For the King's Glory
What does the Church need today in order to have her heart set aflame for the Lord Jesus Christ and for His Great Commission?
It’s striking that Matthew closes his gospel without the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven. Neither does he give us the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Instead, Matthew leaves us with a foretaste of Jesus’ heavenly glory and reign, a view of Jesus already exalted in the heavens at the right hand of God.
In Matthew's gospel, mountains often give us a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Matthew 28 is much like the vision we get in Revelation 14 where the Lamb is standing upon Mount Zion with all His redeemed host. This final scene is filled with echoes of the promises in the Old Testament regarding Mount Zion. In the Hebrew scriptures, all of Israel's eschatological hopes are anchored in and symbolized by Mount Zion. Matthew 28 is proclaiming to us that all of these Zion hopes are beginning to be realized through the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. The Great Commission springs not only from Jesus Himself but also from a view of Jesus and all of His glory and splendor.
The Messiah is Enthroned by God
Psalm 2 gives us the aim of the psalms, the Messianic kingdom and the reign of God through His Messiah. Psalm 2 becomes a prophecy of the Messiah and of Mount Zion.
The Messiah is enthroned by God which we see in verse 6. There's emphasis in the Hebrew with the pronoun “I myself.” God's installment of the king is His answer to the raging of the nations. The messianic reign is the answer of God to a world in revolt against heaven. The Messiah will rule and subdue all the nations of the earth.
This of course is the way that the nations will find blessing: by coming under the scepter of the Davidic king and God's enthronement of His anointed. These are the fulfillment of the promises that God made to David in 2 Samuel 7 that we know as the Davidic covenant regarding a future son of David. In Matthew 28 when Jesus declares “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Me,” using a passive verb, the implied subject is God. God the Father has given Christ all authority in heaven and on earth and has enthroned Him. His exaltation is a work of God and there is no glory, no honor, no majesty that God has withheld from His beloved Son.
As Paul's words in Philippians 2 proclaim, God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name above every name so that every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
The Enthroned Messiah Reigns as God’s Son
Verse 7 says, “You are my son, the Lord God declares to His Messiah. Today I have begotten you.” This relationship too fulfills the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 where God had declared to David about one of his future sons, “I will be His Father and He will be My Son.” Scholars refer to these statements as an adoption formula. This formula signifies that the function of the Davidic king is to reign as the son of God on behalf of God the Father.
It's a part of His anointing. His function as the Messianic king begins and ends with God, who alone is the sovereign one and proclaimed King in worship. The Lord reigns. As Son of God by office, He reigns to establish God's will and rule on earth. Enthroned on Mount Zion, the Messiah reigns again to establish God's kingdom, not His own.
Adam was the first human son of God charged to reign, to rule and subdue all the earth on behalf of God. He reigned from the summit of Eden, the original mountain of God. And as God's firstborn son, his charge was to reign on behalf of his Father and gather all creation to worship and obey God. As the son of God, his inheritance was the ends of the earth. By office, that function as firstborn son of God was granted by covenant to David's son. Psalm 89, for example, refers to the Davidic King as the highest of all kings and the firstborn of Yahweh so that he should reign for the sake of honoring the Lord God, his Father. The Messianic king that stands in Matthew 28 is none other than the eternal son of glory who for our sakes took on our flesh and our humanity upon himself and was born in the line of David according to the flesh.
The Enthroned Messiah Inherits the Nations
In Psalm 2, the Lord turns to his Messiah and says, “Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.” The Great Commission is but a means by which the Father continues to exalt the Son.
The nations are a gift of God the Father to the Son. In Matthew 28, Jesus proclaims “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go and disciple the nations.” He has asked His Father for His inheritance, the nations, and His request has been granted. The nations are also the object of the Son's mission. The Son reigns to gather all of creation to the footstool of His blessed Father in worship and in adoration to establish the kingdom of God eternally. The Great Commission is caught up in this reciprocal exchange of love between the Father and the Son, empowered and enlivened by the Holy Spirit. Every nation, every tongue, every tribe should confess him as Lord and king. The Messiah is enthroned, inheriting the nations. The Great Commission flows from the commission given to Adam and through the Davidic covenant, the Messiah reigns for the sake and glory of God the Father.
And with these promises in mind, the gospel of Matthew begins its opening verse announcing Jesus Christ, the son of David. And then the gospel ends with this Psalm 2 vision of the Son of David, the Messiah, enthroned and inheriting the nations.
The Nations Promised
Isaiah 2:2-4 helps illustrate how the Messiah commissions His Church. It envisions this era where all the nations are regathered to God, reconciled to God and to one another. It envisions a world of justice and righteousness and everlasting peace: blessings of the kingdom of God because the nations have been brought into fellowship and communion to a true knowledge of God.
