Who Got Saved in the Old Testament
A harlot in Jericho. A Syrian general. A Sidonian widow. A Moabite girl. An Ethiopian eunuch. A Hittite soldier. A whole pagan city.
None of them were born in the right country. None of them grew up reading the law. None of them had the temple, the priesthood, or the prophets the way Israel did. And every one of them was saved, redeemed and sit in Heaven today.
Part 1 walked through how salvation worked before the cross: By faith. By looking forward to the Promised Messiah and trusting the same God and the same Saviour that the New Testament Christian trusts today, just from the other direction.
If that was true for the Israelite, then it was true for the Gentile, and the Old Testament proves it over and over. The door to God was never closed to the outsider who would believe.
Here are nine of them. The Gentile Hall of Fame.
The Nine Gentiles
1. Melchizedek
A king and priest in Canaan who was already worshipping the most high God before Abraham was ever called. Abraham gave him tithes, and Hebrews 7 uses him as a picture of Christ.
2. Jethro
Moses’ father-in-law. A Midianite priest who heard what God had done at the Red Sea, walked into the camp, and confessed that the LORD was greater than all gods.
3. Job
Not an Israelite. Lived in the land of Uz somewhere in the days of the patriarchs before Abraham. Walked closer to God than most men in Israel ever did, and God let his story become one of the longest books in the Bible.
4. Rahab
A harlot in Jericho who hid the spies, was spared when the walls came down, married into Israel, and ended up in the line of David and of Christ.
5. Ruth
Walked away from her country, her people, and her gods to follow a widowed mother-in-law and the God of Israel. Great-grandmother of David and in the family tree of Jesus.
6. Naaman
A Syrian general who dipped seven times in a muddy river and went home declaring there was no God in all the earth but in Israel. Swore he would never offer sacrifice to another god again.
7. The Widow of Zarephath
She fed Elijah before her own starving son, called the LORD by His covenant name, confessed her sin when her boy died, and confessed the word of the LORD as truth when God raised him. The Lord Jesus pointed to her in Luke 4 as a Gentile God reached past Israel to bless.
8. Nineveh
A pagan city that repented in sackcloth from the king down to the cattle at one sermon, while Israel was rejecting prophet after prophet up the road.
9. Ebedmelech the Ethiopian
A Gentile eunuch in Zedekiah’s palace. He risked his life to rescue Jeremiah out of the miry dungeon when the princes of Judah wanted the prophet dead. God Himself sent a personal word of deliverance back to him through Jeremiah and said, “thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the LORD.”
Why These Nine Matter
Every one of them is a witness to the same truth Part 1 laid out. Salvation has never been about being born in the right country. It has always been about believing the right Promise.
Rahab heard about the Red Sea. Ruth heard from Naomi. Naaman heard from a little servant girl. The widow of Zarephath heard from Elijah. Nineveh heard from Jonah.
They heard something true about the God of Israel, they believed it, they turned from their own gods, and God counted them righteous. The same way He counted Abraham righteous. The same way He counts a sinner righteous today
Romans 10:12-13, “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
This truth started long before Paul wrote it down. It was already running through every one of these nine lives.
What This Opens Up
Ten different countries, ten different backgrounds, ten different stories. But when you line their lives up side by side, the same five patterns show up in every one of them. The same five marks of saving faith that show up in a New Testament Christian show up in a Canaanite harlot and a Syrian general and a Sidonian widow.
We will walk through those five patterns in Part 3.
