Adam Dodd, Assistant Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Backgrounds, Vice President for Campus Technology, and Director of Tandy Institute of Archaeology at Southwestern Seminary, preached in SWBTS Chapel on September 18, 2025.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
I think wow, is in order maybe, maybe we just adjourn right now and let that do its work in our heart for the rest of the day. I don’t know that I have anything to offer after that. Dr Dockery, thank you for the opportunity to address this group. I don’t consider myself much of a preacher, but I do always appreciate the opportunity to engage with the Scriptures with this community. So thank you. I also probably need to begin with a bit of something, a confession, an admission. I don’t like doing these sorts of things publicly, but since it took place in this room not so long ago, perhaps the acknowledgement should take place in this room. Some of you may recall that about this time a year ago, I preached a sermon from Psalm 19, and I did so from this little ditty right here. And if you recall, I acknowledged that I realized just shortly before that I didn’t own a hard copy of the CSB. I engage with the CSB regularly in digital format, but I didn’t own a physical copy.
I owned physical copies of the hcsb because, as I admitted at the time, I am a hardcore Southern Baptist, not just a casual Southern Baptist. And so I borrowed this from my daughter. Hence the color, because she’s a better Christian and a better Baptist than I am. And you know, it got some laughs. I acknowledged it. We had some conversation afterwards. And so the next time I preached, given that this is such a tiny Bible, I thought, I’m going to preach from a big Bible. What’s the biggest Bible i i have? And so I brought this guy right here and made reference to this guy as this bad boy, alluding to its size. It’s the biggest Bible I could get my hands on. And so I, you know, was kind of proud of myself. And just a few weeks later, actually, I think just a week or two later, Dr Yarnell, who is quite the character, deceptively, quite the character. I He brought his own Bible, a facsimile of the King James Bible, in fact, and in a very Crocodile Dundee-esque way.
You know, that’s not a knife. This is a knife said, Dr Dodd, I’ll put your Bible, I’ll see your Bible and raise you a bigger Bible. So after that, I went up to Dr Yarnell after the service, and tip my hat to him. Gave him kudos, well played. And to my surprise, he very generously gifted, gave me that facsimile. And that was very touching. One of my research Yeah, give him a hand. Well done. Dr Yarnell, one of my research interests is studying the Bible as an artifact. How has the sacred scriptures moved through time? And so thinking about versions is very meaningful thing to me. And so that was a very meaningful gift. I was touched. I was touched all the way until about halfway back to my office, carrying that thing. And I realized that was not a generous gesture. That was him saying, I’m not leaving here with that Bible. Someone else is, or it’s staying here for the duration. And so in that picture, Jim Bob, if you put that picture back up, I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a vein popping out of my head, my forehead. It is so heavy.
And so at that moment, I said, if I get the opportunity to preach in chapel again, I’m going to preach from that thing. Just to say you gave it to me, I’m going to use it. And that was my that was my plan all the way up until I thought about having to lug that thing around and all over this stage, because I’m a wonder. And so Dr Yarnell, I just have to say, well done. You win. And I am going back to my cute little tiny Bible that let me prance around this stage and walk while I talk. So well done, sir, that’s my confession, and I’m I’m done with the big Bible business. All right, so let’s get to our our passage, our text, and we will be dealing with the the fullness, the the whole of the book of hose. Isaiah, or we’ll be attempting to we’re not going to read everything, but we’re going to try to give the whole landscape of the book. So the title of the sermon is thus so but the unwavering yet unexploitable love of the Lord. And I like words. I’m trying to be pretty careful with my words and so unwavering and unexploitable are both chosen pretty specifically.
They’re not like two sides of a coin. They’re not just facts, not just realities that make up the thing. They’re more like two pans on either side of a scale or a balance, you put too much in one or have too little in another, and you get out of balance. And so we have to remember that God’s love is unwavering. He doesn’t grow weary of us. He doesn’t get bored with us. Doesn’t trade us in for another. He is not fickle. It’s his devotion or his affections. Is that me? So let’s try this. All right. Note to self, trim the beard next time. So God’s not fickle. There we go. All right, let’s see if I can navigate this. But he’s also not going to be taken advantage of. He’s unexploitable.
