Dr. Thomas Schreiner · The Master's Seminary · 28 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Thomas Schreiner, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
Jesus' favorite name for himself came from Daniel, and he filled it with something no one expected: suffering. Dr. Schreiner traces the titles of the King, the deeds only Yahweh does, and the kingdom that arrived small as a mustard seed. Listen for the difference between a kingdom postponed and a kingdom hidden.
In Daniel the vision's explanation identifies the son of man with the saints three times, and in the Gospels Son of Man is Jesus' most common name for himself. Much of what he claims fits Daniel exactly: the Son of Man forgives sins and is Lord of the Sabbath, fitting for the one who receives the kingdom, and the future sayings match too, the Son of Man coming in his glory with all the angels to sit on his glorious throne. But Jesus says surprising things as well: the Son of Man's authority is veiled, he has nowhere to lay his head, and, most profoundly, the Son of Man must suffer and die, a category that appears in no Old Testament son-of-man passage. No wonder his hearers were confused about what he meant.
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain, taking their stand against the LORD and his Anointed? Acts 4 quotes the psalm of the death of the Messiah, with a twist: the plotters now include not just the pagan nations but the Jewish people themselves. In the psalm's historical context, the King installed on Zion is David, and Yahweh laughs at the nations raging against his chosen king. In the final fulfillment, the installed King is Jesus, enthroned in the heavenlies at God's right hand.
You are my son; today I have become your father. Systematic theology sometimes reads the verse as the eternal begetting of the Son, and Schreiner affirms the doctrine, the Son is the eternal Son of the Father, while denying that this verse teaches it: in the psalm it is the installation formula, God enthroning his king. Watch the New Testament use it. In Acts 13 Paul preaches that God fulfilled the promise by raising Jesus, as it is written in the second Psalm: the today of the begetting is the resurrection, when Jesus is installed as the messianic King, reigning at the right hand, which is not to say he was not the Son before. Hebrews does the same: on earth he was made a little lower than the angels; now, raised and installed on high, he is greater than they. His resurrection means he reigns.
How is fulfillment working in the story? The kingdom comes with the king, and the Gospels' focus falls on him: Son of Man, Son of God, servant of the LORD, true Israel, true son of Abraham, and, reaching beyond the Gospels, the last Adam. The old Sunday school answer turns out to be right in a profound way: everything finally points to Jesus; everything finds its climax in him.
Notice the shape of Jesus' authority. In Judaism a disciple chose his rabbi and might one day outgrow him; Schreiner notes that his own doctoral students can surpass their supervisor and tell him where he is wrong. Not so with Jesus: his disciples are disciples forever. He says what no mere teacher may say: whoever loves family more than me is not worthy of me; take up your cross for my sake; whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. To the rich ruler who claimed the commandments kept, Jesus issued a command he gave no one else, sell everything and follow me, surgery tailored to the man's particular god, and the man's refusal showed his unbelief. Jesus is also the bridegroom of the new wine: the mountains of Joel and Amos drip their sweet wine through him, and the wedding wine of Cana quietly announces that the kingdom has come.
Two storm scenes anchor Jesus' deity in Scripture itself. Psalm 107 praises Yahweh who stilled the storm to a whisper and hushed the waves for the sailors; Jesus does precisely that, an unmistakable echo even without a quotation. And Job 9 says God alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea, where the Greek version is more emphatic still, he walks on the sea as on dry ground, with the very verb the Gospels use of Jesus. Schreiner engages a recent book by Daniel Kirk arguing that the synoptic Jesus is presented only as a man: right, he grants, to stress Jesus' true humanity, but a clear case of reductionism, and worst exactly here. Yes, Jesus invites Peter onto the water, and the whole point of the story is that Peter walks at Jesus' behest, and sinks. The derivative act proves the original; to read them as equivalent is to forget how stories work.
Matthew says kingdom of God four times and kingdom of heaven thirty-two, and the standard scholarly explanation, a Jewish avoidance of the divine name, fails on Matthew's own pages, since he both says kingdom of God and names God freely. Schreiner follows his colleague Jonathan Pennington's dissertation, written under Richard Bauckham: the phrase is a deliberate authorial theology. Heaven-and-earth language proclaims God's transcendence, the distance between God above and us below, and, given the storyline, the moral gulf between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom that is good. Matthew, who so often draws on Daniel, is saying that the kingdom comes from heaven: supernatural, a gift, arriving after two thousand years of promise as a miracle, through a king, by God's grace and power.
