“For this Hagar, is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:26).
A woman, a mountain, a city, strung together as if they symbolized one and the same thing, afford a very interesting example of the way in which the Spirit of God utilizes Old Testament history to illustrate New Testament truths.
The key is at once put into our hands, for we read, “Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants” (v. 24). The first covenant was the law. It could only minister condemnation and death (2 Cor. 3:7, 9). No person ever got blessing from the law.
The second covenant is one of grace, founded on the righteous basis of the death of Christ. It will be publicly established with Israel in a future day. The terms of it can be gathered from Jeremiah 31:35-34 and Ezekiel 36:21-38. It consists of the new birth, the forgiveness of sins, and the bestowal of the Spirit of God. Clearly none of these things can be procured by merit or effort. It is the ministry of righteousness and of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:8-9).
Let us see how the woman, the mountain, the city, illustrate this.
Hagar—The Woman
We all know the story of how Abraham was childless and sought a blessing from the Lord, and how the Lord promised him a son, that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. Later when the Lord told him to take a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon, and the smoking furnace and a burning lamp went between the pieces, it was to let him know that the promise of sovereign blessing could only come through death and the faithfulness of God. The sacrifice of the animals bespoke the great truth that it was only through death that the blessing could come. The smoking furnace and burning lamp passing between the pieces spoke of God’s faithfulness. See Jeremiah 34:18, where the significance of passing between the pieces is shown.
But Abraham was impatient. He sought the blessing by human effort. Yielding to the suggestion of Sarah, his wife, he took to himself as wife Hagar, an Egyptian woman. In this way he sought to take the matter out of God’s hands, and to obtain the blessing by human effort. But the blessing could not come that way. God has stamped the miraculous in the matter of man’s blessing. The birth of Isaac, of Jacob, of John the Baptist, and above all and contrary to all human thoughts, that of our blessed Lord, were all miraculous. It is all lifted out of the region of human power.
As the result of Abraham’s marriage with Hagar, Ishmael was born, his birth stigmatized as being “after the flesh.” The law is given to man in the flesh, and the flesh resents the law. The Lord said of Ishmael, “He shall be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” (Gen. 16:12).
So it is with the law. By it men find out what the flesh is. Wild, incorrigible, untameable, as it is, the lesson of the first covenant, if learned aright, leads us to appreciate the second covenant, the free sovereign grace of God, conferred apart from “works of righteousness, which we have done” (Titus 3:5).
Abraham was 86 when Ishmael was born. God kept him waiting for a further fourteen years before the promise of a true heir was fulfilled. A century old, his body dead, his wife an old and barren woman, it became a question of GOD’S power and faithfulness. Abraham at last learns his lesson. “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God” (Rom. 4:20). Isaac is born, the child of promise. Isaac means “laughter,” and Sarah’s son was laughter in the home of the hitherto childless couple.
The day came when Isaac was weaned. Ishmael mocked; Sarah counselled casting out the bondwoman and her son. God confirmed this counsel. It ever has to come to it that the choice must be made between the flesh and the Spirit. The world mocks at the Christian today. It is true that the flesh will be found with the believer as long as he is in his mortal body, but the mind has to cast it out, in other words, to judge it as incurable, not capable of being educated into anything different, to be judged and set aside, learning that it is condemned once and for ever in the death of Christ.
It is a great matter to appreciate the new covenant and not to expect anything in any shape or form from the old covenant.
Sinai—The Mountain
There seems a touch of sarcasm when it describes it as “Mount Sinai in Arabia,” reducing it to a mere material geographical expression. We are told it is “to bondage.” The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us “Ye are not come to the mount that might be touched” (Heb. 12:18). Woe betide the man that touched that mount, Sinai. If so much as a beast touched it, it was stoned or thrust through with a dart. If anyone touched that mount, in other words, if anyone under the law failed to keep it in all particulars, it meant condemnation and death. There was no mercy there.
The thunders and lightnings, the overshadowing thick cloud, the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, the whole Mount smoking as a furnace, the earth trembling as God approached the place, the mediator, Moses, the one who was nearest to God in every way, filled with fear and quaking with dread, such were the accompaniments of the giving of the law. No wonder that the people entreated that the voice of dread should be heard no more. This was the first covenant, connected in this Scripture with the mountain, where it was promulgated.
What a contrast to the beautiful sight of the Babe in Bethlehem’s manger, the homage of the angels as they worshipped Him, who was indeed the virgin’s Son, but infinitely more, who from all eternity was God, the Son, who became flesh that He might being blessing to men. See Him moving through scene after scene of blessing; the lepers cleansed, the deaf and dumb cured, the dead raised, the gospel preached. It was all a ministry of blessing, but at what a cost. He had to become the Antitype of the sacrifices that Abraham offered up. The new covenant could only be founded on death, and that the death of One mighty enough to settle all the claims of the first covenant.
It is good that we come to Mount Sion, typical of grace. Jesus is the Mediator of the new covenant as Moses was of the old. How good it is to be clear that blessing can only come through death, that it is absolutely undeserved by the best of us, that its blessings are alone bestowed by sovereign favour.
The Epistles to the Galatians and to the Hebrews are evidence how slow we are to learn the lesson.
Jerusalem—The City
“Jerusalem, which now is… is in bondage with her children.” What a vivid way of showing the end of law-keeping. The law was the schoolmaster until Christ came. The Jew, alas, failed to learn the lesson of the law. They turned the precious types of the great Antitype into empty ritual. They failed to understand the shadows and rejected the Substance, Christ Himself. Was there ever a spectacle of the futility of the law in itself when we find a nation of professed zealous law-keepers banding together for the destruction of the Mediator of the New Covenant? Oh, grace upon grace, that God should take occasion of man’s greatest sin to lay the foundation in righteousness of that channel through which His glorious grace could flow to perishing men.
Though long after the Epistle to the Galatians was written, it is not surprising to see the city destroyed, the temple razed to the ground, the people scattered, truly in bondage, for well nigh two thousand years.
And there will be no blessing for Israel till they seek it on the terms of the New Covenant, and through their crucified and rejected Messiah, till they learn the true meaning of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, and the great day of atonement is truly celebrated.
Meanwhile there is the Jerusalem which is above, the mother of all those who come under the blessing of God in this dispensation. Our blessing comes down from above. It is all of grace. It links the believer with the place from which it comes. It gives character to those it blesses, as a mother gives character to her children.
May we know more of this. May we lay this remarkable lesson of the woman, the mountain, and the city, to heart.