The Church and Overcomers

By Stephen E. Jones

 Today we’re going to deal with the church and the overcomers.  There seems to be some controversy as to whether or not there is a separate body of people called the “overcomers.”  And I know that when we deal with a question of overcomers as being a separate body of people, we’re often accused of setting up an exclusive club or something like that.  I agree that it is a matter of heart attitude where people could view this as somewhat of an exclusive club and have a wrong attitude toward the rest of the church.  But on the other hand, one’s attitude or treatment of this is a separate issue from the facts themselves.

In Revelation chapter 2 and 3, we have a message to the seven churches.  In this message, the message is to the whole church, but at the end of each message, it says, “To him that overcomes, will I give this and give that.”  In other words, it is implied that not everybody is overcoming within the Church.  In the New Testament times, the apostles were primarily focused upon the new church, that is the believers in Jesus Christ.  Pentecost was the new thing that God was doing.  So no doubt they assumed that these new Christians of Pentecost, i.e., under the anointing of Pentecost, were overcomers. They were people called out of the old order as Judaism as it existed at the time.  They were called away from the temple worship, called away from the sacrificial system, called away from the old priesthood Levitical order, into a new thing that God was doing.  And to a great extent, they were the overcomers of the day.  They were able to come out of the old level of worship and faith into a new thing.  They were able to come out of a Passover level of faith into a Pentecostal level of faith.

The Cross tested their faith to see if it was genuine.  If they did not stumble at the cross, which was the fulfillment of the Passover--that is if they truly understood the significance Passover and believed in Jesus as the suffering Messiah who died for our sins--then they were eligible to move on into the next realm of faith and experience with God.

Pentecost came.  The overcomers of that day moved on, and they received some help from the priests and Pharisees who remained behind when they stumbled at the Cross.  That is, the church was essentially kicked out. They were expelled by persecution.  You can see that in Acts chapter 8, as well as the entire book of Acts which is pretty much devoted to that subject of how the split came between the old order and the new-- that is between the order of Judaism and Christianity--or as I like to put it, from the Passover age to the Pentecostal age.

Prior to the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, the spirit of God worked with people, not in them.  It was the Passover level of faith.  When a person experiences Passover, the idea is that you are accepting Jesus Christ as your Passover lamb.  That is the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.  The experience of Passover is our justification by faith.   We have talked about this many times.  But Pentecost was something different.  It was a new relationship with God, an enhanced relationship.

Prior to the day of Pentecost, prior to the fulfillment of Pentecost, the spirit of God was in some ways limited in the OT time period.  We see for instance the time of Samson, the spirit of God came upon Samson in various times, and he did great exploits.  It’s not that the spirit of God was inactive.   But in a corporate sense, the Spirit of God led the people, and people could be led by the Spirit, but it really was an external thing.  They had a tabernacle, and they had a temple where God lived.  And He was said to be the living in the Holy of Holies in an external location.  In other words, if people wanted to find God, they had to go to the place where God was dwelling.  You had to go to church, in other words.  But in Pentecost, we became the church, we became the temples of living God.  He began to indwell in us. This was an entirely different thing.

Unfortunately of course, over the years as the church developed from a way of life to a religion, we began to revert back to the OT pattern.  We began to go to church again, instead of "we the church" going to a place of fellowship, where all of us little churches would meet together to share what God has done in our lives and what revelation God has given us, and what word he has spoken to us in the past week.

So as we moved into this area of the OT again, we again set up a priesthood through whom we must find God. We had to go to a location, a church building, a cathedral--whatever it is--as if God lives on the corner of Second and Main. We no longer had a personal relationship with God but had to go through someone else.  This is a reversion back to the OT.  So throughout the past 2000 years, whereas we were supposed to be moving more into Pentecost, and with the view toward the Feast of Tabernacles (the third feast) we instead have largely gone back into the Passover realm.  And from there, many people have even stumbled on the basics of the Passover and no longer considered Jesus Christ and faith in the blood of the lamb to be the atoning sacrifice for sin.

