Bible Wonders -The Lion Eagle Ox and Man are One

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? So what can we do to capture their essence inside the Hebrew letters from which he named these animals? And so, it's kind of a neat thing because you can study both the animals and their essence, but also the essence of some of these letters by looking at them. So, for example as we're talking about the heads of the cherubim, you know if you looked at the front of them it says they had the face of Adam. And from the back they had the face of an eagle.

From the right they had the face of a lion and from the left they had the face of an ox. Well, the interesting thing is in each of those animals that are described there, not the man, but the animals, there is a reish, the letter reish in Hebrew means head. And so when you think about what an eagle, an ox, and a lion all have in common is, I don't know if you've ever gotten in a pen with a real live bull before that had horns, like there's no doubt that he's in charge when he's in that pen with your, if you were gonna jump in a cage with a lion.

I mean, once again, there's no doubt he's in charge or maybe like me, you've had a chance to stare an eagle down and I think it's just absolutely phenomenal thing that in each of these cases, you'll find that reish. And yesterday we talked about the eagle, today I wanna talk briefly about the lion, but I just wanna talk a little bit about Adam's wisdom and something that we might could learn from all this, what God was showing me this morning. So if you look at the word lion in Hebrew, the first letter is an aleph, which you might know is like the alpha male. Well, a lion is like that, but it's certainly a connection to father.

Like when you hear the word Abba, right? It's an aleph in a bit, meaning the head of the house. And so when you think about a lion, he certainly is the head of the house. In case you didn't know, oh, well, I'm sure you all do know that Jesus is the lion, the tribe of Judah. So he is the head of that house.

There's no doubt about it. And then the second letter in the name lion is a reish. And the third letter is a yud.

And we've talked about that, that yud is the little that means a lot. And it is the letter that begins the name of Jesus. It's the beginning letter of the word Jehovah. And so you can see that this lion in all sorts of ways is definitely connected to God and would be a picture. And you can't help but wonder when God made the cherubim, did he make them before he made the animals and they had their essence or did the cherubim were sort of a picture of the essence of the animals that we would be able to see here on earth. But Adam had the joy of describing their essence in their names.

As you see, the animals were paraded in front of Adam and he named them. So as I was thinking about this concept, God just kept hearing in my head, hear, O Israel, the Lord is one. Which actually the verse itself reads a little bit differently than that, but that's what I kept hearing in my head.

So I decided, wow, these cherubim had four faces, yet they were one or they were in one accord, so to speak. And so I decided to go look at that verse and there's a couple very significant things. When he says hear, O Israel, that word hear is very much connected to the word name because hear in Hebrew would be pronounced Shama, but it's spelled almost exactly like Shem. You might have heard that means name.

So it's a shin and a mem that means name. Well, you put a ion on the backside of that or sort of yoking to that and you get the word hear. So when he's saying hear, it's like when you call somebody's name, you get their attention. And so it's like, hey, Robbie, you're gonna get their attention. So when he says hear, O Israel, in other words, he's calling their name and he's getting their attention. So this is obviously significant. The word Israel, when you really think about it, is a beautiful thing in this particular context because when Jacob got his name, the way he got it was by wrestling with God. And I don't know if you ever noticed, but boys love to wrestle with their dad.

And why is that? Because they love to test their strength. I can remember wrestling my dad. He was like iron to me when I was a little kid. Like man, wrestling him was like wrestling the best.

It's a great way to test your strength. And so this is exactly what Jacob was doing. He was a contender. He was contending with God. He was wrestling with God.

He was testing his strength. And I don't know if you've ever noticed, wonderful disciples have a tendency to contend, wrestle with God throughout their life with tough questions they take to God like David did in the Psalms. And so here he is saying, God is saying, listen, you contenders, those of you who have tough questions for God, hear this, right? And then he used a double name. He says, the Lord, which means Yehovah is what's translated, Yehovah Elohai, which we talked about those words in the names of God. So we use a double name of God. And so you've got two words, but then he says, is Yahweh a God? In other words, one God, one Lord. So again, we're seeing the four faces of a cherubim.

And I don't know many people like this, but I do, that they have different faces. They used in different circumstances, yet they are united. And the beauty of the church was in one accord, clearly when in the book of Acts. And so the word one is a phenomenal word because it is a numeral, but it has the power of an adjective. In other words, the word one can mean united. It can also mean that it's the best. In other words, it's first in line, like we're number one, that's an adjective.

It's singular. In other words, it means it's simply one thing, but also can mean an indefinite article like someone, right? Or it can mean that it's incomparable, like there's only one. It also can mean in time, once upon a time, one time. So there's another aspect of the word one.

But when you really look at the word Akkad in Hebrew, it is very much, again, starts with an aleph. It means the head, which makes sense because it's number one. And then the next letter, when you look at that letter, it is the word for united. It means marriage to an extent. It's a female energy and a male energy underneath a hoopah. And so this is a united word.

So when you think about one, you've got the head, you've got united, that's another letter. And then the last letter in the word Akkad, which is beautiful, is a dalit. And a dalit means help, right?

And so like when God was looking at all those animals, he was trying to find Adam a help meat, right? And that word help, like every little kid you ever met, they always have a million questions, they're contenders, right? They always, what is this, what is that?

Everything's always unfair because they're contenders. But then they always wanna help. Like, how can I help, how can I help, how can I help? And that is a big part of oneness. Like when we're united with God, how can we help?

How can we help, how can we help? And certainly when you see those heads in the cherubim, you can see they're there to hear. So going back to this verse, Deuteronomy chapter six, hear, O Israel, the Lord, Yehovah Elohai is Akkad, is one. And that oneness is a significant thing and a significant power, right?

Your God is one. Wonder about that today on Bible Wonders. Do we have to render? Do we have to render? Do we have to render? Do we have to render? Do we have to render? I do. I do.