Hanukkah 5771 (2010)

I really wanted to have a different introduction to share at our annual Hanukkah Party this year.  We’ve usually shared this in the past, but it just didn’t seem like the right message to share this year.  I knew what I wanted to say but every time I sat down to put it together, there were large chunks missing and it just didn’t flow.  I must admit that I’m not a very good blog reader, I don’t often have time to read the wealth of thoughts that my friends share.  I do enjoy it when I am able to catch up with my friends but to be truthful, I don’t get a chance to do that too often.  But the other day I was looking through my feed reader and found Derek Leman’s Classic Hanukkah:  MJ Style.  His entry sparked the connecting of thoughts in my own mind and I did borrow heavily from his entry as I found myself able to put my own thoughts together with his help.  Thank you Derek.  :)  Below you will find our 2010 Hanukkah Introduction.

In John 10 we find that our Master was in Jerusalem for Hanukkah and that He taught in the Temple where the Hanukkah celebrations were centered.

What is Hanukkah all about?  To understand the events of the past that have led us to this festival, we must go back to the book of Daniel.  Daniel wrote about mysterious visions and revelations.  He was taken as a Judean captive to Babylon in 604 BCE and spent his lifetime serving the kings of Babylon and later the Medo-Persian kings who conquered Babylon.  There are particular visions that describe a statue representing various kingdoms and a particular vision about a ram and a goat fighting to the death.  These visions cover a significant period of time – from 600 BCE through to the 10th Emperor of Rome, Titus.  You may remember seeing pictures of Titus’ Arch, it’s one of the only places that remains recording pictorially the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the Temple articles.  This image of the Temple Menorah is one of the most common images of a menorah today.

Daniel chapter 8 records a vision and the words the angel Gabriel spoke as he explained the vision to Daniel.  Daniel 11 records further insights into the previous visions. This is where Hanukkah comes from.  Remember the statue in King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:  Judea had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire, ruled by the Medo-Persian Empire and then the Greek Empire.  Upon his death, Alexander the Great left his kingdom to be divided between his 4 top generals.  Israel was a strategic piece of land that was often fought over.

In the year 176 BCE, 400 years after Daniel’s vision was recorded, Israel was under the rule of the Syrian Empire.  The king at that time was Antiochous IV.  Antiochous was quite a guy.  He, like other rulers, determined that he was a god.  He wanted to be called Antiochous Ephiphanies, meaning Antiochous the divine.  He worshiped the Greek god Zeus and felt that he was one of Zeus‘ special god-like men on earth.  Antiochous felt that the Greek culture, language and religion needed to be spread across the known world and it was his duty to see to it that the world convert.  He made specific laws that would force the people to convert to the Greek ways, and the penalty for refusing these laws was death.  He wasn’t kidding.  In Israel there were many Jews who liked the Greek ways.  They are called Hellenists.  They were tired of the old fashioned ways of their fathers, the Torah and the Jewish Temple rituals.  They welcomed the Greek influence in Israel.  They wanted to be a modern people, a sophisticated people.  They liked the entertainment that Greek culture provided, the games and the fashion.  They wanted the Greek libraries, courts, temples and places of discussion and learning.  They saw the new laws that Antiochous made as a good way to get their people to change and fit in with the rest of the world.  Needless to say, they supported Antiochous and encouraged him to write specific laws.  Some of these laws made it illegal to circumcise infant sons, to study the Bible and to keep the Sabbath.  Some other laws made it a requirement that the Jewish people sacrifice only to the Greek god Zeus and that the people must eat foods that were considered unclean.  Remember, the penalty for disobeying any of these laws was immediate death.  These were scary times in Israel.  Antiochous had already taken the Holy Temple and done terrible things to it and in it.  Some Jews appreciated the new laws and thought they were good for society.  Others, the ones who were faithful to G-d and to the Torah, knew they were in trouble.

