God Knows
Download MP3I wanna thank you for inviting me to come and preach here. I wanna thank Joel and Lauren for being really good friends with me and Sandra. I know Joe was a true friend. We was in a meeting. Not gonna go into all the details, but never to say the least, but in this meeting, it was somewhat contentious and 3 black guys, 3 or 4 white pastors, and Joe included.
Alton Hardy:And and, you know, I'm here in Birmingham preaching the gospel of reconciliation, and I hang out with guys like pastor Harry Reeder, and and and I don't know how people perceive that. And some people among my peers don't always see that the way that I see it. And so but in that particular meeting, you know, I know your pastor was kinda crazy. So So I ended up leaving the room and what I was told Joe said, you know what I did. Right?
Alton Hardy:I said, what did you do? And he stood up for me and I said, wow. I said, so I'm always indebted to him and your pastor for his willingness to fight with me in the gospel, here in Birmingham especially in the area of reconciliation. And so with that being said, I wanna dive into the word this morning. So please stand with me as we read God's word here from Psalms 139.
Alton Hardy:I got a little echo so I don't know what that is. Please excuse my voice. It goes through its seasons of where it doesn't want to act right, but I just preach over it. So don't I'm not sick. At least I don't think I am.
Alton Hardy:You know? So here we go. Psalms 139. It says, oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.
Alton Hardy:You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh, Lord. You know it altogether. You hear me in and behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
Alton Hardy:It is high. I cannot attain it. Where should I go from your spirit? Or where should I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there.
Alton Hardy:If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward part, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Alton Hardy:Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance and in your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, oh God.
Alton Hardy:How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than a sand. I awake and I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh God. Oh, men of blood, depart from me.
Alton Hardy:They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord? And do I not load those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred.
Alton Hardy:I count them my enemies. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. This is the word of God. You may be seated.
Alton Hardy:King Jesus, it is always an honor to preach your word and you know that I cannot preach it without your anointing, your spirit that empowers not only me but all preachers and teachers. So I ask that you would come now and fill me up again and refresh me, Renew me, in this second service here. Help me not to give less than what I gave in the first. Help me to give even more and also in the third. Come now, Holy Spirit, and just move me out of the way.
Alton Hardy:Fill me up now. Bless your people. And they're hearing in their ear. In your name we pray. Amen.
Alton Hardy:Right now, in our world, according to United Nations, or the world meter population clock, there are approximately 8,100,000,000 people living on the earth in 2024. That's a lot of people. And within this vast, human population, there are a great sense of loneliness. I don't know if you're keeping up with that, but there's a, I don't know if it's coming from COVID, but there's a groundswell according to all the research. There's loneliness that is pervasive throughout the world.
Alton Hardy:Sense of purposelessness, emptiness, and just the overall feeling of futility, of vanity, concerning human existence. I was driving in this morning, I saw the homeless guys under the bridge and I I was thinking about the sermon obviously and I just forgot. What are they thinking this morning? You know, saw a guy kind of getting up and it's hot outside and he's just flooded my mind that he's probably don't have a lot of hope, a sense of futility about his own existence. But there's also great joy in this world.
Alton Hardy:Happiness, there's prosperity both mentally, physically, and spiritually. Some people are in the best time of their lives. You know, everything is clicking. Business is good, children are well, getting all 4 point o. Everybody's heading to Alabama, nobody's going to Auburn.
Alton Hardy:Roll Tide. I just divided the room. It's at the pastor I was tracking with you till you said that. So, bro, stand up for me now. All is well, you know, and and there's a sense of meaning in many people's lives happening with people living upon the earth right now.
Alton Hardy:But God, in his infinite wisdom, and God's infinite wisdom is beyond us. It is past us. It is above us and all around us. God in his infinite wisdom, as we're in this book of Psalms that y'all preaching through here this summer, has has given to us the Psalms that covers and and spans the plethora of human life. Human experiences with all of the various emotions and expressions that happens to us all.
Alton Hardy:Whether we be rich, whether we be poor, whether we be educated, uneducated, whether we be black, white, in between, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, or whatever your ethnicity that you claim or bear. God has given to us in this book of Psalms, here in Psalms 139, a psalm that navigates us through the clutter of confusion. And there's a lot of confusion right now in our world concerning a lot of things. But importantly, more importantly concerning our human existence with questions like, who made us? Yet might be on your heart this morning.
