Dr. Thomas Schreiner · The Master's Seminary · 26 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Thomas Schreiner, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
The course reaches the prophets, and begins with what Dr. Schreiner calls perhaps the greatest book in the Old Testament. Isaiah sees the King on his throne, watches Assyria flood the land up to the neck, and gives Ahaz a sign he never wanted. Listen for how a prophecy fulfilled in Isaiah's own day becomes, in Matthew's hands, a word about a greater Son.
Isaiah may be the greatest book in the Old Testament, and Schreiner opens by commending a new study he has just finished: Andrew Abernethy's The Book of Isaiah and God's Kingdom, in the New Studies in Biblical Theology series edited by D. A. Carson, the same excellent series that carries Morales on Leviticus and Hamilton on Daniel. Abernethy's emphasis, which Schreiner shares, is that the kingdom of God is one of Isaiah's main themes.
Chapters 1 through 37 center on Assyria, Israel, and above all Jerusalem. Assyria carried the northern kingdom into exile in 722 BC, overran almost all of Judah, and besieged Jerusalem, but did not take it: the Lord slew 185,000 in the Assyrian camp, and the army withdrew. Isaiah's own image is a flood rising up to the neck: the land devastated city by city, the capital, the head, spared. The judgment was covenantal, the curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 27 and 28 come due, and the book's pictures of Israel's sin are withering: a people more senseless than the donkey at its master's trough, a faithful city turned prostitute, God's own enemies, a vineyard yielding putrid grapes.
In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord in the temple, and the vision is of Yahweh as King: enthroned, the hem of his robe filling the temple as the sign of royal authority, the thrice-holy One. Abernethy reads the smoke as God's theophanic presence and perhaps his anger toward his people, and the presence of the seraphim as a signal of judgment. No wonder Isaiah, speaking for himself and representing the nation, cries woe is me before such holiness.
John writes that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and spoke of him, and he can only be speaking of Isaiah 6. The right conclusion, Schreiner argues, is not that Isaiah saw Jesus instead of Yahweh; it is Trinitarian: to see God is to see the Lord. Again and again the New Testament takes passages about Yahweh and applies them to Jesus Christ, and John does exactly that here.
The day of the LORD, a massive theme across the prophets, is a day of both judgment and salvation. Chapters 24 through 27 widen the lens to universal judgment, and chapter 34's judgment of Edom makes Edom stand for all the ungodly nations: God will judge.
Aram, which is Syria, and Ephraim, the northern kingdom, conspire against Judah to depose Ahaz and install their own puppet king, and the house of David is terrified. Isaiah meets Ahaz with his son Shear-jashub, whose name preaches: the remnant shall return. The word is do not fear these two leaders; the plot will not stand, and within sixty-five years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people. Then the Lord invites Ahaz to ask any sign at all, deep as Sheol or high as heaven, and Ahaz declines: I will not ask, and I will not test the LORD. It sounds spiritual, and the following words expose it as unbelief: is it not enough to try the patience of men, must you also try the patience of my God? God is not pleased with the wicked king.
Therefore the Lord himself gives the sign: the maiden will conceive and bear a son and name him Immanuel, God with us; and before the boy knows how to refuse evil and choose good, the land of the two kings Ahaz dreads will be abandoned. Read on and the timetable explains itself. The Lord will then bring Assyria against Judah too: invaders whistled in like flies and bees to settle in every ravine and bush, a razor hired from beyond the Euphrates to shave head, legs, and beard. The vineyards, a thousand vines worth a thousand silver pieces, become thorns and briers, and every survivor lives on curds and honey from a young cow and two sheep. Curds and honey are survivor's food: the sign's own wording dates the judgment to the sign-child's infancy. On the normal reading of the Old Testament context, Schreiner argues, this prophecy is fulfilled in Isaiah's own day.
