It is important to remember, God has always had a faithful people. Sadly, those who were of true Israel within ethnic Israel were often the minority, and sometimes a small minority. But God always had a remnant of true believers within the overall professing nation of Israel in the Old Testament. They were submitted to His plan, obedient unto His voice and consequently manifested His power and glory to a fallen world.
Old Testament Scripture makes various diverse allusions to this called out people amongst the Hebrew people. The Psalmist attests in Psalm 73:1, “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.” God was only bound to those within the camp of Israel who were set apart as a sanctified people. He regarded only those who had renewed hearts as true Israelites. Isaiah 45:17 calls God’s true elect “Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation.” Isaiah 49:6 describes the elect congregation as “the preserved of Israel.” Psalm 147:30, Isaiah 11:12 and 56:8 calls them “the outcasts of Israel.”
God had an active spiritual people in each generation in Israel throughout the Old Testament that knew their God and were committed to divine truth. They were a transformed community that were in holy communion with their Lord. Isaiah 65:9 confirms: “And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there.”
Isaiah 10:20 authenticates this thought: “the remnant of Israel … shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.” Contrary, to what many Christians think, God’s favor was about more than racial pedigree in the Old Testament, it was instead about righteousness and truth. Isaiah 10:22 tells us: “though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness.” Though many in the old covenant accepted the Gospel message, many more rejected it.
Dispensationalists often overlook (or dismiss) the closeness of the relationship that existed amongst God’s true elect in the old economy. There are countless examples of that in the Old Testament. Think about the words of the Moabite Ruth, which she said to Naomi in Ruth 1:16-18: “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.”
This shows us the depth of intimacy and the spiritual bond that existed during the old covenant. Another example was David and Jonathan. David testified in 2 Samuel 1:25-26 about his love for Jonathan: “How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”
No one could surely deny the spiritual bond that existed between the true people of God in the Old Testament. These people were all part of true Israel, within natural Israel. They were the believing remnant. They were in union and communion with God and each other. They were the household of faith. They were the true children of Abraham.
A lot of Israelites before the cross, including the Pharisees 2000 years ago, wrongly imagined that favor with God automatically came through simply being the natural offspring of Abraham. Dispensationalists have unfortunately swallowed that same lie. But nothing could be further from the truth. Romans 4:13 instructs: “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.”
Here we see that the blessing was not passed on through the Law or by natural means, as the Jews imagined, but rather came through a people of faith. These alone were the promised seed. Natural genetics, racial birth and family background never carried any merit with God.
Romans 4:16-18 continues: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.”
This demolishes the Dispensational fallacy that God’s earthly people are the Hebrew people who foolishly put their confidence in keeping the Law. Clearly, it is the household of faith that are the promised seed. It is they alone who are God’s holy remnant.
