What part doe Ishmael play in the history of redemption? Looking further at Galatians 4, we learn much from Paul’s exposition of these events. Thought this is real history in Genesis, it is history under the supervision of God and containing in it wonderful lessons for the church. Ishmael, who was of the bondwoman, was born after the flesh, that is to say, he was born according to the ordinary processes of life – a child of Abraham and Hagar after the flesh, according to the normal course of events. But he of the free woman, Isaac, the later son, who came to the very elderly Sarai, was born by promise against all the odds. She was of such an age, but God had promised a special descendant who would bear the seed royal of the coming Messiah. So one was born according to perfectly ordinary processes, the flesh; but the other by the promise of God and the power of God.
‘Which things are an allegory’ says Paul. This is allegory in the biblical sense of the word, the original Greek sense of the word. An allegory is a picture or a narrative of something that literally happened that has a deeper meaning, a spiritual message built into it. It has been called veiled speech, but it's not very veiled. ‘For these are the two covenants’, and a covenant in the Bible is a special arrangements in which God binds himself to do certain things. ‘The one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar’ (Galatians 4:24). Agar or Hagar represents the bondwoman, represents the covenant that was made through Moses with the Jews on Mount Sinai, the law covenant. Here are my standards, says God, in the Ten Commandments. Do this perfectly to the letter and you will live forever and have eternal glory. Fail and you will be judged and condemned. Well, that's a very gloomy covenant. Earn heaven, or else. Why did God make such a gloomy covenant with weak fallen men? Because they wouldn't have his grace and his kindness. They wouldn't have the offers of mercy and forgiveness, the offer that God would circumcise, so to speak, perform an operation in their hearts and change them if they trusted in him and repented of sin and trusted in his coming Savior and his provision. In their pride, they didn't want that. No, they wanted to earn God's favour. ‘We are capable of it. We don't want free passage. We want a deserved and earned acceptance by God.’ So God said, ‘If you will not have grace, I will give you a covenant which offers you life and heaven by accomplishment, by works.’ It was doomed from the outset. Then why did God give it? To humble them and to turn them back to the promises of Christ, the Savior who would come. That's what the Apostle Paul says: the law is our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. Mount Sinai is a covenant of law, and it is bondage because if, in your pride and self-confidence, you try to keep it, you will be striving all your life and failing. It ends up in death and judgment. So the covenant given on Mount Sinai ‘gendereth to bondage’ and it's represented by Hagar.
‘For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children’ (Galatians 4:25-26), says Paul. These Judaizers, he teaches, come to you from Jerusalem, and that impresses you. ‘If they are from Jerusalem, they must be right’, you think. ‘No,’ says Paul, ‘because Jerusalem is in bondage to the old law. They won't have Christ.’ Many Jews were converted, 3,000 and 5,000 and many others, but the majority were still trusting that they could keep the law and please God in their own strength. They are the children of Hagar, as it were.
‘But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.’ Jerusalem which is above is the church of truly saved people. Its headquarters is above in heaven. That's the real Jerusalem, which one day will come down out of heaven and somehow be wonderfully joined to earth, and become the dwelling place of God's people forever. Jerusalem which is above is free, freely forgiven, free from condemnation, free from the bondage of sin and law keeping, because believers voluntarily keep God's laws as much as they possibly can, out of love and gratitude to him. Nevertheless only Christ's righteousness can actually save us and deserve heaven for us. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.