The Wonder of Hosea Son of Beeri

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Don't you just love a great question. And I think that the book of Hosea, which is where God sent me in the next study. And again, I'm not exactly sure how much of Hosea I'm going to study and what exactly I'm doing, but I know where he sent me to the beginning of Hosea.

And oh, there are so many questions and the more I dig, the more fascinated I become. Again, my word of the year was that I would be gathered in great faith. And so I know that this is sending me in this direction. And clearly God has illustrated this in my life in so many different ways in the last couple of weeks.

With the loss of my mother in law and as our family drew together in that type of situation. Although, you know, there's still issues, obviously, all over our family, but we get drawn together in different ways that we just didn't expect. And so the idea of Hosea, OK. And there are, like I said, there's more questions. There are answers.

But I just give you some observations that I think are fascinating. So Hosea, his name is the original name of Joshua, which means salvation. And it was before Moses named Joshua God's salvation or the salvation of God. He put a yud in front of Joshua's name in order to or above in order to get this idea of this that's going to come from God. And so that's kind of cool that Hosea has that original name of Joshua, which again means salvation, which is very much connected to Yeshua or Jesus's name in so many different ways.

And this idea of the iron or getting Jesus's vision is very much connected to salvation. And so we have this prophet here who lived a very, very long time. And in his time, he lived through four different kings in Judah and one king in Israel.

And so they say he prophesied for more than 60 years. But beyond the idea of just Hosea and the idea of that as salvation is who his dad was, OK, which is very much connected to the whole book of Hosea. And as you might recall, Hosea was the one who was told to go marry Gomer, the prostitute.

And the first three, I believe, chapters of the book are going into that whole allegory of how Israel had sinned by having false lovers, which I'm sure we all can relate to. Well, fascinatingly, very fascinatingly to me, Hosea's father, he was the son of Beery. And when you hear that Beery sound, that's the idea of a well, but it ends in a yud. So it's a bet and a race and an excuse me, a bet and an aleph and a race, which is beer, which means well.

And then they put a yud on the end of it, which means sort of a spring of living waters. Well, you can't help but see the connection to the woman at the well. I mean, number one, Hosea was from northern Israel. He prophesied in northern Israel where, you know, Samaria would end up being. And Samaria was certainly the one that had a great deal more trouble.

But obviously Judah had its troubles, too. But nonetheless, you know, it's interesting that the woman at the well was from Sychar, right, which is in Samaria. And Jesus told her, right, that and again, referring to a well of living waters.

Well, a well of living waters is the word Beery. OK, now when we review, what was the problem with the woman at the well? Well, you know, she'd had a lot of different people that weren't her husband. OK, and I don't know about you, but I've had a lot of lovers that weren't the lover of my soul, which is Jesus.

And so to an extent, we are all women at the well. We all need salvation. And Hosea is, you know, Johnny on the spot with that idea of how to get that done. And again, very fascinatingly to me, you know, the signature verse, if there's one in Hosea or the one that Jesus quoted the most was Hosea 6-6, which, you know, you can't help but see the sixes in that, which if you are a study of Hebrew, then you would know that the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet is a letter above. Well, you know, what Jesus would say about that when he quoted Hosea is, you know, go see what this means, that God desires, right, mercy more than sacrifice and knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. That was the Hosea 6-6, you know, that Jesus quoted a couple of times in the book of Matthew. Well, when you think about the idea of the letter Vav, the very first verse in the 119th Psalm on the letter Vav is significantly connected to this.

Again, you're going to end up with more questions than answers, but you can't help but love this. The very first verse in the Vav section of the 119th Psalm is, Let thy mercies also come unto us, O Lord, even thy salvation according to thy word. Do you see that? And that word mercy in both cases of where Hosea used it in Hosea 6-6 and in where, you know, the Psalmist or David used it in Psalms, I think verse 41, the first verse in the Vav section is the word hesed. And so you're familiar with it probably from the 23rd Psalm.

Well, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. But hesed is so much more than mercy. And so when you look at the word hesed, it begins with that letter het, and that letter het itself begins, you know, if you break it down, it begins with a vav, and then it has a zion, and it's covered by a heteroteric, and it has to do with your union. And it is also, obviously, or maybe not obviously, you know, very much connected to the Habakkuk idea or the statutes idea.

But again, since it starts with a vav, you can't help but see that hesed has a lot to do with mercy, right? And it has to do also with love because it's a union with God. And you can see that all over that verse and the connection between Hosea and mercy, okay? The connection between salvation and mercy and the connection between living waters, that idea of beary and mercy. I mean, it's all kind of coming together as we think about what the whole book of Hosea is kind of teaching us. Certainly the first three chapters are teaching us that God has mercy on us in spite of all the false lovers that we have chosen. But like the picture of what God is telling us, that he wants us to have a knowledge of him. He wants us to love mercy. And if you want to be gathered in great faith with your family, let me just say that the operating word is mercy, right? And a mercy in Hebrew, I'll break it down for you, it starts with that hat like we talked about.

And that has to do with our union. And then it has a psalmic, which is this supernatural like gravity, this gathering that's unbelievable. And so much connected to being gathered in great faith is this idea of our union with God and then this unbelievable force to be reckoned with, which is gravity, which is gathering us together. And then the last letter is Dalit, which has to do with being a servant, but really to dying to ourselves. Our souls cleaved to the dust is the first verse in the Dalit section. And so it has to do with taking up your cross and doing it. But it is also meaning the beloved because acts of service has everything to do with, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments.

And that is everything to do with the letter Dalit. OK, so as we put those three together, you get mercy. And so you can see mercy has to do so much with love and has so much to do with union. It has so much to do with gathering together in service.

Right. And serving our brothers rather than ourselves, especially when it comes to being gathered in great faith. It's simply you have to die to yourself in order to make all that happen, which is merciful. It's amazing thing as you put those together. All these things to think about as we just get into the book of back of Hosea and put the connections together. What God showed me this morning. I thank you so much for listening. And I know there's a lot more questions than you may have answers. But the word Hosea and the word Beery and the idea of loving mercy more than sacrifice. Thanks for listening.