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Genesis 50:20, Ephesians 3:1-11
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people1 should be kept alive, as they are today.
(ESV)
3:1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is1 that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in2 God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good morning. I've had this day, marked on my calendar for months now because I've been so excited, about one of my dearest friends here in the city coming to speak to us. Alton Hardy is going to bring the word and share his story with us. He has pastor Urban Hope Church in Fairfield. Alton and I have been friends for a few years now, and, we're in a small group together.
Jeffrey Heine:And I know a lot of pastors in the city. I get together with them fairly often, but Alton is one of those guys who just makes my heart sing, and he's become probably my closest pastoral friend within the city. I need somebody older and wiser. And, and he and he's in many ways, just a mentor to me. And one of the things I love about Alton is that he loves Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:He absolutely loves Jesus. He understands the gospel, and he is a faithful declarer of the gospel. And I wanted him to come in and to share his story, not because just because it's, it really does testify to the grace of Jesus Christ, but it also prepares us for what we're gonna be looking at ahead as we come to Genesis. I do wanna give you a warning about Elton though. Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:And, the the warning is this, last time I went to Urban Hope to hear Elton preach, somebody made the mistake of falling asleep on the back row. Alton called them out middle of the service. I mean, literally called him out and, and said, hey. Go wake up, that guy on the back row. Nobody moved.
Jeffrey Heine:He goes, no. Go wake him up. And so went and woke him up, and he goes, congregation, this man, his name is Thaddeus. He doesn't know Jesus. We're laying hands on him and praying for him tonight.
Jeffrey Heine:And, and so think of poor Thaddeus, who's asleep, the back row, and he wakes up, and all of a sudden an entire church is coming to him to lay hands on him and to pray. So you might have thought at times that the preacher was speaking directly to you, but Alton, no, speaks directly to people. And, and I've been forgiving, or gracious to those who I see their eyes closed in the service. I assume you're praying. Alton won't.
Jeffrey Heine:If you have a Bible, turn to Genesis 50 and Ephesians 3. Genesis 50 and Ephesians 3 is their new worship guide. Let me read from Genesis 51st. As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.
Jeffrey Heine:Ephesians chapter 3. For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power.
Jeffrey Heine:To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he had realized in Christ Jesus, our lord. This is the word of the lord.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Joe, so much for that warm, kind introduction. You know, as a preacher, you know, I've done this a few times. I was telling someone in the last service, believe it or not, when I was didn't preach start to learn how to preach or talk till I was about 23 because I stuttered so much, and I couldn't talk. And so the way God got me out of that is help me preach. And so my first sermon haven't started since, and so it's been good.
Speaker 2:But as I was just sitting there, reflect on how I would introduce this time, you know, I typically I choke up, because I'm really in a, a special time with god in my life. I'm I'm 53 years old, and and I'm I'm actually just I'm seeing, something transpire in my life that I didn't see for a long time. And and so you'll get to hear some of that today, and you'll get to see, this man standing in front of you. I'm a big guy. I've asked God to make me smaller, and he hasn't done it.
Speaker 2:And I've always wanted to be small. I hate getting on planes. People look at me. Oh, Lord. You know, this big guy.
Speaker 2:And I don't have a lot of money, so I'm always in between seats. So it's it's just not good. Anyway, but I'm a big guy and here I am. And so you will hear some things today, that will be somewhat riveting to you. I assure you, Jesus has done a good work and he's still doing his work in me.
Speaker 2:And so it would seem like though I'm still reeling from the pain of some of the stories you were here, but I assure you, I believe in God's goodness. God is using it to bring about what he desires here for the seed of Birmingham and beyond. And so I just wanna prepare you for that. I don't know when I cry. Sometimes I cry.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I cry when I don't want to cry, and and it just comes. And and and I'm a big guy too, and so God has me crying all over the south here in Birmingham. And I just anyway, it goes from there. So but let me open up with a word of prayer, and I I dive right into it. Father, we just thank you so much for, this moment.