Instead of going backward, we should be going forward.  If you look at the pattern in the New Testament, you will see that those who did not stumble at the cross, those who had faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, were able to move on into Pentecost.  Not only on the day of Pentecost, but also subsequently in history as well.

Pentecost was not a single experience or a single day which came and went and that was the end of Pentecost.  It was not simply an introduction to the church age.  It was an experience that God expected all of us in this age to experience.  Pentecost is for everyone, not just for the chosen few 12 disciples, or even for the 120, or even just the 3000, or the 4000 or 5000, who experienced in the first days of Pentecost.  Unfortunately though over the years, particularly after the death of the disciples, after the first century, the gifts of the spirit seemed to wane. But instead of wondering how they had grieved the Holy Spirit, they assumed they were doing just fine. So they concluded that Pentecost was only for the Apostles or for the early church in general.

We need to seek God’s face and continue on in Pentecost. Instead of doing that, we have made excuses and said, well, the Holy Spirit went back to heaven again.  That was the end of it.  And it became a convenient excuse for a lack for the original power that God had given to the church in the book of Acts in chapter 2.  The power of God came upon people back then, and we lost it, and we said God intends that we not have it anymore. Therefore, it must have just disappeared.  So we have theology today that thinks and assumes that the Spirit of God left with the disciples, and they were the only ones that were filled with the Spirit.  When they died, that was the end of it.  Now what more do we expect?  Well now all we have left is to go back to the Passover age, and find the OT patterns of how to establish the Kingdom of God.  Well, by those patterns you do it by the military conquest.  So anybody who disagrees with us, we must force them to convert or die.  Repent or die.  We’ll kill you if you don’t repent according to our prescription.

Well that is not the way the Spirit of God intended to operate.  If we have to kill people that disagree with us, that is a very poor substitute for manifesting the glory of God, which would bring them to true repentance.  But you see, if we cannot manifest Christ to people to show them the love of God and the glory of God, then we have to fall back upon the use of force, in order to force them into our religious pattern.  And that is the pattern of religion instead of the Christian way of life.  It is a religion instead of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

In Galatians 4, Paul talks about this problem mostly in terms of the transition from the old order of Judaism and Jerusalem into the new order of the heavenly Jerusalem, and he talks about this in terms of Abraham who had two wives, Sarah and Hagar.  He also had two children, Ishmael and Isaac, one born from each of them. Paul says in Gal. 4:24 that Hagar and Sarah represent two covenants. This was an allegory, and it says Hagar is from Mt. Sinai, which engenders bondage.  Paul says this Hagar is Mt. Sinai in Arabia and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

Now, it is important that we understand this.  The old Jerusalem, with its Judaism, with its Old Testament practice, is Hagar.  If you tell this to any Jew today, he will be awfully insulted.  I’m sorry, but if you are insulted, deal with Paul, don’t deal with me.  I didn’t say this.  <others would react the same way>  This is what the scriptures say, and I’m just reporting the news here.  It’s obvious from this that Paul says this allegory means that Hagar is Jerusalem, Mount Sinai is Jerusalem.

How did Jerusalem become Mt. Sinai?  Mt. Sinai was the place where God instituted the old covenant under Moses. It happens to be located in Arabia, or Saudi Arabia , as it is now named. Mount Sinai is located on the east side of the Gulf of Aqaba, a mountain called Jabal al Lawz.  But anyway, it’s in Arabia, and it says that it answers to "Jerusalem which now is," that is, old Jerusalem, as opposed to the new, the heavenly Jerusalem which he talks about in the next verse.  The old Jerusalem is Mount Sinai because they refused the new covenant and the mediator of the new covenant who is Jesus Christ.  In rejecting Him, they chose to remain in the old covenant, or under the jurisdiction of the old covenant.  In so doing, they put themselves under the jurisdiction of Mount Sinai which in Arabia.  Under that lawful jurisdiction, God hired the Romans to come in and displace them, and ultimately the children of Ishmael came into the possession of Jerusalem.

