Mining the Minors: The Post-Game Show

So then, 212 posts. I almost hate to see the end of it. This series might be the most fun I’ve ever had writing about the word of God for free in my spare time (of which I currently have way, WAY too much). I’m not sure how many of our readers benefited from it, but nobody benefited from it more than I did.

I started with the idea that Andy Stanley is wrong about the Old Testament’s irrelevance to the Christian message. I’m more convinced than ever of that. The gospel is anchored to an Old Covenant narrative and worldview, and the Christian “case in the marketplace”, as Stanley refers to it, depends on respecting and making use of the entire story God has told the world concerning his Son.

If you ever doubt the importance of the Old Testament to the teaching of the New, just go to our Mining the Minors Index Page and read only the posts entitled “So-and-So in the New Testament”, which document the NT’s usage of the messages from the Minor Prophets. (Jonah doesn’t have one, but only because I covered most of the NT’s references to Jonah in the series’ first post.) By my count, the Lord Jesus, his apostles and the writers of the NT quoted or alluded to the Minor Prophets at least 59 times. (I’m leaving out most of the parallel references in the synoptic gospels and dozens of potential allusions in Revelation that may be to the Major Prophets rather than the Minors.)

There can be no doubt the New Testament writers and those they quoted understood the prophets — Jonah very much included — to be historical rather than mythical, authoritative rather than suggestive, literal as often as figurative, and destined in every respect to be completely and satisfactorily fulfilled. Moreover, if this arguably-most-obscure section of the Old Testament is foundational to our faith, then surely the Major Prophets, Psalms and historical books are even more critical to our interpretation and understanding of the teaching of the Lord Jesus and his apostles.

I’ll leave our readers with a series of five links from The Blue Letter Bible to over 800 quotes, allusions and possible allusions to the OT in the NT. I have found these exceedingly useful during this series, and you may too:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes01.cfm
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes02.cfm
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes03.cfm
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes04.cfm
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes05.cfm

The two disciples from the Emmaus Road encounter had a unique experience when the risen Christ walked with them and shared with them the Old Testament passages that spoke of him, including “all the prophets”, not just the most well-known ones. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they asked one another.

No kidding. The story of the Christ didn’t begin with the gospel of Matthew. We are fools to disconnect it from its foundation. It was necessary that the Christ should “suffer these things and enter into his glory”. That glory, in part at least, is eloquently described in the Minor Prophets.