thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.”

Remember we talked about that passage—probably a year ago now. We were talking about the Psalms 20-24. We talked about this verse and David’s victory over the Ammonites, the opponents of the children of God. And this picture of what David does to the Ammonites I said then was a picture of hell, was a picture of God’s judgment against those people who rejected his grace.

The Ammonites remember—they did that—who turned instead to a false god Molech, worshiped him, and then sought to expand that worship of Molech into the covenant people itself. Originally through the curses of Balaam and then into actual oppression by the peoples that came into the land. Remembering of course that tyranny of Molech worship is ever thrust on a people—it’s introduced perhaps because the guardians of Israel aren’t doing their work. But it’s because the people themselves turn from God that he gives over to the oppression of these people.

In any event, this verse 31 is a picture of the judgment of God against those people that reject his covenant grace and are idolators.

Therefore it says specifically that David put them under the saws, under harrows, under axes, and made them pass through the brick kilns. Now, I pointed out when we talked about this a year ago that some commentators, in fact probably most of the commentators we read today, believe that what this says is he made them servants—they had to work in the iron works and work in the kilns. I don’t believe that to be the case.

I believe that it is consistent with God’s dealing with the people of Ammon and the Ammonites and picturing his judgment upon them for their idolatrous practices of Molech worship—that it is consistent with that image of Molech and God’s hatred for Molech and for those people who had worshiped him—for this picture to be giving us a picture of these people being cut asunder and burned in the brick kilns.

Remember these people were people that had taken children and burned them in sacrifice to Molech. And now God says through David, the covenant picture of the covenant mediator of Jesus Christ to come, that he’s going to demonstrate his wrath against these people by cutting them up and by putting them in fire themselves. They’ll pass through the fire now.

And we’ll see in the prophets as well that same terminology used by God for those people that would do this idolatrous practice. Now, it may seem real harsh, I guess, of us and real inhuman of us today to see this happen. But remember, we have to let our standards be governed by God’s standards. And these things are pictures of hell. And if we somehow try to soften all these pictures of hell in the scriptures, we end up softening our own conception of hell and our own preaching of hell. And then we don’t do the job that Ezekiel was to do, which is just to warn the evildoer of the fate to come unless he turned and repented and turned back to God.

What I’m saying is it’s important to let the scriptures speak for themselves of these matters.

Prior to this time—when Saul failed to kill King Agag, what did Samuel do to him? Do you remember? Samuel hewed him in pieces. He hewed him in pieces at the place they’re supposed to offer sacrifices. What this is a picture of, of course, is the sacrificial animals who were burned as sacrifices to God. And they had to be dismembered to a certain extent also before they’d be put in those fires.

And so the killing of the animals and the sacrificial system, the cutting of them apart and the burning to God, is a picture of God’s judgment against sin. And so it’s consistent with that picture here—God’s judgment against the Ammonites and their idolatrous terrible child-sacrificing practices—to show this same picture of them now becoming their own sacrifice because they’ve rejected the sacrifice of a covenant mediator to come provided by God.

Now, it’s important for us to remember this: This is a picture of God’s judgment against Molech worshippers. Okay.

The next picture we’ll look at is the time of Solomon. And here we see specifically, of course, the involvement of the Israelites in this Molech worship in very specific fashion, having been infected with the desire to have a Molech king over them at the time of Saul. Now, Solomon, two generations later as it were, actually builds a worship place to Molech as well as other gods.

And we read about that at the beginning of this talk. I won’t reread that scripture.

In 1 Kings 11:33, however, later in the chapter, God says that because they have forsaken me and have worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the God of the Moabites, and Milcom, the God of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways to do that which is right in my sight, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father, then these specific judgments will come upon him.

God says—and by the way, this verse shows us these set of verses in 1 Kings 11 shows us that Milcom worship—M-I-L-C-O-M—in the authorized version is identical with Molech worship. Milcom being the more formal name for king. There are several Hebrew words here that are used for Molech. But in any event, God says that because Solomon and the people rejected me—because Solomon rejected me and instead turned to this form of king worship and introduced it back into the land the way that the people wanted to do in the terms of Saul and built this high place of worship to Molech—because he’s done that, the kingdom is going to be taken out of his hands and it’ll be divided. The 10 tribes will be removed from him. One tribe will remain for his son, however, and that will be Rehoboam, will be his son, who will actually lose the kingdom for Solomon.