Why? Because Jews wanted to be under the old covenant which in Arabia, which is Hagar.  And in putting Jerusalem, the old city, under that jurisdiction, God simply acted according to their decision.  And so this is why in 70 AD, God used Romans to remove them from the land. If you are to look at Matthew 22:7, you will see that it was God who did this, and you just cannot just blame big bad Romans for doing that.  In Matt 22:7 Jesus told a short parable foretelling this. It reads,

"When the king heard thereof, he was angry, and he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city."

Now that is pretty strong language, but this is one of Jesus’ parables. I believe Jesus spoke the truth, so if you don’t like the wording on this, you will have to take it up with the Author.  I’m just a messenger of the bad news here.  I’m sorry that Jesus was "anti-semantic," but this is just the way it is.  We either believe his words or we do not.  I don’t care to apologize for what Jesus said, but nonetheless, I will refer you to him if you have a question about the above.

In this parable it is obvious that Jesus was talking about the Father, who is the king that sent forth his armies.  He’s not the emperor of Rome.  The Roman emperor may have thought he was doing it, and he certainly did.  But God takes the credit for it, just like Pharaoh thought he was doing what he was doing, but God kept taking credit for it (Exodus 9:34 to 10:1).

So the old Jerusalem is a Hagar; it is not Sarah.  If we revert back to Judaism, or the practices of Judaism--such as God being in a location of Second and Main, or having the old levitical-style priesthood through which you have to go through to get to God, and you cannot have your own personal relationship with him--if we revert back to this, we’re going back to the old order, and we’re not overcomers.  Overcomers are going in the opposite direction.  We’re moving on into the Tabernacles, not going back to Passover and beyond. Paul says in Gal. 4:26-28,

But Jerusalem which above is free, which is the mother of us all.  For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.  Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.

That is, if we are of the New Jerusalem, we are of Sarah.  We are the children of Isaac, who is the mother of us all, and we are the children of the promise.  The children of Ishmael are the children of the Old Jerusalem. Its priesthood, the scribes, the Pharisees, and all those who rejected Jesus Christ, are the children of Ishmael allegorically speaking.  I’m not talking racially.  I’m speaking spiritually.  They are Ishmael, the children of Hagar, the Old Jerusalem.  They are not the children of the promise.  In other words, the promises of God are not coming upon that group of people.  That’s all that Paul was saying. If we want to be the children of Promise, we must come thru Isaac, not through Ishmael.

Then Paul says in verse 29, But as then he that was born after the flesh,” (he is talking about Ishmael who was born in a normal manner) “persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now."  Just as Ishmael persecuted Isaac in the book of Genesis, so also the children of the old Jerusalem persecuted the children of the New Jerusalem, which is the early church.  You can read that history in the book of Acts. Or if you want, you can read Justin Martyr, you can read the Polycarp, you can read all of these early Christian leaders for the first few centuries, and they can tell you about persecutions that came from those who remain under the old covenant, the spiritual Ishmaelites, the children of Hagar.  Gal. 4:30 continues,

Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.

Now that’s a pretty strong language.  But again, Paul was merely quoting from the book of Genesis.  "Cast out the bondwoman."  He did not say, let’s embrace the bondwoman, and let’s go back to the Old Jerusalem, and consider the old Jerusalem to be the fulfillment of the all the promises.  That is not what he said.  Come out of that old order.  Come out of the old Judaism order and come into Pentecost, is what he was saying at that time.  That was the message of his day.

But now, 2000 years later, we have another situation which directly parallels this situation in Galatians in Paul’s day.  In this past 20^th century, particularly, the church has largely become Judaized all over again.  Paul would have turned over his grave if he was to see what is going on today.  People are converting to Judaism faster than Jews are converting to Christianity.  And they think that’s what God intends for them to do this.  This is partly because they think old Jerusalem is the place where all the promises of the Feast of Tabernacles are going to fulfilled.