He has standards for those with whom he relates. In fact, he is the standard. He expects us to be in obedience to His instruction. He expects us to be loyal to him. He expects that we have no other gods before him. These are his expectations. And so I’m not sure who this morning might need to hear. God doesn’t need you to motivate him, for him to continue to love you. He doesn’t require that his commitment to his faithfulness is enough for him. You just rest in that fact. But he is also not a pushover. He does not suffer licentiousness or the fools that think they can pull it over on him. And so if that is you, if there’s someone that needs to hear that, well, then let me encourage you, exhort you, rise up and remember that you serve the one true King of everything, seen and unseen, and that comes with some expectation, and I think that the book of Hosea is adequate to let us navigate through those and address both of those extremes. And so that’s what we’re going to do this morning. Our path will look something like this, recognizing that every book of the scriptures is occasional in some way. There’s some event, circumstance, situation that providentially, God has used to motivate the author to pin the instruction that has been preserved for the guidance and instruction authority of the Church throughout the ages, and as Dr pilot reminded us on Tuesday, there’s a context to every book, and we would be remiss if we neglected that context.
So, I’m going to spend just a moment. I’d like to spend more time, but I don’t think we have the temporal budget to be able to spend as much as I would like, thinking about the political and the social situation that Hosea is living in and addressing, and maybe where the touch points in his text are, and then we’re going to step back from that, and we’re going to deal with the text. We’re going to ask, what is the theological message of the book of Hosea, and how has he used the structure in his book to drive home and make that message clearly receptive to those who are reading or hearing his book. Now, all along the way, I’m going to try to integrate the ideas of Hosea into the larger context of the scriptures, some contexts that are nearly contemporaneous with Hosea and others that are far removed temporally and geographically. And I’m doing this to help remind us and drive home how remarkably consistent the Lord is in his engagement with his people. So that’s how that’s where we’re gonna go this morning. Let’s start with the context. In the first verse of the book, I gotta get my eyes on the first the first verse of the book, The superscription, if you will, gives us a bit of the temporal setting, the word of the Lord that came to Hosea, son of Berea during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel, and Jim Bob… I think I got a slide if you want to throw that up there, just to help us get our bearings a little bit, you’ll see that there are four kings from the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom, that help us orient ourselves to the message and Ministry of Hosea. And there is one king from Israel, Jeroboam, the second.
Now, despite this excessive use of the Judean kings, instead of over the Israelite kings, to date our Prophet, our Prophet, by all indication, hails from the north, hails from Israel, and his message was predominantly targeted at the northern kingdom, not exclusively. He has some things to say to Judah, for sure, but he’s primarily targeting at the northern kingdom. And so every indication we have from the milieu of the text suggests that not just in the eighth century, where all these kings reigned, but in the center part, the middle part of that eighth century, roughly 755, to 722 and I have rounded these numbers. So if some of you are splitters and not lumpers, and this is upsetting, you just know I admit I am rounding the numbers. But right in the middle is kind of where Hosea’s ministry existed, 755, to 720 and so what’s going on in that time period? 755 to 720 what’s going on in middle part of the eighth century? Well, one thing you can see is there’s a bit of a flurry of prophetic activity. You’ve got Amos, who’s also prophesying to the northern kingdom just right before and maybe writing right up to Hosea. You’ve got Micah and Isaiah who are prophesying in the southern kingdom in and around Jerusalem with messages pretty consistent with what Hosea has to say.