The theological background to Isaiah 2 is Genesis 1-11 and the plight of the nations which culminates in Genesis 11:1-9, the tower of Babel's story. All humanity gathers with one accord to build a ziggurat to breach the heavens as it were and to build a name for themselves for human glory.The Lord descends and brings judgment upon them by confusing their languages. They are in spiritual exile from God, separated from each other by geography and language and culture. They enter into a perpetual state of war and violent animosity.
Isaiah 2 presents to us the very reversal of the judgment of God. The scattered nations will flow not to a man-made mountain for the glory and name of man, but they will flow to Mount Zion for the praise and the worship of the Lord God.
This is nothing less than the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. As a response to His judgement on the nations, God made a promise to Abraham that all the nations would be restored to blessing ultimately in a son of Abraham, but called upon him to sacrifice his son. Abraham is willing to lift the knife and because of that willingness, God promises the nations will be restored unto fellowship with God.
Finally, the nations gathering to Mount Zion in Isaiah 2 were redeemed by the suffering servant from Isaiah 53. In Isaiah 53, the Great Commission is a result of the divine exaltation of the Messiah, but the divine exaltation of the Messiah is itself the result of His dreadful humiliation. The vision of Jesus' beauty and glory in Matthew 28 is that of the risen Messiah after He had laid down His life as an atonement for the sins of His people, the sins of the nation.
In Matthew 4, Satan tempts Jesus three times, showing Jesus not only all the kingdoms of the world, but also their glory. The devil is probing this spotless Lamb for any hint of a grasp at worldly power. The Messiah is to reign only for the sake of and for the glory of his heavenly Father. And He loves the nations and would reign over them compassionately, sacrificially as a loving shepherd laying down his life for his sheep. The nations need to be redeemed from bondage to sin and delivered from the wrath and judgment of God. They need to be cleansed by the blood of Christ and transformed by the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, "Get away from me, Satan, for the scriptures say, you shall love the Lord your God. You shall worship Him and serve Him only."
That is Jesus' goal in the Great Commission: to bring all the nations to the adoration of God that they might worship and serve Him only. This means that Jesus had to embrace the cross of agony.The crucifixion gives us a view of Jesus that is filled with wretched majesty and woeful irony. He was mocked and abused and humiliated. He surrendered to the humiliation and to the torments of the very ones He came to save. What meekness, what tender submission, what unending love.
The nations were purchased by His blood, shed to cleanse and to sanctify them. They are His possession and inheritance. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and therefore the church must go and disciple these blood-bought nations.
The Church’s Commission
And so finally we come to the practical aspect of it. Christ commissions His church to claim the nations. We can now see the Great Commission in Isaiah 2. The divine instruction of the Lord shall proceed from Zion and the word of the Lord transforms those nations and claims them through the blood of Christ. They are then brought back to the Messiah. In the context of Isaiah's theology, it is first the word of salvation that goes forth from Zion, instructing the nations and turning them from violence. All the nations are shaped by the word of God in order to obey the will of God on earth.
And this is precisely what we see in Matthew 28: the word of the risen Lord going forth from Mount Zion to claim the nations. As we know in the Great Commission, the main verb is “disciple.” Discipleship requires a relationship with God and His people. It requires the Church, her ministry of sacrament and word, baptizing them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey the will and the rule of God on earth. This obedience of the nations is the gift of the Father to the Son and is also the way the Son honors the Father. This is what Paul means in Romans 15:18 when he says that the fruit of the gospel is the obedience of the nations.
The church is sent by the enthroned Messiah who has inherited the nations to claim the nations through her ministry. Therefore she must go. She goes on behalf of the Lord Jesus. But she also goes with Him. This exalted, glorious Son of God’s final words to His Church are “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” But this is the great vision with which the gospel of Matthew closes. Look to Him and all of His exalted glory reigning at the right hand of the majesty of God. Whenever the church is weak and frail and lethargic, it's because we've lost sight of the glory of the beloved Son. To not go is to rob Him of the loving gift from the Father.
Surely there are some of you who haven't discovered yet the bliss of being under the scepter of the Lord Jesus Christ. But what else is there in this world that could capture your heart? Embrace the Son, lest He be angry and you perish. He will return in glory to judge the nations. Flee to him now, knowing that all who cherish the Son are loved by the Father. And know that in Him there is eternal life in a new heavens and new earth where there is no more war, no more sin, no more strife, no more sorrows, no more diseases. Just love and joy in the blessed fellowship of the people of God and with God Himself.
Though that is the view with which Matthew closes his account, the church's mission does not end until that great trumpet blasts and Jesus descends with all His glory. He will come to collect the nations into Himself and to usher them into the new heavens and the new earth. But in the meanwhile, the Enthroned Messiah inherits the nations and He commissions His church to claim them. Claim them for the King’s glory.