Alton Hardy:Where do we come from? Why are we here? Who really knows us? Who really knows you? Who really knows me?
Alton Hardy:Those could be questions that are in our hearts this morning. Who really understands you and I? Does God really care about you? Me? Does he really see me for who I am really am?
Alton Hardy:That could be in the room and I know that it is. It's always in the room. People really know me for me. My wife says to me all the time, Elkins, you really don't know me. I said, baby I'm trying.
Alton Hardy:I really am. Look, I give her that husband's thing. I'm really trying to understand you. So you're not paying me any attention. I said, yes I am.
Alton Hardy:I'm looking at you. Here we go into our little thing, whatever. But, But this Psalm, it communicates to us that the God of the Bible is an all knowing God. Meaning, he knows and sees everything about you and I. What you and I are thinking at all times.
Alton Hardy:And what we are going to go through and what we're going through and what you and I will go through in the future. Both good and bad. That God knows and sees everything about you. This psalm also communicates that the God of the bible is an ever present God. Meaning that he is present everywhere at the same time throughout the universe.
Alton Hardy:There's no place in the universe where God is not at. This Psalm also conveys to us that our lives are not a happenstance. It's not a mistake. This is father's day. According to all the research, what we see, the pathology of fathers in the lives of their children is astronomical.
Alton Hardy:You wanna know who goes to prison? You wanna know who's failing to school? You wanna know who's homeless? 90 some percent, I think it's like 95% of homeless people come from fatherless homes. There's something that is detriment connected to a bank to a father.
Alton Hardy:So you should pray for dads. But this Psalm conveys to us that even if you're fatherless in the sense of a biological situation, that you're still not a happenstance. You're not a mistake, but a divine intent created for a divine purpose by an all powerful creator. This is what this psalm communicates and conveys to us. What Psalm 139 is overall is conveying to us in a profound way, in a profound deep theological way and also in a most most human practical way is that God knows, which is the title of my sermon.
Alton Hardy:God knows you right now in this room today. God knows what you're thinking, what's worrying you, what's bothering you, whether it be your schooling, what job you're gonna take, what house you wanna buy or desire to buy, who you wanna marry, who you don't wanna marry, and all of the above. God knows. He knows everything about you. Verse 1 through 6 here, the psalmist explains about this God that knows.
Alton Hardy:Verse 1 says, oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know me when I sit down, when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down. You are acquainted with all of my ways even before a word is on my tongue.
Alton Hardy:Behold, oh lord, you know it altogether. You held me in and behind me before and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge, the psalmist says, is too wonderful for me. It is high and I cannot attain it. We see here in the text, there's a Hebrew word to know, which is yada, which shows up in this section repeatedly and is conveyed that the God of the bible is an all knowing knowledgeable God.
Alton Hardy:There's there's he's he's unlimited in his understanding of you and I. He doesn't have to learn us. He knows us. God doesn't have to go to school, oh, let me figure out who Alton is or who you are. He knows us and he has divine discernment of us.
Alton Hardy:I don't really think in our day and our time here in modern Christianity, which I oppose, I like to read old books. I read some new books, but it's gotta have some meat on the bones. Don't give me I pick on now I pick on preachers. I don't know if Joel Osteen did it. I mean, not that Joel Osteen.
Alton Hardy:See, I don't know if Joel Brooks does it. My fault, Joe. The Joe here is a good Joe. But don't give me no best life, not stuff. Don't don't send that to me in an email.
Alton Hardy:Hey, you need to read this book. And so I believe in this modern time that in our day, the Adventist Christians here in America really don't think deeply about the attributes of God. The bigness of God. Like the Puritans did. The great reformed baptist theologian, Arthur Pink says, this this this divine all knowing knowledge of us, about God, that it fills us with uneasiness.
Alton Hardy:That someone and somebody knows us like this. That he knows even though I have any hair on my hand, but God can still count them even though they're in the on the side of my skin. That he can still count them and see them. You know, when I let my hair grow out sometimes, and my wife said, why don't you let it grow? I said, babe, come on.
Alton Hardy:You know my hairline is receding. I'm not gonna walk around with a half a do, you know. No. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that.
