When the Holy Becomes Filth: Text: Ezekiel 7:20-27
Introduction: The High Cost of Idolatry
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has completely domesticated the concept of sin. To our modern sensibilities, sin is a slip-up, a mistake, a poor choice, something to be managed with therapy or a self-help book. But the Bible speaks a different language. In Scripture, sin is high treason. It is cosmic rebellion. It is a declaration of war against the living God. And no sin reveals the blackness of this rebellion more clearly than idolatry.
We tend to think of idolatry as something primitive, something involving golden calves or stone statues in a jungle. But idolatry is first and foremost a matter of the heart. It is the act of taking a good thing that God has made and elevating it to the place of God Himself. It is giving ultimate loyalty, ultimate affection, and ultimate trust to something in the created order. And when a people do this, particularly a people in covenant with God, they invite a very specific and terrifying form of divine judgment. God's response to idolatry is not simply to punish; it is to un-create. It is to hand the idolaters over to the very logic of their sin.
In our passage today, Ezekiel the prophet is delivering God's verdict against Judah. The end is here. The day of the Lord is at hand. And the central charge, the crime that has brought the entire nation to the brink of utter destruction, is their gross idolatry. They had taken the very gifts of God, the beauty and wealth He had given them, and used them to fashion idols. They had taken the glorious Temple, the place where God's own presence dwelt, and had turned it into a stage for their spiritual adulteries. And so, God announces a judgment that is perfectly, poetically, and terrifyingly just. He will take what they have profaned and make it profane. He will take what they held sacred and turn it into filth. He will give their holy things over to the most unholy of men, so that they will know, finally and irrevocably, that He is Yahweh.
This is not an easy word. This is not a message designed to make us feel comfortable. But it is a necessary word, because our own nation, and dare I say, our own hearts, are just as cluttered with idols as ancient Jerusalem was. We have taken the gifts of liberty, prosperity, and beauty, and we have turned them into gods. We worship at the altars of self, sex, and stuff. And God's principles do not change. What He hates, He has always hated. And the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness are as certain today as they were in the time of Ezekiel.
The Text
They transformed the beauty of His ornaments into pride, and they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things with it; therefore I will make it an impure thing to them. I will give it into the hands of the foreigners as plunder and to the wicked of the earth as spoil, and they will profane it. I will also turn My face from them, and they will profane My secret place; then robbers will enter and profane it.
‘Make the chain, for the land is full of judgments that promote bloodshed, and the city is full of violence. Therefore, I will bring the most evil of the nations, and they will possess their houses. I will also make the pride of the strong ones cease, and their holy places will be profaned. Anguish has come, and they will seek peace, but there will be none. Disaster will come upon disaster, and report will be added to report; then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders. The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land will be dismayed. According to their way I will deal with them, and by their judgments I will judge them. And they will know that I am Yahweh.’
(Ezekiel 7:20-27 LSB)
Beauty Perverted, Holiness Forfeited (vv. 20-22)
We begin with the root of the problem: the perversion of God's good gifts.
"They transformed the beauty of His ornaments into pride, and they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things with it; therefore I will make it an impure thing to them." (Ezekiel 7:20)
God is the author of all beauty. He is the one who gives gold, silver, and precious jewels. He is the one who ordained the glorious adornments of the Temple. These things were meant to be signs, pointers to His own transcendent glory. But the people of Judah committed a fatal error. They took the sign and made it the substance. They took the gift and worshiped it instead of the Giver. "They transformed the beauty of His ornaments into pride." This is the essence of idolatry. It begins with pride, the arrogant assumption that God's gifts are our own possession, to be used for our own glory.
From pride flows the inevitable consequence: the creation of idols. "They made the images of their abominations and their detestable things with it." They took the very materials that were to adorn God's house and used them to construct rivals to God. This is a profound spiritual treason. It is taking the wedding ring your husband gave you and melting it down to make a trinket for your lover. God's response is one of perfect, reciprocal justice. "Therefore I will make it an impure thing to them." The Hebrew is stark; He will make it like refuse, like something unclean and repulsive. The very thing they lusted after, He will turn into garbage in their hands.
And how will He do this? He will give it away.
"I will give it into the hands of the foreigners as plunder and to the wicked of the earth as spoil, and they will profane it. I will also turn My face from them, and they will profane My secret place; then robbers will enter and profane it." (Ezekiel 7:21-22)
God often uses wicked nations as the rod of His anger. The Babylonians are coming, and God calls them what they are: "foreigners," "the wicked of the earth," "robbers." He is not whitewashing their character. But He is sovereign over them. Nebuchadnezzar may think he is acting out of his own imperial ambition, but he is God's servant, an instrument of divine judgment. God will give His treasures, His Temple, His holy city, over to these pagans. And their purpose is to "profane it." That which was set apart as holy will be made common, trampled underfoot, and defiled.
The ultimate horror is contained in that phrase, "I will also turn My face from them." The greatest blessing of the covenant was the presence of God, symbolized by the Aaronic blessing: "Yahweh make His face shine upon you" (Numbers 6:25). The ultimate curse is for God to turn His face away. When God removes His protective presence, the hedge is down. When He turns His face, all that is left is the raw, unprotected consequences of sin. The "secret place," the Holy of Holies itself, will be profaned. The robbers will not just break into the treasury; they will burst into the very heart of Israel's worship, and there will be no one there to stop them.
