What if the Maccabees never stood up to Antiochus Epiphanes? What if they had lost the war? What if Mary and Joseph had never been born or they had been raised as pagans? Thousands of things could have gone wrong, but fortunately, Hannukah is the story of how things happened in such a way as to make sure that Jesus, our Savior, was born!
If you can’t see the podcast link, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the Miss Tyler Version (MTV) which is from the Christian Standard Bible rephrased so that it is easier for kids to understand).
I’ve told you before that without Abraham and Sarah, there would be no Jesus but what you might not know is that without Hannukah there wouldn’t be a Jesus either! About a hundred and sixty years before he was born, there were terrible things going on and any one of them could have make Jesus’s birth impossible but thank God, the Jewish people were delivered from their troubles so that Jesus, the true light of the world, could be born. Last week I told you some of what happened and why it is so important for us to always be loyal to God and not to any wicked person who wants us to follow him (or her) instead. This week, we are going to tell two “what if” stories about how things could have gone wrong in ways that would have meant that either Jesus was never born or that, if He was, his family would have been idol worshipers, or maybe he just wouldn’t have been able to preach about our God at all. Many of the sages who studied the Bible were believing that the time of the Messiah was coming soon and that He would overthrow their enemies, and if they knew then I believe that Satan knew it too and would do whatever it took so that the Messiah would never come.
Let’s try our first “what if” story: A long time ago, in the Land of Judea, the Jews were living rather peacefully in their homeland, which had been given to their ancestors by God. It was His special holy land, and in the middle of it there was the great city of Jerusalem and above Jerusalem stood a beautiful platform on a mountain, surrounded by tall walls and atop the platform was a magnificent Temple. People traveled from all over the known world to worship God in this place and celebrate His festivals, from as far away as Babylonia in the east, Alexandria to the South, and Rome in the west. Wherever they ended up in the world, the Jews would dream of visiting the Temple at least once in their lifetimes.
But these people, although they loved God as their king, were ruled by a Greek king named Antiochus Epiphanes. He was a very wicked and greedy man, and so when the brother of the high priest offered him a lot of money so that he could be the High Priest, King Antiochus gladly took the money and made that man Jason the priest instead. And Jason immediately started changing Jerusalem to a city that was more and more Greek. He put in a gymnasium where men played games and worked out and competed in sports completely naked—and I can’t even imagine why. Whenever I think about it, I get the giggles and I can hardly stop laughing. But I guess they thought it was cool. Just no. And Jason made changes to how the city was being run so that it could be a lot more like a Greek city politically and a lot less like a Jewish city. And the odd thing is that people didn’t seem to complain very much but then, when a man named Menelaus decided he wanted to be the High Priest, he gave king Antiochus even more money. And that’s when things got really bad, as we saw last week. But Antiochus Epiphanes thought the changes were great—he liked it that pigs were being sacrificed to his gods (and especially Zeus) instead of the God of the Jews on the altar of His beautiful temple.
The king sent representatives to all the towns and cities of Judea in order to force the Jews to make sacrifices to the Greek gods instead of to the one true God. Menelaus had already sacrificed a pig on the altar of God, ruining it forever, but now they were building new altars all over God’s holy land and trying to force the Jews to serve other gods. Now, you know that the commandments say that we can’t have any other gods and that we can’t make idols or serve any other gods or make sacrifices to them. Some other commandments sometimes we have to make exceptions, like we would all work on the Sabbath to save someone who had fallen into a well, right? Of course, we would. But there is never a good reason to serve other gods, no matter what. But that’s exactly what the king was trying to force them to do. Plus, he didn’t want them keeping God’s other commandments either! And the king’s officers were killing people whom they were catching serving God, and even killing little babies—just like Pharaoh. Now, here’s where the story is going to change to a ”what if.” You know, as if all that wasn’t quite bad enough!