Alton Hardy:But God can count even that. And so Prince says, that this knowledge about us, it it fills us with an uneasiness because of the fact that God knows us for who we really are. Not what we try to project sometimes, but who the real you when nobody else is looking. That's how God knows us. And so the psalmist goes on to say, the Lord has searched me and known me.
Alton Hardy:This means that God knows the real spiritual condition of our souls this morning. Not what we wanna tell, but god knows the real condition of your soul, whether it's good or whether it's bad. Whether you actually will read your bible. You'd be surprised how many Christians really don't read their bible. I mean, really, whether you want more on TikTok, Instagram, IG, and all the above, and all the other stuff that really don't mean, God really knows.
Alton Hardy:When you really understand the Psalm and what it's trying to communicate, it changes your prayer life. It changes your life for real for real. Because you realize, I can't hide anything from him. Some should be in know me, the thermostat. You know when I sit down and when I rise up from the morning to the evening, you know everything that I'm doing, everything that I'm thinking about.
Alton Hardy:You discern my thoughts from afar. You know what we are thinking before they become actions throughout the day. So you're thinking about it, Gosh, I see what you're thinking. I see that you don't like that person, that you don't like your boss. You know I say to people, church you know most of what Elvis do is try to keep people together.
Alton Hardy:Come here. Reconcile. Keep loving each other. Pursue holiness. Pursue peace.
Alton Hardy:And I say to them all the time. You know God can see that you don't like her. Right? Or him? You know, in my young days, I used to people that I don't like in church I try to avoid them.
Alton Hardy:And God said, do you see him looking at you? I'm not Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder here. I can really see you, Alton. You can't hide your emotions or your feelings about someone so you might as well start coming to me and praying about it. This is what the psalmist is saying.
Alton Hardy:You've seen my thoughts from afar. You are acquainted with all of my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh lord, you know it all together. God knows the the real thoughts behind our actions. You know, we're motivated by a lot of different things.
Alton Hardy:Some good, some bad. You know, I'm a shopper, been shopping for years and And, probably most other men in this room combined, I probably have more clothes than all of y'all. Most men don't shop like that, but I do. And I don't It's just really And I'm working with it. It comes out of my childhood.
Alton Hardy:I went about 6 months of not buying anything. I was like, what am I going with shopping? And at times it usually comes to me is after I get done preaching. I just end up in dealers. While I'm in dealers, I just got done preaching.
Alton Hardy:And I said, well, what is going on with me? Growing up, impoverished, having no clothing, just the whole 9 yards, and and so I'm like, gosh, I'm enough. You don't need all those clothing that you're not even wearing. Just just let me be Abba. Let me be a dad that you're longing for because I'm here, Elton.
Alton Hardy:That's what the psalmist say. He knows our thoughts from afar, what's really behind what we do and our actions. And most of this stuff comes out about childhood. God can see that. He can see that in what's in you today.
Alton Hardy:Some days you're just sad. Where you sad for? See, god can see why you're sad. God can see why you're angry at your wife or your children. Other people can't, but God can really see it.
Alton Hardy:Like, what's really bothering you? He can see it. And he knows all the words that we will speak before we speak them. Then I love what the psalmist says in verse 6. He said, this knowledge is too wonderful for me.
Alton Hardy:Meaning that the psalmist is saying that God's knowledge of him is above his ability to comprehend. He's in awe of God. That this God that we serve knows us this intimately. Everything about us. And then the psalmist leads into verse 7 in this next stanza.
Alton Hardy:Here he says in verse 7, the psalmist begins to reflect on what I call the the present reality of God. The ever present reality of God. He says, where should I go from your spirit? Can I go anywhere where you where you don't exist? Where should I flee from your presence?
Alton Hardy:The Psalmist is asking. If I ascend to heaven, we know God lives in heaven. The earth is his foot stool. He sits there. Psalmist said, I I know if I go there, you're already there.
Alton Hardy:With all the myriad of angels and seraphims and cherubims that are saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. So that's a no brainer. What's understood don't need to be explained. But then I love what the psalmist says. He says, but but if I make my bed and shield, new king James says, hell.
Alton Hardy:If if I go to the place of the dead. If I go there, some says, you are even there. There's this idea that if you're in hell, that if you're there, God is not there. Well, hell is the absence of God's presence. That's not true.
