Trusting Our Ways Over God's Ways

SabbathBlessings · Jul 7, 2026

When I was studying Isaiah and Jeremiah, I noticed the two prophets lay down the same invitation, in the same order. Watch for these three things in both books, come to the water, forsake your own way, keep the Sabbath holdfast My covenant.

Isaiah opens with God's invitation to everyone -come to the waters- is an invitation to God's salvation Isa 12:3:

Isa 55:1 "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."

Then God calls the wicked to forsake their ways:

Isa 55:7 "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

And He gives the reason we must forsake our own way — our thinking cannot be trusted, because His ways are so far above ours:

Isa 55:8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."

Then He says- let Me bless you- and this is how. Forsake what He calls evil, and do what He calls righteous — and the sign of it is the Sabbath:

Isa 56:1 Thus says the LORD: "Keep justice, and do righteousness, for My salvation is about to come, and My righteousness to be revealed. 2 Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who lays hold on it; who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and keeps his hand from doing any evil."

And it was never for Israel only. Everyone is invited to join themselves to the LORD, serve Him, and take hold of His covenant:

Isa 56:6 "Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants — everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant —"

The door is open to the foreigner on the same terms as the those who were born into it. It was never bloodline. It was always the heart holding fast God's covenant.

This is the same pattern in Jeremiah in the exact same order.

First, God shows why the wicked must forsake their ways — sin is engraved in the heart. And notice the contrast: God's desire is to write His law on the heart Jer 31:33, but instead their sin is engraved there, too deep for them to remove themselves:

Jer 17:1 "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with the point of a diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart..."

Then the blessing and the curse — the two ways, exactly like Isaiah:

Jer 17:5 Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD. 6 For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited. 7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, and whose hope is the LORD. 8 For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit."

Second, the same reason Isaiah gave — do not lean on your own heart, because you cannot even know it:

Jer 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? 10 I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind..."

This is the exact point of Isaiah 55:8. Isaiah says your thoughts are not My thoughts. Jeremiah says your own heart is deceitful and you cannot even know it. Both prophets ground the call to forsake self on the same truth: the human heart and mind cannot be trusted, so we must come to His.

And where do we come? To the same water - the fountain:

Jer 17:13 "O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake You shall be ashamed. Those who depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters."

Third, God brings it down to the Sabbath-just as He did with Isaiah. And the Sabbath fits here for a reason: it is self-surrender made visible, the weekly act of resting on the Sabbath day in the Creator instead of striving in our own strength. It is "forsake your own way" written into the calendar:

Jer 17:22 "...nor carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers."

And once again, blessing and curse for those who will not:

Jer 17:24 "And it shall be, if you heed Me carefully," says the LORD, "to bring no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work in it, 25 then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David... and this city shall remain forever... 27 But if you will not heed Me to hallow the Sabbath day... then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched."

Two prophets, one covenant, one invitation. Come to the water freely -that is grace. Forsake your own way and stop trusting your own heart - that is the surrender that receives grace. Hallow the Sabbath, that's accepting God's invitation to join ourselves to our Creator, the only God who has the power to make heaven and earth Exo20:11, the only one who deserves our worship Rev14:7 . And it is open to everyone who will come.

Will we be like God's people in past who feared God through mans traditions trusting in our own ways Isa29:13 Mat15:3-14 or come to the waters today and fear God, trust His ways and keep God's commandments. Exo20:20 Ecc3:14 Ecc3:12-13 Rev14:6-12

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
Two prophets, one covenant, one invitation. Come to the water freely -that is grace. Forsake your own way and stop trusting your own heart - that is the surrender that receives grace.

And you don’t think non-Sabbatarians do that?

SabbathBlessings said:
Will we be like God's people in past who feared God through mans traditions trusting in our own ways Isa29:13 Mat15:3-14 or come to the waters today and fear God, trust His ways and keep God's commandments. Exo20:20 Ecc3:14 Ecc3:12-13 Rev14:6-12

The issue is of course one of interpretation. The only people I know of who are intentionally rejecting Scriptural instructions are liberal Christians who advocate for abortion or homosexual marriage (by the way regarding the former, I believe the SDA is too lenient, insofar as it allows abortion in cases of rape or incest; in my view the only possible grounds for abortion would be if the pregnancy was not survivable, and only one condition can cause that to my knowledge, a very rare ectopic pregnancy, and i would like to see medical research done on how to intervene to save ectopic pregnancies just as intervention can now be done in women who are RH-negative.