So there’s a flurry of prophetic activity going on at this time God is speaking. What is he speaking about? Well, now to get to that, we have to say a bit about the political situation. And again, I’m gonna oversimplify, just to help make sure we’ve all got kind of the rough, same rough starting point. If we think about the eighth century in Israel, we can break it up into kind of two different periods. In the first period, there is tremendous prosperity and peace for the nation or the state or the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom. This is when Jeroboam, the second is reigning Assyria. The big boy on the block is preoccupied with other things, other portions of their empire, and they also have some weak rulers at this time. So Israel doesn’t really have to worry about them. They’re not raiding their coffers, they’re not coming in militarily. And so that lets the nation of Israel prosper quite a bit, at least if you’re in the upper class, because the lower class didn’t seem to feel the prosperity quite as much, probably because of some of the oppression and unfaithfulness of the upper class. So they’ve got all this prosperity, but all this prosperity just drives them further away from the Lord worshiping other gods, and drifts them further away from the ways of the Lord, so they don’t treat their fellow countrymen the way they ought to, according to the way of the Lord. So in this first half, lots of prosperity, if you are in the upper class, if you are not, very little of that felt. That changes in about the middle of the eighth century, whenever a guy by the name of Tiglath Pileser the third comes to power in Assyria. Now he is not a weak ruler. He is very strong ruler, and he has specific interest in advancing the reign of Assyria, especially westward.
And so as that westward expansion moves toward Israel, that disrupts all of that prosperity and peace, we’ve got several kings that are assassinated. Things are in a fair amount of chaos, or at least disruption. And so now, instead of them being unfaithful in the midst of prosperity, there’s an opportunity for them to go, Wait a second, maybe we should return to the Lord, because things aren’t so good anymore, and that is exactly what they do not do. That disruption drives them further and further into seeking solutions that are not solutions from the Lord. They are looking everywhere, politically in particular, instead of looking to the Lord, this is Hosea his message to Israel. It is also Isaiah message to Judah. You know some passages that deal with this. This is not just a hose Hosea book issue Isaiah in chapter 31 is very specific. Hey, you can look to Egypt for some help, but I’m going to destroy you right along with Egypt. So if you’re going to look there for help, just prepare for what’s coming. Or a past passage that we know very well, Isaiah seven and eight. This is the original backdrop of those passages telling the king of Judah, look to the Lord, quit trying to find your own solution. But look to him to resolve these issues for you. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and resolve them for you, whether you’re looking to me or not. And so those are the two ways in which the eighth century kind of divides, and the book of Hosea is kind of littered with references to these undercurrents throughout in the early chapters deal with that area of prosperity, the latter chapters deal with that time of disruption. So with that backdrop, let’s actually go to our text and take a look at a few different passages.
I’m going to hunker down on one particular but we’re not quite there yet. Let’s look at the first major division in the book of Hosea. I’m a big structure guy. If you write a paper for me in my class, I’m going to tell you I ought to be able to follow your argument by how you have it organized. I don’t want a stream of consciousness. I don’t want you to throw up on the paper. That’s just not good writing. And that’s I think, I think a lot of biblical authors had some pretty good instructional writing professors in their theological seminary days, because the structure will tell you what the message is often so if we look at the structure, we find two primary divisions in this book. The first is chapters one through three. The tone of chapters one through three is exceptionally biographical. It is all about the life of Hosea, and from the very first verse in that section, that is verse one, verse two of chapter one, it says, When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him, Go and marry a woman of promiscuity and have children of promiscuity, for the land, is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord. Now I’m not going to get into what exactly is behind this phrase.
Woman of promiscuity, whether or not she was a temple prostitute, whether or not this is a metaphor altogether, or whether or not there actually was a woman who was promiscuous before her marriage to Hosea, and then maintain that promiscuity into and throughout her marriage to Hosea, those are debates and discussions that are had. And if you take our o2 ot two classes, we can spend a fair amount of time on those, because they’re interesting questions. But I’ll go ahead and let you know where I am, just so you don’t have any doubt about how I’m handling this passage. I have no issue understanding this passage concretely that there was a real woman that she was promiscuous before the marriage, and she was promiscuous throughout the marriage, and I think that the grossness of that situation drives home the power of the message of Hosea. And if you can’t relate to an adulterous relationship like that in concept, and then see your own sin with as much disdain, then I will pray that the gospel will do some work in your heart, because that’s the point of this, this metaphor, this passage, the reality of it drives home the reality of our promiscuity before the Lord. Now, just as an aside, this is free. You’re not paying for this. How in the world can I kind of do this dance with in the ethics realm, et cetera. And I take a lot of comfort in the book of Job.
