Hanukkah 5773 Part1

Hanukkah has many names: “The Festival of the Dedication of the Altar, “The Memorial of the Purification of the Temple” and “The Festival of the Lights.” Each name has historical and spiritual implications in our life today. To fully present to you all that I have learned from my studies I have decided to release a series of three articles.

The more I study about Hanukkah the more I see how the revelation of who God is can be found in the history of the Jewish people.1When you grasp that the Jews as a people group were created to reveal God’s heart, His ways and eventually His Son to this planet, you can appreciate how great the war is between satan and God.2It becomes clear how much effort satan puts into trying to portray God as a liar and stop His eternal plan. This plan, which began before the foundation of the earth, was pronounced to satan in the Garden and declared in covenant language to Abraham.3,4

In B.C. 170 the Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanies attacked Jerusalem and killed 80,000 Jews, selling many more into slavery. He destroyed the temple, stole the articles of worship and sacrificed to his foreign gods at the altar. He destroyed copies of the Law and prohibited all Jewish religion, making it a capital offence to have a copy of the Law or to circumcise a child. If a parent was found to have circumcised their son, they were crucified with the son hanging around their neck. In Dec. B.C. 168 he sent another 20,000 troops into Jerusalem, erected an Idol of Zeus, offered swine blood on the altar and turned the chambers into brothels for his soldiers.

Violence was not the only method satan employed. He also engaged the pride of the Jews themselves to eliminate God’s ways in the lifestyle of the Jewish people. Antiochus wanted to impose the Hellenistic culture on the inhabitants of his Kingdom. Many Jews embraced that philosophy to gain political and economic stature. Hellenistic Jews wanted to preserve only the aspects of Judaism that fit with the Greek ideals. To that end they chose to remove anything that separated the Jews from others. They rejected the very laws God sent down to reveal His ways to the world. Sabbath worship and circumcision were rejected, and pagan sacrifice was incorporated into worship. Do you understand how important those two aspects of God’s laws are? Circumcision is the physical sign of covenant for the Jewish man with God. Shabbat, the covenant act of submission and trust, is so near to God’s heart that not keeping it was reason for death of the individual. Those who keep it were given the promises of blessings whether Jew or foreigner.

Enter now the Maccabees, a family consisting of a priest and his five sons; a small band of lovers of God and His ways. The commentaries of this account show two opposite opinions. Some see them as liberators esteeming the Lord and His ways. Others see them as zealots taking the Law into their own hands and interpreting it for their own interests. What I see is that the very same mindsets identify the remnant of believers today that are lovers of God and His ways.

History records that Mattathias, an old priest of the village of Modin, killed a Hellenist Jew who accompanied a royal commissioner of Antiochus as they offered heathen sacrifice in the temple. Mattathias and his five sons then fled to the hills. Mattathias and two of his sons died within a few months. The remaining sons were Judas, Jonathan and Simon. Judas became renamed “Maccabee”, meaning hammer. By Dec of B.C. 164, under his leadership, a small band of Jewish Freedom Fighters reclaimed the temple and rededicated it to God on Kislev 25 B.C., exactly three years after its desecration.

In the first book of “Maccabees”, found in the “Apocrypha”: “Juda Maccabaeus admonished the Jewish people, ‘The days of the dedication of the alter should be kept in their season from year to year, by the space of eight days, from the five and twentieth day of the Month of Chislev, with gladness and joy.’”

In my next article we will talk about the 8 days of celebration, the story of the Oil and the revelation of the Menorah that they kept in the temple. There is so much richness to receive from that aspect of Hanukkah that I want to have time to unfold it in a separate release.

Are you puzzled as to why there was so much energy used to destroy the Jewish culture? My answer to that question is the following. From the day Satan embraced the idea of elevating himself above his creator; his goal has been to establish his own kingdom and be worshiped as the supreme god. If there were no more Jews, Messiah could not come as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. There would not be a Son of David to sit on throne as King of Kings forever. There would not be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. God’s word would not be fulfilled. Satan would prove God not to be sovereign but a failure. So, does the victory of the Maccabees then become only a triumph for the Jewish people or is that victory also part of the foundation of the faith for every Gentile that believes in Jesus as their Savior and Lord?

Sadly, today the universal church is not far from the mindset of the Hellenistic Jews. A doctrine of love and acceptance without boundaries of morality and integrity in the ways of God is called God’s grace. A culture of pagan worship has crept into the church that makes place for satisfying the needs of the flesh above the ways of God. There is a culture today unwilling to acknowledge His sovereignty or understand it is that sovereignty that brought us the ultimate scarifies of His only Son on the cross for us because of His uncompromising love for us.

Antiochus, Haman, Herod, Hitler, and a host of others used by the enemy of our King Jesus have tried to thwart God’s plans by destroying the Jewish people to no avail. History over and over again shows the hand of the Lord fights with and for the Jewish people against all odds. In fact, the miracle of the Six Day War was fought on the same mountain as the Maccabees. Also, as with the Maccabees, the Israeli army was seriously out-numbered. So, my friend, your God will also fight for you against all odds. It may not always look as you would suppose but His promise that He will never leave you or forsake you stands firm for He watches over His word to perform it.

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1Gen 12:1-3 [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. [2] I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. [3] 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.”

2Gen: 3:15 And I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”

3Rev. 13:8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (NKJ)

4The plan which began before the foundation of the earth was pronounced to Satan in the garden and declared in covenant language to Abraham.