And the king’s officers went to the town of Modein, and they built an altar in town and then brought an old priest named Mattathias in front of everyone and promised him money and power if he would just offer up a pig to the Greek gods on the altar they had built. Now, Mattathias knew that they had killed everyone who said no, and he thought about his wife and his five sons and his grandchildren and all the people in the town. He didn’t want them to suffer and die and what difference would it really make if he went ahead and made the sacrifice anyway? He was sad but he went ahead and took his slaughtering knife and cut the pig’s throat, put the blood on the sides of the altar and burnt the body as a sacrifice to the gods of the Greeks. And then his sons and everyone else in town did too because they respected Mattathias—after all, he was a priest and their leader, one of their elders who decided what to do when people had problems.
As the story got out, more and more of the people in the small towns made offerings on the pagan altars and the ones who didn’t were killed. Pretty soon, people were just too scared to resist anything the Greek king wanted and they found that it was easier to live in the Greek ways of life than to live as Jews. The Greeks built amphitheaters and hippodromes in the cities, gymnasiums and temples to every god and goddess that they worshiped. They learned to like pork and because the pigs grew big and fat quick and would eat absolutely anything, that they could have meat a lot more often, and found that they could make more money if they worked on the Sabbath. After about fifty years, no one could even tell that they used to be Jews because everyone who kept God’s commandments was dead or hiding, and those who weren’t, felt safe and thought that living as Greeks was absolutely normal. Most of the Jewish families were allowing their sons and daughters to marry the pagans around them too. All the Torah scrolls had been burned, the priests were all either dead, or hiding, or serving at the Temple of Zeus up on Mt Zion. There was no war to drive out the Greeks, the Temple was never cleansed, and when the Romans came to power a hundred years later and they took over Judea and Galilee, there weren’t any more faithful Jewish families. Maybe Mary’s family had all been killed, and Joseph’s too, or maybe they were just ordinary people living as Greeks in their Greek towns. Jesus couldn’t be born into a pagan family and so Jesus couldn’t be born there and then at all.
What if Joseph and Mary’s families both went into hiding and remained faithful to God. Well, that would be great but then who would Jesus have to preach to? The Romans would probably still be in charge by the time Jesus was born, but Jesus’s ministry was almost entirely about teaching the Jews about the Kingdom of God and how it would be different than the sages had thought it would be. If they didn’t know the Torah, then what Jesus was saying wouldn’t have made all that much sense to them. Things wouldn’t have been the same, that’s for sure. Jesus might have gone from hiding place to hiding place preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, but would the Jews have really wanted to hear about a God who wanted to forgive the Greeks and the Romans who had forced them into hiding for two hundred years? Probably not because they didn’t even want that when Jesus really did preach two thousand years ago. Most people, no matter who they are, don’t really like to hear that God loves the people who have been mean to them and wants them to be His people too. That’s just how we are and so God needs to change our hearts.
What if Mattathias hadn’t made the sacrifice but his sons and the other people in the village didn’t run off into the wilderness with him? What if they had all died in battle? What if they had never gotten Jerusalem or the Temple back from the Greeks? You know what? There are probably a thousand “what ifs” that could have happened and if they had, there would be no Jesus, no Cross, and we would all be in huge trouble. Now, of course, we can also say that God would have made sure that Jesus happened some way or another and maybe the Jews from Babylon or Alexandria or elsewhere would have returned and God could have used them—but Hannukah is part of the story about how God did make it happen with the Jews who had faithfully returned to the Land when God told them to after King Cyrus of the Persians let them leave Babylon. Without Hannukah, our Jesus story in the Gospels would be very different. Hannukah is the celebration of rebuilding that altar and dedicating the Temple back to God and relighting the Menorah. That Menorah was always lit, day and night, so you could always see the Temple on Mt Zion as the light from the seven lamps on the Menorah flowed through the high windows, so that the Temple could be the light of the world. Josephus tells us that Hannukah was called the Festival of Lights, because when all seemed to be lost, God’s salvation of the Jewish people shined like a light in the darkness. And Jesus knew about Hannukah, as we will see in the Gospel of John, Chapter 10:22-30:
Then the Festival of Hannukah took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter. Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us hanging? If you are the Messiah, just tell us already.” “I did tell you and you didn’t believe me,” Jesus replied. “The things that I do in my Father’s name tell you absolutely everything you need to know about me. But you don’t believe what you see because you are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, so that they will live forever. No one can take them from me. My Father has given them to me, and He is greater than anyone or anything else. No one is able to take them out of the Father’s hand. My Father and I are one.”
