Out of Zion

Susan Michael: Well, why should Christians pray for Israel? Well, why did the Old Testament the Psalmist tell us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem? And why did the prophet Isaiah say that we would be called as intercessors on the walls of Jerusalem praying day and night? Why is it so important? Stay tuned, we're going to talk about it and a whole lot more.

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timeless issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to life in your everyday world. Now, let's join Susan with your Israel Answer.

Susan Michael: Welcome, friends. Today we're going to talk about why to pray for Israel. We just finished a series of why Christians should support Israel, and we gave a ton of reasons: moral, biblical, personal, etc. All those reasons and more are why we should pray for Israel. That's pretty clear.

But one way that we can support Israel is through our prayers. But why pray? Why pray for the peace of Jerusalem? Why Jerusalem? So let's talk about it. In Deuteronomy, the children of Israel were still in the wilderness of Sinai and God was giving them the law and telling them how to worship and all of the legal requirements that they could live in fellowship with him.

He told them seven different times, "And when you go to worship in the place that I will choose, then you do this and you do that." I'll just read one of those verses, Deuteronomy 12:5: "But you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name for his dwelling place, and there you shall go."

So it's clear in Deuteronomy he's not telling them where the place will be, but that one day he will choose. It was almost 400 years later that God revealed that the place he wanted them to worship him was in Jerusalem.

So when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, God spoke and said these words: "For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually." So God had chosen the land of Canaan, and he had chosen Jerusalem for the place where the temple would be, where his presence would dwell, and where his eyes and his heart would be forever.

The Psalmist said, therefore, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. This, of course, is in Psalm 122:6. There are a set of psalms, 120 through 134, that are known as the Psalms of Ascent. These are the psalms that the pilgrims would sing as they made their way up to Jerusalem, that place that God had chosen.

When they were commanded to come three times a year for the three great feasts of Israel, and they were to come before his presence. So they would sing as they made their way up into the hills where Jerusalem is. That's why they're called the Psalms of Ascent; it's going up to that hilltop.

The priests also sang these very psalms as they ascended up the stairs to the temple. And even more than that, the exiles when they were returning from exile and returning to the land of Israel, they would sing these psalms all the way along the journey.

So the presence of God became synonymous with the temple. The temple was important because that's where the presence of God was. And in these psalms, we see this longing for going up to Jerusalem. It wasn't about just the city; it was about the presence of God that was there.

Let me read to you Psalm 122:6-9: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces. For the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, 'Peace be within you.' Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good."

So you see, it was all about the house of God and God's presence. That's why Jerusalem was so important and why the Psalmist said pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem also came to personify the whole people of Israel. It wasn't just about a city.

And when Jesus was on earth, he wept over Jerusalem and he expressed God's love for the people. I want to read to you a few of these verses. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus laments over Jerusalem. He said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"

Obviously, Jesus was not talking to the stone walls of the city; he was talking to the people of the city and personifying all the people of Israel. Matthew 23:39 says Jesus once again said, "See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!'"

Here Jesus is lamenting over the destruction, the desolation of the temple, of the Temple Mount, of Jerusalem. But he says to them that you will not see me again until you welcome me back to the city. That's what the words "Blessed is he who comes" means; it's a welcome.

Well, Jesus was not talking to the stones of the city; he was talking to the people. Luke 19:41, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. It says, "Now as he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it." So the point is that Jesus was there expressing and feeling the heart of God for his people, personified in the city of Jerusalem.

Shouldn't we have the same heart? If that's God's heart, this is the place he said his heart and his eyes would always be. Jesus entered into that and wept over the city and lamented over it and talked about his longing to gather the people under his wings.

We, as spirit-filled believers, shouldn't we also sense that very heart of God for his people? Jesus also prophesied over the city. And in Luke 21:24, he said, "And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all the nations"—talking about the people—"and Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."

Well, this clearly happened in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the temple and Jerusalem. The people were scattered throughout the Roman Empire, throughout the world, and Jerusalem was dominated by the Gentiles for the next 2,000 years almost.

And it was only changed in 1967 when Jerusalem once again came under Jewish sovereignty. Wow. That was in some of our lifetime. If you're younger than that, then in your parents' lifetime. But that just happened. That's a prophecy that Jesus uttered.

And so he spoke to the city as representing the people. And we should have the same heart. We should appreciate that if God is fulfilling his promises to Jerusalem, it's back under Jewish sovereignty, then maybe we should better understand what he's doing and get involved, get on his side, on his calling in this regard.

So now that leads us to the next point. We're to pray for the peace of Jerusalem because of God's promises to the people, to the future of the city. But we're also called to pray for Israel and the Jewish people. Because once we understand the biblical significance of the Jewish people, of God's calling, his covenants with them, then we begin to understand the importance of praying for them.

