International conflict. The need for social reform to attend to the needs of the poor. A call for spiritual renewal and a focus on leadership ethics. Displaced refugees. The disintegration of the institution of marriage and the concept of covenant in general. Does that sound like a page from today’s news? Certainly!
But believe it or not, this list of world challenges actually screams from the small Old Testament books known as the Minor Prophets. The messages from the Minor Prophets have faded in the modern church. But God wants to use the topics of their world to address the challenges in our world today. So we must give renewed attention to them.
The prophets are all about relationships, our relationship with God and how it should shape our relationship with others. Could it be that here lies the answer to the world needs with which we are hammered through news outlets every day? I think so. The Minor Prophets call for faithfulness to God’s covenant and impending consequences if people don’t repent.
In addressing the concerns of our world, the Minor Prophets speak as the freshest, the wisest of counselors, for they are set in the nitty-gritty realities of life in a fallen world, but ultimately they point us to Jesus, the promised Messiah, the Prince of Peace anticipated in their pages.
In John 5:39 Jesus said to religious leaders of his day, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”
My prayer for you and me is that, as we engage in study of the Minor Prophets, we will hear the messages of these prophets for their day, understand their relevance for our day, and, with them, speak into our world a word of hope and power and transformation.