We know from 1 Corinthians 11:2 and 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 2:37 that there is an Apostolic, Holy Tradition, and we see this tradition in the contents of the New Testament, the versification of the New Testament, the Nicene Creed and other important conventions.

The issue then becomes whether to trust the ancient church and those Christians who have followed those practices for the longest - and I chose to trust them over 19th century interpretations because of the millions of martyrs over the centuries, including millions in the 20th century at the hands of Communism and Islam and Fascism.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 10, 2026

People of the church has forsaken God from ancient times. This idea because its an "ancient church" does not make it automatically true servants of God. The consistent theme in Scripture is a remnant people (small remainder of the original) who keep God's commandments Rev12:17 not because God does not call everyone to join themself to Him, to serve Him Isa56:6, not everyone responds because they want to do it their way, not as God asks.

When things not according to Christ get handed down in church generation after generation I can see why people think its God's will because "everyone else is doing it"

Yet this is exactly what happened in Scripture that God condemned and eventually led to judgment and death. Why the Bible is for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness 2 Tim3:16

Jer 16:11 then you shall say to them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the Lord; ‘they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. 12 And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one [b]follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me.

Jesus speaks directly about following the wide path everyone else is doing verses following the narrow path.

Mat7:13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 [c]Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

To try to use keeping traditions over obeying one of God's commandments and justify it, is not something found in Scripture.

Jesus could not have condemned this practice more, claiming it makes void God's word, ones heart far from Him and our worship to Him in vain. I am not sure why people try to use this when Jesus is so clear on this matter and Paul of course a servant and follower of Christ, said everything has to be according to Christ.

Col 2:8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ

Mat 15:3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,”[a] 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8 “‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
9 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

This is the same pattern shown over and over again in Scripture- God says one thing, obey My commandments, we try to justify why we know better or He doesn't mean what He says. No wonder why the everlasting gospel is calling us out of our false teachings and back to true worship, fearing God, keeping His commandments, give Him glory and worship the God who made Exo20:11 Rev14:7 Rev 14:6-12

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
People of the church has forsaken God from ancient times.

Individual members, yes, but not the entire church functioning through an ecumenical synod.

The idea of the ”Great Apostasy” having already happened is the central error of Restorationism as a movement, because it clashes with Matthew 16:18, and is even more problematic than the Roman Catholic misinterpretation of Matthew 16:18 as granting Papal Supremacy and Papal Infallibility, since Papal Supremacy occurred relatively late in the history of the Roman church in response to tampering from the Carolignian dynasty of the ”Holy Roman Empire” not to be confused with the actual surviving part of the Empire, the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, which was one of the five surviving Christian states in Asia and Africa at the time (the others being Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Armenia, the Kingdom of Cilicia and the Kingdom of Georgia), and Papal Infallibility came in the 19th century as I’d assume you were aware. As a result the impact of doctrinal changes was not as severe as the dogmatic instability of the Restorationist movement where even essential beliefs like the Trinity were in some cases de-prioritized or in other cases outright rejected (of the churches founded on Restorationist ideals or as part of the Restorationist movement, only the Stone/Campbell movement).

Based on Matthew 16:18 we can exclude the possibility of all of the ancient churches (in addition to, and completely independent from Rome, there were the four Greek Orthodox Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem and the autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church of Cyprus, and the Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian/Ancient Church, including the Christians of Syria, Mesooptamia, Persia, India and prior to the Islamic genocides, also the churches in Yemen, the Far East (these dated from the first century), and then dating from the early fourth century, the Armenian Apostolic Church (founded 306 AD) Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox and Georgian Orthodox (founded around 315 AD) and later the Serbian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, (both founded in the late first millenium during the evangelization of the Slavs, the Kievan Orthodox, which later became the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Siberian and the Japanese, Chinese and Native Alaskan churches, the latter part of the Orthodox Church in America, all dating from the Baptism of the Kievan Rus people into Orthodoxy in 1006 AD - and Kievan Rus had no death penalty (thus any arguments about it being tainted by the inquisition are invalid - for at the time the Orthodox were not remotely associated with any violence, rather all violence occurring in Orthodox jurisdictions was against the Orthodox, for example the cutting out of the tongue of St. Maximos the Confessor for rejecting the Monothelite heresy, the violent sacking of Rome by the Arian Gothic tribes, and so on, with one sole exception, that being the very strange persecution of the Syriac Orthodox conducted in the name of Emperor Justinian who was married to a Syriac Orthodox woman, St. Theodora, but we don’t know whether he in fact did it or if it was a palace coup or the result of him having a mental breakdown.