Who is the kingdom for? The Beatitudes open with the answer: the poor in spirit, the spiritually bankrupt, those who know they are weak, those who become like children. What great news to preach: the kingdom is not for the strong, the mighty, the noble, or the good, but for everyone humble enough to admit the need of God, of help, of forgiveness. Schreiner makes it personal: if the kingdom is for the strong, I do not qualify; if for the good, I do not qualify; if for the weak and for sinners, that is me, needing him every hour, prone to wander. The barrier is the heart that will not repent, the problem Paul names in Romans 2 and the problem at many a family table where nice people feel no need. And religion itself can be the subtlest refuge from needing God; Schreiner recalls a longtime colleague who entered seminary unconverted and, thank God, was saved there.
Matthew 13 speaks of the mysteries, the secrets, of the kingdom, and the hidden thing is what many call the already and the not yet. The kingdom overlaps with the present evil age; it has not come immediately with apocalyptic power. Hear it as Jesus' hearers did: he announces that the kingdom has come in him, and the world goes on as before, while Daniel had taught them to expect the rock that ends every other kingdom. That is not the kingdom, they said, and you can see why they disbelieved. But Jesus says the kingdom is now as small as a mustard seed and as hidden as leaven, a treasure in a field, a pearl worth everything, given to those who repent, and it will yet be a tree, and the whole dough will be leavened.
When does the seed become the tree? Postmillennialists read a gradual permeation through history, the world slowly transformed by the gospel. Schreiner confesses, with real warmth, that he would love for that to be true, so many Puritans and Jonathan Edwards held it, and Iain Murray's The Puritan Hope encouraged him greatly, but he is not persuaded. With Ladd, he tends to think the tree and the fully leavened dough arrive at the second coming, while granting one could affirm real growth without becoming postmillennial. To the world's eyes the kingdom remains mustard-seed small, represented by the unimpressive people of the King, which is to say, by us.
The parable of the vineyard workers ends with wages for those hired at the eleventh hour: repentance is possible even at the end. Schreiner passes on a sober word from Carl Trueman: our culture no longer resonates with the gospel as it once did, and yet people are going to die, and those who die slowly think about their lives and their future, which makes the deathbed a great opportunity for witness. No one should be counseled to wait; no one should be told it is too late.
The key point of the hour: the fulfillment has come, and it has come in a surprising, astonishing way, not the way anyone expected. The kingdom is present in the King before it comes in power.
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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 element of Jesus' Son of Man teaching has no clear Old Testament precedent?
2. What twist does Acts 4 add in quoting Psalm 2?
3. To what does Acts 13 tie the words, today I have begotten you?
4. How does the lecture relate Psalm 2:7 to the eternal begetting of the Son?
5. What made discipleship to Jesus unlike discipleship to a rabbi?
6. Why did Jesus tell the rich ruler, and not everyone, to sell everything?
7. Which Scriptures anchor the storm-stilling and sea-walking as divine acts?
8. What is Pennington's account of Matthew's kingdom of heaven?
9. Who is the kingdom for?
10. What is the secret of the kingdom in Matthew 13?
11. Where does the lecture, with Ladd, place the mustard seed's tree and the leavened dough?
12. What does the parable of the vineyard workers say about the eleventh hour?
All twelve correct. Lecture 22 is complete.
The Son of Man's glory came veiled, and his road ran through suffering. Where do you quietly demand that God's work in your life look impressive, and what would trusting the mustard-seed way mean this month?
The rich ruler received a command tailored to his one idol. If Jesus named the single thing standing between you and following him freely, what would he name, and how do you know?
The kingdom belongs to those who admit they need it. When did you last tell God plainly that you do not qualify and need him every hour, and what keeps that from being a daily confession?
Psalm 2:7, the coronation decree: the LORD names his Anointed his own Son and seats him to reign, with the nations promised as his inheritance.
The lecture's own recommendations: Jonathan Pennington's study of Matthew's heaven-and-earth language, whose findings it adopts, and Iain Murray's The Puritan Hope, which Schreiner says encouraged him greatly even though he remains unpersuaded of its postmillennialism.