Alton Hardy:Hell is the presence of God with his holy wrath and indignation upon rebellious and unrepentant sinners. God is there. It's just his divine judgment is upon them waiting for the day of judgment. The son that says, even there in Sheol, hell, you are there. Take the wings of the morning and dwell in the outermost parts of the sea.
Alton Hardy:Even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say surely the darkness should cover me. I get into the dark place. There's no light there. There's no flashlight.
Alton Hardy:There's no phone light. There's no light light. The Psalmist says, if I go there, surely the darkness will cover me. He says. And then he says, and the light about me be night.
Alton Hardy:Verse 12. He said, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you. God is everywhere at the same time throughout the universe. There's no place where we can escape him, his gaze, and eyes.
Alton Hardy:He sees us from afar. He knows everything about us. And you know most people don't know that. Most Christians don't know that. I tell young men that are struggling with porn.
Alton Hardy:I say, hey. When you're struggling with porn, just just say this when you when you go on the computer. Whatever it is, how you doing. Say, Jesus, I'm about to do this. I know you're looking.
Alton Hardy:You could be in the darkest room in the house. Doesn't matter where you're at. I know that you are looking at me and you already know what I'm thinking before I even get there. This passage helped change your prayer life. It helps you understand that you can talk to God about some of these deep, sinful proclivities because he already know what you're thinking.
Alton Hardy:Now God will say, now why are you doing that? You know I'm more than enough for you. You have a beautiful wife upstairs, but you got this wound in your heart. I can feel you. I tell guys, just start talking to him.
Alton Hardy:I said, Jesus, why am I keep doing this? Why I keep on this internet for this? You'll be amazed what stops happening. How God will start to help you see you you. And so the psalmist says that even in the darkness, it is light to you.
Alton Hardy:And what the psalmist is is realizing and what he's saying to us that God's presence cannot be hindered by any darkness at all. That even in the dark places of life, that God's hand is still leading him and that God is still caring for him. What an amazing and gracious truth for us as Christians to know. And so I'm making my transition here. Right now we have a lot of confusion in our world surrounding human identity.
Alton Hardy:I have a young church. Young meaning in age, gen d's and millennials. For those of us who are in the acts and baby boomers and those who are above that, you remember the song that we were singing. You would say it when he when Michael J Smith wrote it. But for those of us who were born out to 1990, there's there's something happening in our country right now with identity.
Alton Hardy:I see it in my own church. There's a lot of questions around identity. Who are we? Who created us? Did God make mistakes?
Alton Hardy:Am I in the wrong body? Am I who or should I be? And there's a lot. And and and every church is wrestling through it, with it speaking truth and love to it. And so, lots of that is happening.
Alton Hardy:Questions surrounding who really knows us? I had a young lady say this, pastor, nobody really knows me here. I said, what do you mean? We love it on you. She said, yeah.
Alton Hardy:But you don't really know me. I was like, I'm trying. But And so, it's a lot of that. Lots of questions surrounding like, do our lives really have a meaning? Is this just some random experiment that we're going through?
Alton Hardy:Is there a purpose for me in a world of of 8,000,000,000 people? 8,100,000,000 people. I dial into those homeless people that I drove past this morning that's down the street are thinking with those thoughts this morning. That there's a intent for their lives created by an all powerful, almighty God. But this portion of Psalms 139, it it it it it it really ministered to me personally many many years ago.
Alton Hardy:When I was in a time of deep suffering in my life. Where I was asking a lot of these questions surrounding the meaning of life. And I was in a deep despair. I was in the pit that the psalmist talks about a lot throughout the Psalms. That being in this pit of gloom and despair, and even despairing of life.
Alton Hardy:And I was asking, was there an intent for my life? As you read The Longest Way, you'll you'll see some of that. You'll you'll read some of them stories. Now, when you grow up without a dad and you just become a man and you're in your twenties, and and things just don't come together overnight. You need a divine visitation to be able to come and heal your heart.
Alton Hardy:I was trying to believe in God. I was trying to understand him, but the wound of the fatherless was real. Had never been told I was love in a masculine sense. And so these things, they impact us. And so I was in this despair, and and this was a Psalm that God used to to bring me healing to my heart.
Alton Hardy:I think when human beings take their lives, hope we never experienced that, but we live in a broken world. It happens. I think when that happens to them, that they have lost hope in what this portion of scripture is conveying to us all today. They've lost hope of that. In this portion of the Psalms, it it spells out to us that it is an all powerful creator.
