Today I sat down with Dr. Kevin Youngblood (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Professor of Old Testament at Harding University and author of the highly praised commentary on Jonah in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the OT series (links below).
Kevin has a gift for making the #OldTestament seem less strange and more accessible. This episode of the podcast is the first in a new series where we’ll take a book-by-book approach for most of the New Testament. To help us set the stage, I wanted to ask Kevin one simple but profound question, “How does the Old Testament anticipate Jesus?”
Because the Old Testament is so strange and so remote from our normal experience, I think it’s easy for many Christians to use the Old Testament like a buffet line: we so often pick out just the things we like and we leave the rest behind. The problem is, if we take the arrangement of the Christian Bible seriously, we can’t leave all this other stuff out just because it’s weird or uncomfortable. The Hebrew Old Testament ends with Chronicles, and in English with Malachi, and both endings leave something to be finished. Youngblood thinks this is intentional: the entire Old Testament story drives us to anticipate some final, decisive act of God, and that is where #Jesus enters in.
Kevin’s commentary on Jonah is now in a 2nd edition: https://zondervanacademic.com/products/jonah2
You can find Kevin’s lectures on Jonah in Zondervan’s Master Lectures series: https://masterlectures.zondervanacademic.com/jonah-kevin-j-youngblood
Faith in the Folds is a podcast for ministry, biblical studies, and Christian living. You can find full videos on Facebook or YouTube, and audio versions on Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, and iHeartRadio podcasts, as well as rss.com/podcasts/faithinthefolds/. You can also follow us on Instagram @faithinthefolds.