And the fact is there were no other Christian churches during this period. It is not until the Waldensians and the Moravians (Unitas Fratrum or Utraquists - whose founders are venerated by the Orthodox, St. Jan Hus and St. Jerome of Prague) that we see authentically Christian churches appear outside of that group, and at least in the case of St. Jan Hus he was trying to restore Orthodox practices lost when Vienna conquered Czechia and Slovakia.

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
The consistent theme in Scripture is a remnant people (small remainder of the original) who keep God's commandments

That is an Old Testament theme, but in the Old Testament they were under the Law and not the Gospel, and did not have the Holy Spirit to guide and protect them.

More importantly, there are no remnant groups that existed that believed in anything resembling SDA doctrine; indeed all ancient Christian denominations that could have transmitted the faith I have enumerated. Some groups I’ve seen Adventists mention as precursors we know from their own writings were not Sabbatarians and some rejected the Old Testament entirely (Paulicians and Albigensians, for example).

If you wanted to methodically identify a church that worshipped every Sabbath and that was in a minority, the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Alexandrian Greek Orthodox, the Mar Thoma Christians, and after the genocide in the 13th century, the Church of the East, fit the bill. However they also worshipped on Sunday - we know from the Patristic writings that Sunday worship was universal and no Scriptural text prohibits it, indeed Christ our True God encourages us to pray without ceasing, which led to the Desert Fathers and other Christians of consecrated life who successfully extended worship into all facets of their lives.

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
This idea because its an "ancient church" does not make it automatically true servants of God.

Strawman fallacy - antiquity alone was never my argument. We have the sacred texts of numerous ancient heretical groups, writings of their clergy, and descriptions of others (one cult that some Landmark Baptists think was an antecedent, the Montanists, we know a great deal about because Tertullian, the brilliant theologian who was seduced by the heresy of rigorism (sinless perfectionism after baptism) which the Montansts embraced, leading to him converting to them, which was quite tragic, for this was the same man who coined the word “Trinitas” to refer to our triune God, God abiding in a Holy and indivisible union of three divine persons.

The reason for embracing the ancient churches or more recent churches with similar doctrines such as the Confessional Lutherans and Continuing Anglicans is firstly compatibility with Scripture, secondly direct involvement with or scrupulous adherence to central aspects of what we know to be holy tradition such as the Nicene Creed and the 27 book New Testament canon, and thirdly, they do benefit from antiquity or proximity to antiquity (with regards to the Lutherans, some of them are basically the direct continuation of the Apostolic and Patristic missions to the German and Scandinavian peoples, likewise the Anglicans, who were probably Western Rite Orthodox prior to the Norman conquest, and who in the Reformation at least regained some of what they had lost (communion in both kinds and the principle of each bishop being equal).

Antiquity is important, because when we see a church with no known antecedents appear within the past 200 years, it requires much more careful scrutiny than a church that we can trace back to the first century.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 10, 2026

That's the issue, people keep looking at churches, when we need to live how Jesus told mankind to Mat4:4

There was apostasy in the church from the very beginning Acts 20:29, we see this throughout the entire Bible. Gods church is a remnant and the characteristics of God's true church is they keep the commandments of God (God's version Exo20:6 Deut4:13 Exo31:18 Exo32:16 Ecc3:14 Rev14:12 Rev22:14) and testimony and faith of Jesus. Rev12:14 Rev12:17 If we keep looking at people, what does my church say and not what God says, we will fail every time , we need to look at Christ and what is according to Him.

The reason we have the everlasting gospel message before the Revelation of Jesus Christ Rev14:6-12, because it says the whole world has drank the wine of Babylon (false teachings) instead of staying faithful to what God said why we are told to get back to fearing God and keeping God's commandments and worshipping our Creator the way He said Exo20:11 Rev14:7 before its too late Rev18:4 Rev22:11.

Our only safeguard is living how Jesus who is God told us to live by and testing everything by thus saith the LORD, not by man.