Now, how could Solomon, a king, be involved in worshiping the king? It’s a good question, right? Remember Solomon was a king like Deuteronomy—the specifics in Deuteronomy said he had to be a king. He was a king like David and like Saul was originally. He wasn’t a Molech. He was a restricted king with restricted activities that he could engage himself in. He had to read the book of the law. Couldn’t lift up himself above the people of his own country. Remember that requirement in Deuteronomy for the king. He couldn’t see himself as above the other people somehow.

We talked about those requirements for king being really a recitation of the two tablets of the law. He had to not be idolatrous. He had to worship God and love God with all his heart, soul, and might. And he had to love the people too—of God. He had to love his neighbor as himself. He couldn’t lift himself up above him. He couldn’t be a Molech as it were dictatorially commanding all the people. And that’s not what he was. He didn’t burn his children to Molech, but he allowed the erection of a Molech worship place.

And we’ll see then with the judgment of God upon him for that. And again, God’s judgments often take the form of the thing itself coming back on the people. God then brings promises to take the kingdom out of his hands and Rehoboam Solomon’s son actually loses the kingdom.

Now you remember Rehoboam—when we talked about elders before, the necessity to listen to the council of the elders—Rehoboam was the son of Solomon who had control of all the kingdom and lost it. Why? Because he rejected the council of the older elders in the land and took the younger elders’ counsel. But do you remember what that counsel was? This counsel was: “you be tough on these people. You rule these people with a rod of iron. You tell them what to do. You make them work hard.” And of course, Solomon had done a lot of that already in terms of the construction of the temple and everything.

But Rehoboam comes along and says to the people, “Look at—you think my dad was tough on you guys. You ain’t seen nothing yet. You know, I’m much stronger than he is. I’m going to be much harder on you guys than he ever thought about being.”

Rehoboam was becoming a Molech. He was becoming an absolutist dictator over the people. And so God’s judgment against Solomon for erecting Molech worship places was that his own son now began to become that Molech itself. And of course as a result of that the people rebelled against him and he lost the kingdom and the kingdom became taken out of the hands of the inheritance of Solomon.

Now the next portion of scripture I want to look at is in 2 Chronicles 20 with Jehoshaphat. This is important for one particular reason. In 2 Chronicles 20:22, we read about the fact that Jehoshaphat was ruling at this time and it says: “it came to pass after this also the children of Moab and the children of Ammon and with them others besides the Ammonites came against Jehoshaphat to battle.”

Once again against these same group of people that are giving the Israelites trouble—Ammon and Moab—they come across against Jehoshaphat to battle. And remember this is the portion of scripture where Jehoshaphat seized the salvation of God. Verse 22: “when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, which were come against Judah, and they were smitten.”

God has Jehoshaphat here lead the people in worship. And it’s the worship of the people with singing praises to God and singing the psalms. While they’re doing that, when the worship begins to take place before God, that’s when the Lord himself delivers Jehoshaphat and the people from the hands of the Molech-worshiping Ammonites, and he does it on his own. He causes the groups, the various groups that are represented there, to fight against each other and to go into confusion, and before you know it, they’re all dead and gone.

And so God’s deliverance from the hand of Molech is accomplished here. Now, I say this is important because this, in relationship to what we’ve already read about, indicates story after story that God will, of his own method in his own doing, deliver us out of the hand of Molech worshippers or Ammonites.

Now in this case it’s real explicit. Jehoshaphat and the troops of Israel didn’t have to do a thing except worship God. In the case of Saul—in the case of Jephthah—we see though that God’s—in the case of David and rather in those cases we see where God’s elect, God’s chosen, representing his covenant coming covenant mediator Jesus Christ delivered the people. So there’s implied in that the idea that God delivered the people by leading the people through the covenant mediator Jesus Christ who accomplishes the fatal wounding or the fatal killing of Satan himself on the cross.