God chose Abraham to birth a nation, a people through whom God would bless the world with his redemptive plan. That is what Genesis 12:1-3 is all about. So I want to read it to you, starting here in verse 1.

"Now the Lord had said to Abram: 'Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'"

This is an amazing—this is what I call the watershed moment in all of history, the watershed moment of the Bible. It's from here that the rest of the Bible just takes off and the story begins to unfold. Because God promised this man Abram he's going to give him a land, he's going to give him a great nation of descendants, and he's going to use him with a great calling of bringing blessing to all the families of the earth.

And because of this great calling, because of what God was doing, he said anyone who blesses you, I will bless, because they're blessing God's plan and promises. So the rest of the Bible confirms this covenant that God made with Abraham all throughout the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It never changes. It is certainly not annulled, and the Jewish people have not been replaced. God's promises to Abraham are everlasting, and they're still in place. Now, speaking of this calling on the Jewish people, the Apostle Paul said that that verse, Genesis 12:3, was the first preaching of the gospel.

So it referred to the coming of Christ and the redemption that he was going to win for us on the cross and that he would bring to the world and implement in his return. And so the Apostle Paul said in Romans 11, when speaking about the Jewish people and this calling on the Jewish people to bring this great redemption to the world, Paul said, "The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

It cannot be revoked. It has not been revoked. It is still in place: God's promises to their fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob, to Moses, to David. Repeated throughout the Hebrew prophets, these promises and the calling have not been revoked.

God used the Jewish people to bring about his plan of redemption. In Romans 9, the Apostle Paul lists a lot of the redemptive products, the things that the Jewish people brought into the world and that have blessed us and helped lead us into salvation.

He said, "For to theirs, to them was given the adoption," meaning the sonship, the relationship with God that Christianity is all about, "the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God and the promises, and from them, according to the flesh, Christ came."

Now in Romans 3:2, the Apostle Paul said they were given the word of God. So you and I have received the Bible, we've received the understanding of sonship and being the children of God, we understand the covenants that God made with Abraham, with David, with Moses, the new covenant—all of these.

The giving of the law, the temple, the service of God, all of this we have received from the Jewish people and have helped us enter into our salvation. So if the Jewish people are this central to God's redemptive plan, and when Jesus returns and it is fully implemented on earth, the demise of all evil—so you can bet that the powers of evil will oppose this plan with everything they've got.

And they know that if they can just wipe out the Jewish people, God's plan is all over, because he planned and he declared that they are at the center of his plan. So if evil can destroy the very people of God that he promised to use, then he can stop God's plan.

So now we understand better why we have been called to be intercessors for this people and for God's promises to be fulfilled. Now with that in mind, I want to read for you Isaiah 62:6-7. It says, "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give him no rest till he establishes and till he makes Jerusalem a praise in all the earth."

Now notice this. He says, "I've set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem." Now is this about a city with stone walls and stone streets? No. This is about the very people that that city personifies, the people that were its inhabitants that later outgrew the city, that lived throughout the land, that now live around the world. This is about the Jewish people.

And it says we are called to be intercessors, that we're to never hold our peace day or night—so in other words, persistent prayer, day and night, 24/7. And it says, "You who make mention of the Lord, keep not silent, and give him no rest."

Well, that's you and me. We are the ones that know the Lord, and it's we are the ones that it says, "Do not be quiet and give him no rest until he establishes and he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth." In other words, until he has finally finished all that he has promised to do for the earth, we are to pray for them.

When Messiah returns and takes up the throne of David in Jerusalem and the kingdom of God is established on earth, it says a new heaven and a new earth. It's called the restoration of all things; that's what the Apostle Peter called it. That is the day when Jerusalem will be a praise in the whole earth.

That is the day we are to intercede for this people and this city until this has been completed. Remember, Jesus is not returning to Washington D.C., he's not returning to New York or to Geneva or to Paris. Where is he returning? To the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. That's why this city, this place, this people is so important, and we are to be watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem.

I hope this has helped you. I want to invite you to download our free downloadable called *10 Ways to Pray for Israel* because in the next few weeks, I'm going to continue talking about this theme. Today we talked about why, but beginning next week, I'm going to talk about how, or ways to pray for Israel, things that we can pray together for Israel and for the Jewish people.

So please go ahead and get this free downloadable; you can read ahead of time and you can follow along. I want to also ask you, please be sure to like or follow or subscribe, whatever your listening platform requires, so that you will hear from us each time we publish a new episode. So please like, follow, or subscribe today. I want to thank you for listening, and I look forward to being here back with you next week. God bless.

Guest (Male): We hope you have enjoyed this episode of *Out of Zion with Susan Michael*. Be sure to subscribe to *Out of Zion* now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pray.com, Salem 1st, Salem Life Audio. *Out of Zion with Susan Michael* is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.