The Man With the New Garment: 1 Kings 11:29-32 [Booklet]

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Garments are often mentioned in Scripture because they signify something significant. Here are lessons for the heart.

Excerpt- (To better understand and to appreciate the following pages, please carefully read 1 Kings, chapters 11, 12, and 13).

There are many coats and garments in Scripture which have a symbolic meaning. In Gen. 3:21 we have the "coats of skins," in Gen. 37:3 a "coat of many colors," in 1 Sam. 2:18 a "linen ephod," or priestly robe; in verse 19, a "little coat", in Matt. 22:11 a "wedding garment", in Luke 15:22 "the best robe," in Rev. 7:9 "white robes," in Rev. 19:8 "fine linen clean and white." In John 19:23 we have the "coat without seam, woven from the top throughout" a symbol of the spotless holy life of the Lord Jesus here on earth. In our chapter we have a "New Garment." All these coats and garments have a symbolic meaning which is most interesting, but we shall confine ourselves to the New Garment in two aspects: as the "New Garment," and the "New Garment Rent.”

As the New Garment it is connected with Ahijah and it represents the kingdom of Solomon in all its glory and beauty. As the New Garment-Rent, it is associated with Jeroboam, to whom ten pieces of the garment were given, and thus it represents the Kingdom divided. The very name Jeroboam means, "divider.”

Though we realize that the man in the new garment does not symbolize the church, but rather the Kingdom of Israel, yet since the moral ways of God do not change with dispensations, there is an analogy between the history of Israel and the history of the church. The moral characteristics of failure are similar and the principles of recovery and blessing correspond. Therefore, we feel at liberty to use this man in that symbolic garment to illustrate the church and particularly that section known as Brethren, to whom the precious truth of the church was so gloriously made known in the 19th century. I think there is a striking parallel between the two.