26. Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees

we are in Daniel chapter 11 this morning picking up right where we left off last week and we're getting just a bit of a late start and so I'm going to truncate slightly the reading of the text I was going to read this entire section that we'll be covering and I think I'll just read the first part of it although we'll cover the rest of it as time permits I think you know this is our last session together this spring I already miss you but summer's are nice I don't mind them too much a little chance to regroup and as I've told you before we are coming back in the fall and continuing this series probably through most of the fall and we're going to be focusing on the Roman world the rise of Roman power and then especially the way in which the power of Rome set the framework for much of the history of the birth of the new testament church so we're going to be looking in some detail and that will be looking at interesting characters like Henry RI Henry the eighth Herod I don't know he really gets around you know Herod the Great is what I meant to say and other interesting unexpected characters may show up as well but in any event I think you'll find it an interesting time together so hopefully you'll be able to find your way back meantime we are in Daniel chapter 11 and last week we were just looking over the beginnings of what's commonly called the Hellenistic era beginning more or less with the great campaign of him of I've got him on the mind of Alexander the Great going down to about the middle of the second century BC and that's where we want to pick up and really the entire section that we're looking at this morning is focused on one particular character who was a descendant of Seleucus remember him the is Antiochus the fourth probably one of the most infamous figures in all of Jewish history and certainly gets a fair amount of attention in this chapter so we're going to be looking at him and the main reason that he's of interest is because he's the primary cause from a political point of view for what's called the Maccabee and revolt and the Maccabee and revolt reshaped israel in profound ways that really set the stage for a lot of what took place later as we come to the new testament era and so even though a lot of people aren't all that familiar with the Maccabee and revolt they may have heard of it nevertheless it has a fairly profound impact on the people of God that I think will be of importance to us as we continue our thoughts in the fall so let's look at this we're at verse 20 of chapter 11 I'll just read this one paragraph although we'll cover a bit more than that this morning verse 28 chapter 11 Book of Daniel Word of God then shall arise in his place one who shall send an official for the glory of the kingdom but within a few days he shall be broken though not in anger or in battle in his place shall arise a contemptible person on whom royal Majesty had not been conferred he shall come in without warning and obtained the kingdom through intrigue armies shall be utterly swept away and broken before him and the Prince of the Covenant as well and after an alliance is made with him he shall act deceitfully and become strong with a small party without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province and do what none of his predecessors had ever done lavishing plunder spoil and wealth on them he shal devised plans against strongholds but only for a time he shall stir up his power and determination against the king of the south and with a great army and the King of the South shall wage war with a much greater and stronger army but he shall not succeed for plots shall be devised against him by those who eat of the royal rations they shall be they shall break him his army so these Dawei and many shall fall slain the two kings their minds bent on evil shall sit at one table and exchange lies but it shall not succeed for their remains and end at the time appointed he shall return to his land with great wealth but his heart shall be set against the holy Covenant he shall do he shall work his will and return to his own land and one more paragraph that will cover so you can tell all of this is describing one character for the most part and it is virtually certainly this character that we know of as Antiochus the fourth sometimes called Antiochus Epiphanes meaning the illustrious although the Jewish people nicknamed him Antiochus Epiphanes which means madman so they had their own views of him but let's let's have a word of Prayer and we'll get started father we're grateful for your mercies to us we thank you that we can continue our studies of this remarkable era of your people and their history and we pray that as we examine this chapter and the history that lies behind it that we would be guided by your spirit and that it would serve to increase our faith and our devotion to you and our confidence in your word and all of these things we give you thanks in Jesus name Amen all right last week we left off at this verse and this slide so I'm just trying to bring back to your memory what we were discussing at that point verse 19 said he shall turn back and this is referring to untie cuss the third sometimes called Antiochus the Great he shall turn back toward the fortresses of his own land but he shall stumble and fall and not be found so quick refresher Antiochus the third gave his daughter Cleopatra