In Between, part 3

Introduction
This series examines what happened during the intertestamental period of Christian history.  The 400 year period of God’s silence between the completion of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ was a pause that punctuated the greatest Word God ever spoke:  Luke 2:10-11, “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” 

Jesus came in peace, offering God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness.  However, many in Israel were hoping for and expecting a military leader who would violently conquer God’s enemies and drive them from the Holy Land.  What accounts for this dramatic difference between God's plan and the hopes of so many? 

Part of the reason they expected and hoped for a mighty conqueror instead of a suffering savior has much to do with the history of Israel during the 4 centuries between the Old and New Testaments.  I want to explore more of that history today.  In particular, I want to focus on the Maccabean Revolt, which is the inspiration for the modern Jewish holiday Hanukkah. 

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, was written around 475 BC.  God spoke through the prophet. 

Malachi 3:1-5

“Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

² “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes. ³ He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver, so that they may once again offer acceptable sacrifices to the Lord. ⁴ Then once more the Lord will accept the offerings brought to him by the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as he did in the past.

⁵ “At that time I will put you on trial. I am eager to witness against all sorcerers and adulterers and liars. I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

Briefly Explain Passage
Judgment is certainly a theme of this passage.  God says, the “Lord” the people were seeking would judge sinners (and this refers to Jesus, the Messiah).  God says, the Messiah will come to the Temple and purify like a refiner’s fire.  And God also says there will be a trial and judgment against evil doers—in particular against:  sorcerers, adulterers, liars, people who cheat their employees, people who oppress widows and orphans, and people who deprive foreigners of justice.  What many in Israel didn't understand, is that much of that judgment would be of the Israelites, for they continually failed to fulfill their role as God's people. 

What Happened Between the Old and New Testaments?
After Malachi spoke, no other prophet’s words were preserved in the Bible.  Israel was ruled by the Persian Empire.  Then, Alexander the Great of Greece conquered most of the known world—including Persia.  Israel was ruled by Greece for 13 years, and the Greek Empire changed the world.  Greek became the universal language almost everyone could speak.  But when Alexander the Great died unexpectedly, His empire broke into 4 smaller, less powerful Kingdoms—Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Syria, and Pergamum. 

The first little Greek kingdom to rise to prominence and rule Israel for 125 years were the Greek Egyptians.  They allowed Israel a certain amount of autonomy, but they encouraged the Israelites to adopt many elements of Greek religion, culture, and language. 

Many Israelites among the upper crust of society accepted these new Greek ideas.  You had to “Hellenize” (become more Greek) if you wanted to succeed and move up the social ladder.  To resist or reject Greek influence was to be seen as backwards, outdated, ignorant, and irrelevant.  

To be sure, there were many positive elements of Greek culture—systems of reason and logic, mathematics, architecture.  If you enjoy using an umbrella or a map, you can thank the Greeks who brought these things to prominence.  However, along with many good things, also came expectations to worship Greek gods and demigods like Zeus, Hercules, Pan, and others.  A rift formed in Israelite society between those who accepted Greek culture in order to move up and those who remained “pure” and faithful only to Yahweh, the God of Israel. 

The second “little Greek” kingdom to rule over Israel were the Greek Syrians.  When they took over from the Egyptians in 198 BC, they started playing hardball with Israel. The Syrians were tired of the stubborn, rebellious Israelites clinging to their Jewish culture and religion.  All the other conquered peoples of the Greek world had welcomed Greek religion.  The Jews were the main hold outs.  The Syrians made it a goal to rid Israel of Judaism and replace it with Greek culture and religion. 

The Syrians tried to transformed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem into a temple to worship the Greek gods.  Jewish sacrifices, circumcision, observance of the Sabbath, and Jewish feasts were forbidden.  Jewish sacrifice in the Holy Temple were replaced with sacrifices to Zeus and included unclean animals, like pigs, that were offensive to Jews.  

One priest in Modiʿim, a small town outside Jerusalem, had had enough.  When a Syrian official tried to enforce heathen sacrifice in his town, Mattathias Maccabeus murdered the Syrian official. He and his sons, the Maccabees, fled into the Judean wilderness and began a 32-year revolt.  They fought against the Syrians and also raided Jewish towns and killed any Jews that sacrificed to Greek gods or who collaborated with the “Hellenists”.  