They are wrong.  Pentecost has come and gone.  The glory of the Lord has departed from the old temple.   He no longer dwells in buildings of wood and stone and brick.  He is dwelling in us.  If we go back, we are not going on into Tabernacles, even if we think we are. It is not that the old order has nothing that we can learn from.  Sure, everyone has some truth that we can learn from.  But to place ourselves back in Judaism is to place ourselves back under Ishmael, under Hagar, the old covenant.

You know there’s a problem in the church today.  We threw out the law, and we kept the old covenant.  We should have thrown out the old covenant and kept the law.  We did it all backwards.  Paul never tells us to throw out the law.  He says in Romans 3:31, "Do we then make void the law through faith?  God forbid!  Yea, we establish the law."  But does he ever say, let us go back under the old covenant? No.  He says to cast out the bondwoman and her son.  Cast them out.  Now that’s pretty strong language, but that’s what Paul says.  He is just quoting from the Book of Genesis.

Galatians 4 then is Paul's appeal to the church to come out of the old order of Jerusalem-Sinai, the old covenant.  That city is Hagar with her children who despised the Sarah company and her Pentecostal children.  As church history progressed, the church more and more reverted to the old covenant, and soon lost its Pentecostal anointing.  More and more, the church began to forbid men to hear God for themselves.   In the late 4^th century, the Pope Damasus wrote, "it is permitted neither to think nor to speak differently from the Roman Church."  Now he said that because there were people out there whom he believed were thinking incorrectly.  That is, he was against the heresies of the day.

Well, I agree, that there were plenty of heresies in the day.  They couldn’t all be right.  The problem was, if you have people who are thinking incorrectly, what is the solution? Do you forbid them to think differently at all?  Or do you teach them to think correctly?  The goal of the early church seemed to be church unity.  That was the big god of the church in early days.  Church Unity.  At all cost, you had to have unity, but if every Christian had his own relationship with God, it created a problem. Everybody seems to come up a different truth.  And so these two concepts seemed be diametrically opposed to each other.  Either you can have freedom of thought, and freedom to have your own relationship with God, or you can have church unity and have nobody thinks for themselves, except for one man, called the great leader or the pope.  We can’t really have it both ways.  Or can you?

Well, the purpose of Pentecost was given way back in Exodus 20, when God came down on Mt. Sinai and spoke the 10 commandments to the people and every man heard in his own language.  The purpose of Pentecost was for men to have their own relationship with God because God would indwell their own hearts. They would be able to hear God’s voice for themselves, as opposed to God living over here on Second and Main, and you had to go to this building to an altar where God dwelt and get your answers from the priest who told you what God said. The purpose of Pentecost was to allow everyone to have their own personal relationship with God, to hear His for themselves.

Now, of course, some would hear the idols of their own hearts.  There would be a mixed bag, because you always have different levels of spiritual maturity.  You have different people with their own set of problems, their own heart idolatries, their own desires, their wishes, instead of what truth actually is.  It would be nice if everyone were full grown and spiritually mature, because then you would not have this problem. But unfortunately, that is not the real world.  So you are going to have this problem, that everybody thinks differently.  But the solution is not to forbid men to have a personal relationship with God. The solution is to teach men to hear correctly, by utilizing the gifts of the Spirit.  That is why God has given the gifts of the Spirit along with Pentecost.

If the gifts of the Sprit had not been cast aside, they could have been used to discern the Word of God and hear His voice correctly.  Like, for instance, the gift of discerning spirits. That is one of the big ones.  Or the word of knowledge.  Or the word of wisdom.  These are all gifts of the Spirit which were designed to help us hear the word of God correctly.  For instance, if I could not hear a particular word from God because of an idol in my heart, or because I was spiritually immature, God might come upon one of you and say, “Tell Steve Jones, this such and such, and this is a word of knowledge”.  And you would get a word of knowledge by which you could tell me what’s going on.