Speaker 2:And, Lord, I I know that you are you are here. You were here this morning. You're here now, and you're here hovering over Birmingham for your glory's sake. And so, father, I pray that as I was shared, not my story, but your story, that you just so, allowed me just to have a a part of it, a story that I didn't really know about for a long time. And so I thank you that even in your grace that you was patient with me to help me to see that that you have no mistakes, that in you, you are working all things out according to the counsel of your will.
Speaker 2:And I pray that's what you would do here today in this service as well. In your name, I pray. Amen. Ephesians chapter 3 is deeply connected to my life, calling, and purpose. I believe in so many senses.
Speaker 2:It was written for me. And it seemed, although, almost every time that that god has allowed things to take place in my life so that he was to bring me to a place where these words from Ephesians would literally be embedded upon my soul, like an imprint. And so there are 3 points from apostle Paul that I wanna bring out from the text here in Ephesians chapter 3 just to kinda guide us in our conversation here this morning. And the first one being that salvation that is all a work of divine grace and election. I didn't grow up hearing these types of sermons on god saving you, you're not saving yourself.
Speaker 2:So if you're hearing that and you've always known that, praise god. I grew up in a different setting where you saved yourself to some degree. But the reality here that Paul says that the divine work of salvation is the work of god. It's not the work of you and I. It is god saving us for himself.
Speaker 2:And Paul says, it is a gift of god. We are saved by grace through faith. In Ephesians 14, Paul tell us that we were chosen in him. When? Before the foundation of the world.
Speaker 2:I love 2nd Timothy 19, one of my favorite passages of scripture that says, god has saved us and called us with a holy calling. Not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus, here it is, before time began. So salvation, you're saved here today. You're a Christian. You are an adopted son or daughter, saved by god, made alive in him.
Speaker 2:How and why? Why do you see? Why are you here today? Why are you made alive? I actually think a lot of Christians don't really think about that as much as they should.
Speaker 2:When I typically, in the morning, I get up and I think about, you know, because I have a big family, not all of us are Christians, and I always say, Lord, why me? And typically, tears run down my face. I'm overwhelmed because I know me. I was going the wrong way, doing the wrong thing, and somehow, someway in this amazing grace, and saved the rest like me. And I was my eyes was availed to the majesty of Jesus.
Speaker 2:So salvation. It's all the work of divine grace. 2nd point. In this plan of salvation, through the gospel of Jesus, the mystery is now made clear. What's the mystery?
Speaker 2:That salvation includes both Jew and the Gentile from every tribe, from every nation, from every tongue and people under heaven. They are now members of the same body. I have to not to even bring this up, but we're in Birmingham and Black History Month for some, celebrated and some don't, and that's okay. Don't feel guilty about it. It's it's but Birmingham has this history and black and white has not been a beautiful history in any way.
Speaker 2:In fact, many people see Birmingham as still the kind of the same old Birmingham, but it's not. But people around the world come here and go to the museum and, looking at history. And when Paul tell us here that the Jew and Gentile, they had a great hostility as well. And it makes the black and white hostility not even a hostility because theirs were intense, and it was a lot longer. And it was great.
Speaker 2:They had a real mutual hatred for each other, Jew and his gentile. But Paul says in this great plan of salvation, God has taken both the Jew and the gentile, and he's now he's making peace with them, reconciling us to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility, which includes anger, bitterness, resentment, and hatred that we at one time had against each other, and that hatred is real. Every now and then in Birmingham, I'll run into some people of color. I think I'll say to me all the time, and you hear this and say as well, pastor Hardy, you're too forgiving. I said, yeah.
Speaker 2:I said, not pastor Hardy. It's this is Jesus, the fellow I met. He's just too gracious, and, I get what you're saying, and when you're letting them off the hook, and I probably some would say today, they hear the sermon and say, hey. See. Here he go again.