Alton Hardy:Not a robot. Not an AI. Not your mom. Not your dad. Not your grandparents, but it was an all powerful creator.
Alton Hardy:He is the one who has created the sun mist. And not only the sun mist, but he's also created every living soul that is under the sound of my voice. Now you may think, pastor, that's really a no brainer, but it's not. When you live in a world of of of a vast pandemic of fatherless, one of the things fathers do, they give their children a sense of identity. And we live in a culture where it's becoming known to grow up in American homes without dads.
Alton Hardy:And you would think this would be a no brainer, but it's not. Come to Fairfield. You see, you can look in the eyes of a kid. 10, 12, 13 years old, and there's no sense of knowing any of the stuff that I'm preaching to you right now. That they've been created by God.
Alton Hardy:The public schools are not going to tell them. In fact, they tell them differently. You've been created by some random combustion that happened 16,000,000,000 years ago. And here comes you, little Johnny. Unless you have evangelists, Christians who know who God is and is willing to communicate that, how will they know?
Alton Hardy:How will they understand? How will they come to believe? So the psalmist says that we've been created by this all powerful creator. John 13 says, all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. That Jesus is the creator.
Alton Hardy:He has created the psalmist, and the psalmist says here in verse 13, he said, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. Let's sit sit with that. The psalmist says, you formed me My inward parts. Arteries, cells, all the internal organs.
Alton Hardy:You did me together in my mother's womb. You created me. This is a delicate formation of your power, the psalmist says. He says, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made that that you you gotta sometimes just look at a human being and just see the the the majestic of a human being. Able to move, swim, sky dye, play basketball.
Alton Hardy:Be like Caitlin Clark. Shoot from half court. I mean, that's an amazing thing. The the the psalmist says, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I'm not just thrown together overnight.
Alton Hardy:God said, I'm gonna do this over a period of about 8 to 9 months. I'm gonna make you in in in inside of a mother's womb. The psalmist says, wonderful are your works. My soul know it very well. The psalmist is like, my even my soul, we know as humans that that there's something there's something amazing about us.
Alton Hardy:The ability to reason and think and hear and and hear and take in information. That's an amazing thing. You have to stop and think and meditate and reflect on what it means to just to be a human. That this is not a random come together. All of us with different shapes and sizes and the colors of skin, hair texture, beards, smiles, temperaments, laughter.
Alton Hardy:You you could just know that's the way Joe Brooks laughed. People say, after we just love the way you laugh with all the way you move. Well, how who gave it to me? God. Who gave you yours?
Alton Hardy:Call it down. It didn't just come. God gave it to us. Let me keep going. And he says, my frame, my body was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret.
Alton Hardy:Intricately woven in the depths of the earth. This intricately is this woven, weaving, all the colors, embroidery of God putting a human together. The psalmist says, then I love this. He said, your eyes, God sees, saw my unformed substance. And this is the one the Lord really just He said, I saw you, Elton.
Alton Hardy:I saw your journey. I saw you, Karen. I saw you, Lydia. I saw you, your unformed substance. You're not a mistake.
Alton Hardy:You're not an accident. You're not a blob. You've been created with an intent. And look what he says. He says, you saw my unformed substance and in your book, stop.
Alton Hardy:That's when you read the bible and you just say, stop. He said, what book? I remember when I read, he said, what book are you talking about? You got a book on me? Yes.
Alton Hardy:I have a book on not only you, but on everyone that I've made. Now I don't know how all of this stuff works out. This is why the psalmist keeps saying, this is amazing. I cannot can't it. I can't comprehend it, but it's in the book.
Alton Hardy:I wrote your life in a book. And this is where you have to be careful with some of the modern day theology that is grows churches pretty fast. And I was hurting when I read that. He said, Alton, in the book, I wrote good days and I wrote days of suffering and pain. Because at the time, I had this Christian ideal, if I'm a Christian, I go to church, I get my tithes and offering, I pray and fast, that surely there should be no darkness, there should be no trouble come my way, There should be no I'm just gonna come in this world and I'm just gonna get in and get out.
Alton Hardy:No suffering for me. I'm never gonna get the phone call. I'm never gonna have to deal with cancer. I'm never gonna have to deal with all the things that I see happening with everybody else, but I'm the Christian. I'm just gonna escape.