Of course hopefully you might also get a word of wisdom by which you would know how to tell me this in a way that I could hear.  Why? Because if I have an idol in my heart, I might not be able to hear this word, and I might respond, “Ah, that’s of the devil and that’s not of God.” If I could not hear it for myself, how am I going to hear that from you, right?  So you probably also need to know the word of wisdom to be able to know how to give me the word whereby the idol of my heart might be overthrown. This is just a little idea of how the spiritual gifts work.

But if we have rejected the spiritual gifts, as being a part of Pentecost that ended in the first century, how in the world are we going to mature spiritually? And what if we cast aside the law, which shows us the way to verify the voice of God? There is, for example, the law of the double witness. It is one of those laws that helps us know that we have truly heard from God. If we have cast aside the gifts of the Spirit and the law, as large portions of the church have done, we are left on our own to discern truth. How in the world are we going to progress in this age of Pentecost?  How are we going to get beyond Pentecost into Tabernacles?  We are not, because we have gone back into a Passover realm. 

So now in our day, we come into the secondary fulfillment of this term, “overcomer.”  It is no longer applied to those moving from Passover to Pentecost.  Now it applies to those who are moving from Pentecost to Tabernacles.  In other words, the overcomers of Paul’s day were one thing, but for overcomers today, God expects more of us today than He did back then.  Back then, Pentecost was new; this was the new thing to move into.  Nowadays, at the end of the Pentecostal Age, we are moving into a new thing, Tabernacles, and we need to know how to handle this.  We need to know the pathway, and we also need to have a little wisdom to know what the attitude of aspiring overcomers should be toward the church itself.

Is this an exclusive club?  No. We are aspiring overcomers.  There are no overcomers in the world yet today. As far as I am concerned; we are aspiring overcomers.  We should not assume that we have already attained.  Go back to I Samuel 24.  This brings us to the passage that the Lord has put on my heart as I was praying and asked what to speak on today, and He told me to speak on the page 400 of my Bible, and it happened to be this chapter.  Verses 6 & 7 in particular is what He gave me.

And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD'S anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.

By the way that word “anointed” is the Hebrew word, “messiah.”  Did you know Saul was a messiah? He was an anointed one.

So David stayed his servant with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Saul.  But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.

  If you look at the story in verse 2, Saul was looking for David with 3000 men. He was out hunting the countryside for David in order to execute him as a rebel.  He was causing problems.  He was not in submission to the king.  He would have liked to be in submission to Saul, by the way, but it’s pretty hard to be in submission when you have to keep dodging spears.  So David had to get out of town quickly.  Of course as soon as he ran away, Saul then accused him of being an outlaw and not in submission to the king. Isn’t that the way it usually works?

Now, Saul represents the church.  If you recall, in I Samuel 12:17, when Saul was crowned king, Samuel said, “Is it not wheat harvest today?”  As you know, from the law in Leviticus 23:14, the day of wheat harvest is the day of Pentecost.  That was when they offered wheat offering up to God, and everyone could now go home and harvest their wheat.  So it became known as the day of wheat harvest.  Saul was crowned on Pentecost; as such he is a Pentecostal and represents the church under the anointing of Pentecost.

Saul reigned for 40 years, and the Pentecost church reigns for 40 jubilees.  That is 40 x 49, or 1960 years, which happens to have ended in 1993.  The age of Pentecost is completed.  And I believe we’re in the transition now into the feast of Tabernacles.  Anyway, once we understand that key, we can look at I Samuel 24 as a story which provides us the pattern of what our attitude should be toward the church if we are aspiring overcomers.  If we are a part of Davidic Company, David represents the overcomers as opposed to Saul, who represents the church, then what should our attitude be toward Saul?  What should our attitude be toward the church?  What did David say?  Let’s begin reading in I Samuel 24:2.

Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.  And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.  And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the LORD said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.

Note, David’s men reminded him of the word which God had given to David.  The word was, “I will deliver Saul into your hand that you could do with him as you please, as it seems good unto you”.  David’s men interpreted that as meaning, “Ah, God has delivered him into your hands so you can kill him”.  Right?  That’s what it says.  That was the word from God, but God did NOT say, “I’m going to deliver him into your hands so you could kill him.”  He says, “I’ll deliver him unto your hands so you can do with him as it seems good unto you”.