remember that to Ptolemy v they were both teenagers Cleopatra was 17 Ptolemy was probably 14 Antiochus was hoping that his very bright astute daughter would sort of mold her younger husband in the direction of her father Antiochus and made Egypt kind of a puppet kingdom to Antiochus itself he underestimated his daughter she was politically astute and realized that the smart money was betting on Rome and so even though she'd gone with instructions from her father she went a different direction and indeed began to court through her husband reliance with and dependence on Rome and that became critically important within the next few years well when Antiochus realized that his daughter had in a sense double-crossed him he didn't want to attack her directly so he thought he'll just go chase off the Romans and so he went off to Greece to fight wars there and found out he was up against a tiger he couldn't control and in 188 finally he was defeated and a piece of apamea as it's called was transacted between Rome and Antiochus which imposed harsh terms of reparation for war debts on Antiochus that forced him to go back pillaging rummaging through his empire looking for money to pay off the Romans and while he was doing so he was stabbed in the back well in a temple trying to rob its Treasuries in Sousa so that's where we left off then verse 20 which we read this morning then shall arise in his place one who shall send an official for the glory of the kingdom but within a few days he shall be broken though not in anger or in battle the successor to Antiochus is a guy named Seleucus the fourth pillar Pater meaning lover of his father he takes over in Syria at the same time we also have a new king in Egypt this is a few years later now told me the sixth kilometre lover of his mother and so there they are you know great family guys and so he takes over in Egypt Seleucus the fourth had the same problem as his father Antiochus he had huge war debts to pay to the Romans so he did the same thing he wanted to loot the Treasuries of various temples in the ancient world and one of the most at least famously wealthy whether it really was or not remained if question but he thought it was was the temple in Jerusalem he sent one of his commanders a man by the name of Healy odorous to raid and rob the temple in Jerusalem this is a famous painting by the Renaissance artist Raphael called the expulsion of hylia doris from the temple it was a famous incident in Jewish history what happened was that hylia doris showed up with a cadre of military force behind him and tried to approach the temple and there was this ferocious reaction of the priests and the popular level as well keeping him out and they were so effective that in fact hylia doris backed off and decided to go home and he went back and told his king Seleucus the 4th that angels had stopped him supernatural powers had come and prevented him from entering the temple I don't know if Seleucus was convinced by that but as it turns out helia Doris assassinated Seleucus some time later and that was the end of him so that brief period of time is really separating now Antiochus from the fellow we're really interested in the two political parties that were emerging at this time in Jerusalem were called the tobe odds and the own iods they are the Liberals and the Conservatives I mentioned last week that you have this rising division of opinion in Jerusalem some people are inclined favorably toward the Syrians and toward hellenism generally this was regarded as up to date this is really sophisticated culture if a person is really with it they're going to be Greek they're going to dress Greeks speak Greek lacks Greek you see that was sort of the way you distinguished yourself as someone that was somewhat you know upper crust that kind of thing and the own ayats on the other hand who took their name from an is the third who was the high priest in Jerusalem at the time and a direct descendant of Aaron were more traditional more conservative they wanted nothing to with this Hellenistic flavor they wanted to remain true to the biblical tradition that came down all the way from Moses so you have a division in the house here in Jerusalem in these days and they go by those two names they'll pop up a little later as we go along verse 21 in his place shall arise a contemptible person on whom royal Majesty had not been confirmed this is n tychicus the fourth he shall come in without warning and obtained the kingdom through intrigue and Tyga's the fourth Epiphanes then shows up in syria and this is in 175 on the death of Seleucus the fourth he took control of Syria claiming to rule on behalf of his brother Demetrius that's why it says he came in with intrigue his brother Demetrius was actually a prisoner in Rome Antiochus came in saying oh I'm just doing this on behalf of my brother soon hopefully he'll be released and then he can take over I'm just here as a caretaker of course Antiochus had other designs but that's how he insinuated himself into this leadership position he became the most hated of all the foreign rulers that ever had Dominion in Jerusalem during this era and remains to this day one of the most contemptible people in Jewish recollection armies shall be utterly swept away and broken before him and the prints of the Covenant as well this is kind of a broad descriptive language to describe his overall reign it's not a particularly tale but