The Unraveling of a Society (vv. 23-27)
The judgment is not just liturgical; it is societal. The profaning of the Temple leads to the complete collapse of the nation.
"‘Make the chain, for the land is full of judgments that promote bloodshed, and the city is full of violence." (Ezekiel 7:23)
The command to Ezekiel is grim: "Make the chain." This symbolizes the coming captivity. The people who refused the yoke of God's law will now bear the iron chains of a pagan king. And why? Because their rejection of true worship led to the breakdown of all civil order. When you abandon the first table of the law (loving God), the second table (loving your neighbor) inevitably shatters. The land is filled with "judgments that promote bloodshed", perversions of justice, corrupt courts, and the city is filled with violence. A society that will not have God as its king will be ruled by chaos.
The punishment fits the crime with chilling precision.
"Therefore, I will bring the most evil of the nations, and they will possess their houses. I will also make the pride of the strong ones cease, and their holy places will be profaned." (Ezekiel 7:24)
Because the city is full of violence, God will bring a nation even more violent to deal with them. The "most evil of the nations," the Babylonians, will come. Those who built their fine houses through injustice will see them possessed by foreigners. The "pride of the strong ones," the arrogant elite who thought they were untouchable, will be brought to nothing. And again, the refrain: "their holy places will be profaned." Their high places, their alternative altars, will be desecrated right along with the Temple they polluted.
The result is a state of total panic and paralysis.
"Anguish has come, and they will seek peace, but there will be none. Disaster will come upon disaster, and report will be added to report; then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders." (Ezekiel 7:25-26)
When judgment finally arrives, they will desperately look for a way out. They will "seek peace," but it will be too late. The time for repentance will have passed. The consequences will be relentless, a cascade of bad news, "disaster upon disaster." And in that moment of crisis, all their spiritual resources will dry up. This is a terrifying picture. They will run to the prophet for a comforting vision, but there will be only silence. They will go to the priest for instruction from the Torah, but he will have nothing to say. They will ask the elders for wise counsel, but their wisdom will have vanished. When a people persistently reject God's word of warning, there comes a point when God withdraws His word altogether. This is a famine of the word of the Lord (Amos 8:11).
The leadership, from top to bottom, will be impotent.
"The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land will be dismayed. According to their way I will deal with them, and by their judgments I will judge them. And they will know that I am Yahweh.’" (Ezekiel 7:27)
The king, who should be leading, can only mourn. The prince, who should be acting, is clothed with despair. The people, who should be fighting, are paralyzed with fear. The entire structure of the nation is dissolved in terror. And God concludes with the central principle of His judgment: "According to their way I will deal with them, and by their judgments I will judge them." God will simply give them what they have chosen. He will hold up a mirror to their sin and make them live with the reflection. Their own ways, their own corrupt judgments, will become the standard by which they are condemned.
And the ultimate purpose of all this horror? "And they will know that I am Yahweh." They refused to know Him as a merciful Father, so they will be made to know Him as a righteous Judge. They would not learn His name through blessing, so they will learn it through the covenant curses. This is not the knowledge of salvation, but the knowledge of condemnation. It is the kind of knowing that the demons have (James 2:19). It is the undeniable, inescapable recognition of the reality and power of the God they rejected.
The Shadow of the Cross
This passage is a dark and brutal portrait of the covenant curses being poured out on an unfaithful people. And as we read it, we should tremble. We should examine our own hearts, our own churches, and our own nation for the idols we have erected. We have taken the beautiful ornaments of Christian civilization and transformed them into pride. We have taken the blessings of God and forgotten the Giver. And the principles of justice have not been repealed.
But this is not the final word. This entire scene of judgment is a shadow, a foreshadowing of a much greater judgment that took place on a hill outside Jerusalem. There, another temple was profaned. There, the "secret place" of God's own Son was given into the hands of foreigners and the wicked of the earth. On the cross, Jesus Christ was made an "impure thing" for us. He who knew no sin was made to be sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).
On the cross, God turned His face away. Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In that moment, He bore the ultimate covenant curse. He was handed over to the most evil of men. He was plundered, spoiled, and profaned. The King mourned, the people were dismayed, and disaster came upon disaster. He was judged according to our ways, and by the judgment we deserved, He was judged.
And why? So that we might "know that He is Yahweh." But not in judgment. He took the full force of this holy wrath so that we might know Yahweh as our Savior. He absorbed the curse so that we might receive the blessing. He was made filth so that we might be made holy. He was chained so that we might go free.
Therefore, the message of Ezekiel 7 is twofold. For those who persist in their idolatry, who take the good gifts of God and turn them into objects of prideful worship, this passage is a terrifying warning. God is not mocked. A day of reckoning is coming when all that is profane will be burned away. But for those who have fled to Christ, for those who have confessed their idolatry and have taken refuge in His finished work, this passage is a glorious reminder of what we have been saved from. The chain has been broken. The face of God is turned toward us in grace. And the robbers and foreigners of sin and death have no claim on the secret place of our hearts, for it has been cleansed and sealed by the blood of the Lamb.