Star of Wonder: 5-Days of Advent to Illuminate the People, Places, and Purpose of the First ChristmasPrimjer

Hanukkah, also called the Feast of Dedication, honors a series of battles that took place during the four hundred “silent years” between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. Hanukkah would not exist but for a group of brothers who came to be known as the Maccabees.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Seleucus took charge of the land of Israel. His descendant Antiochus Epiphanes invaded Jerusalem, desecrated the Temple, and declared that anyone who observed the Law of Moses would be put to death.

One family decided to worship the true God alone no matter what the cost. When two Seleucid officials came to their small town and demanded that Mattathias ben Johanan, a Levite, make an offering to a pagan god, Mattathias killed the king’s representatives. His five sons took up the cause of righteousness, and the strongest of them, Judah Maccabees, put out a call for men who would fight for the freedom to worship God.

With God’s help, Judah and his brothers took a group of untrained farmers and created a guerrilla army. After months of fighting, they defeated a highly trained military force, complete with battle elephants!

When Judah’s men recaptured the city of Jerusalem, they rebuilt and rededicated the Temple, held a feast, and decreed that an annual Feast of Dedication should be observed so no one would forget how God had preserved His people.

If not for the miracle Hanukkah commemorates, the religious distinctiveness of the Jewish people would have been obliterated. Just as God heard their cries when they were enslaved in Egypt, He heard their cries under Seleucid oppression and Roman occupation.

He sent a Deliverer, but not the one they expected.

Our world is not so different from that of the Maccabees. Divisions among people have never been more pronounced. We don’t trust our leaders because their truth seems to shift with every cultural breeze.

Our situation is not as dire as that faced by the people of Israel under Seleucid oppression, but the clock is ticking . . . and hope is born of suffering. We wait, looking toward the sky, because our Messiah is coming again.