Your Family Tree
Introduction
My father never spoke to me about his life before he had come to England and married my mother. I knew virtually nothing about his background. A few years ago, I was contacted by The Judaica Museum in Berlin. They were doing some research into the Gumbel family. They sent me a copy of my family tree. I discovered that my great-great-grandfather was called Abraham Gumbel. My great-grandfather was called Isaac and his brother, Moses!
My father was Jewish. He qualified as a barrister and became a Doctor of Law at the University of Tübingen in 1927. Later he read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and knew what was likely to happen to someone like him who was known as ‘Israelitisch’. He came to England and qualified as an English barrister as well. His sister and parents eventually came too. Many of the rest of my family, on my father’s side, were murdered in Dachau, Riga and other Nazi concentration camps.
The treatment of the Jewish people through the centuries has been complex, and at times tragic. Sometimes even passages in the Bible have been misinterpreted and misapplied as a weapon of abuse against the Jewish people.
The people of God in the Old Testament were the nation of Israel. The people of God in the New Testament are all those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. We share a common history and family tree. We worship the same God and, the apostle Paul tells us, the way of salvation is the same for us all.
Psalm 89:14–18
14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
love and faithfulness go before you.
15 Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you,
who walk in the light of your presence, LORD.
16 They rejoice in your name all day long;
they celebrate your righteousness.
17 For you are their glory and strength,
and by your favor you exalt our horn.
18 Indeed, our shield belongs to the LORD,
our king to the Holy One of Israel.
Commentary
Your God is the God of Israel
The Lord, whom we worship, is the Holy One of Israel. ‘All we are and have we owe to God, Holy God of Israel, our King!’ (v.18, MSG).
The psalmist says of the Lord, ‘The Right and Justice are the roots of your rule; Love and Truth are its fruits’ (v.14, MSG). God’s choice of the people of Israel does not make him unrighteous and unjust. He is a God of love and faithfulness. He loves all people. The foundation of his throne is righteousness and justice. He will act in a way that is right and his treatment of other nations will never be unjust.
God intended that all nations would be blessed through his choice of Israel (see Genesis 12:3). This has now been made possible through Jesus. You too can walk in a right relationship with God and experience the blessing that this psalm talks about: ‘Blessed are those who… walk in the light of your presence, O LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; they exult in your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength’ (Psalm 89:15–17). As a result, ‘We’re walking on air!’ (v.17, MSG).
Prayer
Lord, help me today to walk in the light of your presence and to rejoice in your name all day long.
Romans 9:25–33, 10:1–4
25 As he says in Hosea:
‘I will call them “my people” who are not my people;
and I will call her “my loved one” who is not my loved one,’
26 and,
‘In the very place where it was said to them,
“You are not my people,”
there they will be called “children of the living God.”’
30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone.’ 33 As it is written:
‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.’
10 Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. … 3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
Commentary
Your salvation began with Israel
God’s plan of salvation began with Israel. His plan for Israel (the Jews) and the rest (the Gentiles) is inextricably linked. What does this mean for you now?
God had a plan ‘to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory – even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles’ (9:23–24). His plan of salvation is wider than just the nation of Israel.
Salvation is based on:
- faith – not your good works
- mercy – not what you deserve
- belief – not where you were born.
Paul goes on to demonstrate this by drawing on the words of Hosea. God had said that he would call people who were ‘not my people’ – that is, the Gentiles – ‘my people’, ‘my loved one’ and ‘children of the living God’ (vv.25–26).
It is an amazing privilege to be part of God’s people, loved by God, called to be his children, the object of his mercy, prepared in advance for glory in order that he might make the riches of his glory known (vv. 23–24).
Under the new covenant, no one is excluded. Everyone can be saved. God has made possible, through Jesus, a righteousness by faith (v.30).
Jesus is the way of salvation. Some will stumble over him, but ‘the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame’ (v.33).
Paul loves the people of Israel. They are his people. He longs for them to be saved. He intercedes fervently for their salvation. ‘Believe me, friends, all I want for Israel is what’s best for Israel: salvation, nothing less. I want it with all my heart and pray to God for it all the time’ (10:1, MSG).