The Book of Job helps me quite a bit. In particular the end of the book, because my reading of the book of Job says number one, God is the source of wisdom. If you want wisdom, you gotta go to him. And in fact, he has wisdom that we don’t have, and if you did have that wisdom, you still couldn’t do anything about it, because he has power that you don’t have. God has wisdom and power that we lack, and that puts a certain posture on us, a certain obligation on us. And I am very comfortable saying that there is a wisdom that God has, that if I knew might be able to explain some things, but I don’t. And so therefore I trust and I lean into the concrete and face value nature of the scriptures. So that’s how I work through this. And I think it works out hermeneutically pretty well. And I would encourage you to adopt something similar to that. So now, if we continue on in this first section of Hosea, one through three, you will see that there are three children born to the woman Gomer, not necessarily to Hosea, because there is a question as to whether or not they are His children. The first child, his name is, is named Jezreel, or is instructed to be named Jezreel beak for a couple reasons. Number one, because the Lord is going to bring the result of Jezreel on the house of yahu, which is the line of Jeroboam the second. In other words, he’s going to bring destruction onto the line of Jeroboam the second, in the same way that the line of Jeroboam the second came to power.
And then beyond that, he’s going to bring that same destruction onto the house of Israel, Ephraim. So this name symbolically foretells the destruction of the unfaithful Israel. The second child comes along as a daughter, and the Lord instructs Hosea to name her lo ruhamah, all right. And this name also is symbolic of an aspect of Israel’s identity and their future. We get this in this compound form Rucha Ma has to it comes from, and it has to do with compassion or mercy, maybe love. And you’ve got the negative particle in front of that Lo, which means she will not or it will not find compassion. This name symbolizes the end of God’s compassionate dealing with the State of Israel, the nation of Israel, the northern kingdom of ancient Israel, the third child, the last child, similarly, is named lo AMI. AMI, my people. Lo Not, not my people. And the significance of this name for the identity of Israel may derive from the biological nature of the actual child, whether this was actually hoseas child or not. Again, the real life circumstance driving the symbolic and theological reality that’s that it’s communicating. So you’ve got three children, all with symbolic names that forecast the state and the outcome of the nation of Israel. Move forward just a little bit into chapter two, and you get a long critique of the mother herself, her unfaithfulness is outlined over and over again, her corruption.
And so chapter two is a critique of the woman, the mother, in the same way that the chapter one is the symbolic naming of the children, both forecasting, both giving a commentary on the unfaithfulness of Israel. That’s a that’s a pretty this is a pretty downer section. What I’ve just said, there’s not a person smiling at me in the room anymore. This is, this is heavy stuff, but I want to draw your attention to two sections in particular, one, at the end of chapter. One, verse 10. Yet the number of the Israelites will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. That sounds familiar. That sounds like the promise to Abraham in Genesis. It sounds like God is saying, Hey, you’re unfaithful. This is coming your way. But I’ve made a promise, and there’s some I’m not going to abandon that altogether. That continues on into the first verse of chapter two. Similarly, there is a reversal of the fortune on the mother at the end of chapter two. So this first section gives us very strong critiques and judgments for Israel, and then gives the hope of restoration for each of them. And chapter three does something similar in a comprehensive way. That’s the first section of Hosea The second section is made up of chapters four through 14:11, chapters, and it is completely distinct and different from the first three chapters. No Biograph, no biographical nature. Hosea is not in view. He’s the mouthpiece of God, but his life is not in view here. And so let’s take a look, just a peek at the first three verses of this big section. Because I think those first three verses, actually, they introduce the rest of the whole of the chapters, and they also summarize, represent, encapsulate those, those chapters in and of themselves, and I think you might see what I’m saying as we work through them. So verse one of chapter four, hear the word of the Lord people of Israel.