more kind of a theme that ran throughout the reference to the Prince of the Covenant is probably a reference to the fact that he was in some ways responsible for the death of this priest I mentioned earlier or Nyhus the third because on eius really rose up against him and so that's probably the Prince of the Covenant who is referred to there but otherwise this is a pretty good description of the overall tenor of his reign after an alliance is made with him he shall like deceitfully and shall become strong with a small party he insinuated himself as I said into in Syria and once he had consolidated his position and had some very loyal people a fairly small group committed to him then he pulled the mask off and said oh just kidding I'm really going to be the ruler here and at that point he repudiated any connections to his poor brother back in Rome Demetrius and declared himself to be the ruler of Syria he was able to gain control with that relatively small military force and that's very reflective of what's stated then in that verse without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province and do what none of his predecessors had ever done lavishing plunder spoil and wealth on them he shal devised plans against strongholds but only for a time Antiochus is the first guy who's actually in a position to use a little of the wealth of his position the others had been having to pay off a Roman debt and that was more or less under control by this point so Antiochus comes in and really buys the loyalty of a great deal of the nobility in Syria and that's precisely what the verse seems to imply so he's able to by well-placed bribes and other uses of his funds get a certain degree of stability and loyalty among these people who would be necessary to support him a particular detail here that falls under this rubric is connected however with what's happening in Jerusalem he was planning to eventually launch an attack against Egypt and it's King Ptolemy and more or less I think with designs having that in mind he received a character from Jerusalem whose name was Jason now Jason was a Jewish man and his Jewish name was Joshua but he didn't want to be Jewish that wasn't sophisticated if you're gonna be cool you need to have a cool Greek name so he changed his name to Jason so Jason now is a fairly prominent character in Jerusalem but he also happens to be the brother of own eius the third the high priest so there's a division in the family of the priest on iose is a true committed traditional Jewish priest loyal to Moses loyal to the heritage of God's people that had been received down through the ages Jason on the other hand wants to be an up-to-date Greek Hellenistic kind of guy so apparently they didn't get along very well and Jason thought to himself you know I bet Antiochus would be open to a proposition and so Jason goes and visits Antiochus and says hey look that brother of mine owned eius is a stick-in-the-mud he's just old-fashioned what you want is for Jerusalem to be a Hellenistic showcase and I'm the guy to do it and furthermore you need Jerusalem to be paying you a whole lot more revenue than it is and I can do that for you too so my proposition is depose my brother own eius and make me Jason the high priest in Jerusalem now the most authoritative position in Jerusalem at the time was the high priest they didn't have a king or other political power and so the high priest really got pretty much what he wanted and was highly respected in town and so Jason is wanting to take over that role and the promise he's making is that he'll make a good you know show for Antiochus by so doing Antiochus digs that action so he says fine man you're in and he'd opposes Aeneas and Jason is appointed the high priest in Jerusalem in 174 what Jason did was true to his word transform Jerusalem into a kind of Hellenistic city this is a typical shot it's not the one in Jerusalem it was eventually destroyed but very typical of the so-called Greek gymnasium or the gun aciem as it was called he built one of these structures within a stone's throw of the temple in Jerusalem now that was bad enough but the Hellenistic practice as you may know when the athletic competition took place was to engage in this athletic activity in gunas hence the term guna see'em anybody know what the Greek word Goom NOS means naked and so you've got not just athletic events you've got a pagan expression of the most really kind of blatant form within a stone's throw of the holy precincts of worship and you can imagine how the city just even though even the Liberals that was a little over the top for them and this was what Jason did so he certainly did make good on his promises to Antiochus but he provoked quite a crisis then within Jerusalem because of doing that well three years later another guy this would be someone like a city councilman he's not a priestly family he has no connections to the priesthood whatsoever he's also a Jewish man he's also taken a Greek name Menelaus it was a famous course King you may know of Sparta back at the time of the Trojan War so he takes this name Menelaus and he thinks wow if Antiochus would depose the true High Priest and install his brother who really isn't the legitimate High Priest then what's to say he wouldn't depose the whole priestly family and put me in there as that priestly character and so Menelaus goes to Antiochus and says hey I can outdo Jason all make Jerusalem