JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. We’re starting a new series on the Prophets. This is the second section in the Old Testament. Today Tom and Jason talk about the Prophets’ audience. Who were they writing for? They also talk about the Prophets’ knowledge. How much did they know about the coming of Christ? Jason and Tom also talk about the importance of considering three different contexts when reading the Old Testament Prophets. Everyone using these books needs to consider all three of these contexts. When you’re done listening, be sure to check out our show notes for links to resources that will help you as you use the Prophets.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk, Tom and Jason here. Jason, we’re starting something new, we’re going to be going through the Prophets.

JD: We are, so we’re in Gear 2 of our structure, why we call it GearTalk. As we consider each of the major portions of our Bible as different gears working together, and we’re going to focus on Gear 2, the Prophets, specifically the focus is on interpreting the Latter Prophets. So those that we normally think of as covenant enforcers. These are messengers of the heavenly court commissioned by God with a message to speak a covenantal message, to call people back to faithfulness in their relationship with God, and a covenantal message that reaches beyond the borders of Israel to the nations, and that addresses, indeed, followers of God in all times. So we want to think about these Prophets and what it would mean that these Prophets are Christian Scripture, that Christian preachers today, living this side of the cross, are commissioned to proclaim for the glory of Christ and the good of the people.

TK: When we think of this section, this second gear, we have the Law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, written by Moses, and then you have four books that are historical: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. And then you have the Prophets. They would have arranged them in different order, same books though, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and then The Twelve. It would be The Twelve; we call them sometimes Minor Prophets. Jason, I think a lot of us would find it easier to read, for instance, Joshua than we would Isaiah or Ezekiel or Hosea. Do you think that’s fair?

JD: I think it’s fair because we’re all drawn into stories, and when we get into the realm of dreams and visions and even very explicit Scriptures, use of Scripture, we’re not fully certain of how to handle it. I mean, these were, old covenant preachers talking to an old covenant people. So what would their sermons have to do with us? And then the simple challenge of interpreting the prophetic words that they give when they’re dealing with future realities, and there’s just all these questions regarding, how do I rightly interpret them? What are the bounds of my interpretation? What’s guiding it? What’s justifying it? How would I establish warrant for claims that I would make? Am I supposed to see these prophecies related solely to old covenant Israel? Do they in any way relate to the church today? Do they—

TK: Have they happened already?

JD: Have they been fulfilled or are they going to happen? How are we supposed to be seeing things in the 21st century that are directly spoken of in those biblical texts? There’s all these questions and if you’ve grown up in the church for any amount of time, it’s very likely that you’ve encountered things that seem maybe even strange or where you’ve heard interpretations that seem a little wacko and we’re wondering, is that right? How am I supposed to think about it? And so I think it’s more natural to be drawn to the parts of the Bible that seem clearer on the surface, which would be books like Joshua. We know what’s happening there and preaching Joshua can have its own challenges, but the story itself seems a little more clear on the surface in contrast to a book like Habakkuk.

TK: I feel like I have some footing as far as I can land myself somewhere and know, okay, this is what we’re doing. But I think our goal here is to celebrate the prophets and say, these are a gift from God, these men are a blessing to the church today and he wants us to be able to read and understand and use them and use them if we’re a parent or preacher or teacher, use them in a way with confidence, I would say. So Jason, I’m thinking we’re going to do something we talked about a little bit shorter today, just getting into this. So I’d love to ask you a few questions as we enter into the prophets. So first question for you, how do we think about the prophets in terms of what they knew? How in the dark were these men? Do they know the gospel that we have? So a presupposition I bring in, Isaiah, does he know about the cross? Jeremiah, do they—maybe not the cross itself as a means of death—but do they know about a king who’s coming and that how much of the gospel do they know? And can you prove that anywhere?

JD: Those are great questions, Tom. We could start in the Old Testament, and I think we’d want to go there, but most of our listeners are most familiar and comfortable with the New Testament and we want to affirm the New Testament claims as they’re thinking about the prophets. What did they declare was true for those prophets? We start out in a book like Acts, Peter’s sermon in Acts 3, he makes some amazing claims. What God foretold, thinking about the resurrection of the Christ, the crucifixion of Jesus, what God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets that his Christ would suffer, he is fulfilled.