Speaker 2:He's he's letting people off. He's not he's not bitter. He's not seeking the revenge. And I I get what they're trying to say in the in the natural outside of Jesus. We would all probably stay bitter, but nevertheless, that is not my story and that's what you were here today.
Speaker 2:And then my third point here is that the gospel of grace this gospel of grace in salvation granted to us, the believers, is made known through the church, the eclasseur. Those in god is calling. And whom god has called, he has also justified. And those whom he has justified, he would therefore you will be glorified. And Paul says, God is calling us to make known through the church.
Speaker 2:I call it here the theater of God. We're on display before the world. Paul says, the manifold wisdom of God, which is the multifacet, the many variations of God's wisdom displayed in the unity of his people, Jew and Gentile. See, in the natural order of things, a guy like me from Sardis, I wouldn't be here in the natural looking at my story and all of that has transpired in my life. But under the banner of the cross in Jesus, I'm here.
Speaker 2:And I don't say this because Joe is sitting there. I say this all the time publicly from my pulpit in Fairfield. I can't you know, and this I cry when I say it because I want people to hear it. It's okay for 53 year old black man to say publicly in Birmingham that I love pastor Joel. I love my friend Greg Mixon.
Speaker 2:I love there are white guys who are in my life who are southerners born in the south. We're born in the south, but but by the grace of God, they are my dearest friends, and we love each other. And when I was out eating with a couple of these couple weeks ago, we had the automatic and just so loved and so much God at the table. And the guy, I grabbed him, I hugged him, and and if I someone said, kiss him on his cheek, and I just kissed him on his cheek. I said, man, I love you.
Speaker 2:And I was overwhelmed because, man, I know my story. I know I'm in Birmingham. I know God's probably looking in. That's the gospel. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:And this is what Paul is saying here. This manifold wisdom of god made known. This display of unity and oneness among the people of God, this gospel love that gives us the power to love one another deeply across ethnic lines and boundaries. As he has first loved us, Paul says, when should we do this? I always use this term in urban hope when we get to the by and by, the hereafter.
Speaker 2:Paul says no. Right now, before the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. God wants this display of the manifold of the power of the cross and the gospel to now be made known to these rulers and to these angels that he is god, and there is no one like him. Well, these verses from Ephesians came to me at a time, brothers and sisters, when I was feeling really overwhelmed and fatigued by the issues of ethnic divisions and hostilities within the church. Because I had been fighting against the forces of racism and divisions from the time I was born in the poor sharecropping community of Sardis, Alabama.
Speaker 2:Some of you guys may know what it where that is. You might even own land down there and you go down there to hunt. But just, you know, I used to walk those woods all the time. I would wake up early in the morning, had nothing to do. Poor kid.
Speaker 2:Had no bike. Had no nothing to play with. So my kind of, mindset would just take a stick in my hand and walk barefoot and just walk through the woods. And thank God that a lot of the state was owned by the land that time because now a friend of mine told me, said, pastor Hurry, you don't wanna do that now because people are out there hunting. So you don't need to be walking on people's lands.
Speaker 2:I said, okay. I won't walk in anybody's land anymore down there. But I used to do that a lot when I was a kid. Used to walk that land. My mother and father had 12 children, 10 boys, 2 girls.
Speaker 2:I'm the 9th from the last, and 3 of us are deceased. 3 boys. But back in November of 2019, Westminster School, the high school, me and the superintendent said, man, I wanna do something special with my kids. I really wanna make this this racial justice thing really impact on their lives. And he was recommending what could what would you recommend, pastor Hart?
Speaker 2:I said, well, I don't know. I mean, you wanna go see where I grew up and just kinda get a glimpse of of that story. And I'm always talking about it, but people are having a hard time because they can't see it, so maybe we have to go there. And so what we planned for. So we took about 230 people there, 21 vehicles, 15 vans, and 6 regular people drove their own cars.