and more Hellenistic and I'll make sure you get even more money you see this by the way is the moment when the priesthood in Jerusalem ceased to be legitimate the priests who were serving in Jerusalem at the time of Christ were not descendants of Aaron that stopped at this moment and there's a sense in which the legitimacy of the priesthood itself ceased at this point because the Hebrew law said that the priest was to be a descendant of Aaron and this is the moment it ended Menelaus goes has a little conversation with Antiochus Antiochus says sounds good to me and he throws aside Jason and puts in menelaus as the high priest wellö Nyhus was so outraged by this I mean he was willing to kind of be quiet when his brother Jason was the high priest at least it was still the priestly family but when Aniyah saw that a complete outsider a complete stranger to the priestly office was now exercising that authority on iessod Haddock and in a very public way he stood up and condemned Menelaus at which time Menelaus of course ordered on the authority of Antiochus his execution and that's why it said earlier in the text presumably the prince of the Covenant was swept aside as well well at this point the own iods in Jerusalem these people who were true traditionalists who had been loyal to Anaya's on the death of their hero they appealed to the Egyptians please remember last week we were saying that Jerusalem was fairly happy to get out from under the Egyptian thumb years earlier when Antiochus the third had taken over Jerusalem they didn't like the Egyptians now the tables are turned now Egypt didn't look so bad and so they send an email down to told me the six appealing to him to come and help them out in the face of this just almost blasphemous abuse of Jewish law that was taking place with respect to Menelaus this brings us to verse 25 he shall stir up his power and determination referring to Antiochus the fourth against the king of the south with the great army and the King of the South shall wage war with a much greater and stronger army but he shall not succeed for plots shall be devised against him by those who eat the Royal rations all right so what happens here is the Ptolemy the distant ruler now appreciates the appeal that he's received from Jerusalem but he's not quite ready to just pick a fight so he's decides instead to do just sort of a modest little incursion into what's called Cole a serious the son part of Syria it actually includes the region of Jerusalem so he sends a small military force up to establish what amounts to a staging area from which he hopes later to launch a more robust military campaign it's not supposed to provoke a lot of attention or get a lot of response but in fact it provokes a spectacular military response from Antiochus this little incursion into his territory brings a pretty ferocious response from Antiochus well the military army that comes as the suggested here in this verse Ptolemy actually had a larger force but what turns out is that Ptolemy himself was betrayed into Syrian hands by some of his closest advisors and so when you read in this verse here plot shall be devised against him by those who eat the Royal rations that's what it's saying that some of Ptolemies closest associates actually betrayed him into the hands of Antiochus and that made this whole thing take a different shape they shall break him his army shall be swept away and many shall fall slain so speaking of Ptolemy now his army surrendered because Ptolemy himself had been captured and Ptolemy was reduced to a kind of puppet under the control of Antiochus this is all happening in the year 170 the only place that held out was the city of Alexandria which was the most powerful city in Egypt the great cities that we know of from the past Thebes down to the south or Memphis kind of in the middle of Egypt had both ceased to be really centers of great power and Alexandria was the place where all of the action was going on and where the great military expression was present and these people in Alexandria were not so sure they were prepared to accept this new regime in which Ptolemy was reduced to a puppet and so what they did actually was they appointed ptolemies brother a younger brother who comes to be known as Ptolemy the eighth his nickname was Fiske on that's a picture of him there the Lord Fiske on means literally in Greek fat belly he didn't seem to mind it he was a corpulent individual so you've got to Ptolemies now ruling in egypt told me the six the true ruler but he's been captured now by Antiochus Fisk on ruling in Alexandria you may be wondering what happened to told me the seventh he is the son of told me the six but he's only an infant so he doesn't have much play at this point so these two guys are both making claims to be rulers of Egypt all right now verse 27 the two kings their minds bent on evil now the two kings here are Antiochus and Ptolemy the six shall sit at one table and exchange lies but it shall not succeed for their remains and end at the time appointed so these two kings get together and act as if they are going to form common cause to get rid of Fisk on but of course in the back of each of their minds are designs to get rid of each other at the same time so it's a very typically political hypocritical lying conversation among typical politicians you know how that goes so anyway this is what's happening the two negotiated hypocritically to