1 Samuel 31:8 And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain… Is there any sadder sight than a battlefield after the guns have stopped firing? A similar scene is described in our text. Before I get through today, I will show you that the same process is going on all the world over, and every day, and that when men have fallen, Satan and the world, so far from pitying them or helping them, go to work remorselessly to take what little there is left, thus stripping the slain. There are tens of thousands of young men every year coming from the country to our great cities. They come with brave hearts and grand expectations. But our young man has a fine position in a dry-goods store. The month is over. He gets his wages. He is not accustomed to have so much money belonging to himself. He is a little excited, and does not know exactly what to do with it, and he spends it in some places where he ought not. Soon there come up new companions and acquaintances from the barrooms and the saloons of the city. Soon that young man begins to waver in the battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In a few months, or few years, he has fallen. He is morally dead. Why do the low fellows of the city now stick to him so closely? Is it to help him back to a moral and spiritual life? Oh, no! I will tell you why they stay; they are Philistines stripping the slain. The point I want to make is this: Sin is hard, cruel, and merciless. Instead of helping a man up, it helps him down; it will come and steal your sword and helmet and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow. But the world and Satan do not do all their work with the outcast and abandoned. A respectable impenitent man comes to die. He could not get up if the house was on fire. What does Satan do for such a man? Wily, he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable and harrowing things in his life. He says: "Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missed them? Do you remember all those lapses in conduct?" And then he takes all the past and empties it on that death bed, as the mail bags are emptied on the post office floor. The man is sick. He cannot get away from them. Come, now, I will tear off from you the last rag of expectation. I will rend away from your soul the last hope. I will leave you bare for the beating of the storm. It is my business to strip the slain. Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now. But after a while it is collision; it is defeat; it is extermination; it is jackalism; it is robbing the dead; it is stripping the slain. Give it up today — give it up! (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.). Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa. |
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