For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land. Now we need to pause here and talk just a bit about this word. Case you might have complaint in your in your scriptures, this isn’t just a whiny complaint. God’s not just complaining. He’s not just venting. This is a more formal sort of thing. The word here is Reeve, R, I, we would transliterate it R, A, B, or R, A, V, it’s a Reeve. And the idea is a suit, a lawsuit. Even now we can’t press the formality of this lawsuit on the form of the text too much, but I think it is in bounds to say that. Whenever God says, I have a case against you, he is intending to draw upon the imagery that is included or made up by the idea of a lawsuit. There is a covenant relationship that he had with Israel, and they have failed it. And he is saying, I’m going to take you to court. Now. This is a bit anachronistic and generically. It is distinct, but maybe it might help some of us get our head around what this might feel like. If you read the book of Daniel, and in Daniel seven, you remember that scene where the little horn that has been blaspheming and talking arrogantly to the Lord is called into the Heavenly Court, and the books are opened, and all his sins and transgressions are opened up. And then God gives judgment on him, or perhaps in Zechariah three, where Joshua is standing there between the angel of the Lord and the Satan in filthy rags.
He is guilty, and he is getting ready to have his sentence met out on him, until the Lord acquits him and puts clean robes on him, this idea that you are going to get summoned into God’s courtroom and he is going to prosecute you and mete out the sentence that is a fairly significant and traumatic metaphor, and that’s the one that’s being applied here by Hosea. The Lord has a lawsuit. He has a suit. He has a case against you, all right? And by the way, he’s not the only one to do this. We see this in the book of Micah. We sit in the book of Isaiah. We see it in the book of Jeremiah. This is a motif that is used by the prophets to help drive home you had obligations. You failed to keep them. There are consequences for this.
So what are their crimes? If they had obligations, what are their crimes? Well, let’s just keep reading. There is no truth, no faithful love and no knowledge of God in the land. That’s the very next those in their very next phrases. And we’ve got to pause here for just a moment and deal with these words, truth and faithfulness, faithful love. I’m not sure what your translation might have, but it has something like that. These are the words EMET and hes EMET and hesed behind these words, these aren’t just general descriptors. These two words, in particular, when they are used in conjunction with one another are used for covenantal settings. Whenever God is entering into a covenant with someone, that God behaves this way and that person is expected to behave in the same way that there is utter faithfulness. Hesed and EMET. Between those two, he does hesed, he does faithfulness, he does loyalty, he does commitment. That is his end of the bargain. He upholds it completely, and he expects that to be reciprocated. But it’s not just covenantal language. It’s not just language that is used in an agreement, and we can see that in the Psalter, in Psalm 25 and other Psalms where these words are used together, and it’s used specifically in a covenantal context. This is pretty clear. It’s not just that. This is actually tied more strongly to the nature of the Lord his character. If you go to Exodus 34 you will remember this passage where Moses asked to see the Lord see His glory, and the Lord’s like, man, you don’t have any idea what you’re asking for. He says, what I’m going to do is I’m going to come down, stay in a cloud, put you in a cleft Rock, and I’m gonna proclaim My name as the way. He says, Lord, the Lord is compassionate, and is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in in faithful love and truth, hesed the EMET.
Hesed and EMET maintaining faithful love to 1000 generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion and sin, but He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the Father’s iniquity on the children and the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation. In other words, if you want to know what God is like, He is faithful and truthful. Okay, that is who he is. And so whenever he says there’s no faithfulness or truth in the land, he’s saying you are antithetical to the way I am. You’re low on me. You’re not my people. Your DNA does not match my DNA. I am faithful in truth, and you are not. The land is not as for this. There’s no knowledge of God in the land. We’re going to I’m going to bypass that right now. That’s a very interesting phrase, probably the best understanding of that from the book of Hosea is understanding that there’s no singular fidelity to the Lord. There might be two or three other options. That’s the one that I think makes the most sense within the context of Hosea. But for the sake of time, we’re going to push past that now the next. These sins, the next crimes, the next transgressions that are listed are cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adult and adultery. These ideas, and three of them verbally, come from the Decalogue.