Alton Hardy:I think a lot of Christians think that. What God is saying, I wrote your life in a book. I also wrote good days. I also wrote days of sufferings. I also wrote in the book, but I love what God says.
Alton Hardy:I wrote it in a book. Every one of them, the good and the bad, what you should do, what you was called to be, the days that were formed for me, the psalmist says, when as yet there was none of them. I tell people, if you wanna pray any prayer, say, Lord, whatever days you had wrote for me, that's what I wanna do and live out. If there's nothing whatever you wrote in the book before I was formed in my mother's womb, before you made me, whatever those days were, that's what I want to live into. Whatever you wrote in the book, whatever you've called me to do, whether you've called me to be a singer, a pastor, a business owner, husband, wife, how many children I'm supposed to have, I wanna make sure that I line up whatever you wrote in the book.
Alton Hardy:Whatever it is. No more. No less. I wanna line up with that. I already know you've numbered my days.
Alton Hardy:Just like you've designed my birth, and you know the day that you would allow my breath to leave. So I wanna live out what those things are. And then the psalmist, he goes on. He realized that you formed me for a purpose. Please hear that.
Alton Hardy:Whoever you are here this morning, you're wondering, do I have a purpose? Yes. The word of God says, you've been formed, made in your mother's womb. God has wrote your days. He's wrote intent for your life.
Alton Hardy:He's wrote a purpose for you. He has something in mind that he wanted you and I to do and to accomplish. And then the psalmist moves on from there. Verse 17, he says, how precious. He says, how precious to me are your faults, oh god.
Alton Hardy:You gotta let that sink in god. He says, Psalmist says, how precious are your faults, oh god, towards me. How vast is the sum of them. If I could count them, the psalmist says, they are more than the sand. Some of you guys have gone to the beach a lot this year.
Alton Hardy:Next time you go to the beach, I want you to take your hand and your left hand, and just put it in the sand and just put it up. God says, you cannot even con compare just with all the sand in your hand how I think about you all the time. Before you don't wake in the morning, God said, I've been thinking about you, staring at you, looking at you, praying over you, loving on you. The psalmist says, these these thoughts of that God has towards us is is amazing. He says, how precious to me are your thoughts, oh god.
Alton Hardy:You gotta think and I I mean, I I get weepy when I think about this. You know, I I I I wanted to tell people that I had a BC life. Meaning life before Christ. A life before I was walking in an alignment to the will of God for my life. And I praise God and I thank God that even when I didn't know him in a way that I understand knowing him, as the psalmist said, he was guiding me and leading me.
Alton Hardy:I didn't even know it. But the psalmist says, how precious are your thoughts? And and when I think about the scripture says that while we were yet sinning, while you and I were yet rebellious, while we were yet going our own way, we didn't care about Jesus. We didn't care how we hurt people. It was all about us, us, us.
Alton Hardy:But the psalmist says, how precious are your thoughts towards me. But while we were yet sinners, while we were yet going our own way, doing our own thing, the word of God says, But Christ stepped out of glory, perfect lamb of God. No sin, no doubt, no evil, never disobeyed his father, never went his own way, but always sought to do the father's will. He steps out of glory, comes into my world, and dies for me while I'm doing my own thing. Those are the thoughts the psalmist is saying.
Alton Hardy:Your thoughts towards me. When I tried to go my own way, you stopped me. He stepped down and went to a cross while we're scarfed at him. He plucked his beard. We spit on him.
Alton Hardy:Give us Barabbas. Give us his world's goods. Give us what we can that we can meet our own needs, our own self gospels. But while we was doing all of that, he was thinking of you and I, that I'm gonna come down, and I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna chase you over with my love.
Alton Hardy:This is what the psalmist is trying to say. He says, god, how precious are your thoughts? How vast is the sum of them? That's what the gospel is. You don't understand how deep the gospel is.
Alton Hardy:God comes to us. We don't come to him. And the psalmist say he's thinking about me and you and thinking about us and loving us from all eternity he steps into our world, and he comes to our neighborhood. He's been calling people to himself called the church, the ekklesia. Someone said, how vast how vast is your thoughts about me?
Alton Hardy:I love how the psalmist says in in in 8 chapter 8 of Psalms 8. He says, what is man? What is humans that you that you always thinking about us? That you're always mindful of us? What is what is it about us?