TK: So right there, if it could I add the word, even though it’s not there, what God foretold by the mouth of all the Old Testament prophets, just for me and understanding, that’s what he’s meaning, correct?

JD: That’s right. He is thinking about David as a prophet and I mean already at that point in the book of Acts and I’m thinking of Acts 2, he cited the book of Joel and he said, but this is what was uttered through the prophet, Joel, Acts 2:16 and he goes on and unpacks it earlier and in chapter 1, he says, speaking about Judas, “This is what was written in the book of Psalms, may his camp become desolate and let them be, let there be no one to dwell in it and let another take his office.” We have already in this book citations of Old Testament prophecy in Acts 2, he even called David a prophet, being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on the throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Jesus. So when we’re talking about the prophets and the book of Acts as something, as a group through whom God spoke, it seems pretty evident that Peter is thinking of Old Testament prophets. It’s something that—these are words that had been written down that were already recognized as the Word of God, and for Peter in the early church, there’s no New Testament written yet. Jesus had just risen climaxing in his ascension. The church has just in-broke, broken into history at Pentecost. So there’s not even any New Testament revelation that has been recorded, Jesus has spoken a lot and his words are much later going to be written down, but at this point, as the history is being proclaimed, Peter is a character in the story in Acts and at that point, the only prophets that God had used to not only speak through but have written down his words were the Old Testament saints, the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Haggai and Malachi, those kinds of folks is what we’re talking about here that Peter says all of them. And what’s intriguing is in the coming weeks, we’re going to use Zephania as a case study Tom of interpreting Old Testament prophets and he’s a distinct example because Peter says all the prophets wrote of Christ’s sufferings, yet if you go into the 53 verses in the book of Zephaniah, you’ll never hear any mention of the Messiah explicitly, no predictions related to the coming of a royal priestly deliverer who would stand as a prophet proclaiming the Word of God, other prophets talk about such a figure. They call him a future David, the new creational branch. They call him a coming king, a shepherd, but not Zephaniah, and yet Peter in readings Zephaniah would say he was among all the prophets who foretold the sufferings of Christ and so it puts a level of pressure on the interpreter to say, how was Peter reading his Bible, how did he understand that Zephaniah spoke of Jesus’s sufferings? But the fact is that Peter simply said,

TK: He did though.

JD: He did, all the prophets, not only did all the prophets speak of Christ’s sufferings, Acts 3:18, in Acts 3:24, we see here all the prophets who have spoken since Moses from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaimed these days, so Moses proclaimed the days of the church, Samuel proclaimed the days of the church, and all the prophets who came after him spoke of those days. That’s a significant statement, that we read about the church age in all the prophets. We could go to Acts 10, Peter again talking and it says to Jesus all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. So here it suggests all the prophets are going to be among those who spoke of the opportunity for making your life right with God to enjoy the forgiveness of sins and find reconciliation, right relationship, a declaration of right standing with God, all the prophets, and so that would that would include Ezekiel and Amos, Obediah, Nahum, these men were proclaiming the sufferings of Christ, the days of the church and the opportunity for forgiveness of sins, so that’s what we should find when we open up their text, that’s what we as Christian interpreters should be expecting to find and should be expected to proclaim when we’re preaching their books.

TK: I think that’s really helpful coming into a book. You don’t know anything about it, so let’s just assume you don’t know anything about Zephaniah, coming in you’d say, “I know he is writing about the sufferings of Christ because the New Testament authors already said that.” So a question I would have—not just the sufferings also the glories to follow, so another presupposition or question we should have is, okay, let’s grant that they wrote the coming of Christ, his suffering, the glories to follow, was that accidentally included in things that did they know what they were writing about I guess is the question or did it just happen like whoa they spoke much better than they knew and if you’re going to say they did know, how are you going to prove that?