Speaker 2:And we went down to Sardis going down these dirt, dusty roads. It was like something out of a movie. All these white vans, and I'm in the lead van. We're riding down Sardis looking for the places where pastor Hardy grew up at. And the first place I took them to was the place where we lived as a family, and there was a dump behind our house, a dump for the city of Selma.
Speaker 2:And it was in this dump that kept us alive because my family would go into this dump and try to find food to feed our families because, like I said, we were poor, real poor, dirt poor, and we would go there every day. It was like a routine. Go to the dump, you may find that's pretty much where we got all our tours from as well. We just went to this dump. It's taken me a long time.
Speaker 2:It's taken me a long time to tell these stories. If you'd have caught me 20 years ago and asked me about Selma, in fact, I never would even tell people I was from Sargas because I was so mad about it, or I didn't I didn't understand it. I didn't see it. I didn't understand Psalms 139 and all of the context that all of my days were written in a book before one of them came to be, and Sardis was a part of that story. So I took them there, and the kids were like, wow.
Speaker 2:And then I took them to the school that we went to. We had to walk to 15, 20 miles and they they saw how long just the drive was. And so I had to walk this every day, pick a little cotton in the morning, and then walk to school, walking past rattlesnakes and everything else along the way. And it was in Shiloh, we would get the books there in the schools that would be the hand me down books. And a lot of times, the books were hand me down coming from white schools.
Speaker 2:There would be derogatory terms in them, like the n word. You know, these were just the days that we were living in. You know, I was born in 1966, so that was normal. And then I took him to the 3rd place in Selma and Sardis to a house where my brother Andre, who's no longer living, he died a few years ago. And Andre and I, he was 2 years older than me, 2a half.
Speaker 2:He would be 55a half if he was still living. And so one day, the sheriffs come looking for a couple of my other brothers who are older. Sheriff's just looking for them. They can't find them. And so we're all of us at this house.
Speaker 2:We're all poor. Shotgun house, outhouse, the whole 9 yards. And the sheriff show up. It was almost about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and they knew my mom. My mom name was Belle.
Speaker 2:Belle, where's my 2 brothers? My mom said, I don't know. Yeah. You do. So they proceeded to grab my brother Andre, and I'm telling the story to the Westminster kids and the teachers.
Speaker 2:And they're like, wow. Is this really real? Man, we're meeting a person who's actually telling the story. And so the sheriffs grabbed my brother. They threw him in the back of a pickup truck, and they put a rope around his neck.
Speaker 2:Of course, we're hollering. We're crying. My mother was crying, said, no. Don't hang my son. We're like, no.
Speaker 2:No. No. It was probably about 8 of them, and they threw him on the back of the pickup truck. And then they would move away from pull the truck off, and then my brother Andre will be swinging through the air as the rope was around his neck. And then they would back back up, let his feet come back on the truck, and they probably did that for about 25 minutes.
Speaker 2:And we're crying and we're screaming. And as I was preparing to tell this talk to the Westminster kids, I called my brother Vernon, who's after me. I said, Vernon, why didn't we call the cops? Not that we had a phone or anything. He's ouching.
Speaker 2:He said, I don't know if you just been down south too long. He says, they were the cops. My point was it was just the life that god was allowing for me to experience. Well, then I moved on from there, moved to Louisville at 12. And while in Louisville in high school, in a school called Moore High School, we were busted out of our community, out into another school.
Speaker 2:I was walking home one day, and a couple of guys called me over to a car. I was walking by a major road in Louisville. I didn't know. I wasn't thinking. I was about 15.
Speaker 2:Walked up to the car, and those guys spit on me. It happened to me twice in Louisville, and it happened to me once in Grand Rapids, Michigan when I was spit upon once again walking to school. I don't know what it is about walking to school, but it was a part of how I had these experiences in my life. But it was in Grand Rapids, Michigan where one racial womb after the another racial womb started to happen in my life. In my early twenties, I was working at a company called Westside Beer, and it's at that company where I was repeatedly called the n word.
