The Festival of Hanukkah (Night 2) - Luke 1 - The Conception of Yeshua

Shalom, friends. my name is Chadwick Harvey, and you've reached Faithful Performance. Thank you for joining us tonight on night number two of Hanukkah. We wish everybody a very happy Hanukkah and hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of this eight-night festival.

Tonight we are going to discover a very important topic: the conception of Yeshua the Messiah, as described in Luke 1. This will bring out the everlasting covenants — the Abrahamic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant — and illuminate how important they are when we read through the lens of the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Gospel accounts. This topic ties directly into Hanukkah, just as we discovered on opening night. If it were not for Hanukkah, if it were not for Purim, if it were not for God raising up the Maccabees, raising up Mordecai, raising up Esther, the pure royal lineage — the seed line running through Judah to the Messiah — would have been eliminated.

Consider what happened with Nebuchadnezzar when he came against the southern kingdom of Judah. He did not kill everyone; he took many people captive. Why? Because of the everlasting covenants. God's promises will never be broken. Even when God judges the people for their behavior, he always preserves a remnant because of the seed line that was destined to lead to Yeshua the Messiah.

When we look at the patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David — each of them was targeted by Satan. Satan wanted to eliminate the seed line from the very beginning. We must look at extra-biblical sources to learn how Nimrod sought to destroy Abraham as a young man, even casting him into fire. With Isaac, we know that Ishmael came against him, though the pure royal seed ran through Isaac and not Ishmael. Esau came against Jacob. Goliath — a giant that Satan placed in David's path — was set against David. And then the Herodian dynasty sought to destroy Yeshua as an infant, with Herod the Great orchestrating the massacre of the innocents. Satan has always come against the pure royal lineage.

Why? Because he knows that once the Savior was born, the messianic prophecy of Genesis 3:15 would be fulfilled — Yeshua would crush his head. That is why Satan has always targeted the Jewish people: because of the royal seed line leading to the Savior, the Messiah, the King of Israel. He was always trying to sever that line in order to prevent his own destruction at the end of the age.

This makes the everlasting covenants an enormously important subject. We are going to go through Matthew 1 and Luke 1 in order, and we will see how Luke describes the events leading to the conception of Yeshua on the Festival of Lights — on Hanukkah. When we read Luke 1 carefully and understand Zechariah, John the Immerser, Elizabeth, and the trajectory Luke carries us on, it produces a paradigm shift. We begin to see that our Savior, our Messiah, was conceived on this beautiful festival of lights — fitting, since he is the light of the world. It is truly remarkable when we read it in the proper lens of the everlasting covenants. Both Matthew 1 and Luke 1 make clear how central those covenants are to everything.

Before we begin the teaching, we light the Hanukkah candles. Each night we start with the shamash — the servant candle in the middle — and use it to light the newest candle first. Tonight, the second night, we light the second candle first, then the first candle. After lighting, we say the blessings of Hanukkah.

The first blessing: *Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.* Blessed are you, Adonai our Elohim, Ruler of the universe, who makes us holy with your commandments, commanding us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.

The second blessing: *Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, she'asah nisim la'avoteinu bayamim hahem bazman hazeh.* Blessed are you, Adonai our Elohim, Ruler of the universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those ancient days and at this season — in the name and blood of Yeshua the Messiah, the fulfillment of the everlasting covenants. Amen.

Now, as I mentioned at the outset, if it were not for Hanukkah, if it were not for Purim, and if God had not raised up men like Mordecai and women like Queen Esther, and if the Maccabees had not revolted and reclaimed the Temple, who is to say that the pure royal seed line would have survived to bring forth Yeshua? Satan's campaign against the Jewish people is rooted in exactly this: God ordained them to bring the Messiah into the world. The Messiah had to come through the Jewish people, through the line of Judah, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. We must honor our Jewish brethren for that responsibility.

If you are not familiar with the Abrahamic covenant, it contains two great promises: first, the seed, which eventually led to Yeshua through Isaac, Jacob, and David; and second, the Promised Land. The Davidic covenant then promised David a seed — the same seed of Abraham — who would rule over David's throne forever, and that rule would be exercised over the land promised in the Abrahamic covenant. So the two covenants build upon each other. The Abrahamic covenant gives us the seed and the land; the Davidic covenant gives us the seed of David reigning over that land on an everlasting throne. And in the New Covenant — fulfilled in the millennial kingdom — Yeshua will complete all of it: the seed of Abraham, the Promised Land, and the everlasting throne of David. That is extraordinary.

Understanding these everlasting covenants reveals why Hanukkah matters and why Purim matters. If either festival had ended in the destruction of the Jewish people, there would be no Messiah, because God's promises require a people through whom to fulfill them. God is a promise-keeper, not a promise-breaker. The theology that says the Church replaces the Jewish people — replacement theology — is demonic and evil. The covenants are that important.

We must read the New Testament through the right lens, or we will slide into replacement theology. That lens requires understanding the biblical calendar, the feast days, the everlasting covenants, and the table of nations as it relates to prophecy. Read it through those lenses and it becomes a beautiful, coherent narrative. Without them, theology fractures in every direction — Jewish and Christian communities going their own way, unable to come together as the one new body and the one new man.

The foundational principles for reading the Holy Bible are: the calendar, the feast days found in Leviticus 23, the Abrahamic covenant beginning in Genesis 12, the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7, and the New Covenant found in Jeremiah 31, Isaiah 59–60, and Ezekiel 36. The New Covenant is in the Prophets, not only in the Gospel accounts. Yeshua is the fulfillment of the New Covenant, but we are not yet living in it, because the Jewish people have not yet accepted him as their King and Messiah. We will enter the New Covenant as one new body, one new man in Jerusalem, in the Promised Land, when they say *Baruch haba b'shem Adonai* — "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" — and Yeshua destroys the Antichrist kingdom and fulfills the Abrahamic, Davidic, and New Covenants on the feast days of the biblical calendar.

With that foundation in place, let us begin with Matthew 1. If we do not understand the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, we will not understand the very first sentence of the New Testament. Matthew 1:1 reads: *"This is the genealogy of Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of David and the Son of Abraham."* Without knowing what Matthew is communicating, readers gloss right over that verse as though it were merely a preamble. That glossing-over is precisely why Christianity finds itself in the position it does today — because Matthew 1:1, the opening statement of the entire New Testament, is misunderstood or ignored.