So, we see that Jesus is in Jerusalem celebrating the Festival of Hannukah with many other Jews. And they had really been wondering about who He was and if He was the Messiah—and of course He was! But especially at Hannukah, they wondered about the Messiah because even though their ancestors had kicked the Greeks to the curb, now they were ruled by the Roman Empire—which was a lot better in some ways but still, they wanted their own government and to be able to just live according to the Bible. Rome mostly left them alone, but when Rome got mean, they got really mean. Pontius Pilate was a terrible bully and a very cruel man. No one really likes to have someone ruling over them from a long way away and especially when they don’t share the same religion or values. The Roman Empire thought that Roman citizens were the best, and that everyone else was not as important. Roman citizens had special rights and privileges that no one else had. If you weren’t a Roman citizen then you were in big trouble if something bad happened because they wouldn’t even remotely care about treating you fairly. In a lot of ways, it was like living in America during the days of Jim Crow laws and segregation where white people were pretty much allowed to do anything they wanted to people who were black. It was a dangerous time for Jesus to be alive, for sure.
Because the Jews hated the Roman Empire so much (can you really blame them?), they were waiting for and dreaming about a Messiah who would kill all the Romans, kick them out of Israel, and make Israel a great Kingdom like in the days of Solomon or John Hyrcanus. Many were hoping that Jesus was that man, and if He was, they wanted to know it as soon as possible. And so, at Hannukah, when they were celebrating their victory over the Greeks by kicking them out of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem and driving them out of the country, they all had one thing on their mind—when would they be able to get rid of the Romans like their ancestors got rid of the Greeks? There were probably a lot of people talking about Jesus the miracle worker, and wondering if maybe He was the one. John the Baptist, before he died, sure made it sound like Jesus was the Messiah. Why was Jesus going around preaching and casting out demons but not saying anything about the Romans? Who was He, really, and what were His plans for the future? Did you know that they couldn’t even openly celebrate Hannukah because the Romans didn’t like them having a festival that was about the Jews rebelling against a foreign Empire. The Romans were very paranoid and they didn’t even like large groups gathering together at all, so they had to be sneaky and not admit why they were celebrating. If the Romans knew the true cause of the celebration, they might figure the Jews were planning another rebellion.
And so, they gathered around Jesus and asked, “How long are you going to keep us hanging? If you are the Messiah, just tell us already.” and it was a very good question. They were so tired of the Romans and all the trouble they had brought with them. They were tired of the soldiers in their cities and the soldiers in the Tower that attached to the corner of the Temple Mount, the fortress Antonia—can you imagine soldiers from another country hanging around just outside your church? Wouldn’t it make you feel weird and not very safe? They were tired of wondering and now, at the festival that celebrated the overthrow of their enemies, they were going to get an answer. What would Jesus tell them? “I did tell you and you didn’t believe me,” wow, how do you think they would respond to that answer? He hadn’t said anything about being the Messiah, never came right out and said, “Yep, I’m the Messiah, all right. I’m here.” He told them something that they didn’t want to hear—that who He was and what He was, well, He was already showing them by absolutely everything He did.