JD: In the Gospels, Jesus says, “Many prophets and righteous men long to see what you see but they didn’t see it. Many prophets and kings long to see what you see and didn’t see it, but they long to hear what you hear and didn’t hear it.” And that type of expression by Jesus suggests they were seeing something. In John 8, “Abraham saw my day he was just thinking about that and was glad.” “Moses wrote about me,” in John 5. These are our conscious elements where they’re longing for something. Yet, as Hebrews 11 says, “They all died in faith not having received what was promised but having seen it and greeted it from afar.” So these Old Testament saints had something. They didn’t have the fulfillment, but they had the promise. They didn’t have the realization or the substance, but they were holding on to the anticipation and the shadow. They had something that they knew was theirs. I think specifically Tom about 1 Peter 1:10–12. What Peter here—so we saw Peter speaking in Acts 3 and in Acts 10—same apostle declares concerning the salvation that you and I as Christians are enjoying today, “The prophets of the Old Testament who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours.” So they were talking about the good news of salvation that you and I enjoy. They were prophesying about saving new covenant grace. These prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours. Peter says, “They searched and inquired carefully well what were they seeking to know they were inquiring Peter says what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” So that’s Acts 3:18 and 3:24. All the prophets predicted the sufferings of Christ. All the prophets predicted the days of the church, the sufferings of Christ, and the subsequent glories. So they were searching and inquiring and I think, Tom, this suggests they’re not only diving into the dreams and visions that they had, but they were looking into written Scripture. Isaiah was looking at Deuteronomy. Jeremiah was reading Genesis. And Zephaniah was reading Isaiah.

TK:  With a specific goal in mind too they’re looking for something.

JD:  That’s right. It means specifically what it says: they want to know something about the person of Jesus and they want to know something about the time of his coming. What person or time the spirit of Christ was indicating meaning as they went into the biblical text that was given to us by the Spirit of God. They were wanting to know what the Spirit was indicating about the person and timing of Jesus is coming when that Spirit was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. So these prophets understand understood that the Spirit was indicating things about the Messiah, and they were approaching previous revelation to better understand and make known things about Christ’s person and the specific time in history when he would come. So they were—at times we read that the prophets were actually counting the clock. They were wondering, when is it going to happen. They know that certain things have been predicted in certain orders and they’re expecting certain things, they’re anticipating certain things, and then verse 12 really captures it. It says, “It was revealed to them.” So this is known. This text is about what is known. “It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced through the preaching of the good news.” So this good news, this gospel proclamation that new covenant preachers are making, we are making it, grounded in the Old Testament Scriptures. And those Old Testament prophets, God had revealed to them, says Peter, they understood that they were writing for Christians. They understood that they were writing not for themselves but for you when they talked about the timing of Jesus is coming and when they talked when they talked about the nature of the kind of person he would be.

This is what they were searching and inquiring to know. They were wrestling with the biblical text to discern what was the Spirit saying through Moses, what was the Spirit saying through Ezekiel. And so later prophets building upon earlier prophets, and when we come to the New Testament that’s what we have. We’ve got these end times prophets called the apostles who are doing exactly what the Old Testament prophets were already doing. The New Testament prophets are searching and inquiring carefully to rightly understand how these Old Testament prophets were reading their Bibles. So with respect to what did they know, Tom, the sense we get from the New Testament texts is that these Old Testament authors knew a lot. They knew that they were longing for the Messiah, hoping in the Messiah, they knew that they were writing about his sufferings and writing about his—the mission that he would spark through the church age, and they also knew that because most of their audiences were rebellious, unbelieving, and stubborn that their writings were principally for a future people. That we would now understand as the new covenant church.

TK: That is really helpful. Makes sense of so many passages. I’m looking at right now Hebrews 11:25-26. It says about Moses, “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” And it doesn’t just say he considered the reproach of Yahweh, for instance, or being connected to God’s people. It actually says he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth—that there’s something he was thinking about, and it’s the coming King who he himself had written about all throughout that Moses writes about in his book. So, Jason, if this is a presupposition I’m bringing in, that the prophets are writing about the Christ, that they don’t know his name yet, he hasn’t come, but they’re writing about the sufferings of Christ his glory is to come, I land in a book and we’re going to get there later, but frequently hear about what you got to know the context. For you, context is more nuanced than just saying one particular thing, so you talk about kind of three areas of context. Can you spell that out for us? Like, I’m approaching a book how do I get the context for myself so that I can move forward?

