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Now that we have looked behind the scenes and arrived at understanding of God’s purpose behind creation, we are better prepared to look at recent Dispensations of time and also some to come.
THE KINGDOM OF SAUL was a type of the era of Law (Mosaic). The name means ‘asked for’, and God was displeased over it. (‘I gave them a king in my anger and I took him away in ‘my wrath.’)
WHY should there by any law (for enforcement)? Because of disobedience! Were all to be truly good and righteous, the word ‘law’ wouldn’t even be found in that people’s vocabulary! But because of the rebellious spirits we were, God cast down a bunch of us to earth to first come under the law of cause and effect (in rapid reaction), and then the laws of the nations. To set the perfect pattern and to prepare for the succeeding Dispensation, the Law of Moses was given on the mount. Hence the name of “Saul”, for, thru our rebelliousness we had ‘asked for it’ (the law).
As the Scripture declares, it was a grief to God to precipitate us into LAW, even as it is unto any normal parent to find it essential to enforce a strict law upon his children. It is so far more beautiful to find that docile spirit which needs no law.
“And He took it away In His wrath.” For, the Mosaic Law ‘could not make any one perfect.’ As ‘an evil spirit came upon Saul leading him into fits of temper and wrong conduct, so similarly was ‘an evil spirit’ appropriated from the Law which led the people into ways grievous to God: they appropriated its ‘letter’ and ignored its ‘spirit’.
Saul and his sons were slain at Gilboa. The word means a bubbling fountain. This prophetically depicted how the Mosaic Law was to terminate at the opening of that ‘bubbling fountain’ on Calvary when the heart beats of the Son of God literally bubbled forth the Fountain of LIFE.