You see, G-d chose Israel as His special treasure.  He said that it is through the people of Israel that He would make His Name great in all the earth.  We remember the miracles in Moses and Joshua’s days where the waters of the river were all piled up as the people crossed the river on dry ground and abundant water flowed from the rocks in the middle of nowhere, we remember G-d speaking to the people from the thunder and cloud on the mountain top, for example.  Those were amazing miracles.  One day He will do wonderful miracles that will make these miracles seem small, but today we don’t see G-d doing things like that.  The miracles of Hanukkah some 2,200 years ago are the kind of miracles we see today.  The miracles of Hanukkah are about saving, healing, preparing and working through His people.

Groups of Torah observant Jews had banded together in the mountains of Israel because they wanted to worship G-d the way G-d said to, but they didn’t want to stay among the Hellenist Jews and risk death.  In time a particular family rose up as leaders and one man in from that family became the leader of a group of guerilla fighters.  His name was Judah Maccabee.  Judah was a great tactical leader.  In fact at West Point, the top American Military school, among the statues honoring the great United States military leaders there stands a statue honoring Judah Maccabee.  His is the only statue at West Point of someone who was not an American.  That’s quite an honor!  He was indeed a great leader, because he had been prepared by G-d for this task and placed in this time for this purpose.  Just like you and me.

Judah led his group of guerilla fighters, called The Maccabees, to fight against the Hellenist Jews.  The odds were incredible.  The Hellenists were determined like the Maccabees were, but the Hellenists had Antiochous on their side and Antiochous had the largest military force in the world.  They even had war elephants!  What did the Maccabees have?  This little band of guerilla fighters were shop keepers, farmers, carpenters and other untrained men.  They didn’t even have swords or horses.  Some of them didn’t even have shoes!  Like I said, the odds were incredible.  But the Maccabees had one thing that the Hellenists didn’t – they continued to trust in and obey G-d.  He would fight for them.

A Great Miracle Happened There!!  It took 3 years but the Maccabees did eventually win the war and regain the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  What an amazing time this was!!  A little band of untrained men with hardly anything were able to beat back and run off the largest army in the entire world!  Elephants and all!  This was a time for celebration indeed!  The Holy Temple needed to be restored and the people set to work right away to clean it up, repair the damage and then to dedicate it to G-d once again.  Once the work was done and the Temple was ready to be dedicated, the leaders were so excited and so thankful to G-d that they wanted to celebrate.  It had been a long time since the people were able to celebrate the Festivals at the Temple and they had just missed the Feast of Tabernacles which is the BIGGEST party of the year.  At the Feast of Tabernacles, also called Sukkot, there has always been a special dedication of the Temple.  The leaders in those days thought that it would be a good idea to celebrate Sukkot a little late.  They called this week long celebration Hanukkah, or Dedication.  They got together and decided that the festival of Hanukkah should be celebrated every year, just like Mordecai said Purim should be celebrated every year.  These celebrations both remind us of a time when the Israelites were about to be completely destroyed and yet G-d fought for them and preserved them.

Hanukkah is a time to remember and evaluate our dedication to our G-d.  It is a time to celebrate His wonderful protection and salvation.  Had the people not stood against the Hellenists and Antiochous, the faithful Torah Obedient Jews would have been either killed or assimilated.  There would have never been a little town of Bethlehem where our Master was to be born some 165 years later and there wouldn’t have been a people for Him to come to.  G-d’s plans can never be thwarted, no matter how hard the enemy tries.