JD:  When we think about the fact that these prophets, by the power of the Spirit, were talking about things beyond themselves, things beyond their age, they were writing not for them but for us, and they saw ahead. Many righteous many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you and I are getting to experience now living in the age of the resurrected Christ. Living in the age where the future has entered into the middle of history. The dawn of the end has come, new creation has been birthed. These prophets were longing for that day when the curse would be overcome, when blessing would begin to intrude until the whole earth is filled with the glory of God like the waters cover the sea. It demands that we not only read about the shadow but we read that the materials related to the shadow in light of the substance that has been revealed. We have to read the Bible as it was intended to be read in light of the Messiah’s coming. That the Old Testament authors are wanting to point us ahead as they’re searching and inquiring to know about the person in the time of Jesus, they’re wanting to move readers to see him alone as the answer to their greatest dilemma. And once you meet Jesus, then you have to read the Bible through him and then read the Bible for him. To read the Bible through him is demanding that we’re approaching these Old Testament prophecies as believers, that we read the spiritual book as spiritual people, using Paul’s language from 1 Corinthians 2.

TK:  So you’re saying that the prophets are the prophets are writing for Christians.

JD: It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you and me. They are writing for Christians, and so it takes being a believer to rightly understand their book because this is spiritual material written for spiritual people. And with respect to the contexts, there are—we can’t just read our book, read the Old Testament prophets in light of themselves, because they were expecting—even as they were writing, they were writing for a future generation that would have the eyes of their hearts enlightened and that would have been living in an age of fulfillment. They were writing their books to be understood rightly by the people who would be living in the age of the Messiah. So we approach their writings in light of the whole.

So I propose three different levels of context. And the words I use are taken out of a little book by Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum, and I don’t even remember the name of that book. It’s over on my shelf.

TK: I got it right here. Christ from Beginning to End.

JD: There it is: Christ from Beginning to End. So that’s where I get the—I had the categories, but they gave me the words, and they’re helpful to memorize and easy to reproduce in the lives of those who want to interpret the prophets rightly.

The three contexts are this, Tom: the close context, the continuing context, and the complete context. So let me unpack each of these.

TK: Okay, so three C’s: close, continuing, complete.

JD: So when it comes to the close context, just think about if you’re entering into a passage in the prophets, you enter into Isaiah 53, and the close context is specifically related to—well, I’m reading these words, what is happening in the immediate? That’s the close, the immediate historical and literary setting that is informing my passage.

So the context is the environment in which our passage is found, and the first environment we have to consider is that close environment, both historically and literarily. So we’re asking what, how, and why does the passage communicate? What does the passage communicate immediately, right here in the text? How does it actually communicate? How does it say what it says? Not just what does it say, but how does it say it? But why relates to why does it say it that way? And we want to consider carefully the passage’s words, its thought flow, its theology in light of where it shows up at the period in history.

Who are the major players, powers, practices, perspectives of the age, and how might they inform our passage? And how might our passage be speaking into those contexts? And then within the book, the literary—the literary context is like, what’s coming before? What grows out of our passage? And the biggest question related to the close context is: if I was to take my passage away, what would be lost? What would be missing from this book if my passage wasn’t present? And if you can answer that, you’ve got a good grasp of the contribution your passage is making within the flow of the book itself.

TK: So you’re saying, if you mentioned Isaiah 53, if I cut out Isaiah 53, how does that—how would that impact the rest of the book? What does it add? What does it—how does it contribute to what Isaiah wrote?

JD: That’s right. That—that’s the immediate literary context—what is Isaiah 53 contributing to the book itself.

TK: So with this close context, Jason, if I am reading my Scriptures in the morning and I’m thinking, ‘What does this have to do with me? What is this—what is this word saying to me?’ Am I—am I ignoring at that point the close context and not asking the question you’re saying—you’re suggesting we should ask to start?

JD: That’s right,

TK: —because I’ve applied it to me right away.

JD: That’s right. Before we are seeking to apply a text to ourselves, we really need to understand it in its original setting. That’s where everything begins. Before the Spirit allows the Word to bridge into the modern world, we need to know what the Spirit is saying in the Word itself first before we can cross that bridge. So yes, we pause, and we’re considering the historical influences, the historical details of our passage, the function of the passage within the book as a whole, what precedes leading up to it that might be informing why the prophet speaks the way that he does, and what do we see following it that is building upon the claims made in our passage. These are all close context elements that we have to ask if we want confidence that our application into our own hearts is actually on target.

TK: Okay, that’s good. That’s good. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now, and I’m looking at book you edited, What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About. A book like that, which is kind of a survey of Old Testament books, or the introduction in study Bibles—how would you say that is as a tool for quickly grasping the close context tools like that?

