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The Bible Breakdown
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The Bible Breakdown
Hosea 06: Shallow Promises VS Deep Promises
The reckless love of God takes center stage in Hosea chapter 6, where we confront the stark difference between our shallow promises and God's deep covenant faithfulness. When was the last time you made a desperate bargain with God? "If you get me out of this ticket, I'll never speed again." Sound familiar?
Pastor Brandon guides us through this profound chapter where God exposes our tendency toward temporary devotion—love that "vanishes like morning mist." With remarkable candor, he challenges us to examine how we sometimes treat Jesus as a spiritual credit card, swiping for forgiveness whenever convenient rather than pursuing genuine relationship. Through the continuing story of Hosea and Gomer, we see a powerful metaphor of God's persistent pursuit of His unfaithful people.
The heart of this message centers on God's declaration: "I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings." This revolutionary statement upends our transactional approach to faith. Drawing from personal ministry experience, Pastor Brandon shares why his church moved away from routine "sinner's prayers" toward more meaningful expressions of commitment, seeking to foster authentic relationship with Christ rather than religious performance.
What does it mean to stop cheapening the cross by using it merely as a "get-out-of-jail-free card"? How might our faith transform if we embraced the truth that we don't live so God will love us, but live freely because He already does? These questions invite us to move beyond shallow promises into deep covenant relationship with our Creator. Listen now and discover how God's unfailing grace calls us to faithful love rather than religious theater.
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon, today. Hosea, chapter six, and today's title is Shallow Promises Versus Deep Promises Shallow Promises Versus Deep Promises. There's another one of those chapters where you better get your popcorn, get extra butter on that stuff, get some salt, because it's good. This is where God is saying okay, that's what those guys are offering you, is what I'm offering you. You're going to make a choice and there's no choice at all. I mean, I'm talking about he is fighting for his bride and I'm here for us. If you're ready, I'm going to open up your Bible with me in Hosea, chapter six. Get everything ready to go. While you're doing that, if you're new around here, make sure you take a moment, like share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast, make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast it really does help us get the word out and make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. That's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job and the more we dig, the more we find. Also, I want to tell you that if you are part of our local real life church I don't know if you know this, but I come up with various different blog entries throughout the week and I post them about. I just got through doing one on leadership, but I've done one before on how to think biblically about spiritual warfare, spiritual authority. I have a weekly newsletter that comes out about the Bible breakdown, and so if you'd like to receive those, you can go to the brandoncannoncom and subscribe to the newsletter and everything I publish. You will get there, and it's just my way of trying to help us think biblically about the world around us. So if you got that, you want to do that, we're going to jump into God's Word together.
Speaker 0:So if you've been with us over the past few days, then you know we've been walking through the book of Hosea and I love the fact that I guarantee you there's a few of you who have never read Hosea. You kind of skipped over it because it was those minor prophets, and now it's one of your favorite books of the Bible. You know it is because this is some juicy stuff, and so if you haven't been with us, this is about the reckless love of God and in chapter one God went to Hosea. If you remember, he is a prophet in the northern kingdom. Remember Israel? Split in two. You got Israel in the north, judah in the south. He's in the northern kingdom, he's alive at the same time as Isaiah and God tells Hosea I want you to go marry a prostitute. Say what, god, you heard me. I want you to marry a prostitute. Her name is Gomer, not Gomer Pyle Gomer, and you got some kids. We're going to make a life and she's gonna cheat on you like a lot, but you're gonna go find her over and over again.
Speaker 0:And, man, do you remember chapter five? How? Or, excuse me, after four, how brutal. That was where he had to go buy her back from her pimp. He had to go buy her back off of some chopping block and and. But he did, and over and over again. God is, that's just like what I'm doing. I'm the one who's having to go buy you back over and over again, and I'm here for it. I love you. I'm going to keep on fighting for you over and over again.
Speaker 0:And then he looks at his detractors and he's saying and I'm coming for you fools. I mean, these are the people that are causing his quote unquote bride to run away from him. So he's like I'm after you. I mean like let's do this. Well, after he's done that, after he's been talking to them, he looks at his bride. He looks at this woman who's supposed to be faithful and she keeps prostituting herself. But instead of seeing her as used goods, as worthless, look at what he says to her today. This is just amazing. This is just awesome. All right, this is great. You ready? Here we go.
Speaker 0:Hosea, chapter six, verse one, says this come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces and now he will heal us. He has injured us. Now he will bandage us our wounds. In just a short time he will restore us so that we may live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord. Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or as the coming of rains and spring morning.
Speaker 0:Oh, israel and Judah, what should I do with you, asked the Lord, for your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight. I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces, to slaughter you with my words, with judgment and inescapable as light. I want to show you love, not offer. I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings, but, like Adam, you broke my covenant and you betrayed my trust.