God had been training David in principles of love.  David’s name means “love.” This is the difference between David and Saul.  Saul means "to desire."  He was run by the desires of his heart.  What was Saul desire?  It was Saul’s desire to kill David.  What was David’s desire?  It was David’s desire that Saul be converted, that Saul come to God, that he repent, that he stop chasing after him and stop trying to kill him.  David’s action was one of love.  Saul’s reaction was one of the idols of his heart--the desire of his own heart.  And so what was it that seemed good unto David in treatment of Saul?  Don’t kill him. That’s what it was.

We need to adopt the same attitude toward the church.  Let’s not try to destroy the church.  The church is God’s anointed, in the age of Pentecost.  God called the church.  It was the legitimate call as God had called Saul.  Never mind the fact that Saul’s reign would end, that his dynasty would end.  Regardless of that, God had indeed called Saul.  You can read that story in I Samuel Chapter 9-11.  If you read there, you can see that Samuel anointed Saul and proved to him that he truly was called of God to be king.  The only problem is he was not called to bring in the true fullness of the Kingdom of God.  It was to be a temporary thing.  Nonetheless, it was real.

In the same manner, the realm of Pentecost cannot bring in the Kingdom of God, because it is an Ishmael and has reverted back to Ishmael.  But to him who overcomes and goes beyond into the feast of Tabernacles, these are the ones who will establish the Kingdom of God in the fullness.  It’s not the kingdom of Saul but the kingdom of David.

There are some who say the Kingdom is now and has been since the crucifixion or since the day of Pentecost or whatever.  That is true, because on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the kingdom of Saul was established.  It was the Saul pattern, but it was not the Kingdom of God as it was ultimately designed to be.  Just witness all the killings in the last 2000 years. Look at all the people burned at the stake for disagreeing and for being a little different, all in the name of Jesus Christ.  Look at all the crusades.  Look at all the havoc that has been done by the church.  A simple look at history shows this.  They have fulfilled exactly what King Saul did in his day.

King Saul was a prophet in his own right.  His life prophesied the history of the church in the last 40 jubilees.  But what is our attitude toward Saul?  That is a different question.  We can certainly recognize the deficiencies in the church.  But when we see that God is sovereign, and that He has allowed these things to take place, and it was in the plan of God that these things take place, we can see that God did not intend Pentecost to bring in the full Kingdom of God upon the earth.  This is reserved to the overcomers who come into the feast of Tabernacles.  And it will not be done by the desire of one’s heart but it will be done by the love that is within us.

It really has to do with our ability to forgive the church.  What the scribes and Pharisees and priests did in the book of Acts--what they did to the church in persecuting the church--is what the church has later done in persecuting the overcomers.  Why is this taking place?  Well, look back at Saul and David.  Saul, through persecution, was training David how NOT to be  king.  How NOT to abuse his power.  How NOT to have a heart attitude that just says, “give me what I want, or I’ll kill you.”  Saul was showing by example to David, how not to be king.  And we need to thank Saul for that.  Let’s thank God that we’re not part of Saul’s Company, because if God has opened our eyes to see beyond Saul into the Davidic realm. Let us remember that we would never come into this understanding, had it not been for the example of Saul.  God has used the Saul church to train the overcomers in what it is really all about.

One thing I learned years ago….when you are persecuted, or mistreated, or falsely accused, or kicked out, it is very difficult to overcome at first.  It may take a while—it took me a few years to overcome as well. But when you can come to the place where you not only forgive but you can pray for those who have persecuted you, or despitefully used you, or falsely accused you of various things, when you can pray for them genuinely as David (I’m sure) prayed for Saul continually, then you have overcome. When they go the way of all flesh--as when Saul died--and you are genuinely heartbroken over their death, like David was at Saul's death, then you’ll know that you have truly overcome and you’ve learned to love. God uses intercession to teach us how to love.  That is one of the major lessons of the past that the Lord has shown me.  When you can intercede for the church, even after they have thrown their spears at you, then you know what love is.

