Bible Commentaries

Ezekiel 8:12

I. Think of the dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts.

Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. For every man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. The walls of the chamber of the text were all painted with animal forms, to which the ancients were bowing down. By our memory, and by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our desires, we are for ever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. That is an awful power which we possess, and alas! too often used for foul idolatries.

II. Look at the idolatries of the dark chamber. All these seventy grey-bearded elders that were bowing down before the bestial gods which they had portrayed, had, no doubt, often stood in the courts of the Temple, and there made prayers to the God of Israel, with broad phylacteries, to be seen of men. Their true worship was the worship in the dark. The other was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. And the very chamber in which they were gathered, according to the ideal representation of our text, was a chamber in, and therefore partaking of the consecration of, the Temple. So their worship was doubly criminal, in that it was sacrilege as well as idolatry. Both things are true about us.

III. Look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light. One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ. Let Christ come into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, floods your soul, leaving no part dark, and turning all into a temple of the living God.

A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 217.

References: Ezekiel 8:12.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 455. Ezekiel 9:4.—S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 60. Ezekiel 9:9.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 223.