Alton Hardy:Jesus said, if you really wanna know. If you really wanna know what I think about you. If you really wanna know what I how I care how much I how much I love you. How much I I I deeply love you so much. Jesus, if you're just struggling today to understand how much I love you.
Alton Hardy:How much I care about you. How much I think about you. How much I've created you for a divine purpose with a divine intent. Jesus said, if you're struggling today, and you may be doubting today, Jesus said, just just look at the cross. Just look at me being stretched wide.
Alton Hardy:They hung me high. Just look at me just look at me dying for you. Just just stare at it. Just gaze at it. Sit in front of it and say, why would you do this?
Alton Hardy:Why would you go through all of that? Why would you endure that kind of suffering for me, Jesus? Jesus, if you're doubting my love, Jesus says, look at me dying for you. Look at me hanging. They hold me wide.
Alton Hardy:Jesus says, stare at me, look into the gaze of my eyes, and seeing me with loving thoughts about you. You think the most honest people think that? You think the guy that I saw under that bridge, he knows that he'd been made by this God who's created him, who's who's woven him in in the in the womb of his mother. He was a little kid. See, we see little kids running around, and I've been been able to live a little life, and I've seen people when I knew his kids.
Alton Hardy:This is one of the most horrifying things in the past that some of you get to see. You knew him as kids, 78 years old, and then you see them now in the 30th. They're homeless. And you wonder, like, what could I have said better? What could I have communicated?
Alton Hardy:What could I have said to them to say, no. You've been made by god. You've been created for a purpose. You've been created to put hair on your arms. You've been created to to drink yourself to smithereens.
Alton Hardy:You've been created by a god who loves you and thinks about you all the time. And this is what the psalmist as he's thinking about this, he said, I awake, overwhelmed with this gratitude of god's thought on him. He said, I'm still with you, he says. He said, oh, that you will slay the wicked, oh, god. Old men of blood, depart from me.
Alton Hardy:They speak against you with malicious intent. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh lord? Can I be honest with you as an urban pastor? I hate the contemporary hip hop music that is that is flooding the airwaves. Murder, murder, murder.
Alton Hardy:Non stop. From overhearing the projects, children, just one yesterday, 2 kids finding guns, getting shot. Some of y'all work in the ER. You see it. It's total chaos in the urban poor communities.
Alton Hardy:Tell people, what do you want me to be smiling about? That's why you're so passionate. Come in my world and just cure the abuse over and over again from young girls growing homes with dudes who are not married to their moms that are touching them in the middle of the night. What is that to smile about? What is that to be happy about?
Alton Hardy:I hate sin. I hate the wicked. We saw the movie that exposed, at least some of you did, about child trafficking? Did you walk out of that movie? Was your heart brokenness over the wickedness of human heart?
Alton Hardy:We go to the extremes that do that kind of pain to people. I have to kept walking in and out. There's, well, you can't take it. I can't I can't see ego. Even if it's on a movie screen, I can't see it.
Alton Hardy:That's what the summons is saying. He says, they speak against you with a malicious intent. He said, I hate those who hate you, oh lord. Do not load those who rise up against you. I hate them with a complete hatred.
Alton Hardy:I count them my enemies. I hate what I see happening here in Birmingham. Hate it. Sometimes, you know, my wife said, why are you always reading Carol Robinson report on who got murdered? I don't know.
Alton Hardy:I'm burdened by it. I'm burdened by it because I know Psalms 139. I know what god has created a human being to be. And when I see others who are who are who are are hurting the image of God, it does something to me. People who are just walking around shooting the image of God as though it's like just throwing away a piece of paper and bragging about it in rap songs.
Alton Hardy:There's a kid in Chicago named Jeff. You can look it up. He got killed just few days ago. And he and all of a sudden, he had, like, 15 bodies. 19 years old.
Alton Hardy:Chicago's on the warpath. And he's bragging about it. Just he said, you he he he was on the he he loved doing his Instagram live. He said, if you don't have 3 bodies, you can't even be around me. You can't even be his friend.
Alton Hardy:You don't have 3 murders on your name. You can't even come in my circle. He said, I got 13 working on 14. And the other day, all over the internet, he came to an end. I hate that.
Alton Hardy:And that's what's perfect in Fairfield, in the kids' head. They see murdering is just like something you just go to the store and drink and just nothing. Most of them are not in church. And when they encounter the gospel, here's what they hear. It's all about your life, your best life now.