Speaker 2:I was threatened every day. I would go to the leadership, and they say, you just quit if you wanted to. I was just trying to provide for my family. I wanted to work, had that southern work ethic, so I was a good worker, but I was the only black guy there, and they just was was really giving me the business. And one particular night, a guy named Mark wanted to fight me.
Speaker 2:He was a big guy, and I was skinny. And because we loaded the trucks at night, so we would get out about 5 or 6 in the morning and Friday night, and we got out of work. And he's out to meet me down at the gas station. And now, like I said, I'm the only African American working at this company. It was about 15 of us working in the warehouse.
Speaker 2:So I meet him down there. It's me, skinny black guy, 14 white guys. And Mark is a big guy, big, burly guy. He has a pickup truck. I don't know what it is about these pickup trucks, but he had a pickup truck.
Speaker 2:And he's trying to get a hold of me. He's trying to hit me, but I'm fast and I'm quick on my feet. I'm a athlete. He can't get a hold of me. And but he goes in the back of his pickup truck and takes out a chain.
Speaker 2:And it was a thick one. And he picked it up, and he starts swinging it at me. And, of course, he's calling me names, and and then I you know, I was like, why is this happening to me? And this guy is literally trying to hit me with this chain, and all I'm trying to do is work a job. But it goes on worse from there, And this would be my end or my last part that I would tell you.
Speaker 2:So working at this company, where I probably, in my 53 years, where I experienced probably the the worst of what I call a racial wound. Was that this company, it was a union company, and I had working 3rd shift, And I needed to get my 90 days in to become fully unionized, meaning they can't fire you from anything. And so this particular night, I had about 60 days in. I got my foreman walks up to me, tells me to get my lunch bill, and he said, I'm firing you tonight. I'm like, why?
Speaker 2:I'm not working well. I've been here every day. He said, no. I'm firing you because you black, and I don't like you. Call me the n word.
Speaker 2:Get your pill. Walk me to his office. But as I'm in his office, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a Christian by now. I'm a part of a charismatic church at the time, and I love Jesus. And and, you know, and and then he's kinda we're walking I remember when we're walking back to the office, his office, I will never forget, he looks at the floor and there were other African Americans working, but they were part of the union.
Speaker 2:He said, I would fire them, but I can't because the union protects them. He said, but not you. He said, I'm firing you, and calls me the n word again. So I go in his office, and I can already feel tears welling up in me because I had had already these stories. But I really wasn't thinking about them like this or anything, but I just you know, I had become used to just being called names, spit upon.
Speaker 2:It was just part of just who I was. I mean, because I was born in the south. I don't know what it was. I was just man, I just gotta make it. I don't have time to kinda put up this fight or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:So I'm in this office, and I always tell this story because I cry because what I want you to put I want you to feel what I felt this night. And so I'm in his office, and he's firing me. I go get the union steward. He comes back. The union steward says, I can't do nothing for you because you're not in the union.
Speaker 2:And he leaves. And so I said, well, let me do this. Let me just fall on my knees and beg him for my job. Maybe he'll have mercy on me. And that's what I do.
Speaker 2:So I'm 6 4, £180, I fall on my face, and I begin to cry out. I said, man, I need my job. Please don't fire me, sir. And I'm wailing so hard. And he stands over me.
Speaker 2:He just goes into a racial hatred. I hate blacks. I hate y'all kind. Go back to Africa. N words over and over.
Speaker 2:Get out the floor, you dumb. He's just he was just it was just overwhelming. I'm crying so hard, brothers and sisters. I'm wailing. And this is in 1993, and it's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 2:It's not Birmingham. And I'm crying. He said, get on the floor. He goes and gets the security guard. Security guard comes in and says, Alton, you gotta get up.
Speaker 2:You gotta get up. I get up. I'm still crying. I filled out the paperwork, and I walk out. I don't know where I was.