David, while he was harassed all around the countryside and living in the caves, he was out doing Saul’s job.  He was out fighting the Philistines, which represents the flesh. He was doing what Saul should have been doing in the first place, but Saul ultimately was overcome by the Philistines.  If Saul had been out doing his job instead of harassing David, he probably would have been able to overcome the Philistines, but he never could, because he had too many perceived enemies.  He thought David was his enemy.

Look what David did, at the end of First Samuel 24:4.  "Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily."  (This means privately, or secretly.)  That was the hem of his garment that he cut off, the tassel.  This was of a great significance.  This wasn’t just taking a piece out of his shirt or shirttail.  Go back to Numbers 15:38-40.  You can see the significance of this and what it represented in typology or allegorically.

Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring: That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto your God.

These fringes represented the Divine Law.  In fact, even in Jewish teaching, they will tell you that this term “fringe” has a numeric value of 600; there were 8 strands and 5 knots, which if you add them together, 613, and there were said to be 613 commandments or laws in the Bible.  So this is not a new teaching.  The fringe or the hem of the garment represented the divine law, and looking at upon it represented the remembering of the law as opposed to our own desires and our own heart.

Saul was looking and acting according to his own heart.  He had ceased to look at the fringe of his own garment, so David cut it off. Basically David was accusing Saul of being lawless. Verse 5 says,

And it came to pass afterward that David’s heart smote him because he had cut off Saul’s skirt.

You see, when we accuse Saul of being lawless, we have to be careful how we do that.  The accusation was true, and one must recognize this fact, but let’s not get into the accusatory mode. If you keep reading the story, you’ll see Saul arose after he had his little sleep, and he went out of the cave on his way. After Saul was safely out probably across the next ridge, David called to him and said, “Hey, guess what? I could have killed you but I didn’t.”   He said in verse 15-22,

The LORD therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand. [16] And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, [Is] this thy voice, my son David?[17] And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept.  And he said to David, Thou [art] more righteous than I: for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.  [18]And thou hast shewed this day how that thou hast dealt well with me: forasmuch as when the LORD had delivered me into thine hand, thou killedst me not.

You didn’t kill me like your men thought you should do.

[19] For if a man find his enemy, will he let him go well away? wherefore the LORD reward thee good for that thou hast done unto me this day.  [20]And now, behold, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine hand.  [21] Swear now therefore unto me by the LORD, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father's house.  [22] And David sware unto Saul. And Saul went home; but David and his men gat them up unto the hold.

Though Saul seemed to repent, David didn’t just go home to Bethlehem.  He recognized that Saul’s repentance was kind of skin-deep, really.  It was the emotion of the day, and Saul was actually prophesying here, once again.  He was prophesying of his own situation, where David was more righteous than he.  Since Saul is a type of the church, we may ask, how is it that the church is going to repent like Saul did and stop harassing the overcomers? It’s through love.

God isn’t about to destroy the seed of the church.  Certainly there are some who will be cut off.  You will find that later on in Second Samuel 21:7, when the 3-year famine struck the land because Saul had persecuted Gibeonites. In that episode, seven of the family of Saul were delivered up to the Gibeonites to be hanged because they had persecuted the Gibeonites.  This what ended the famine in the days of David. (In our day this is what will end the famine of hearing the Word.)  But David spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan and his brother.

Look at the story.  The house of Saul was cut off in many ways, but God spared the remnant of them.  And notice that Saul here understands that David was to be king.  And he understood it because of the love of David, not because David was such a great warrior.  When David became a great warrior, that’s when Saul got worried.  But when David manifested the love of God, that’s when Saul saw the truth.  This is an important principle.  We, as aspiring overcomers, need to understand this.  We’re not here to destroy the church.  Let’s not make threats against them.

