Many Jews asked Jesus if he was the Messiah, the Christ (John 10:22-30). It was only natural at Hanukkah to desire political salvation. It is a festival that remembers the time when Jews were liberated from the Seleucids and Antiochus Epiphanes. They were now under Roman oppression, a system where an immoral minority could become fabulously wealthy while many Jews became desperately poor. If Jesus was the Messiah, why was he acting so much differently than the Jewish leaders thought he should? His works of healing and preaching about a heavenly kingdom did not seem to fit this world’s politics. While they looked for a liberating warrior, God’s true sheep know that the solution is not political but heavenly. The answer is hidden in a ministry to the needy, by saving the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned.
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