Speaker 2:It was about 2:30 in the morning. I know if it gets in September, I look up to the sky. I said, God, I don't know where you are. I don't know why this keeps happening to me. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Just and I don't have time to go into it. That's another sermon, but I will say it on this time, guys. I say this a lot of time when I'm preaching in white churches. I went through a time when I hated myself. Racism had damaged me so bad.
Speaker 2:I didn't wanna be black no more. And so I just god brought me through that, but it was it was it was hard on me. And I know I had some suicidal tendencies in that because I just got tired. So so I walk out that night, like, where is god? Is he asleep?
Speaker 2:Is he on is he slumber? Where is he, god? Where is he? And so It was 2 months later in my church, a guy named David Ireland, you can look him up, pastor David Ireland. He has a church in New Jersey.
Speaker 2:He was in the different camp back in those days. Church 1200 pulls me out of his audience, said, come here, man. I wanna pray for you. And it's 2 months later, and I go up to him, and he's he gives me a word. He says, man, you've experienced a lot of racism.
Speaker 2:Is it in fact your whole family has? He said people despise you because of your pigmentation and your ethnicity and he's then he says, you've been so wounded by it, but he said, but, Alton, he didn't know my name. He said, but, sir, he says, but but you want to be a reconciler. You want to be a healer, but you've been wounded. But he said, god's going to heal you and the people who have despised you because of your ethnic, cultural ethnicity, they will become your friends.
Speaker 2:And I go sit down. Like, I don't know what that means, but god was starting the Genesis 5020 was starting to come into my life. Well, I didn't say this last year, but I say it on this one, and I gotta kick it up here. I was in the CRC, and, in my first time up, 3 services. It's kinda like what y'all guys got here.
Speaker 2:8, 10 o'clock, 11:30. So I had to boom, boom, boom, get them done. And I've been assigned a text from Ephesians 431, which says, get rid of all, bitterness, rage, and anger and brawling from among you. And then verse 32, be kind and compassionate, forgiving each other just as Christ has god has forgiven you. And and I went and praised the lord.
Speaker 2:What do you want me to tell the people about Ephesians 431? Because that was my text, and my pastor had assigned it to me. And I'm in front of about 1,000 well, church was about 35100 mostly, whites, about 20% black and other. And I'll never forget it as I was preparing for the sermon, and this was in 2005, Grand Rapids, Michigan at a CRC church, Christian Reformed Church, like PCA in Grand Rapids. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:As I was praying, he say, tell them the stories. They knew the companies. People couldn't believe it. It's like, that happened to you? And the question was, how do you get rid of bitterness?
Speaker 2:So something had transpired from 1993 to 2,005 where god had had worked the gospel in me to where I got up and said, guys, the only way that I can be standing here today is because of the cross, is because of Jesus, It's because of what he's done and what he's brought in my life. Fast forward. 7 years ago, we moved to Birmingham. I don't know how I really got to Birmingham. And this Ephesians 3 had been really working in my life.
Speaker 2:I was known for preaching that in Grand Rapids. This kid from Selma with all of these stories, but he was reaching and saying, Jesus wants this metaphor. He wants this thing. And so I moved here in 2 in 7 years ago and going through the process of of needing to get ordained in this particular denomination, And things weren't going right, and there were some racial overtones to it. And I remember coming home telling my wife, I'm so tired of race.
Speaker 2:I've been fighting my whole life. It's no matter where I go, in Grand Rapids, I'm at the Tom, I'm at the I said, Jesus, what about you? You said that you wanted a manifold. You said in John 17, you prayed that we might be 1. Jesus, you said that you killed the wall of hostility.
Speaker 2:You've broken it down. But everyone keeps saying, Jesus, that I don't I can't have it here, that I can't be friends with Joel, that I can't be friends with somebody that's white because there's this power. There's this learning. There's this boundary. There's these walls.
Speaker 2:There's something that's saying no else's. You can read it, but don't live it out. Stay in your corner. Stay in your pocket. Stay in your lane.
