The Treason of the Privileged Text: Ezekiel 5:5-7
Introduction: The Weight of Privilege
We live in an age that is allergic to distinctions, an age that despises hierarchy, and an age that therefore cannot comprehend the logic of God's judgments. Our egalitarian sensibilities want to flatten everything. We want to imagine that God grades on a curve, or perhaps that He doesn't grade at all. We want to believe that all sins are basically the same, all cultures are basically equal, and that God, if He exists, is a sort of benevolent, senile grandfather in the sky who is terribly concerned that no one's feelings get hurt.
Into this sentimental mush, the prophet Ezekiel speaks with the force of a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil. God does not deal with all people in the same way because He has not given all people the same thing. Privilege, in the economy of God, is not a license for indulgence; it is a summons to responsibility. And the greater the privilege, the greater the responsibility. And consequently, the greater the privilege, the more catastrophic the fall, and the more severe the judgment.
This is a principle that runs like a river of fire through the entire Scriptures. To whom much is given, much is required. This is not just a general spiritual platitude; it is the central indictment that God brings against His covenant people, Israel. And because the Church is the new Israel, it is the central indictment that God brings against a faithless and compromised Church in our own day. We in the West, and particularly in America, have been the beneficiaries of centuries of gospel light. We have had Bibles in our homes, churches on our corners, and the residue of a Christian consensus in our laws and culture. We have been, in a very real sense, set at the "center of the nations." And what have we done with this immense privilege? We have, like Jerusalem of old, taken God's gifts and used them as a club to beat Him with. We have rebelled more wickedly than the pagans who do not have a tenth of our light.
The passage before us is a divine courtroom speech. God, through His prophet, is laying out the legal basis for the coming destruction of Jerusalem. It is not an arbitrary act of anger. It is a covenant lawsuit, and the charges are clear, specific, and devastating. And as we listen to God's case against Jerusalem, we must have the courage to hear His case against us.
The Text
"Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of the nations, with lands all around her. But she has rebelled against My judgments more wickedly than the nations and against My statutes more than the lands which are all around her; for they have rejected My judgments and have not walked in My statutes.’ Therefore, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Because you have more turmoil than the nations which are all around you and have not walked in My statutes, nor done My judgments, nor done the judgments of the nations which are all around you,’"
(Ezekiel 5:5-7 LSB)
The Center of the World (v. 5)
God begins His indictment by reminding Jerusalem of her unique position.
"Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of the nations, with lands all around her.'" (Ezekiel 5:5)
This is not primarily a statement of geography, though Jerusalem was at a crossroads of ancient empires. This is a statement of covenantal theology. God is saying, "You were My chosen city. You were the place where I put My name. You were to be the capital of My kingdom on earth." Jerusalem's centrality was not a matter of her own achievement, but of God's sovereign placement. "I have set her" there. She was intended to be a city on a hill, a light to the Gentiles. The law was to go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
She was the heart, and from the heart, the lifeblood of God's truth was meant to be pumped out to all the surrounding nations. They were to be the model home, the showroom for the righteousness and peace that comes from living under the reign of the one true God. All the other nations were arranged "all around her" to look and see. They were meant to look at Israel's justice, Israel's prosperity, Israel's family life, and Israel's worship and say, "What nation is so great, who has God so near to them?"
This is the high calling of the covenant people of God in all ages. The Church is now that Jerusalem. We are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9). We have been set in the center of a dying world to be the hub of life. We are the embassy of the kingdom of heaven. Our calling is to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. God has given us His Word, His Spirit, and His sacraments. He has placed us at the center. The question is, what have we done with that placement?
The Treason of the Center (v. 6)
Having established the privilege, God now details the rebellion. The charge is one of aggravated treason.
"But she has rebelled against My judgments more wickedly than the nations and against My statutes more than the lands which are all around her; for they have rejected My judgments and have not walked in My statutes.’" (Ezekiel 5:6)
This is a staggering indictment. God is not just saying that Jerusalem was sinful. He is saying she was more sinful than the pagan nations surrounding her. More wicked than the Babylonians, more rebellious than the Egyptians, more corrupt than the Philistines. How can this be? The pagans were steeped in idolatry, child sacrifice, and sexual depravity. How could Jerusalem be worse?
