A couple nights ago I watched the movie Defiance. It is a true story about Jews in the early 1940’s who hid from the Germans in the woods for several years in order to avoid being sent to concentration camps or killed.

At first there were only a handful of people who gathered to seek refuge in the forest but the number eventually swelled to over 1,200. They built shelters with branches, cooked meals with food they scavenged or stole, only eating about every other day, and tried to maintain some semblance of normalcy while being vigilant to avoid enemy soldiers.

At one particular point in the movie they assembled for the Rabbi to pray. Although the prayer was not verbatim from a prayer offered by the actual Jews hiding in the Russian woods, it seemed to me it undoubtedly depicted their sentiment.

What he said was, “God, we do not want to be your chosen ones any more. Please take back Your choice of Abraham and his descendants as Your people. If this is how we are to be treated we no longer want to be Your favored nation.”

As I watched the movie I reflected on the opportunity I had to be in Israel several years ago. I thought about the Holocaust Museum we walked through with all the pictures and videos of the atrocities of World War II. I remembered our tour guide who spoke very little about the war but did mention his involvement and time in a prison camp. He shared how his wife as a girl lived with her family in a cellar during that time, only coming out for fresh air at night and not seeing the sun for over a year.

The Jews are God’s people. Whether they desire to be or not they still are and He won’t reject them. This is seen throughout Scripture but a few passages that remind us of it are:

I Samuel 12:22 “For the Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself.”

Psalm 89:31-37 “If they violate My statutes, And do not keep My commandments, Then I will visit their transgression with the rod, And their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off My lovingkindness from him, Nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, Nor will I alter the utterance of My lips. Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure forever, And his throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established forever like the moon, And the witness in the sky is faithful.”

Jeremiah 33:25, 26, “Thus says the Lord, ‘If My covenant for day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns of heaven and earth I have not established, then I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David My servant, not taking from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them.’”

Romans 11:1, 2a “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. . .”

Two things weigh on my heart as I think about this.

The first is we need to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. . . ” Psalm 122:6

We must pray for the nation of Israel. Lift its leaders to the Lord, ask for protection from their enemies and for wisdom as they work out the peace accord with the nations around them.

Second we must pray for our nation and our leaders.

We read in Genesis 12 where God told Abraham (then called Abram) to leave his people and start a new nation which would be His special people.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (verses 1-3)

I believe God’s statement to Abraham several thousand years ago still applies today. Nations that bless Israel God blesses and those who curse them are cursed by Him.

The U.S. has always been one of Israel’s strongest allies and we have seen God’s continued blessing as a result. It appears, however, we are starting to go soft on our support of Israel and I believe this will be catastrophic if we do.

I heard a sound clip today of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s answer when asked if there would be retaliation if Israel were attacked. She said, “I don’t think there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation.”

The questioner followed up with, “By the United States?”

Her reply was, “Well, I think there would be retaliation” without committing our country to stand strongly with Israel as we have in the past.

Although we Christians have a special place in the eternal plan, the Jews are and always will be God’s chosen ones. We need to pray for the regularly and often. We also need to consistently and fervently pray that our nation stays strong as Israel’s ally. God’s blessing on our country depends on it.

That’s what’s on my heart this week.
Mark