Speaker 0:Gilead is the city of sinners. Tracked with footprints of blood, priests form bands of robbers waiting in ambush for their victims. They murder travelers along the road to Shechem and practice every kind of sin. Yes, I have seen something horrible in Ephraim and Israel my people are defiled by prostituting themselves with other gods. Oh, judah, the harvest of punishment is also waiting for you, though. I wanted to restore the fortunes of my people.
Speaker 0:In other words, god knows us, he knows when we're serious and he knows when we're not. And just like he has shown in the other chapters about the shallow promises that evil people make toward us, he's now, in this chapter, talking about the shallow promises that we sometimes make to God, and you know what we don't want to do. We don't want to talk about that. You know what I'm saying. Like we don't want to talk about the fact that. Can we just? I mean like, so let's just go there, right, let's just talk about it for a second.
Speaker 0:Nobody wants to talk about the fact that we lie to God on the regular. You know what I'm saying. We lie to God on the daily. Think about it. How many times do we say how about this one? You get pulled over for speeding. God, if you get me out of this ticket, I am never going to speed you the rest of my life. You know you are speeding before the end of the day.
Speaker 0:God, if you answer this prayer request, I'm not going to ask you for anything else. God, if you forgive me of this sin, I am never going to sin again. Going to ask you for anything else. God, if you forgive me of this sin, I am never going to sin again. God, if you do this, god if you do that, and how many times? Okay, here's one we really don't want to talk about how many times we go to church on Sunday and we turn over a new leaf for like an hour you know what I'm saying when we do all the things we raise our hand at the right time, we pray the right prayer, all this kind of stuff and then we act like it's all okay.
Speaker 0:Can I tell you one of the reasons why and this is I know this is so local and I'm trying not to be too local because I know we've got people who listen and watch all over the world at this point, but at our local church we used to do the whole thing, like a lot of churches do, and that is, at the end of the service we would explain what salvation is and, and we will give people an opportunity to pray the prayer of salvation. Repeat after me. All that good stuff, and I think that's beautiful. I think that's wonderful. But one of the things that started to grieve my soul as I started noticing that a lot of people would fill out our connect card and I know because they put their name down and they would mark that they hadn't gotten saved that day, I was like, no, wait a minute, we keep records of this stuff. You marked you got saved two weeks ago and then eight weeks ago and then 12 weeks ago, and what it was is they were turning over a new leaf every week. You know like, hey, listen, I sinned a whole lot, so let me just get God's forgiveness. God ain't ever gonna do that again, knowing good and well, you're gonna do it. You know what I mean and I'm not putting shade on you. We've all done this right, and so one of the reasons why we stopped doing the sinner's prayer as a corporate thing is because I wanted it to mean something.
Speaker 0:I felt like that in, at least in our local church not with everybody, of course, right, but with some people it kind of lost something. And so what we do now is we talk about what salvation is we have the plan of salvation on the back of our Connect card and about what salvation is. We have the plan of salvation on the back of our connect card and we say we're going to have one more song of worship and if you would like to receive salvation, do something. You'll get out of your seat. We have a table in the back of our auditorium and say hey, I want you to go meet with our prayer team in the back. I want you to tell them take them this card. I want to give my life to Jesus and they're going to pray with you and they're going to be right there celebrating you as you come into the kingdom of God.
Speaker 0:It's a beautiful thing, and the reason why is because we wanted to try to get rid of some of that turning over new leafs and we wanted to see like we wanted to cost you something like come to Jesus, let it be real, right. And if we're not careful. If we're not careful, then we can pray to God only to get out of trouble, not to get into a relationship. And the thing is is that Jesus did not die on the cross just to be our get-out-of-jail-free card. Jesus died on the cross and rose again to set us free from sin and death so that we could enter into his kingdom, have fellowship with him, become heirs of the kingdom of God, become a kingdom of priests and our God, children of God. First, john says see how very much our father loves us, because he calls us his children, because that is what we are. We're no longer in the kingdom of darkness, we're the kingdom of light. That's what he came for.
Speaker 0:So me, you, everybody around you, here's my challenge to us, here's the application point. Let us not cheapen the cross by using it as a credit card machine where we just swipe every time we need forgiveness, but instead see it for the glory that it is, and it is our King who came to rescue us and then to live accordingly. Don't live so that God will love us. We live free because he loves us. So, no more shallow promises, but deep promises to the Lord.
Speaker 0:Let's pray God. Thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, that you're with us and that you're for us and that in all ways you walk with us. Lord, I pray that we will walk closer to you every day, not because we feel like we have to, but because we're overwhelmed by the fact that we get to and that we are so loved by you. Thank you, god, for your unfailing grace. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen, amen. What God's word says in Hosea 6, verse six. We read it earlier today I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings, in other words, no shallow promises. I want relationship, man, the amazing, reckless love of God. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Hosea, chapter seven.