The answer lies in the nature of light. Sin is measured by the amount of truth that is defied. The pagan sins in the twilight, but Jerusalem sinned at high noon. The nations rebelled against the general revelation of God in creation and conscience. But Jerusalem rebelled against the specific, verbal, inscripturated revelation of God. They had the law. They had the prophets. They had the Temple. They had the very presence of God in their midst. Their rebellion was not born of ignorance, but of high-handed, deliberate apostasy. They "rejected" God's judgments. They heard the statutes and consciously chose not to walk in them.
This is why the sins of the Christian West are far more putrid in the nostrils of God than the sins of a lost tribe in the Amazon. We have despised two millennia of grace. We have taken the blessings of the gospel, the stability, the liberty, the scientific progress, and the prosperity it produced, and we have kicked the God who gave it all squarely in the teeth. We have legalized the murder of sixty million of our own children. We have celebrated sexual perversion that would make a Roman blush. We have done this not in ignorance, but in open, defiant rebellion against the light we were given. To whom much is given, much is required. Our judgment will be more severe because our privilege was infinitely greater.
Lower Than the Low (v. 7)
The indictment deepens. Not only had they rebelled against God's high standards, they had failed to live up to even the low standards of the pagans.
"Therefore, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Because you have more turmoil than the nations which are all around you and have not walked in My statutes, nor done My judgments, nor done the judgments of the nations which are all around you,’" (Ezekiel 5:7)
This is the final humiliation. God's own people had become more chaotic, more unjust, more of a "turmoil" than the surrounding nations. They had not only rejected God's perfect law, they had even violated the common-grace standards of justice that the pagans, by and large, still maintained. The pagan nations had their own laws, their "judgments," which, while flawed, often preserved a measure of civil order. They had standards for contracts, for property, for punishing violent crime. But Jerusalem had sunk so low that even these basic standards were ignored.
When the people of God abandon His Word, they do not become neutral. They become a vacuum, and that vacuum is filled with every kind of filth. When the Church loses its nerve, when it ceases to believe and preach the whole counsel of God, it doesn't just become irrelevant; it becomes a contributor to the chaos. It becomes worse than the world. We see this today. We see churches and denominations that have abandoned biblical sexual ethics and are now cheering on abominations that even secular people a generation ago would have recognized as grotesque. We see Christians whose business practices are more dishonest than their pagan counterparts. We see Christian families in more turmoil and disarray than the unbelieving family next door.
When God's people refuse to be a city on a hill, they become a sinkhole in the valley. They had rejected God's perfect standard, and in so doing, had fallen below even the world's compromised standard. This is the endpoint of apostasy: to become a scandal not only to God, but even to the ungodly.
Conclusion: The Logic of Judgment
This passage is a severe mercy. God lays out His case with devastating clarity so that no one can say His judgments are unfair. The logic is inescapable. Great privilege brings great responsibility. Willful rebellion against that privilege brings great judgment. And that judgment is not simply punitive; it is restorative. God was about to dismantle Jerusalem brick by brick, not to annihilate His people, but to purify them. He judges in order to save.
The same logic applies to us. The turmoil, the chaos, the moral collapse we see all around us in the West is not random. It is the hand of a covenant God dealing with a rebellious covenant people. We are being judged. And the purpose of this judgment is to bring us to our knees. The purpose is to make us see the utter folly of our rebellion. The purpose is to make us cry out for the mercy that is found only in the true Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the one who stood in the center of history. He is the one who perfectly kept all of God's statutes and judgments. And He is the one who, on the cross, absorbed the full force of the covenant lawsuit that we deserved. He took the turmoil, the chaos, and the curse upon Himself. He was judged more wickedly than the nations, for our sake.
Therefore, the only sane response to a text like this is repentance. We must confess that we have taken our great privileges for granted. We must confess that our sins are worse than the world's because we have sinned against the light. We must confess that we have often sunk below even the world's standards. And having confessed, we must flee to Christ, who is our only hope of pardon and restoration. For it is only when we are humbled by the severity of God's law that we can truly rejoice in the glory of His grace.