1 Chronicles 20:6 And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand… "A giant," "the son of a giant," "children of the giant," "a man of great stature." There were giants in those days; there are giants in our day. There is nothing in all history so great as the history of the present; there is no moment of time so pregnant with the meaning of eternity as the moment of our present breathing. You tremble when you read the names of these giants. There is no need to tremble; a deadlier giant is aiming at your heart to-day. The heroics have changed as to apparatus and nomenclature and environment, and all that sort of vanishing vapour; the great fight goes on, the tremendous rush of armies, Philistine and Israelite still meet face to face. And. they can make no peace; they represent different worlds, different ideas, atmospheres, purposes, and they never can compromise. June cannot compromise with December. What giants have you been fighting? You have got through the first crude lot. I know it; so have we all. But it was a mere mob of blackguards; the hostility itself was vulgar, coarse, contemptible. The mischief is, lest having got through that mob of scoundrelism and villainy detestable and palpable, we think that therefore the fighting is done. The fighting never ends until the body is in the grave or is laid out on its last bed. You have killed the giant of Falsehood, you would not for the world be thought to be a liar. Long ago you killed the giant Untruth, the black-faced giant Lies. But it does not therefore follow that you are now a true man, that you have escaped the lap and the shame of another falsehood, deeper, subtler, deadlier. Take care! "Thou shalt not steal." What is stealing? What is a thief? In the old time the robber despised the thief. A great distinction is drawn in the New Testament between thieves and robbers. Thieves were little, contemptible, mean apers of gigantic, majestic robbery. There is another set of giants to be encountered. What about the giant of Unbelief? But we are rather proud of fighting with the giant Unbelief, and showing thus how extremely intellectual we are. That we have even known the very existence of the word unbelief may show what marvellous giants of might we are. Not until we. distinguish between crime and sin can we make any real progress in gospel studies. Have you fought down and conquered the giant of Ingratitude? Who thinks about the spiritual sins? Who is not horrified by crime and draws its garments round it in attestation of its shocked refinement? There may be more sin in ingratitude than in some murders. The murder may have been done in hot blood, in haste to be repented of evermore, through ages eternal to be regretted and deplored as a lasting bruise of the soul. Ingratitude is slow, mean, deliberate, calculating, cruel. The giant of Ingratitude takes a great deal of fighting. Have you overthrown the giant of your Ambition? that sordid, calculating ambition that always wishes to shoulder out some other man and get a foremost place in the race of life? The danger does not lie always along what may be called the line of giants. There are more difficult forces to contend with than the visibly and measurably gigantic. There is not a giant to fight every one of us, but there is a foe that every soul must know and confront and be thrown by or must overthrow. You could shoot an evil beast, but an army could not overtake the Colorado beetle. There would be plenty of people who at other people's expense would go to distant countries to shoot big game. Poor fools! If they would pay their own waybill I would think a little less harshly of them. So many people are prepared for giants who are not prepared for beetles and bacilli and the germs that sow the air with death. Many people would do heroic things who are only called upon to do little, simple, daily, domestic things. Are you fully aware that there are many assailants and enemies who are not giants by name, but are giants in influence, in obstinacy of purpose, in a cruel determination to ruin your soul? Have you calculated the force of little things? Read me the plagues of Egypt. Lions, tigers, elephants — is that how the story runs? Not a word of it. What were the plagues? Hardly anything bigger than a frog; the lice, the flies, the little things, these excited the alarms of Egypt, and brought Egypt to her knees. You and I are not called upon to fight the giant of Gath, or his son, or the monster referred to in the text, but we are called upon to fight many insects, bacilli, germs of poison, things that require a microscope to discover, so minute as to be to the naked eye actually invisible, and vet on the tip of your finger you may have as many of them as would people any city in Europe as to mere number. To that fight we are called — the fight of spirit with spirit, soul with influence. A tremendous battle is ours! Do you suppose that an eagle fears any foes? Think of those pinions of steel, those eyes of fire, that beak of brass. And yet the eagle is maddened to death by a humming-bird no bigger than the joint of a finger. We have often told of the insect in certain countries that eats away all the woodwork of the door and leaves nothing but a coat of paint, so that going to the door and endeavouring to open it, it falls to pieces under the slightest pressure. That is translated into the life of to-day and into the life of every day. The paint is right, the externalism is beyond criticism, all seems to be well; but take care, for the white ant has eaten up all the interior character, and nothing is left but some flake of paint. We have to fight these things in various forms, but principally I think to-day in the forms of books and tracts and publications. (J. Wolfendale.) Parallel Verses KJV: And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant. |
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