Little by little, the Maccabee’s guerrilla warfare wore down the Greek Syrian kingdom. The Maccabees recaptured and cleansed the Jerusalem Temple in 165 BC.  Many believed this was the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophesy in Malachi 3:1, where it said, “The Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple…”

The Jews gained independence in 142 BC.  Jewish kings once again rule in Jerusalem. The Hasmoneans dynasty were ruthless kings who were not of the royal line of David.  In 128 BC, they raided the northern territory of Samaria and demanded the Samaritans convert to Judaism.  When the Samaritans refused, the Jews destroyed the Samaritan’s temple in Shechem. This and other events like it led to the bitter animosity between Jews and Samarians we read about in the New Testament. 

The Hasmonean rulers of Jerusalem served as both kings and high priests.  They were not pure or holy or even good and they were not of the royal line of David.  A politically savvy group known as the Sadducees, said it didn’t matter.  The Sadducees preferred terrible Jewish rulers to good pagan rulers.  The Pharisees said a true king must be of the line of David and never accepted the Hasmonean royal line.  This became a bitter dispute that divided the Pharisees (who wanted a return to pure Judaism) and the Sadducees (who were willing to compromise for political expediency).  That division persisted into the New Testament where we read about Christian's interactions with both the Pharisees and Sadducees. 

The reconstituted, independent Israel was not a kingdom to be proud of.  There was no justice.  There was no peace.  Violence and chaos was the order of the day.  Leaders said they worshiped God, but their religion was a lie.  They embodied the sins Malachi 3:5 rebukes--people "who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me."

In 63 AD, a new and more powerful empire marched it's legions into Jerusalem and took over.  The Roman Empire’s rule of Jerusalem had begun and the people still yearned for a Messiah to come save them from oppression and finally bring God's Kingdom on earth.  Would this Messiah be like Mattathias Maccabeus—a priest who murdered oppressive officials, waged war on God’s enemies, and violently cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem?  

Many believed and hoped the Messiah would be like the Maccabees, but God had a much better plan.  He foretold the Messiah’s who would be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6).  The true Messiah’s plan is foretold in Isaiah 61:1, where it says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.”

And Jesus came and read these very words from the scroll of Isaiah and said in Luke 4:18, “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” 

Conclusion
As we wait for Christmas, we still don’t know how long we need to wait for Jesus to finally return to judge the living and the dead and right all the wrongs of our broken world.

Waiting is hard.

While we wait, it is tempting to skip ahead and put our hope in people we admire.  We might think, "Perhaps this religious leader is the one we can trust." Or we say, "Maybe that celebrity is someone we can truly admire."  Or we hope, "Maybe the next president will be the one who puts our country back on the right track."

Why do we think our help will come from one of these worldly solutions  and not from Jesus, the true Messiah?  

And while we wait, it is so easy to waiver back and forth between compromising important core values we should never compromise for the sake of practicality or being militant idealists who are incapable of any compromise at all.   

Perhaps the best course of action while we wait is to allow Jesus to fulfill Malachi’s words in us:
To allow Jesus to purify us,
refining us like gold and silver,
burning away all the impurities in us.  

Perhaps it is best, while we wait, that we truly live for God in Christ 
by not cheating employees of their wages,
by no oppressing widows and orphans,
by not depriving the foreigners living among us of justice. 

Perhaps, while we wait, we should be about fulfilling Jesus’ mission when he quoted Isaiah 61:1,
The Lord has anointed me to:
bring good news to the poor
comfort the brokenhearted and
proclaim that captives will be released,
and prisoners will be freed.

Waiting is hard.

But sometimes, God Himself is the One who tells us to wait and be faithful.
And while we wait, we should worship and serve God and God alone
by living out the principles and mission of Jesus Christ.

