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.
“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.
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 ModiÊ¿im, 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!”
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.