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
That's the issue, people keep looking at churches,

The Church is the Body of Christ, of which He is the head, onto which we are grafted on - see 1 Corinthians. It is not an optional fellowship although i can understand how accumulated experiences with abusive denominations could cause one to develop a cynical attitude and become one of the tragic number of unchurched Christians. I know a great many people who have suffered some form of mistreatment and have become unchurched, usually involving discrimination by liberal churches against those of traditional faith or fundamentalist churches engaging in “church discipline” while building a cult of personality around their pastor or people traumatized by sexual abuse in certain denominations such as the RCC, SBC and some Anglican churches.

The Liturgist · Jul 10, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
Our only safeguard is living how Jesus who is God told us to live by and testing everything by thus saith the LORD, not by man

Of course the issue there is that we are ultimately dependent upon humans to continue to print Bibles and make them available to us and we are dependent upon the translators to have gotten it right, the scribes to have copied the manuscript properly, the Church Fathers for correctly identifying which books are canonical and which ones aren’t (if we can’t trust them, we can’t trust the canon, and it would be a disaster if it turned out that some critical foundational truth of Christianity was contained in a book such as 1 Barnabas or the Acts of Thomas that had been (correctly I think) deemed uncanonical.

But we do have a quality control method - the Nicene Creed, the unifying document of normative Christianity, and the connections between it and St. Athanasius, who defined our 27 book New Testament canon - given the enormous impact of those two events on the Christian faith, and of the subsequent Council of Constantinople (which had no Roman or Latin attendees, by the way, it was a local Greek Orthodox council that wound up being accepted as ecumenical due to the quality of its revision of the Creed which became the definitive version), which was convened by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who was an ally of St. Athanasius - quickly we can see a nexus forming of early church fathers that we can trace back to the first century and to the Apostles (for example, through St. Irenaeus, Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch to St. John the Beloved Disciple who led the church in Ephesus among other places).

Leaf473 · Jul 12, 2026

I trust that God has put his laws and his ways into my mind and written them on my heart.

Thanks be to God for his New Covenant!

Bob S · Jul 13, 2026

Leaf473 said:
I trust that God has put his laws and his ways into my mind and written them on my heart.

Thanks be to God for his New Covenant!

Has your mind ever pricked your conscience, convincing you to observe the Sabbath? Those who believe it is the Ten Commandments that are written in our hearts have a lot of explaining to do. They expend millions trying to convince their listeners that they have to keep the Sabbath. Most are never convinced, and of those who are, many soon leave. This is my observation from personal experience.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 13, 2026

Not everyone wants to be in a covenant with God Jer31:33 Heb8:10 because they do not like the terms Rom8:7-8 Isa 56:6 not everyone wants to give up their sins John3:19-21 sadly, this is the same pattern of God's professed people throughout the history of Scripture, I do not believe a lot has changed considering in the everlasting gospel message saying the entire world, or the majority has drank the wine of Babylon Rev14:8 or false teachings and to come out of them before its too late Rev18:4 Rev22:11. The same condition when God rose up the Prophet Jeremiah to go before God's people as a warning, before they were taken to Babylon because their sins were engraved in their hearts and so far removed from God's will, they no longer even knew what sin was anymore.

Leaf473 · Jul 14, 2026

Bob S said:
Has your mind ever pricked your conscience, convincing you to observe the Sabbath?

No, it hasn't. My conscience has been pricked by the Holy Spirit many times, though!

Leaf473 · Jul 14, 2026

Romans 8 - For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; 7 because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God, for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be. 8 Those who are in the flesh can’t please God.

I believe this is referring to those who are in the flesh, not in Christ. Those who are in the New Covenant would be in Christ.

The beginning of that section - There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Isaiah 56 - Also the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD
to serve him,
and to love the LORD’s name,
to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it,
and holds fast my covenant,
7 I will bring these to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

This sounds like the Covenant that they are holding fast to is the Old Covenant, since they are making burnt offerings.

Or we could say that Isaiah 56 is highly symbolic, in which case the Sabbath there would be symbolic as well.

Bob S · Jul 14, 2026

Leaf473 said:
No, it hasn't. My conscience has been pricked by the Holy Spirit many times, though!

Amen! That should be enough to alert those who think the Ten Commandments are written in our hearts.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 15, 2026

There was never a time when all nations came together on the Sabbath in the OC. This is a fulfillment of the NT Acts 13:44 Acts 18:4 and true fulfillment in heaven Isa 66:23

Why Jesus quotes from Isa 56 in His day. Mat21:13

Why God uses both present and future tense in this passage. There is never a time God wants His people to stop doing justice and righteousness as its the foundation of God's throne Psa 89:14 and instead do evil and there is never a time when God wants His people to stop loving His name, joining themselves to the LORD to serve the LORD, only God's enemy wants us to do this. Why Jesus told man to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, not man.