5 Tips On How To Wait Well

Introduction

Do you ever feel stuck in between, like you’re just waiting for something important to happen?  What’s the hardest part of waiting?  I asked that question in a Facebook post this week.  Here are some of the responses:

• The number one response was “waiting” – haha – or being patient
• Letting go of control
• The anticipation
• To keep doing your daily activities while you wait
• Sacrificing pride
• Not knowing how long you’ll need to wait
• Worrying about what you’re missing
• Worrying someone else is getting something at your expense
• The unknown
• Thoughts in your head
• Trusting God
• Knowing there is something you want or want to do but being frustrated because you have to wait to get it.

Forty years of Stanford research found that people able to wait patiently and delay their own gratification are more likely to succeed in life than those who don’t.[i] 

The Bible is filled with long periods of time when people had to wait and delay gratification while enduring hardship.  Abraham and Sarah had to wait until the were old to have their promised son, Isaac.  The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt 400 years before they entered the Promised Land.  David had to wait to become king of Israel.  And there was a 400 year period of waiting between the time the Old Testament was completed and New Testament began with the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.

That long period of silence in between the Old and New Testament leads many to think nothing important happened, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Case and point: When the OT closes the Persians were in control and everyone was speaking Aramaic. When the NT opens the Romans are in control and everyone is speaking Greek. Apparently, a lot happened in those in between years. 

I want to recap the history of Israel from 475 BC to the time Jesus was born.  But first, I want to read a strange apocalyptic passage from Daniel chapter 8.  I want to read it, because it is a prophecy that God gave to Daniel while he was living as an exile in Babylonia.  And yet this prophecy foretold all the kingdoms that would rule over Israel before the Messiah was born.  Let's look at the passage and then review the actually history of the intertestamental period.

Daniel 8:18-22
¹⁸ While he was speaking, I fainted and lay there with my face to the ground. But Gabriel roused me with a touch and helped me to my feet.

¹⁹ Then he said, “I am here to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath. What you have seen pertains to the very end of time. ²⁰ The two-horned ram represents the kings of Media and Persia. ²¹ The shaggy male goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king of the Greek Empire. ²² The four prominent horns that replaced the one large horn show that the Greek Empire will break into four kingdoms, but none as great as the first.

What a strange passage!  But it refers to actual event that happened between 475 BC and 4 BC when Jesus was born.  Let’s look at that history and listen to the parts of Daniel’s prophecy.

Daniel 8:19 says, “I am here to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath.”

Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC by Babylon and the Jews, including Daniel, were taken into captivity.  However, Babylon was destroyed by the Medes and Persia.  Daniel 8:20:  “The two-horned ram represents the kings of Media and Persia.”

The King of Persia sent the Jews home to Jerusalem and they rebuilt their temple in 515 BC and then the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, was written about 475 BC. 

The Jews remained under Persian Rule until a guy from Greece named Alexander the Great tried to conquer the whole world.  The “whole world” included Israel and Jerusalem. 

So from 336-323 BC, Israel was part of the Greek Empire & they learned to speak Greek.  Greek became the universal language of the world (the way English is today), which is why the New Testament would eventually be written in Greek.  Daniel 8:21 says, “The shaggy male goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king of the Greek Empire.”  The king of Greece was Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in 323 BC.  After his death, the Greek empire splintered into four smaller, less powerful kingdoms—the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, the Seleucid Empire in Syria, the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and the Macedonia Kingdom in Greece.  Daniel 8:22 says, “The four prominent horns that replaced the one large horn show that the Greek Empire will break into four kingdoms, but none as great as the first.”

After Alexander the Great’s death, the Israelites were ruled by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 323-198 BC.  The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, giving us the Septuagint.  It was also during this period that Jews began to separate themselves into two major schools of thought.  There were the Hellenist who wanted to welcome Greek culture and philosophy into the Jewish religion.  On the opposite side were the Hassidic Jews who wanted to keep Jewish culture and religion pure and undefiled.  These “pious ones” as they were called, eventually evolved to become the Pharisees of the New Testament.

We will look more at the other Kingdoms that ruled Israel in the coming weeks.  But very quickly, we see Syrian Kingdom conquered Israel from the Egyptians in 198 BC and ruled until 165 BC.