Alton Hardy:Some prosperity, soft light stuff. Nothing about what I'm sharing with you. So I'm with David. I hate it. And then I like when he comes to the end, because I'm telling the church that if I was God I would destroy the eating more sauce sometimes.
Alton Hardy:And God's You know, and I'm eating that in my heart and God said, I know. I was like, what's taking you so long? Please don't come back. And so and the Lord has to just work with me. He knows his son.
Alton Hardy:He knows his servant. And this is why I love what David says here in verse 23. He starts out by saying, search me. You've known my heart. You know my thoughts.
Alton Hardy:And he ends with it. He says, search me, oh god. Do introspection on me. Know my cordia, know my heart, what moves me, what drives me. Sometimes we can't see what's in our heart, but god can see.
Alton Hardy:And that's what the psalmist is saying. He's like, I hate the evil and the wicked but then he comes to the reality. He says, wow. If you know the life of David, he committed murder, committed adultery, took a man's wife and then killed the man. This is the same guy writing the psalm.
Alton Hardy:And he says, search me no more than in my heart. Always be asking God what's in your heart. I tell preachers all the time, man, you don't know what's in you. Don't be snarling about doctor Tony Evans. Don't be laughing about some other preacher falling.
Alton Hardy:You don't know what's in your heart and what will come over time, what will happen 20 years from now or 15 years from now. And this is what David is saying. Lord, search me knowing what's in my heart. Try me to know my thoughts because what's in the wicked is enough. The only difference is we've met a gracious savior who's keeping the wickedness at bay.
Alton Hardy:That's why we should always be praying, Lord, search me, know me what's in me. Don't let me blow up my marriage 20 years from now. Don't let me blow up my business by trying to take a shortcut. Don't let me cheat, lord. Help me remain faithful to my wife and my husband, lord.
Alton Hardy:Don't let me get caught up, lord. Lord, search me. Know what's in my heart. Show me. Reveal it to me so that I don't walk away and blow up my whole family.
Alton Hardy:I know men that have done that, and women as well. And I didn't know pastor for yeah. It comes to telling young guys it's ain't a 100 yard dash. This is a this is a find of good, find of faith. And the psalmist says, try and be Lord.
Alton Hardy:Know me what's in my heart. And he says, verse 24, and see if there be any previous ways. Grievous way in me. Things that go against God. Things that hurt God.
Alton Hardy:Things that are that are sinful. You should always be praying that. And the Lord reminds me when I'm so angry at the wicked around me here in Birmingham, the Lord said, he reminds me, remember where you were when I found you? Yeah, Lord. I forgot.
Alton Hardy:Be patient, son. And what this does, this keeps us humble. Tim Keller says this way, we are more worse than what we think, but we're more loved than what we ever imagined. So both and what's in us, only God can see. And the song is just saying, Lord, please keep me from the previous way.
Alton Hardy:Keep me reminding me of your grace, of your love, how you think about me. Keep me from not going away. That's what this hymn we're singing. Our hearts are prone to wander from the one we love. It's just something about the human heart.
Alton Hardy:I don't know how it work. It's prone to wander. There's a wandering in our hearts. Will destroy us, that are grievous to you. Do that, Lord.
Alton Hardy:In Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we are so grateful. That your all seeing, all knowing, all powerful hand is not against us, but it's for us.
Alton Hardy:What a wonderful gospel truth that is, that you are for us reaching out, calling us, beckoning us, warning us to yourself. Because if you don't draw us, we wouldn't even come. We wouldn't even try to come to you. But in your goodness to us and your thoughts towards us, while we were in our mother's womb, you pursue us with a love, with a grace, and with a mercy that is beyond understanding at times. And what I pray here this morning that you would shower upon those who, lord, who feel that their lives are just a is just an it.
Alton Hardy:They don't believe that it's been created by you with a divine intent, with a divine purpose, that you had something in mind for them to do and to be in this short life. Well, you did that for me. I didn't believe you needed this. I was at a great place of despair and you made an entry into my heart by revealing to me that I had an intent. And now, here in 2024, I get to see how you take the the bad, the hurting, the abandonment and all of the above, and you work it out for your good, for your story, and ultimately for your glory.
Alton Hardy:I pray that you do that for others as well here at Redeemer Church. This I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
