God, along with a great array of our enemies around us, has a legal case against Israel. Considering the high requirements and expectations laid out in the Book of Contracts, we have fallen short. Even after two severe sentences carried out of dispersion and long exiles, we have returned now to similar performances that had previously earned those harsh punishments. Corruption sours our politics, religious hypocrisy abounds, and sodomites annually parade with pride through the streets of holy Jerusalem, providing a legal right for yet another judgment.
Harsh sentence was handed down to Israel very early on when a last straw was reached in the Golden Calf at Sinai, a death sentence by He who judges with equity- but Moses was favored to be spared. Yet Moses chose to stand between the Judge and the accused, saying no, then take me too (Exodus 32:9-12,31), and “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people… So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” And so God honored that appeal of Moses and relented.
Intercession is not mere words, but the laying out of one’s life in jeopardy for one’s beloved. This was the spirit that was in Moses, and in Paul when he proclaimed his willingness to be cut off from the Messiah for the sake of his own people Israel (Romans 9:3), and that which was in Yeshua when he laid down his life in intercession for us. Intercession is seeing the lady about to be attacked by the rapist and placing oneself between the two, and striking him. The Hebrew for intercession is l’hafgiah– from the root to strike.
We here in Israel stand as cohanim (priests) between the Most High and His people, who has thus far marvelously sustained and prospered us these 70 years, appealing the case, asking that He remember His covenants and promises to our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the dread fine paid by him who would “die for the Jewish nation” (John 11:51), to have mercy for His own name’s sake and to stay His anger and save (Ezekiel 36:21-23). For the eyes of all nations are now upon Israel watching, and why should they say “Where is their God?” (Psalm 115:2; 79:10; Exodus 32:12).
As our enemies daily declare our destruction and dispersion, with perhaps sufficient firepower to achieve their dark wish, we appeal this case before the Judge just as did Moses, Paul and Yeshua- “forgive them for they know not what they do”- laying our lives and those of our children and grandchildren as a living sacrifice in truth, saying hosha-na (save, please, your people!).
I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. – Isaiah 62:6