Well, these things all picture that. But Jehoshaphat gives us a much clearer picture because of God’s smiting the people who had come up against them while the worship service is going on. Now, this is very important because as we look at Molech worship in our own country today, as we look at people who see the state as the sole provider, as the state becomes more and more dictatorial, we’ll talk more about specific examples next week in terms of this country.

But as we see that happening in our land around us, we should recognize that it’s—we must rely upon the work of God to affect our deliverance from them. Ultimately, we still engage ourselves in activities, but we don’t fight them with the same weapons that they use to fight their battles. We fight them first and foremost by relying upon God being our shield and God being our defense.

Just like David went out against Goliath, of course, not armed with armor. Remember, the armor wouldn’t fit him. Here you had Saul who could have gone out against Goliath with armor. Saul was bigger than everybody else. He was head and shoulders above all the rest of the Israelites. He could have gone out as representative of the people. But instead, God chose to send David out. Why? Because David represents the Jesus Christ coming not with the armor of man, with the final victory of God. And we’re to rely upon that victory.

What I’m saying practically speaking here is that when we have once a year at least a service of imprecation in terms of abortionists in this land, when we sing God’s imprecatory songs about his defeat of his enemies—the enemies of his people—when we pray for God’s judgment as we try to remember to do every week and at least in our church service hopefully in our family devotions we pray for God’s judgment against people like Senator Packwood specifically and against Senator Fry for what he’s done in terms of abortion in the children’s service division and child abuse and trying to take control out of the hands of parents and into the hands of the Molech state.

When we pray for these things and sing for these things, we have to recognize it’s effectual. It’s a reminder to us. We see that Sunday forms the pattern for the rest of the week. When we come together and worship God, and as part of that worship, recite back to him portions of his law that talk about his judgment upon Molech worshippers, upon the Ammonites, upon those that would come together with them in trying to defeat God’s people, we’re saying that the judgment against the Molech state comes forth from God and from his throne room first and foremost. That’s the most important thing we can do.

Now, we do engage ourselves in activities. And David did take Goliath’s sword and cut his head off. We do engage ourselves in activities, political action or whatnot, but we don’t put our reliance in those things. Those things come only after we recognize our dependence upon God for deliverance.

And so, the story of Jehoshaphat reminds us to rely upon God for his deliverance. We look at modern-day Ammonites and modern-day Molech worshippers.

Josiah is another important thing to talk about for a couple of minutes in 2 Kings chapter 23. I won’t read this. We’re running a little bit short on time. I broke my sermon in half, so I’m still running a little short on time. But I did think it was important to talk a little bit about this history and develop the pattern for what the scriptures teach us about Molech worshippers.

Okay. In the times of Josiah in 2 Kings 23, you remember this from before. We’ve talked about Josiah in times of reconstruction. What does he do? He goes out and he takes down and destroys the high places that have been erected in idolatrous practices of Israel. He goes out and actually he desecrates the place of Molech worship or Milcom worship. He turns it into kind of like a garbage pit is what people think that means. Everything will be thrown down there, all the refuse of the city be thrown there now to burn.

Instead of having human sacrifices burned, he desecrates it so they can no longer practice Molech worship at that specific location, which is Topheth or the Valley of Hinnom, and we’ll talk more about that next week—that location. It’s also a picture of God’s judgment which is very important for us. But the important point to remember here is that Josiah—and we’ve talked about how we’re the Josiah generation as we’re trying to reconstruct the land having rediscovered God’s law.

The destruction of Molech, the worship of Molech or state worship was an important element for Christian reconstruction. I’ve said before when we talked about Josiah passages that there are destructive aspects to reconstruction. We have to tear down—beginning with our own minds—the idols that we’ve been practicing worshiping in this country up to now. That’s a beginning element of reconstruction.

Remember Gideon had to take the idols of his father and get rid of them first and burn them and get rid of it. And so Josiah had to take the idols of the fathers before them and burn them. And we have to take the idols that our fathers have allowed—either through omission or commission—to be built in our land and in our minds. We’ve got to root those things up. It’s a part of reconstruction. And so Josiah teaches us that the defeat of Molech worship—as I said beginning with ourselves first in our own minds—is essential to Christian reconstruction.