JD: You said, How to Understand—which of my books did you say?

TK: What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About.

JD: Yeah. That—that book is focused on the message. It’s book by book. It’s going to aid the reader in understanding what are the major themes that are being addressed in this book and how might my passage be contributing to one of those themes.

TK: So that would you’re saying, for the close context, that’d be a great starter?

JD: It would be a great starter in thinking about what is my passage contributing to the message of the book and how does the message of the whole book it inform my particular passage. It would be a great place to start. That—that book does, though, move beyond simply the immediate questions to the next context level.

So if we’re starting with a very small circle, now we’re going to go out one level to the continuing context. And when we’re talking about continuing, you can think of movement through Scripture, and there’s two layers of that movement that I want to highlight. One is simply, Scripture is being progressively revealed. So if we come into a book like Isaiah and we’re in Isaiah 53, we want to say, ‘What theology would Isaiah have had available to him in the Bible that he had?’ he didn’t have the whole Bible that we have, but he did have some Bible. What Bible would have been available to him, like Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus? All of a sudden, we have a context to understand the image of a—like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And there’s informing theology coming from the law that Moses had already laid out that Isaiah seems to be expecting his readers to know and understand.

So that’s a continuing context. We’ve gone beyond the level of the book. Now we’re looking at the whole of Scripture, but specifically the earlier Scripture and how it might be informing the Scripture that we have. So how does Scripture using Scripture is part of continuing context. And then the second level is the story. And there’s a story that has been birthed in Genesis that continues all the way to the Book of Revelation. And what we’re asking is, how does our passage contribute to that overarching story of redemption? Each of the high points being seen in the progression of the biblical covenants: from the Adamic-Noahic covenant where Adam and Noah are the covenant heads, and through them God builds a relationship with all creation; the Abrahamic covenant, where Father Abraham becomes the covenant mediator, influencing all those who are in him; building out of the Abrahamic covenant, stage one fulfillment is Abraham would be the father of one nation in one land, and so we get the Mosaic covenant; then stage two, Abraham the father of many nations in many lands, realized in the new covenant; and then anticipating the new covenant is that Davidic covenant where there’s the foreshadowing of a son in the line of David who had sit on the throne forever.

We want to be thinking about the progression of the storyline and how all of the covenants are interrelated, and really climax in the person of Jesus. So we want to be asking the question here in the continuing—sorry, the continuing context—one of the key questions is, how is my passage contributing to the story that climaxes in the person of Christ? What is Isaiah 53, for example, contributing to the overarching development of salvation history—the fall lead—sorry—creation leading to the fall, leading to redemption all the way unto complete consummation? What is my passage contributing to that overarching storyline?

TK: It’s somewhere—it’s somewhere in that arc, though. It’s—

JD: It has to be in that arc.

TK: It’s not a—it’s not a weird, strange thing. And I think I grew up a little bit like that, like so take a—take one of the smaller books of prophecy that I didn’t know, and be like Micah. And Micah, you’d say, ‘Well, there’s prophecies of Bethlehem,’ so that I can put it more on the map. But there’s certain books you’d say, ‘I don’t even know what to do. This is just out there somewhere.’ And what we’re saying today is, actually, it’s not out there. It’s—it is in this arc—the continuing context. But the prophet is actually writing about the suffering of Christ, the glories to follow. We just have to figure it out. Um, we’ll talk about covenants more, Jason, if you’re good, in weeks to come, because I think that’s important.

JD: We will talk about it more. One thing I would just add is that they’re not only talking about Jesus. They’re also talking about immediate realities in their present: Assyria, Babylon, Persia. These are real peoples in history that dot the storyline of Scripture and help the movement of Scripture. The prophets foretold that the northern kingdom of Israel would be destroyed by Assyria, and when it happens, all of a sudden God’s prophets are shown to be true. They foretold the destruction of Babylon, and when that happens, all of a sudden false prophecy is distinguished from true prophecy, and the people are given immediate predictions. When they’re realized, what it does is it forces the listeners to say, ‘If they were true about the immediate predictions, then they’re likely going to be true about the longer-term, longer-range predictions related to the Messiah.’ And so the immediate prophecies play a key role in substantiating the validity of the future-oriented, longer-range prophecies.