Isa 56:1 Thus says the Lord:

“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come,
And My righteousness to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who lays hold on it;
Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
3 Do not let the son of the foreigner
Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying,
“The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”;
Nor let the eunuch say,
“Here I am, a dry tree.”
4 For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,
5 Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name
Better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give [a]them an everlasting name
That shall not be cut off.
6 “Also the sons of the foreigner
Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him,
And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants—
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And holds fast My covenant—
7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
8 The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says,
“Yet I will gather to him
Others besides those who are gathered to him.”

To claim sacrifices do not continue in the NT is not reading what the Scripture says. Rom12:1 Heb13:15-16 1 Peter2:5 This passage doesn;t say animal sacrifices, people add that to this passage when its clearly not there. God's alter is in heaven Heb8:1-5 Rev8:3-5 and I would not want to miss out on this invitation God gave to everyone to join themselves to Him, serve and love Him as if God ever ends this. Just the the invitation God gives in Isaiah again made to everyone to come to the waters of salvation Isa55:1 which does not end Rev 22:17 what God does is forever Ecc3:14 we can always choose to accept God's invitations or serve another. I know many want to serve Him the way they want and not how God asks, but we are told whoever we obey is who we serve Rom6:16KJV

There is never a time God wants us to stop doing justice and righteousness Isa 56:1-2 its the foundation of God's Throne Psa 89:14 and instead do what God deems as evil Isa 56:2 Neh13:17 Mark 3:4 these choices stay that way until the end of time Rev22:11 its a matter of which voice we choose to listen to and yield ourselves to.

Leaf473 · Jul 15, 2026

SabbathBlessings said:
There was never a time when all nations came together on the Sabbath in the OC. This is a fulfillment of the NT Acts 13:44 Acts 18:4 and true fulfillment in heaven Isa 66:23

This is very much speaking of the future and we know this because Jesus quotes from Isa 56 in His day. Mat21:13

Why God uses future tense.

Isa 56:1 Thus says the Lord:

“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come,
And My righteousness to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who lays hold on it;
Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
3 Do not let the son of the foreigner
Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying,
“The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”;
Nor let the eunuch say,
“Here I am, a dry tree.”
4 For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,
5 Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name
Better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give [a]them an everlasting name
That shall not be cut off.
6 “Also the sons of the foreigner
Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him,
And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants—
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And holds fast My covenant—
7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
8 The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says,
“Yet I will gather to him
Others besides those who are gathered to him.”

To claim sacrifices do not continue in the NT is not reading what the Scripture says. Rom12:1 Heb13:15-16 1 Peter2:5 This passage doesn;t say animal sacrifices, people add that to this passage when its clearly not there. God's alter is in heaven Heb8:1-5 Rev8:3-5 and I would not want to miss out on this invitation God gave to everyone to join themselves to Him, serve and love Him as if God ever ends this. Just the the invitation God gives in Isaiah again made to everyone to come to the waters of salvation Isa55:1 we can always choose to accept God's invitations or ignore them. I know many want to serve Him the way they want and not how God asks, sadly that's been the story of the Bible.

There is never a time God wants us to stop doing justice and righteousness Isa 56:1-2 its the foundation of God's Throne Psa 89:14 and instead do what God deems as evil Isa 56:2 Neh13:17 Mark 3:4 these choices stay that way until the end of time Rev22:14 its a matter of which voice we choose to listen to and serve.

Burnt offerings.

SabbathBlessings said:
Their burnt offerings...

If we want to consider that as symbolic, I'm cool with that.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 15, 2026

The Bible tells us what everything is so we do not have to lean on ourselves for meanings.

Rev 8:3 Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. 4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand.

Leaf473 · Jul 15, 2026

Sure, the House of prayer referred to in Isaiah 56 would then be something in heaven. Burnt offerings would then be prayers.

SabbathBlessings · Jul 15, 2026

House of prayer according to Jesus is the temple, a place for worship. What Jesus quoted from in Isa 56 and we see fulfillment in the NT all nations coming together on the Sabbath in His house of prayer Acts 13:44 Act 18:4 and final fulfilment for the saints who accepted God's invitation to join and serve the LORD Isa 66:23 Rev 22:3 invited to everyone....Isa56:6

Mat 21:12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”

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