December 11, 2016 - Hanukkah

TONY AND MICHELLE PAWLAK

MEMORY VERSE

‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ 

says the Lord Almighty.

Zechariah 4:6b

Today we're going to talk about a wonderful holiday in December that celebrates and commemorates an absolutely awesome event in history!  I'll bet you thought I was talking about Christmas, didn't you?  Well, I wasn't.  Although, Jesus

did celebrate this holiday.  Don't believe me?  Just check out John 10:22-23.  Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.

Festival of Dedication?  What's that you say?  You can't find it anywhere else in the Bible you say?  Well, there's a reason for that.  You see, there is a four hundred year period between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The story of the Festival of Dedication happens about halfway through that period.  Let me tell you the story.

Over three hundred years before Jesus was born,  A man called Alexander the Great, leader of the Greeks, set about conquering the world.  He even Conquered Judah (northern Israel).  However, he allowed them to keep their religion and way of life if they wanted as long as they sent him a tribute (payment). Many Jews still decided they wanted to be more like the Greeks and started dressing like them and even worshiping their gods!  Idolatry has never pleased God. Things were about to get really bad...

Not long after, Alexander died and Israel had a new Greek

ruler.  Many years and rulers later, Antiochus Epiphanes came to power and was nowhere near as nice as Alexander was.  Antiochus thought that everyone should have the same language, culture, and religion as the Greeks.  So he made Judaism (the religion of Israel) illegal.  No one could worship God in Israel anymore, they had to worship the false Greek gods.  Anyone caught breaking these new laws could be put to death!

To make things worse, Antiochus even took God's Temple in Jerusalem and stole all of it's treasures.  He then put a giant statue of the the Greek god Zeus in it and told people to worship it!  He even had people

sacrifice filthy pigs to the false gods in the Temple!  This desecrated (made spiritually dirty) the Temple and deeply offended the Jews who still worshiped the true God. Soon, everyone in Jerusalem who wanted to worship God had to leave or die.  

One person who left was a priest named Mattathias.  He took his family and went to the town of Modein where they continued to worship God.  That is until the Greeks came and set up an altar to false gods there too.  They tried to get Mattathias to worship the false gods but he refused. When he saw

another Jew offer a sacrifice on the evil altar, Mattathias rose up and killed him for idolatry.  He then killed the Greek soldier who had set up the altar.  After that, he destroyed the evil altar itself. 

Mattathias knew that he would be in trouble with the Greeks for what he had done so he and all the people who worshiped God fled into the

wilderness and set up an army. One of his five sons, Judah, became the general of the Jewish army and they began attacking Greek regiments and winning.  This made Antiochus very angry so he sent more soldiers after them. Judah, however, was a very good and very tough soldier.  So tough, in fact, the people named him Judah Maccabee (The Hammer).  

Antiochus even sent a large army with War Elephants (the

Jews had never seen an elephant) to try and defeat Judah's army.  Judah reminded his soldiers that God had enabled Israel to win against great odds before and they should keep fighting.  Eventually, Judah's army kicked the entire Greek army out of Israel.  Judah decided it was time to go to Jerusalem and restore worship to the true God.

When they arrived in Jerusalem, it was a mess!  There were weeds growing in the Temple court, the Temple treasures either had to be restored or remade, there were dirty sacrifices and idols throughout the Temple, and the altar had been so desecrated that it

needed to be rebuilt.  Judah Maccabee gathered the priests and they got to work. 

Finally when all the work was done, it was time to dedicate (set aside for a specific purpose) the Temple to God once again. This meant they had to light the Menorah, a special seven tiered lamp stand that was fueled with a very special oil.

 However, all the oil for the Menorah had been desecrated except for one cruse (earthen pot or container) which was only enough to light it for one day!  It took eight days to make new oil  so they didn't know what to do.  They decided to light the Menorah and hope for the best as they began to make new oil.

Amazingly, the Menorah stayed lit for all eight days, just enough time for more oil to be made and added.  Because of this, the Festival of Dedication is also called the Festival of Lights and is celebrated every year for eight days.  You may know the Feast of Dedication by it's Hebrew name: Hanukkah!  And, thanks to the Book of John, we know that even Jesus celebrated Hanukkah and, if we want to, we can celebrate it too.  

Happy Hanukkah Everybody!