Let’s understand they have a dilemma.  Saul had no choice but to be a Pentecostal.  Saul in the NT persecuted the church until he was converted, and his name was changed to Apostle Paul.  Paul in the NT shows us basically the pattern of Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth who was able to make this transition from Pentecost to Tabernacles.  Let’s look quickly at Second Samuel 9:1-3 to just finish this out.  Here we have this pattern.

And David said, Is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan's sake?  [9:2] And there was of the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he said, Thy servant is he.  [9:3] And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God unto him? And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his feet.

Now when you deal with this in types and shadows, the foot company deals with the end of the age.  It’s really dealing with our time today. It’s too long to get into here, but it’s dealing with our time today. Verse 4 says,

The King said, Where is he? And Ziba said unto the king, Behold, he is in the house of Machir [which means “sold” or “to sell”] the son of Ammiel [which means "My people is God."] Remember Ammi, means "people" or "nation." Loammi, means “not my people” in the Book of Hosea.  Ammi-El, my people is God, or my kinship is God, is what the name means.  And he is in Lodebar.

“Lo” means no or not, and “debar” means pasture.  No pasture or no field, no inheritance, basically.  So the names here mean that he’s been sold, sold for sin, and has no inheritance in this kingdom and is in need of a kinsman redeemer.  This is the church under Jonathan, you see, the Jonathan Company, which, of course, perished with Saul, his father.  He was the branch of Saul's house that loved David, but he could not get out of the Saul Company.  This is representative of a portion of the church as well, those who have truly a heart for God, but for whatever the reason cannot or do not break free and get past the house of Saul. Verse 6 says,

Now, when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was coming to David, he fell on his face and did reverence, and David said, Mephibosheth.  And he answered, Behold thy servant.

Now, Mephibosheth means "to blow away the shade," or to destroy, blow away, scatter, the shame or the idol.  The term shame is often used as a synonym for the word idol.  Basically, it is showing in allegorical form that he is one who has been coming under the discipline of being sold into this bondage for a time, in order to do away or scatter the idols of the heart.  And so as the result of that, he is restored.  He is given a place where he can sit at David’s table from then on.  David says in verse 7,

Fear not: for I will surely show thee kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually.

His inheritance was restored in Saul.  Not in David, by the way, but in Saul.  In other words, the Mephibosheth Company, which does not inherit the fullness of the Tabernacles, does inherit the fullness of Pentecost in the coming Davidic Kingdom.  So you will have a two-tiered system here, it seems.  The Davidic Company comes into the fullness of the stature of Christ, the fullness of the Tabernacles, and the fullness of the Spirit. They are the overcomers.

As for the Saul Company, there will be a portion of them who come fully back into Pentecost, and they’ll have the restoration of Saul's inheritance there, the fullness of Pentecost. It means, basically, that they will attain to the glory of Pentecost as it manifested in the book of Acts with its spiritual empowerment and the gifts that come upon them. That’s tremendous.  A lot of us would love to have that today!  This is a tremendous inheritance that he gets.  And he gets to sit at the table and be fed by the Davidic Company, and truly have the Word and understand the Word and have the love of God within him that they never had before.  This is the result and the intent, I believe, that God has for the house of Saul, at least for the Jonathan Company, that branch of the House of Saul.  We need to be ready for this.

Remember, David swore to Saul that he would not cut off the seed after him.  Jonathan’s seed, Mephibosheth, was the fulfillment of that promise as well.  The church is not going to be cut off.  The church is going to be used of God, once they have learned their place in a Davidic Kingdom. There will be a time of learning, where they must sit at David’s table.  They will learn the Word, and God will pour out His Spirit upon them in a Pentecostal fashion which will allow them to do a lot of work in this Kingdom of God, even though they are lame in their feet.  Their walk is impaired; they are not complete; they are not in the fullness of God. Nonetheless, God has a place for them.  So there will be a day when the Saul Company will be restored to its position as Saul. Praise God!

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