The Maccabean Revolt of 168 led to 100 years of independence (and is the event that inspired the modern Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which lasts eight days and ends this year on December 6th).

However, independence was short lived and tumultuous and never lived up to God’s standards for His Kingdom.  And the Romans conquered Israel in 63 BC and ruled for 400 years until 313 AD.

Waiting is Hard
Waiting can be hard—especially when you don’t know when the waiting will and you feel like you’ve lost control.  However, God is in control.  Daniel’s prophecy shows that God knew everything that was going to happen in Israel in between the Old and New Testaments.  And, God also knew how all these events would shape the world to get us ready to receive the Messiah.

Some will wonder, “Why didn’t God just send the Messiah? Why wait 400 years?”  Well, I don’t pretend to know the mind of God and all His purposes and plans.  I do know that there were huge differences between the world of 500 BC and the time Christ was born.

First of all, those 500 years of the Intertestamental period allowed time for the Greek language to spread so that people across the world could understand each other from one end to the other.  Also, new roads and international trade routes and diplomatic agreements made travel more possible.  In 500 BC, people were using scrolls and clay tablets.  The New Testament was written in books and letters in the first century AD.  Books and letters were a new technology that made sending written information about Christ easier.  Thus, the Good News about Jesus was able to spread across the world in the first century AD in ways that weren't possible in 500 BC.  Israel wasn’t ready for the Messiah in 500 BC. The world wasn’t ready either.  

Learn How to Wait Well
Studies show that people who know how to wait well are more successful and happy than those who need immediate gratification.  Whether or not you feel like you have the discipline to be patient, there are things you can do to improve your ability to wait well.  You can train your patience just like you can train your muscles in the gym. 

Here are a five tips that can help you practice being patient.

5 Tips To Improve Your Ability To Wait Well
First, don’t worry. Jesus said, “don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:34)  He taught His disciples to simply seek God’s Kingdom and His righteousness and trust God to take care of the rest.  Stay focused on doing God’s will and everything will fall into it’s proper place and you won’t be letting your thought be dominated by worries about things you can’t control anyway.

Second, enjoy the moment.  When your thoughts are consumed by what might happen next, you can miss out on the beautiful life you have right now.  Learn to appreciate the many, many blessings God is giving you today.  Tomorrow will be here soon enough.  They say, "A watched pot never boils."  If you dwell on waiting for something to happen, it will seem to take forever.  However, "time flies when you're having fun."  If you focus on enjoying the blessings God has for you right now in this moment, those times will fly by and your waiting for whatever's coming next will soon be over.

Third, practice being uncomfortable.  There are going to be times in life when you experience pain, hurt, sickness, and many other uncomfortable circumstances.  You might well practice getting used to it.  Practice denying yourself.  Skip a meal (fasting).  Spend some time being bored (on purpose).  Exercise hard and make your body sore.  Learn to deal with the pain and discomfort in a controlled environment.  It will help you deal with being uncomfortable later.

Fourth, wait before you make a big purchase.  Rather than making an impulse buy, set a rule that you have to wait 24 hours before you buy something.  If you see it today and you want it today (and you can get it today), make yourself wait 24 hours.  It’ll still be there tomorrow.   So wait until tomorrow.  Two things may happen if you wait.  First, you may discover you really didn't need or want that thing you almost bought on impulse.  Second, you will train yourself to delay gratification.

Lastly, challenge yourself.  If you truly feel stuck, like you’re not going anywhere, then do something proactive to improve yourself.  Times when you’re waiting are great times to get training that will give you new skills.  Go back to school or take a course.  Read a book.  Listen to a podcast.  These things will give you new skills and insights and may also inspire you about the next steps you could take.

Jesus is With Us
The Good News is, we aren’t waiting alone.  Jesus is there with us in those in between times too.
Jesus is not dead.  He is risen.  And He is with us while we wait.  So Jesus helps us find new strength and courage.  He will nourishes your soul and fill you with hope as you wait patiently for His return and for whatever important changes you are may come.

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[i] https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification?fbclid=IwAR2XpwUq2x6V4W0IUBKGgxJ78cB4I9D5GlguqC8g6C0fsfPiU8lXYHvzZVQ