“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced.”
Psalm 22:3-5 NLT
David wrote that his ancestors and the ancestors of those in his nation “trusted in [God]” and as a consequence were rescued. And because of that trust, they were saved and “were never disgraced”. The ancestry of the Jews was well recorded in the Bible, with frequent listings of the ancestry of a particular person. Women were only rarely mentioned, these lists being male dominated, but the most significant can be found in Matthew, with the “record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). There follows a list of Jesus’ ancestors starting with Abraham, and the list terminates with “All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17). Worthy of note were four remarkable women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba, but there were forty two generations listed in total. But if we select various men in the list we can indeed find many whose trust in God was recorded in the Old Testament. In Genesis 15:6 we find, “And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith“. In Psalm 56:4, David wrote, “I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?” And then we have, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time” (2 Kings 18:5). It is remarkable that there is such a genealogy backed by occasional stories of Jesus’ ancestors trusting in God, but when the Angel Gabriel visited that young Jewish woman, little more than a girl herself, God knew what was behind her, and He was never disappointed, because Mary was a remarkable woman, ready and willing even at a young age, to take on the responsibility of raising God’s own Son, Jesus, and trust God in the process.
How much of our ancestry do we pilgrims know? I know very little beyond my grandparents, with just a few hints remaining in fading sepia prints of their parents, and even then I know nothing about their spirituality other than my mother’s parents went to a particular church and their remains are buried in the graveyard there. But I suppose the question remains about the legacy we are leaving for the generations that will follow us. Near where I live is a graveyard with grave stones recording the names, and sometimes families, or people who died in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the church, the Dunfermline Abbey, there are other plaques that go right back to the 11th Century I believe. King Robert the Bruce was supposed to be buried there in 1329, but the Abbey is an old building, solid and reassuring, but sadly now little more than a mausoleum, standing there as a reminder of a move of God’s Spirit in a previous generation long ago.
But the important fact about our ancestry is that, although records of people and their names are long lost, their impacts live on in the generations that followed them. By that I mean that they laid a Christian foundation that has stood the test of time. We may have ageing congregations in some churches, with dwindling numbers, but God is once again on the move. I was greatly encouraged to receive an email from Gavin Calver, CEO of the Evangelical Alliance, yesterday, and the first paragraph reads, “It was hugely encouraging to see new research ‘The Quiet Revival’ released by the Bible Society this week. The research says that Gen Z is leading a massive rise in church attendance, with 16% of 18–24-year-olds attending church and more men going to church than women. Overall church attendance has risen by 50% over the last six years, resulting in over two million more people going to church”. Jesus is in control of His church and He made a promise to His disciple Peter one day, “Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18). And the fact that we pilgrims are here today, proclaiming the Lordship of Christ, is an indication that Jesus’ promise still stands, with not even all the powers at the disposal of the devil able to destroy it.
What legacy are we pilgrims leaving our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond? For myself, I pray that it will be more than an epitaph on a tombstone somewhere. But if we don’t have a legacy plan in place it will be a lost opportunity. As David said in the verses from Psalm 22 we are considering today, we trust in God to rescue us, to save us, and to keep us from disgrace. That’s what happened to his ancestors and because of that he knew that the Lord was holy and there was nothing more he enjoyed more than seeing God “enthroned on the praises of Israel”. We pilgrims look forward to the future generations in our family lines and we pray that they too will look back at us, assured that their ancestors did something special in God, trusting in Him with their lives.
Dear Father God. We declare our trust in You, the only One worthy of all the praise and all the glory. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 