TK: And that just answers one of my questions: if I am a preacher, teacher, and I’m wondering why would I talk about Assyria or Babylon or Persia for that matter—what does it have to do with someone living in—in our time in our place? Is a lot of it has to do with what you said, is we watch how God kept his word at a certain point of time, and it informs what he will do in the future. It gives us confidence in God.

JD: That’s right, Tom. It plays a key role in seeing God’s faithfulness in the past to his promises, both the blessing to curse. We gain our own confidence that God will continue to be faithful to his promises, both the blessing to curse. That’s not the only element, though. There’s also this element of typology, Tom, such that Assyria and Babylon, the return to the land, are all portrayed as events that foreshadow greater future events, so that we’re anticipating a new Assyria, a new Babylon that stand as enemies to God’s ways and God’s people, yet stand also as agents in his hand to bring about his purposes, culminating in Christ. And the return to the land was foreshadowed. It happens in space and time, and it, by its nature, anticipates an even greater return, a greater new exodus. And that’s also part of why we would be preaching Assyria and Babylon and Persia—is to help show how they are part of a greater story. And those events of judgment anticipate the greatest judgment that is still to come and the event of judgment at the cross. Those events of renewal and restoration and return are all anticipating the greater restoration, renewal and return that is secured in Jesus, not only for one people but for a global, international people.

TK: I feel like you’re bumping into that third category, or the complete context.

JD: Well, we—I am in that the continuing context naturally leads us to the end of the story. That’s end. And that’s where we cannot be done with our prophetic preaching—that is our preaching of Old Testament prophets—until we help our people see where the end is. So we need to determine how our passage fits within the whole of the biblical canon. And we do this in a number of ways, but a key way is looking at how later Scripture is actually using or building upon our passage. How does—how do the later prophets use earlier prophets? How does Zephaniah use Isaiah? That’s part of the complete context when it comes to interpreting Isaiah—considering how later prophets like Zephaniah, like Zechariah, are using Isaiah’s book and interpreting it.

But not only that, we don’t stop with those Old Testament prophets. We move all the way into the New Testament prophets to consider how Luke, Peter, Paul are appropriating and interpreting Old Testament Scripture and then, in turn, applying it to the church age—how they’re seeing—how they interpret Jesus as the culmination of the story itself, how they view him as the anti-type to all the previous types, how he’s the substance that fills up the form that was the Old Testament prophets.

So we’re considering, how does later Scripture utilize or fulfill our passage, or clarify or develop the meaning of our passage? And then we bring all of our reflections together, and we’re considering elements of doctrine. We’re considering specifically, how does our passage contribute to the progress of revelation and point to or clarify Christ’s person or work? And much of that is even determined by looking at how the New Testament authors are—that—that’s the complete context, the complete biblical context of every Old Testament prophecy is the end of the story and the interpretation that the New Testament authors give. And I’m proposing that when we approach Old Testament prophecy, we need to be thinking about all three contexts. And our right interpretation is not done until we arrive at what the complete picture that the biblical author—capital A—and the biblical author—lower A—expected us to have when we read his book.

That’s helpful, and ended to know that all Scripture is given and profitable. God gave it. God intended it. It’s intended to help us. I think sometimes—I’ll sometimes stay when I’m teaching somewhere, I’m going to meet—we’re going to meet, for instance, Hosea in heaven someday, and he might say to us, ‘How did my—how did my book help you? I labored over that.’ And we want to be able to have an answer to that question. We don’t want to say—I mean­­—

JD: He was writing for you.

He was writing for us. Yeah. So if we—if we said to him, ‘I did, Hosea, I—it just seemed strange, and you use strange words, and I found it uninteresting,’ that I may—that not be said of us. May we instead join in the struggle to say, ‘Lord, you put this here for a reason, and a Spirit-filled man put this down for my help and the help of many.’

JD: That’s right, Tom. That’s right. I look forward to these coming weeks when we can step by step, with examples from Scripture, unpack the close, continuing, and complete biblical context for approaching Old Testament prophecy.

TK: Perfect. I’m going to put some links in the show notes just of some things that’ll help. But Jason, look forward at next week.

JD: Awesome, Tom. Thanks.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Next week, we continue our study of the Old Testament prophets. For additional resources connected to the prophets, go to our show notes. For resources related to biblical theology, visit HandsToThePlow.org or JasonDerouchie.com.