destroy Ptolemy the eighth of course to do this and Tyga's realized that he needed more firepower and so he went home at this point leaving his puppet told me the sixth to rule what remained of Egypt excepting Alexandria and he's going to go and regroup he's going to fire up a bigger military engine and then come back to take over or to execute his plans and so it's in this context we have verse 28 he shall return to his land with great wealth but his heart shall be set against the holy Covenant he shall work his will and returned to his own land so Antiochus is stopping by Jerusalem Anna's on his away from Egypt back to Syria he stops there he has his ally Menelaus help him levy a special tax on all of Jerusalem he wants to fundraise and he's going to gather money from wherever he can and so he grabs as much money as he can from Jerusalem at this point then he heads back to Syria to engage in further fundraising so he can come back with his military force while he's away this con is able to stage a complete coup and drive out told me the sixth because at this point told me the stakes have been greatly weakened and this con is of course the guy the Egyptians in Alexandria are rallying to what happens is that told me the sixth the son have told me the fifth flees from Egypt and goes to Rome remember there had already been a relationship with the Romans courted by his father told me the fifth and Cleopatra and so he's a known quantity he shows up in Rome and says hey you got to help me Egyptian Egypt is spinning out of control reinstate me to my proper role there and so that's what's happening but behind the scenes as these things are going on verse 29 at the time appointed he shall return and Tyga's returns comes to the south but at this time it shall not be as before well this challenge launched by Fisk on against Ptolemy the puppet of Antiochus brings Antiochus back with this much larger military force and the year is now 168 and he shows up but as it says here it won't be this time as it was before this time when he arrives in Egypt he finds he's not simply dealing with Egyptian powers he's got Rome there because the Romans have responded favorably to the appeal given to them by Ptolemy the sixth now it's not a huge Roman army that shows up it's a fairly small but very disciplined Roman legion that's there and it's led by a Roman senator who's not a military man he's dressed in a spitting Roman toga you know how they would appear and he's standing there and his name is well we'll get to his name in a minute for ships from key team shall come against him that is Antiochus and he shall lose heart and withdraw he shall be enraged and take action against the holy Covenant he shall turn back and pay heed to those who forsake the holy Covenant all right the Roman guy that's there is G PO Pelias Linnaeus it's one of the most famous incidents in ancient history in which Pope elias drew a line in the sand from whence we get this expression now what happened was Antiochus is there he's got this good-sized Syrian army behind him very impressive and he of course is in his full military garb looking very powerful and then you've got this Roman guy probably a little kind of you know what plump a Roman senator not a military man holding a little rod and a few Roman soldiers behind him so it really seems like a pretty disproportionate power would favor Syria but of course Antiochus knows that behind this Roman senator is the power of Rome itself and that gets his attention well Pope Elias says to Antiochus okay we have a treaty agreement with Egypt based on arrangements made by Ptolemy v and so you need to understand if you attack Egypt that is going to provoke a treaty violation that requires Roman response and so you're gonna be fighting not just Egypt you're gonna be fighting Rome so what's it gonna be are you gonna go home or are you gonna proceed with this military expedition and tangle with Rome Antiochus a very proud man he's wondering what to do he says I need a little time to think about this let me go consult with my councilors I'll get back to you in a day or two well Pelias doesn't say a word but he takes that little wand in his hand and starts drawing a circle in the sand and he draws a complete circle all the way around Antiochus then he says let me make myself clear if you step out of this circle without giving me a response that will be deemed a declaration of war by you on Rome what are you gonna do now Sigmund Freud had a expression called displacement displacement is where something bad happens at work but instead of retaliating at work you go home and kick the cat you know you ever heard of that have you been there and that's what happened with Antiochus he was completely humiliated he had his whole army behind him and yet he didn't have the guts to stand up to Rome because he knew what Rome could do and so angry and humiliated he sculpt away saying okay okay you're gonna have your Egypt and that was the end of that but now here he is with all of these forces all dressed up nowhere to go and so of course Jerusalem is the major city between him and home and he took out his anger and humiliation on Jerusalem as the verse says here he shall turn and pay turn back and pay heed to those who forsake the holy Covenant there were some in Jerusalem who were willing to by this time forsake their own religion and support the as you know loosely using the terms of reforms that