Chambers of Imagery
A. Maclaren, D. D. Ezekiel 8:12 Then said he to me, Son of man, have you seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark… Look at that dark painted chamber that we have all of us got in our hearts; at the idolatries that go on there, and at the flashing of a sudden light of a God who marks, into the midst of the idolatry. I. THINK OF SOME DARK AND PAINTED CHAMBER WHICH WE ALL OF US CARRY IN OUR HEARTS. 1. Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping amidst beauty, itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of everything brought into the light? Do you think you could stand it? Well, then, go to God and ask Him to keep you from the unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live humbly and self-distrustfully, and feel that your only strength is: "Hold Thou me up, and I shall be saved." 2. The walls of that chamber were all painted with animal forms, to which these men were bowing down. You and I, by our memory, by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, by our desires, are forever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. It is an awful faculty that we possess of, so to speak, surrounding ourselves with the pictures of the things that we love, and have yielded ourselves in devotion and desire unto. Just as today, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their walls, in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful evils, the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may live ugly shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can do away with "the marks of that which once hath been." II. LOOK AT THE IDOLATRIES OF THE DARK CHAMBER. A man's true worship is not the worship that he performs in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that little private chapel where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the attribution of supreme excellence to, and the entire dependence of the heart upon, a certain person. And the people or the things to which a man attributes excellence, and on which he hangs his happiness and his well-being, these be his gods, no matter what his outward profession is. You can find out what these are for yourself, if you will honestly ask yourself one or two questions. What is it that I want most? What is it which makes my ideal happiness? What is it which I feel that I should be desperate without? What do I think about most naturally and spontaneously, when the spring is taken off and my thoughts are allowed to go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is "God!" then I do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper of God. Honour, wealth, literary or other distinction, the sweet sanctities of human love dishonoured and profaned by being exalted to the place which Divine love should hold, ease, family, animal appetites, lust, drink — these are the gods of some of us. And do not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and dependence from God alone is like the sin of these men in our text, that it is sacrilege. They had taken a chamber in the very Temple, and turned that into a temple of the false gods. Who is your heart made to shrine? We were made for God, and whensoever we turn the hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that which is the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten upon Him, to other creatures, we are guilty not only of idolatry but of sacrilege. III. LOOK AT THE SUDDEN CRASHING IN UPON THE COWERING WORSHIPPERS OF THE REVEALING LIGHT. Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that were looking upon them. They were hugging themselves in the conceit, "The Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth." And all the while, all unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all. Not a finger lifted, not a sign to the foolish worshippers of His presence and inspection, but in stern silence He records and remembers. And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of putting a solemn truth? There are plenty of us — alas! alas! that it should be so — to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be. that the properly blessed thought of a Divine eye resting upon you should be to you like the thought of a policeman's bull's eye to a thief? Why should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and strength giving and companioning of all convictions? "Thou God seest me." One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifest before the judgment seat of Christ. Do you like that thought? Can you stand it? Are you ready for it? My friend! let Jesus Christ come to you with His light. Let Him 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 on His beams, floods your soul, making no part dark, and turning all into a Temple of the living God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth. WEB: Then he said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? for they say, Yahweh doesn't see us; Yahweh has forsaken the land.