Thursday, March 25
Read Isaiah 66:22. What is the text saying to us? What hope can we find there?
One of the most wonderful promises in Isaiah is found in Isaiah 66:22. Read it carefully. In the new heavens and the new earth, our seed and our name shall remain—forever. No more blotting out, cutting off, grafting in, plucking up, or uprooting. We have here a promise of eternal life in a world made new—a world without sin, without death, without suffering, a new heaven and a new earth, the final and complete fulfillment of our Christian faith, the consummation of what Christ had accomplished for us at the Cross.
Why are there new moons along with Sabbaths in the depiction of the new heavens and the new earth as presented in Isaiah 66:23?
Though there are a number of different ways to look at this difficult text, one approach is this: God created the Sabbath before the sacrificial system existed (Genesis 2:2, 3). So, although Sabbaths were honored by the ritual system, they are not dependent upon it. Thus, they continue uninterrupted throughout the restoration period, on into the new earth. There is no indication in the Bible that new moons were legitimate days of worship apart from the sacrificial system. But perhaps they will be worship days (but not necessarily rest days like weekly Sabbaths) in the new earth, possibly in connection with the monthly cycle of the tree of life (Revelation 22:2).
Whatever the specific meaning of Isaiah 66:23 may be, the crucial point seems to be that God’s people will be worshiping Him throughout all eternity.
Why does Isaiah end with the negative picture of saved people looking at the corpses of rebels destroyed by God (Isaiah 66:24)?
As a graphic warning to the people of his day, Isaiah encapsulates the contrast between faithful survivors of the Babylonian destruction and rebels, who would be destroyed. This is not everlasting torment—the rebels are dead, killed by “fire,” a destruction that was not quenched until it did its job so that the re-creation of Jerusalem could begin.
Isaiah’s warning points forward to an ultimate fulfillment prophesied by the book of Revelation: destruction of sinners, Satan, and death in a lake of fire (Revelation 20), after which there will be “a new heaven and a new earth,” a holy “new Jerusalem,” and no more weeping or pain, “for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4; compare Isaiah 65:17-19), a new existence, with eternal life for all who are redeemed from the earth.
