“Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which genders to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia” (Gal. 4:21-25).
Hagar represents the covenant from Sinai. Hagar was a bondwoman, and an Egyptian. Her son, therefore, was a bondson. He was a bondson, by whatsoever means he might have been born: because his mother was a bondwoman. As we have seen, the means by which Hagar’s son was born was altogether out of distrust of God and of unbelief in his promise—was only a scheme of the flesh; and, therefore, “he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh.” But, “The minding of the flesh, the carnal mind, is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7, 8).
Accordingly, the covenant for which Hagar stands—the covenant from Mount Sinai—is a covenant in which people, knowing only the natural man and the birth of the flesh, seek, by their own inventions and their own efforts, to attain to the righteousness of God, and to the inheritance which attaches to that righteousness. This, because, as we have also seen, Sarai and Abram had the fullness of the promise of God, and of his righteousness, in God’s covenant confirmed in Christ, before ever the scheme concerning Hagar was invented. And this scheme was invented, and could be invented, only by forsaking that promise and covenant. And to forsake that promise and covenant was to trust only in the flesh.
Did, then, the people at Sinai have any promise of God, or any covenant, in which they could trust, before they entered into the covenant of Sinai? —They had. They had the Abrahamic covenant, exactly as had Abram and Sarai before they entered into the scheme which brought in Hagar.
Not simply did they have this covenant with Abraham, as a far-distant thing, bedimmed by the lapse of time between Abraham and them: but they had it repeated to them, directly by the Lord, and made with them, as with Abraham; and all this before they ever left Egypt at all. Read, “And God spoke unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered My covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: and I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God, which brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear [“lift up my hand,” margin] to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it to you for an heritage; I am the Lord” (Ex. 6:2-8).