Who’s In?
And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Isaiah 56:6-7a NIV
All – Each one of the prophets provides an answer to the pressing question, “Who is part of the Kingdom of God?” Micah gives us the three basics: act justly, practice ḥesed and follow in God’s ways. Habakkuk provides a short form of the same idea: live by faith. But Isaiah specifies one of the “ways” in a statement about membership: keep the Shabbat. We might expect this. After all, Sabbath is one of the distinctive practices of Jewish faith. But what we should notice is the inclusiveness of Isaiah’s remark. “All” who keep the Sabbath will be ushered into the joy of the Lord. There are no caveats here. The Hebrew is quite clear. Kōl, that is, the whole of these people, the complete group—no exceptions. Used more than 5000 times in Scripture, “It is commonly translated ‘all’ if the following word is plural, and ‘every’ if the word is singular and without the article.”[1] Since this verse is specifically addressed to “foreigners” (hân-nēkār), we can be sure that God’s message through Isaiah applies to anyone not Jewish. That’s most of us. Shabbat is one of the tell-tale signs of the Kingdom.
This has some very disturbing implications for religious practice since 250 CE. By that date the other “monotheistic” (in italics because I am really not so sure the definition of the word applies) faith had ceased to observe Shabbat. The reason for abandoning this ancient practice was political. It was, in Roman eyes, quintessentially Jewish, and the new religious faith, Christianity, was avowedly not Jewish. Therefore, the most obvious signs of Judaism had to be either discarded or converted. Some were simply discarded (e.g., the dietary instructions). Most were converted (e.g., baptism replaced circumcision, the Lord’s prayer replaced the Shema). So, Shabbat became Sunday. Conveniently enough since there was already a religious practice associated with pagan worship of the sun.
“Why is Sunday called Sunday? Because it’s the day the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples set aside for the worship of the sun. Caesar’s Gallic Wars [were] published in the first century B.C. There, he described the Germans as caring nothing for the gods of the Romans. He said they worshiped only those deities that they could actually see, the ones that provided something of real, tangible use: the sun, the moon and fire. Caesar said they knew nothing of the other gods, not even by rumor. The Anglo-Saxons came from Germany. They conquered much of the island of Britain, beginning in the fifth century A.D., who were also worshipers of the sun, the moon, and fire. And this is reflected in the Old English name for Sunday, Sunnandæg, meaning ‘day of the sun.’ Old English was the language of the Anglo-Saxons. In Germanic mythology the sun is personified as a goddess variously named Sunna or Sól (Sun in Old Norse).
It is because of a common heritage of worshipping the sun in pagan times that there are equivalents of the English name Sunday in the various other modern Germanic languages: Dutch: zondag; German: Sonntag; Danish and Norwegian: søndag; Icelandic sunnudagur (Sunna’s Day); and Swedish söndag.”[2]
But I am sure you already knew this. Those who are attempting to re-establish the faith of the disciples, the traditions of the prophets and, particularly, the life ways of the Messiah, will have moved out of the astrological religion of the sun and adopted the original timeframe of the Creator. The disturbing implication is the scope of “believers” who either don’t know or don’t care that Israel’s God is worshipped on Shabbat, and He doesn’t like to share His time with one of the created elements of His universe. The disturbing implication is that God’s word through Isaiah has a negative side: those who do not keep the Sabbath without desecrating it are not going to be ushered into the joy of the Lord in His house of prayer.
I know. It doesn’t seem fair. And it doesn’t explain all those wonderfully faithful Christians in the past and present who clearly have deep relationships with YHVH, the God of Israel, and still go to church on Sunday. But maybe God is just a great deal more understanding than we are. And maybe we need to explain why.
Topical Index: Shabbat, Isaiah 56:6-7a
[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 985 כָלַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 441). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] https://patch.com/georgia/athens/why-is-sunday-called-sunday
