And he said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.” Ezekiel 8:6 ESV
For twenty-five years Ezekiel had trained to be a priest in the temple of God in Jerusalem. Then five years before he would have entered priestly service he had been carried away to unclean Babylon as a hostage. We can imagine how he must have been pining for what might have been back in that beautiful, holy temple back home.
But through the Holy Spirit, God gave him a horrifying vision of what was actually going on back there in the Temple. They were committing “abominations.” What is an abomination? It is that which is disgusting to God because it is contrary to the nature of His creation. Sin is an abomination to God and it is so because it is flying in the face of the way He made us. He made us to be submissive to Him and when we are proud and arrogant it is an abomination. He made us to find our glory in Him and when we find our glory in ourselves and in our world it is an abomination. He made us to forget ourselves in concern for one another. Sin is an abomination.
One of the tragedies of our day is that we have become desensitized to the abominable character of sin. We watch television and we see a murder a minute. “Another murder, oh well, that’s life.” We see all of the evils. “Oh, they’re having an affair. Oh well.” We see all of the sins and we lose our capacity to be disgusted and horrified and grieved by the sin that is around us. Through television, we invited the enemy into our homes. I’m not saying that we all need to get rid of our TV sets, but if it’s in our homes we’d better guard it exceedingly carefully. We need to gain a sense of horror at the sin which is all around us. Sin is a heart condition before it is anything else. And the Holy Spirit asks us whether there is abomination in the temple of our heart.
Called To Be Transformed 