we're going to be put in place by Antiochus and so that's what takes place this becomes this moment of great abuse in Jerusalem he does several things for one thing he tore down a bunch of houses of Jerusalem to build a defensive fortress to prevent the Romans from making any further encouragement incursions into his own territory but he does a few other things that are really calculated to simply insult the Jewish psyche and especially the Jewish religion he changed the name of Yahweh the God of Israel to Zeus Olympus that's what we now are going to worship he ordered the Jews to begin sacrificing pigs to Zeus and if you know anything about Jewish religion you know how abhorrent that would be he prohibited the celebration of Sabbath days festivals or the Rite of circumcision he committed what sometimes called the abomination of desolation mentioned by Jesus the Olivet discourse in which he went to the temple and took a pig and slew it on the brazen altar right there in the holy precincts in front of the temple he plundered the temple treasury and he left troops as he left town he left a bunch of troops behind him to carry out what amounted to a reign of terror over the next three years or so there in Jerusalem forces sent by him shall occupy and profane the temple and fortresses they shall abolish the regular burnt offering and set up the abomination that makes desolate so this incident in particular was the one that was probably the most outrageous from the Jewish point of view in which he commits this abomination of desolation sacrificing a pig well the temple was taken over of course by the Syrians and was shut down so as we were saying a couple of weeks ago the temple ran in an uninterrupted way from the time it was put back in operation under Darius until it was destroyed by the Romans with one exception three years and these are the three years 168 to 165 in which it had been desecrated and of course controlled now by the Syrians and so for this three-year period of time this the temple is basically not operating he shall seduce with intrigue those who violate the covenant but the people who are loyal to their God shall stand firm and take action there were two groups in Jerusalem as you know one group was called the Jewish Helenus these were the proto Sadducees that term doesn't seem to be used yet but it was the group that eventually became the Sadducees that we hear about in the New Testament they basically embraced the pagan worship at this point they were willing to not put up a fuss and simply allow the terms of new life in Jerusalem to be implemented as indicated the other group will call the Hadean the pious ones these are the proto Pharisees and they are the ones who really in this case heroically opposed the Syrian presence oftentimes at risk of life and limb the wise among the people shall give understanding too many for some days however but they shall fall by sword and flame and suffer captivity and plunder we hear the details of this from the book of Maccabees and it's given in excruciating detail what happened there were this was like an underground resistance sort of like the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War you know there was a whole underground movement among the French to resist the Nazis this is very much the same kind of thing the Syrians were there and there was a pretty ferocious underground campaign to push them off but it was not successful at least at the beginning many of these people were competent scholars of the Jewish faith they had sort of underground worship services and teaching and so on going on in spite of all of that tens of thousands were martyred some of them under horrific circumstances there are great wonderful stories of heroic martyrdoms that took place during this time clearly reflecting a deep heartfelt faith among many of these Jewish people who wanted to hang on to their faith in the face of this kind of oppressive presence and so it's wonderful reading and very much worth taking a look at it if you have opportunity when they fall victim they shall receive a little help and shall join them who she shall join them in sincerely I think the best guess is that when it refers to this little help it's referring to the Maccabee and revolt the reason it's called a little help is because even though the Maccabee and revolts started with a pretty deep commitment to authentic legitimate Jewish tradition it went sideways pretty soon thereafter and so it became highly watered down and by the time all the dust had settled this Maccabee and revolt had really more or less become a kind of almost a connection between the Jewish people and this Hellenistic culture in the form of the Hasmonean dynasty that came some time later so I think the term a little help used in the biblical text here is pride appropriate there were early successes by the Maccabees and this led many to join them but they weren't joining out of sincere devotion to the Jewish faith or culture but rather simply because they were trying to be on the winning bandwagon and so it was that kind of insincere participation some of the wise shall fall so that they may be refined purified and cleansed until the time of the end where there is still an interval until the time appointed the time appointed is the time of Messiah were still around 160 years out from the birth of Messiah this did have a huge purifying effect on God's people which is why