So when we read John 10 and find that our Master was at the Temple at the Festival of Dedication, we can imagine what that celebration must have been like at the Temple that was considered one of the wonders of the world, celebrating with those who were faithful to G-d and considering His amazing salvation so many years ago.  In the days of Yeshua the Romans were ruling over Judea.  The statue in the vision in Daniel speaks of Rome as the feet and ten toes as the Emperors of Rome.  These ten Emperors would rule over Judea and Jerusalem until they destroyed Jerusalem and banished every Jew from the land.  The people in Yeshua’s day expected Him to rise up like Judah Maccabee and lead the people to conquer Rome then establish His kingdom.  But the time for that hadn’t come yet.  This was the time for Messiah, the son of Joseph, the suffering servant.  In Matthew 24 we read that the disciples asked Him when He was going to come as Messiah, son of David, the conquering King.  When He answered them, He spoke about the days of the Maccabees.  When Matthew wrote his gospel he wanted to make sure that his readers understood what the Master was talking about so he included a little note:  “Let the reader understand the allusion” he said.  For many of us, we didn’t know about the events that brought us the Festival of Hanukkah and so we didn’t understand what our Master was talking about.

Shortly after Yeshua died, rose again and ascended to the Father in Heaven, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.  Titus’ Arch still stands as a memorial commemorating the Roman destruction, it is Titus’ trophy.  When the Believers were watching the Roman Emperors do many of the same things that Antiochous had done, they understood that it was time to leave Jerusalem and run for their lives.  Most of them did and they survived, but they were never able to return home to Jerusalem again.  Rome harshly oppressed the Jewish people and the believers in those early centuries.  The battles with Rome did not turn out like the war with the Syrians.  There were similarities between Rome and Syria, but there were many differences too.  Yeshua didn’t return to lead the fight for His people in 70 CE.  He still hasn’t returned just yet, but the time hasn’t been right.

We know that in the end of days that things will again become very difficult for the people of G-d.  Like Daniel, John was given visions of the end of the age.  You see, G-d works in patterns and cycles.  When we look at history we can see that sometimes the same things happen over and over again.  Often times G-d does this to help our generations understand His message.  It is as if He is saying “I’ve told you this before. Remember?  Fight the good fight, stay strong, because your children will remember this.”  Daniel was told that his visions were about the end times, but only 400 years later the very things he spoke of happened just like he saw.  John was told that his visions were about the end times too and a lot of what he saw seems to have taken place in his own time.  But you see, this is the beauty of G-d!  Both Daniel and John’s Revelation tell us about the end of times and we can see the pattern when we look at both of them together.

Daniel had a goat, John had a dragon.  Rev. 12:17 and 14:12 tells us that again there will be an incredible battle between the faithfully observant children of G-d and a strong enemy that perseverance will be required and that the faithful will again be saved from destruction.  It is THIS battle when our Master will come as Conquering King to fight on behalf of His people, when His feet again touch the Mount of Olives in Judea and He will sit on the throne of His father David in the City of the Great King.  Then, and only then, will the Messianic Age be ushered in and we will all go up to Jerusalem where our Messiah will teach us and set all things straight.  The time is close because for the first time since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem the Jewish people area again in the land that G-d keeps His eye on day and night, from the beginning of the year to the end.  Not until now have the Jewish people been back in Israel, back in Jerusalem, to receive their King.

Should we be one of the generations that needs to gather in the hills to resist the onslaught of the enemy, we can know that we are not alone.  We can know that our G-d has fought on behalf of His people before when the odds were unfathomable, and He has preserved His people in His faithfulness.  We can rest assured that He will make His Name great among the nations and the end result will be beyond our wildest dreams.  What a celebration of dedication we’ll have when that day comes!

This is Hanukkah.  This is the Festival of Dedication.  This is the season when we consider our dedication to our King even when times are tough and so many things are enticing us to turn away from the path.  This is the season when we rededicate our temples to our G-d.

So what do we do to celebrate?  We gather together to tell the story, to teach our children about the faithfulness and wonder of our G-d.  We light the Hanukkah menorah, called a Hanukkiah, with one candle for each night of the festival.  We tell stories, we eat sweet and oily foods, we spend time with friends and family playing games and enjoying one another’s company.  Tonight we will do a lot of these things.  We’ve heard the story, we’ll light the lights then we’ll eat and play games.  There are stories associated with each of these things and maybe you’ll hear some of them tonight too.