They come from the 10 words, the 10 Commandments. These are things that they are not to do, and these are things that they are doing specifically. And so this verse, in and of itself, is saying, just as the Decalogue told you, how you relate to the Lord and how you relate to one another, you’re not doing either well. You don’t know the Lord and you don’t know his character. You’re not his people, and you’re not engaging with one another in the way that you’ve been instructed to do, you’re violating the very generic and essence of the commands that I gave when I chartered Israel, when you came out of Egypt. Now, the last thing I’ll mention in this passage comes from the next verse. For this reason, the land mourns, and everyone who lives and it languishes, along with the wild animals and the birds of the sky, even the fish of the sea disappear. You will probably recognize the three domains of creation from Genesis. One in this passage, your land, your sky and your sea. God forms those domains, and then he fills those domains in the Create, in the creation narrative. And so you don’t behave or have the same nature as God, you don’t treat each other the way you’re supposed to, and you’re disrupting the very order of creation.
That’s the critique in these first three verses. Now the rest of this section is going to go on to give much more specific and contextually derived crimes for Israel. And just like the first three chapters, there are two major sections that show the possibility of a reversal. And so what do we do? How do we put the whole book together? And this is where I come back to the title. I think we can do this in three simple words, thus, so, but there’s a thus, Israel is unfaithful. Israel has sinned. That’s just a fact for the book of Hosea, they are not upholding their end of the covenant. That’s the fact. So what happens? So there is a judgment Israel will be judged for this. They are not upholding their end. But and with the prophets, there is very often a very significant but because the Lord is hesed, because he is faithful, He is not going to let it in or leave it with the judgment, there will be a hope for restoration, a possibility for restoration. So the book of Hosea and its patterns in the first three chapters and its patterns in the last 11 has this sin, judgment, restoration pattern. Thus, so. But now, as we end, what are we supposed to do with this? What does this have to do with a New Testament follower of Jesus, living in 2025 if God brought judgment on an ancient people for their lack of covenantal faithfulness, would all ancient Israelites in the room raise your hand please.
Okay, good job. I’m glad you know that you’re not an ancient Israelite. I Well, let me give you three ideas to get you going. Okay. Number one, learn. Learn what your God is like. Learn who he is, learn what he loves, learn what makes him smile, learn what pleases Him, learn what upsets him, learn what makes him angry, learn what makes him very angry. So read the book of Hosea and learn about the nature of your God. You will find that he is a completely faithful God number two, worship Him in response to what you learn. Whenever you learn these things about him, or are reminded about these things, let that draw your heart up into praise of who he is and gratitude that he is that way, verbally express, Lord you are faithful and upright and just and beautiful and majestic. And every time I read this book, I am more and more infatuated with how you were this way, and I can’t be this way, but I want to be your image. Will you please help me to model you well in this land? What? Better way for him to get honor, for you to confess and acknowledge who he is, and then say, I can’t do that. Will you help me to model you better? Because I believe you have power that I lack. So learn about your God and worship your God. In response the last one, take your cue from ancient Israel in the book of Hosea, recognize your place in the Gospel story, but take a cue from them.
Do I believe that the atoning work of the Son and His righteous life and His substitutionary death on the cross is adequate and sufficient to give one new life and make one a citizen in the kingdom of God. Absolutely. Do I believe this happens only by way of grace, through faith, and I don’t do anything to help make that better, without a doubt. But do I also take certain passages, even in the New Testament, quite seriously and Jim Bob, if you’ll, put that list of passages up for us to glance out when we read through this. Every one of these disrupts some aspect or some idea that’s floating through our culture right now and kind of persist in our culture, and in one way or another. If you adopt those ideas, it’s co opting or disrupting or distracting one from the gospel. So yes, all of those theological truths are right. But if you find yourself doing the math to go, how little do I have to do and still keep my relationship with the Lord, or you find yourself going dabbling with ideas that Co Op disrupt or distract from the gospel, then I’m going to, I’m going to take a warning and an admonition from the great thinker, Bob Newhart, and say, Stop it. Stop it. Remember. And realize that your God is completely, completely faithful, and he expects that faithfulness to be returned to him from you. And whenever you find yourself in a trial, lean into him instead of trying to find other solutions. And we’ll end this sermon in the same way that the whole book of Hosea ends.
Let whoever is wise understand these things, and whoever is insightful recognize them for the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in or probably better over them.