when Jesus finally did reach the scene there was a deep legitimate heartfelt population of people looking for God's Messiah and we see evidence of that again and again in the New Testament it seems that this is what was being achieved all right let me just give you a quick sketch here in my limited time of what actually happened in the Maccabee and revolt we have Antiochus the fourth who I just mentioned he is ruling here from 175 to 160 for this campaign against the Jewish people is in 168 in 167 this group of Syrian troops that he left behind to implement this Hellenistic kind of campaign were going around Jerusalem Jerusalem was under their control but now they're trying to pick off one by one the little communities that surround Jerusalem one of those towns is called MODY n which is about 20 miles from Jerusalem so these Syrian troops come and as they commonly did demanded that the folks engage in public pagan worship act in treason really against their own Jewish religion the priest in that town was a man by the name of Mattathias he was about 80 years old but he was so outraged that and I think it must have just been a supernatural fit of adrenaline when these Syrian soldiers were there making this demand he actually manhandled one of them grabbed his sword and slow about eight of these Syrian soldiers and two or three of the Jewish people who were about to go ahead and and do this thing I mean he just went crazy you know and so kind of mayhem broke out and these Syrian soldiers had you know they they either were killed or had to run for cover and that was the beginning of the Maccabee and revolt this guy named Matias from that point he called all the people who wanted to be faithful to the covenants to follow him and they all went out into the Judean wilderness and began to launch a kind of guerilla type campaign against the Syrians who were there in operation in that region well Mattathias as I said was an elderly fellow and he died two years later actually one year later 166 his middle son he had five sons the third of them was a man named Judas and he came to be called judas maccabees the family name was Heslin a n' but Maccabees was the Syrian word for hammer because that's the way they viewed him so Judas continued this campaign and the over the next year or so had a series of stunning victories he was greatly outnumbered by the Syrian forces but he was such a brilliant tactician that he was able to nevertheless score these victories and really create quite a problem for the Syrians who were trying to occupy this region finally in 165 Judas was able to retake Jerusalem and rededicate the temple 165 so three years to the day after the temple had been desecrated by Antiochus it's re dedicated and cleansed with the with the care of Judas and so that takes place and this of course is what Daniel is talking about in the verses we just looked at verses 34 and 35 of Daniel chapter 11 the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is celebrating the oil that burned for eight days when they read Edda cated the temple they needed consecrated oil and they didn't have any or not very much and so in faith they went ahead and lit these the the lamp stand there in the temple and then as the story goes and I'm not willing to deny it miraculously the lamp kept burning for eight days even though there was clearly not enough oil to keep it going thus it came to be called the feast of lights or the feast of dedication that's referred to in the Gospel of John 10:22 so Happy Hanukkah that's what is being celebrated when our Jewish friends celebrate their you know kind of festivities there it's a Christmas time that's the reason why all right well civil war broke out in Syria because Antiochus the fourth the bad guy we've been talking about dies and a minor skirmish and there's a conflict over who's going to control Syria and that of course gives Judas an opportunity with all of that you know confusion up there to the north to really gather power and momentum in Israel he makes enemies however because he was it was a conservative in the extreme this would be sort of like if you know the term Sharia law on steroids it was that kind of thing you know he was just vicious in imposing the most strict form of Jewish law so that he actually provoked a lot of negative sentiment even among his own people he was a great military character he wasn't so good at politics and not was not very good at diplomacy at all and so this is you know this is basically what's going on in 162 that brother who'd been in prison in Rome is released he shows up and he is able to through this Civil War conflict get himself into a position of leadership the liberal Jews in Jerusalem actually appealed to Demetrius to help them from against Judas oddly enough you know so that's kind of the direction this thing went Judas was killed in a battle the Battle of a Lhasa in 161 I'm gonna go through the rest of this very rapidly cuz I want to wrap this up but just kind of a quick sketch that gets us to the end of this little section here his brother Jonathan was a much more bright tactician politically and so what he does is a more quiet and kind of slow and steady way gather strength by quiet diplomacy in Jerusalem nevertheless not putting up a direct affront against Demetrius who had come in now and gotten rid of Judas Jonathan is certainly an important character but he does what he does a little bit more