And that made them angry and they wanted to hurt him—Jesus wasn’t who they wanted Him to be. And when Jesus said that He and God were one, boy howdy that made them really angry and they went and got rocks to throw them at Him and try to kill Him. Jesus asked them exactly what He had done to make them want to kill Him. He asked, “I have done so many good things for you that my Father wanted me to do, which ones are you wanting to kill me for?” And they said, “We aren’t trying to kill you for anything good you have done! You just made yourself equal with God! You’re nothing but a normal man and that’s blasphemy!” That might be a new word for you—blasphemy—so we’re going to talk about it. Blasphemy comes from a Greek word that means slander—and there are a few different ways to slander someone. One way is to say things about someone that are wrong and mean, or being disrespectful, or saying something terrible about God or something that belongs to God. One time, God told the Edomites that they were blaspheming the mountains of Israel by saying that they were going to they were going to take them for themselves. They thought that God’s Holy Land was just theirs if they wanted it but God took that as an insult. Nobody does anything with His Land unless He allows it and He wasn’t letting them have it and He didn’t want them to have it. The Jews at the Festival of Hannukah were angry because Jesus was making it sound like He was God and that made them furious. But Jesus was pretty much saying, “Could I do all of these good things if they didn’t come straight from God?” Fortunately, Jesus escaped before they could kill Him because they were really angry.
Why was Jesus at the Temple at Hannukah? Why was Jesus at the Temple for Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles? He was there because whenever anything tells us about Jesus or points to Him, He is always there. But sometimes people think that Jesus shouldn’t have been at Hannukah but I think that Jesus is especially there at that time because I believe that was when the angel Gabriel came to His mother Mary to tell her that she was going to have a very special baby:
When Elizabeth had been pregnant for six months, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, who was descended from all the kings of the House of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.” But she was very confused about what he was saying, wondering why he said that to her and what it meant. Then the angel told her, “Don’t be scared, Mary, because God is pleased with you and has chosen you for something special. Now listen carefully to me: You will be pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will make Him a King just like His ancestor David. He will be the King of the Jews forever, and the whole world will be His Kingdom.”
Mary asked the angel, “How can this happen, since I am not married yet?” The angel replied to her, “The Holy Spirit will come to you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, your holy child will be called the Son of God. Just think about your relative Elizabeth—she is very old but even she is having a son, and even though she has never been able to have a baby, she is six months pregnant. Nothing is impossible with God.” Mary answered, “I am willing to do this, I am the Lord’s servant. I want this to happen to me just as you said it would!” Then the angel left her. (Luke 1:26-38 )
Wow! Maybe this is why Jesus told the people that He was the light of the world when He was celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in the Fall. A lot of people think that Jesus was born in the fall even though most people in the world celebrate His birthday in December or January. The truth is that we really don’t know for certain what day He was born because the Bible doesn’t say anything about it. All we know is that when He was born, all of the angels came and sang and praised God because they were so happy. Up to that point in the whole history of the world, Jesus being born was the most important thing that had ever happened. All of the prophets had been talking about a child who would be born who would be called Immanuel, God with us, and that’s who Jesus is. Jesus is God walking on earth with us and so everything that Jesus said and did was showing us exactly what God is like—that’s why Jesus said at the Festival of Hannukah that He and the Father were one, the same. And they got angry because they didn’t understand. Honestly, it is hard to understand! And so, when the angels saw that the promises of the prophets were beginning to come true, and they knew that the curses in the Garden were all about to be undone, they were more excited than we can possibly imagine. But the angels weren’t the only ones at that party:
In that same area, shepherds were staying out in the fields and watching over the sheep all night. Then an angel of the Lord stood in front of them, and the glory of the Lord was shining all around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, because I am bringing you good news of great joy that will be for everyone in the world: Today in Bethlehem a Savior was born for you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This is how you will know it is Him: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.” Suddenly there was a multitude of God’s angels along with the angel, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors.” (Luke 2:8-14)
I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you have a wonderful Festival of Lights and that learning about Hannukah has taught you a lot more about Jesus.