Chapter 8 delivers the child. Isaiah writes on a great parchment, before trustworthy witnesses, the name Maher-shalal-hash-baz, swift the spoil, speedy the prey; the prophetess conceives and bears a son, and the Lord gives him that name, for before the boy can say father or mother, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried to Assyria. Schreiner's view is that this child is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. Then the flood image returns: Assyria like the Euphrates bursting its channels, sweeping into Judah, rising up to the neck, filling the land, O Immanuel. Yet God is with us; Jerusalem will not be taken. Do not call conspiracy what this people calls conspiracy; do not fear what they fear; fear the LORD.
If the sign was kept in Isaiah's day, why does Matthew cite it at the virgin birth? Most evangelicals read 7:14 as a straight-line prediction with no fulfillment in Isaiah's generation, which is possible, but Schreiner finds it unlikely against the flow of chapters 7 and 8. His answer is that Matthew reads typologically: God's promise-shaped pattern in history corresponds to, and is escalated in, its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The word for the mother can mean maiden and can mean virgin; there is room in it for both. So there is a greater birth, of a true virgin, a greater Son, a greater sign. In Matthew, prophecy is not only straight-line prediction; prophetic passages also work typologically, and the course will see further examples when it reaches Matthew.
Isaiah 6 ends with the nation felled to a stump, and the holy seed is the stump. Isaiah 11 answers: a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The remnant is a huge Isaianic theme, and Schreiner argues that for Isaiah the remnant's promise finally centers on the king himself, not that the king is the only one left, for Isaiah and his children remain, but that the hope of the remnant is concentrated in him. So Isaiah 9: a child born for us, a son given to us, the government upon his shoulders, a dominion vast and a peace without end, which Schreiner is inclined to read as prophecy fulfilled in Jesus himself rather than in any figure before him, and likewise the Spirit-anointed shoot of chapter 11, whom the New Testament proclaims as the Spirit-anointed Messiah.
Chapters 32 and 33 gather the hope. A king will reign in righteousness, a man like a shelter and a refuge. First comes desolation, the palace deserted, the watchtower a waste, the joy of wild donkeys, until the Spirit is poured out from on high; then the desert becomes an orchard and the orchard counts as a forest, justice inhabits the wilderness, and the result of righteousness is peace, its effect quiet confidence forever. With chapter 11's infant safe beside the cobra's den, this is new creation. And here Schreiner found the title of his book: your eyes will see the king in his beauty.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all twelve are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What is the big picture of Isaiah 1 through 37?
2. What does Isaiah's temple vision in chapter 6 show Yahweh to be?
3. What does John say about Isaiah's vision?
4. What does Edom represent in Isaiah 34?
5. What was wrong with Ahaz's refusal to ask for a sign?
6. What do the curds and honey of Isaiah 7 signify?
7. Whom does Schreiner take to be the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 in Isaiah's own day?
8. How, then, does Matthew use Isaiah 7:14 at the virgin birth?
9. Beyond pattern and correspondence, what marks typology?
10. Where does Isaiah's remnant hope finally center?
11. How is Schreiner inclined to read the child of Isaiah 9?
12. What follows when the Spirit is poured out from on high in Isaiah 32?
All twelve correct. Lecture 16 is complete.
Ahaz declined God's kindness in words that sounded humble. Where in your own praying or planning might pious language be covering unbelief right now?
Isaiah's household preached in its names: the remnant shall return, God with us, swift the spoil. If this season of your life carried a name that told the truth, what would faith name it, and why?
Isaiah's worship begins with woe is me before the holy King. When did the holiness of God last unsettle you, and what would it mean to seek that again rather than comfort only?
Isaiah 33:17, the hope that named this course's book: with your own eyes you will look on the king in his beauty, and on a land reaching beyond every horizon.
The lecture's own recommendations: Andrew Abernethy's The Book of Isaiah and God's Kingdom, in the New Studies in Biblical Theology series the lecture praises, and the Isaiah chapters of The King in His Beauty, whose very title comes from Isaiah 33.