quietly and diplomatically Demetrius himself died in 150 that gave rise to a conflict between two characters this guy Alexander bolus was a usurper he was killed and abroad Demetrius the second to the throne Jonathan himself was a brilliant and adroit courting both sides in the conflict and the long and short of it is that he was eventually appointed governor in Jerusalem that might be good but he also managed to have himself appointed High Priest that was not good he was he was not he was a broadly of the priestly family but he wasn't a legitimate priest at all and besides that in Jewish law you don't combine church and state in the same office and so this was kind of holding himself out in a sense as a messianic character and that is kind of a death knell here and and that didn't create a cloud really over his head I his brother Simon was appointed governor and Philistine territory Jonathan died in 1:42 Simon the brother was able to negotiate at that point Jewish independence they become enough of a problem that actually in this turn of events and the political turmoil he was able to actually establish Jewish independence and thus was established what's called the Hasmonean dynasty which was the Jewish nobility at the time of the birth of Christ Herod the Great was married to a Hasmonean princess and that's how he tried to legitimate his own status there among the Jewish people so that is kind of the state of affairs in Israel and we're going to leave it at that for about the next three months and in the fall we're going to come back and then try to rebuild this story from the Roland point of view we'll cover some of this again and my very rapid Sunday School lesson this morning I'd like to have you turn to John chapter 10 now John chapter 10 verse 22 this is Jesus now and we read the following at that time the festival of the dedication took place in Jerusalem that's Hanukkah this is of course wintertime Jesus is there this is probably prior to the Passover where Jesus himself of course would be killed I'm sorry did I not say verse 22 John 10:22 he was at the festival of the dedication now we need to understand that this was probably the time more than any other time of the year when the Jewish people were thinking of messiahs because the famous history of judas maccabees was part of their culture and so this was the time when they started thinking and looking and asking about a coming Messiah thinking it would be another Judas another political character who could you know brilliantly drive off in this case the Romans so not surprisingly we find what happens next verse 23 Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon a very prominent area there in the temple so the Jews gathered around him and said to him how long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Messiah tell us plainly because Jesus has on the one hand appeared to be a messiah and yet on the other hand has not looked very much like judas maccabees we don't see much military strategy going on we don't see him making a kind of military machine and otherwise engaging in the sorts of activities that you would expect of a and during this richly messianic time of the year that of course became the central concern of the folks who were talking to Jesus if you're the Messiah tell us plainly jesus answered and said I have told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name testify to me but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep I think what Jesus is saying here is I have told you that I am the Messiah but because I don't fit the mold of your expectations you don't accept that you want a messiah after your image when in fact what God is giving you as a messiah cut from a very different mold now if you were of my sheep then you would recognize Who I am because my works testify to my identity and all of these things are irrefutable but because your blinders are still on you don't see it my lesson for all of us is simply that we are Christian people and of course we hope and pray and have good reason to believe that we are of his sheep we are those who have eyes to see ears to hear and yet even we can have a misguided and somewhat distorted idea of what the Messiah really is and many times we want the Messiah to be something more of what we want you know who will solve the problems that we see is the most conspicuous problems in our lives to get rid of the Romans in our lives that are troubling us right at the moment we want the Messiah to be a messiah of our making to do our bidding and I'm sorry to tell you Christ doesn't come to do our bidding he is the Messiah and we are here to do his bidding and so the question we need to ask ourselves as we come to this one who we indeed affirm is the Messiah is what would you have me do and sometimes Christ will put us in tough situations difficult painful hard situations where we might like a Messianics you know rescuer and he may say no I've got better things for you I'm going to leave right there and then the tasks we have is to in faith and confidence trust him to be the Messiah that he really is rather than simply to the side of our own admission

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 27,037

Keywords: Judas Maccabeus, Maccabean Revolt, Bruce Gore, Antiochus IV, Maccabees (Armed Force), intertestamental period

Id: zqFZDX8bgwA

Length: 51min 27sec (3087 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2015