There is only one way that they will be saved, and that is by faith, through ‘the righteousness that comes from God’ (v.3). This righteousness comes through Christ. ‘Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes’ (v.4).
‘Christ is the end of the law’ is a huge, ground-breaking, life-changing, history-making statement. There has been a great deal of debate about exactly what Paul meant. However, some things are clear.
- ‘Christ is the end of the law’ in that he has fulfilled the law. Jesus once described himself as having come to ‘fulfil the law’ (Matthew 5:17). The purpose of the law was to point us to Jesus (Galatians 3:24). Now Jesus has come, its role has been completed.
- ‘Christ is the end of the law’ in that he has satisfied the law. Jesus was the only person who has ever fully kept the law, yet through the cross you receive the benefit of his obedience.
- ‘Christ is the end of the law’ in that he has set you free from the burden and condemnation of the law. As we are constantly failing, we live life under a black cloud of condemnation. Because of Jesus, ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8:1).
- Jesus has set you free from seeking salvation through the law. No one can be saved by the law. No one, apart from Jesus, has ever managed to keep the entire law. ‘Christ is the end of the law’ in that he has set you free from trying to establish your own righteousness. Instead, you are now given ‘the righteousness that comes from God’ (10:3).
Prayer
Lord, thank you that salvation is open to all through faith in Jesus. I pray today for the people of Israel: ’My heart’s desire and prayer to God… is that they may be saved’ (v.1).
1 Chronicles 1:1
Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah.
Commentary
Your history is bound up with Israel
In today’s passage we see another family tree. This is my family tree. It is also yours.
‘Names launch this story,’ writes Eugene Peterson, ‘hundreds and hundreds of names, lists of names, page after page of names, personalnames... Holy history is not constructed from impersonal forces or abstract ideas; it is woven from names – persons, each one unique. Chronicles erects a solid defense against depersonalized religion.’
There is more than one way to tell a story. The two books of Chronicles cover the same period as the books of Samuel and Kings. The new writer (possibly Ezra), writing a hundred years or so later, traces the history of Israel from Adam to the return from exile.
We see in these chapters that Israel’s history is our history. Our history goes back to Adam (1:1) and the beginning of the human race.
The church goes back to Abraham. ‘Abraham was the father of Isaac. The sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel’ (v.34). Both Israel and the church of Jesus Christ look to Abraham as their father.
In chapter 2, the chronicler traces the history of Israel through the sons of Israel right down to David (2:15). Again, Israel’s history is your history. The church began with God’s call to Abraham and continues right down the ages until now.
Whether the church is popular or unpopular, big or small is relatively unimportant. People talk about the church as if it is a fairly marginal phenomenon only interested in gaining popularity. The only question the media ask is whether it is popular or not.
But as Bishop Lesslie Newbigin pointed out, this is absurd. The church has outlived great empires, philosophical systems, totalitarian systems. The things that seem to occupy the whole horizon of public thinking now will be simply phantoms, half remembered from the past, twenty years from now. But the church will still be there. This given reality needs to be at the centre of our thinking as Christians.
Prayer
Thank you, Lord, for our common family tree with the people of Israel. Thank you for the extraordinary privilege of being part of the people of God, who trace our history back to the beginning of the human race, through Adam, Abraham and Israel, and right down to the present day.
Pippa adds
In Psalm 89:14 it say,
‘Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.’
With all the political unrest and changing governments around the world, righteousness and justice needs to be the bedrock of any form of governance. Don’t stop praying for our world leaders.
Thought for the Day
The church has outlived great empires, philosophical systems, totalitarian systems. The things that seem to occupy the whole horizon of public thinking now will be simply phantoms, half remembered from the past, twenty years from now. But the church will still be there.
– Bishop Lesslie Newbigin
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References
Eugene Peterson, The Message: 'Introduction to 1 and 2 Chronicles' (NavPress, 1993).
Lesslie Newbigin, Discovering Truth in a Changing World (Alpha International, 2012), p.96.
The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel (commentary formerly known as Bible in One Year) ©Alpha International 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Compilation of daily Bible readings © Hodder & Stoughton Limited 1988. Published by Hodder & Stoughton Limited as the Bible in One Year.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised, Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.
Scripture quotations marked (AMP) taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.