My Love for Israel Is Passionate and Strong

In one paragraph

On March 3, 2024, Brian detoured from his planned message to talk about Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. Rather than a lecture, he opened the floor to the congregation and let the conversation shape the morning. The thread running through all of it was simple: if you love God, you cannot be indifferent to what is happening there. The conversation started with a basic question: why...

Read together

1. Romans 11:24 wild olive branch grafted into a cultivated olive tree, used to show Christians are family with Israel
2. Zechariah 8:2 God's passionate and strong love for Mount Zion and Jerusalem, used as a foundation for Christian care of Israel
3. Zechariah 8:3 God returning to Mount Zion and living in Jerusalem, the city called faithful and holy
4. Ezekiel 16:1-15 God's honest account of Israel as unwanted at birth, chosen and adorned by God despite having nothing special, then turning to prostitution and idolatry
5. Genesis 12:2-3 God's covenant promise to Abraham to bless him and all families of the earth through him
6. Psalm 34:14 turn away from evil, seek peace and pursue it, used in discussion of how Israel and Christians should respond to the conflict
7. Romans 12:1-2 do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by renewing of your mind, used to contrast how God works from the inside out in the New Testament
8. Matthew 6:33 seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else will fall into place, used to encourage aligning with what is important to God

What was said

• Go to thefp.com and read the talk by Bari Weiss that Janet shared, which explores antisemitism and what ordinary people can do about it.
• Read Zechariah 8 and Ezekiel 16 side by side and sit with the tension Brian described between God's passionate love for Israel and his unflinching honesty about her failures.
• Pray for Susan, who is doing aid work with Frontier Alliance International on the edge of the Golan Heights right now, and for Caleb as he travels to Israel on Friday.
• Find Romans 11:24 and read the surrounding passage to understand what it means that Gentile believers have been grafted into the same olive tree as Israel.
• This week, when someone asks why Christians care about Israel, try answering from what you actually believe rather than deflecting, because Brian said that question is already showing up in everyday conversations right here in Jackson.

Talk about it

1. Brian started by asking why Christians should care about what happens to Israel. What was your honest answer before he began working through it, and did anything said this morning change or sharpen that answer?
2. Romans 11:24 came up around the idea of being grafted in, and someone described Israel as an older brother in the same family. What does it actually mean to you, day to day, that you are connected to Israel in that way?
3. Ezekiel 16 describes Israel as unwanted at birth, abandoned in a field, with nothing intrinsically special about her, yet God chose her anyway. Brian said the story of Israel is our story. Where do you see your own story in that passage?
4. Brian pointed out that it is easy to look at Israel with rose-colored glasses, as though they can do no wrong, and that the ongoing war is making that harder to hold onto. How do you personally hold together God's passionate love for Israel, as stated in Zechariah 8:2, with an honest look at the real and complicated actions of a real and complicated nation?
5. Several people named reasons they might hesitate to show up publicly in support of Israel, including fear of being seen as political, concern about what colleagues or neighbors would think, and doubt that one person standing in the cold makes any difference. Which of those hesitations resonates most with you, and what would it look like to act anyway?