Question:
Dear Greg,
I
have a question about the seventh day Sabbath.
Isaiah 66:22-23 says that the Sabbath will be kept in the new heavens and
new earth and all mankind will come and bow down before the Lord.
That doesn’t sound optional. If
the Sabbath is kept then, why not now? If
it isn’t optional then, why should it be optional now?
I mean Saturday, not Sunday, or a choice of either.
Mike
Answer: Dear Mike,
Several
principles of Bible study and understanding need to be clarified before
addressing your question.
1.
The Bible does not contradict itself.
2.
Before a passage of the Bible has a meaning to us
now, it first of all had a
3.
All passages must be read within their context—the historical, cultural
and
Those
are three critical keys (PTM has a booklet about understanding the Bible that
gives many others, with examples) that we need to keep in mind with your
question/assertion.
You
state that Isaiah 66:22-23 means, to you, that the seventh day, Saturday Sabbath
is not optional. Here’s a good
question to ask ourselves as we study the Bible.
Are we asking the Bible to validate what we already believe, or are we
looking to the Bible to correct and teach us?
If we are looking for verses and passages that support our view (such a
practice is called proof-texting) then we must understand that we are
“using” the Bible. A text
without a context is a pretext, which, if you forgive me, is what you are trying
to force Isaiah 66:22 to say.
If
proof-texting is what we are doing (and all of us do that from time to time—it
is hard to lay aside prior beliefs when one comes to the Bible), we must ask
ourselves a question. We need to
ask, “where and when did I decide to believe what I believe, the belief that I
am searching the Bible to support? Is
my understanding a tradition I have received from the gospel of Jesus
Christ—from all of the Bible—or from some other
place/time/source/tradition?”
Isaiah
is a book of prophecy—not of predictive prophecy that tells us exactly when
Jesus will return, but a book of prophecy about hope for the future, about the
blessed Hope, the Messiah, the Suffering Servant, the Branch, the root of Jesse,
the Son born to a virgin, etc. The
emphasis of Isaiah, the foundation of Isaiah, is the Lion and the Lamb, typified
by Jesus the Lamb of God and Jesus the Lion of the tribe of
Chapter
66 is the last chapter—the last of a number of chapters giving hope to the
original audience. Who was the
original audience? Jews, under the
old covenant. The audience was Jews
who did not know of the cross of Christ, who did not know of a new covenant, who
did not know of the birth, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.
How would God inspire Isaiah to help them understand how glorious a
future day, after their death, would be? By
using language about realities they did not understand?
Would he tell them about worship services to honor the birth of God in
the flesh, to honor and celebrate the resurrection?
Did
the Jews understand the cross at the time of Isaiah?
Did they, for that matter, understand it at the time when Jesus died for
our sins? What was it, by way of
reminder, that caused the Jews to want to kill Jesus—and eventually to act on
that desire? Because he was breaking
the Sabbath and because he was calling God his Father—making himself equal to
God, very God, God in the flesh (see John 5:18).
After
all that Jesus did (as described to us in the pages of the New Testament),
revealing to us who and what God is, helping us understand what the old covenant
was all about (see books like Romans, Galatians, 2 Corinthians, Hebrews,
Colossians, etc.)—are we to assume, by what you propose, that Jesus will
return the second time and say, “Just kidding about the cross.
It wasn’t that drastic. We
need to go back to eating kosher, sacrifices in the temple, Sabbath, holy days
(all of them, not just the ones you might be thinking about—read Leviticus
23:9-14 for example), etc., etc.” Will
Jesus REVERSE everything he said and did on earth when he returns, and is that
reversal hidden in one proof-text in Isaiah 66:22?
What
does Isaiah 66:22 mean? It means
that Jews are being promised, in less than specific terminology, that a new day
is coming. They are being given
hope. They (and all Christians who
read it within the original context) are being told that a new world is coming,
and they are being told about it in a way that they will understand.
All people will keep Sabbath—just like Zechariah talked of a worldwide,
all humanity feast of tabernacles (Zechariah 14:6) as something the people he
wrote to would understand.
But
does that mean such a specific thing will happen?
Only if nothing happened after Isaiah 66 and Zechariah 14.
But something did happen. Someone
did come to this earth—God in the flesh. He
changed everything. He had that
power because, among other things, as he told the Jews in the book of John,
“before Abraham was I am” (John
Be
sure and read the entire eighth chapter of John in context—and as you have
time, the entire Gospel of John will help you with your question.
The
Sabbath is not optional—it is not even relevant.
It has no meaning to Christians. Christ
is our meaning, he is our Savior, he is our rest, he is our sign, and he is our
Sabbath. The Sabbath is not
Sunday—the Sabbath has never been changed.
It is kept, observed and broken by Jews and all those who choose to live
under the old covenant. Those who
accept Jesus are not under the old covenant—in any way.
Hope
this helps with your question.
In
Christ,