Speaker 2:Jesus, it's not what he says. You I know he said it, but don't I've heard pastors tell me this, and I keep saying, no. No. I'm not doing it no more. No, Jesus.
Speaker 2:You said you took Jew and you took Gentile. They had 18 years of hatred, and you took them and you made them 1 in the same body, and you displayed your power and your glory. Not when they got to heaven. You did it, Jesus. And, lord Jesus, if you can do it for the Jew and Gentile, can you not do that For a kid from Selma who's been told his whole entire life, this is where you go.
Speaker 2:This is where you stand. But Jesus says, come out. I've called you. You've been justified. You are warning me.
Speaker 2:You don't have to stand over there no more. And I said, Jesus, I'm believing you. So 7 years ago, I come here. I'm in Birmingham. Y'all know Birmingham, and things are not going right.
Speaker 2:And and I was gonna quit. I wasn't gonna even come into the PCA. And it was just it was hard on me. I'm gonna quit. I said, lord, I messed up.
Speaker 2:I should've just stayed with the CRC and just gone left and just kept my mouth shut. But now I gotta speak up for your word, and now I'm down here, and it ain't getting no better. Jesus, why can't we just get we just get along Jesus? Why is he everyone keeps saying, you can't do it. So I was done.
Speaker 2:And so being the guy, I'll say, this is what it is. You gotta make up your mind what you want. He said, let me know on January 2013. And as I was praying, put up the first pant, and I'll be done here. And I was so down sitting on my couch.
Speaker 2:My wife was looking at me. She said, what have we done moving to Birmingham expecting that God could do it here? And God says, what does that say? I said, well, it says PCA. Well, see, that was the company where that man stood over me and scared me and told me that I was a nobody.
Speaker 2:And god says, what if I say PCA? And then and I I so I googled. I said, wow. I said, man, PCA. God said, I have it where I want you.
Speaker 2:And then show the PCA logo. There's the PCA logo. You know what? And I end here. Here's the story.
Speaker 2:See, lord, I will tell the story every time you want me to tell the story. Why you want me to tell the story? Why do you want me to tell the lord? Here, here, this is all god gives me. He says, tell them.
Speaker 2:Tell the people in Birmingham. Tell the people that this is the hour of the manifold. That god says, I want a people. And we're not waiting. I'm not waiting another generation before I can love my brother, Job.
Speaker 2:God said, this is the hour in Birmingham that God said, I want to pour out my spirit and I wanna show. I wanna show the powers and I wanna show the rulers and I wanna show the authorities that this Jesus who has come and died and rose again on the 3rd day, who sits to the right hand of the father, that he's lord, that he's savior of his people. And right now, through the eclairs here, through the church, we may know. We may know. Urban Hope pastor for Fairfield, redeemer, and many others.
Speaker 2:We make known that our lord and our savior who died for us, who made us, who gave us a new life. We show the people who he really is. And Jesus has told us when people see it, they will know that we are his disciples. And brothers and sisters, I am here. What the enemy didn't know, he was he was wounding me along the way, and he was stabbing me, and he was standing over me, and he was spitting on me, and he was trying to burn me.
Speaker 2:But what he didn't know, that God was working out his plan, and that what he was meaning for evil, that God was gonna flip it. And God took that same pain, that same denigration that I took on from all the racial stuff. God took the same pain, and now he's burning me with a unity, with a gospel that's none of this world, but it comes from the cross. It takes black men and white people, and it melts them, and they're unifying at the bottom of the cross. That's what he's done.
Speaker 2:And the enemy didn't know that. He thought that I was gonna become bitter, that I was gonna be Malcolm x. But, no, I'm for Jesus. And I'm telling y'all today, he's good. He's sweet.
Speaker 2:He's everything. And so, lord Jesus, I submit this to you. I submit it to you, Jesus. This is your story, and I'm just a part of it, lord. And so father in your name, in the name of your son, have your way.
Speaker 2:Amen and amen.