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People of Mercy-1 Timothy 1:12-17

By Mike Osborne | May 21, 2007

Introduction (before text): Do you like reality TV shows?
● The Apprentice
● Survivor
● American Idol

You may not watch these shows, or even like them, but the fact is they reflect the values of many Americans:
● Folks trying to get ahead at any cost
● “one-upmanship”
● Greed, self-interest
● Gloating in victory…complaining in defeat
● Human beings trying to beat others to the punch…judging each other resenting each other, rejecting each other
● Competition, survival, winning

I’m glad God doesn’t run His family like The Apprentice! I’d have gotten fired a long time ago!
● I’m glad God is not like Simon Cowell…I’d never make it to Hollywood!
● And if the Christian life were like Survivor…God would be perfectly just to kick us all off His island, because we’ve failed Him and broken His commandments time and time again.
● But praise God, He does not deal with us as we deserve.
● He deals with us according to MERCY.

I want to talk to you today about mercy.
I. Mercy is God’s delight.
II. Mercy is our calling.

I. Mercy is God’s delight. He loves to be merciful to people!

● Mercy is one of His primary attributes.
● Exod. 33 – Moses: “Show me your glory.” God: “No one may see me and live. But I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord. I will have MERCY on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I’ll have compassion.”
● Illus.: I love to go to movies…God loves to be merciful.
● Micah 7:18 – “You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.”
o The Message – “Mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most.”

I want to make 4 brief observations about the mercy of God:

A. First, the meaning of God’s mercy. Let’s start by defining mercy in general.

● What mercy IS NOT – it’s not being weak, or passive, or compliant, or soft on sin and injustice. Just because someone is nice, it doesn’t mean he’s merciful.
o Rolling over and playing dead is not the same as being merciful.
o Paul wasn’t a weak, passive man.
o See vss. 3-4 – Paul wasn’t soft on false teachers!

● What mercy IS - making an assertive decision to let someone off the hook…it means cutting someone slack…compassion, pity, warm affection, tender love toward someone in need

● Matthew 18:23-35
o Jesus tells the story of a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.
o One of his servants owed him 10,000 talents…that’s an enormous amount of money – millions of dollars, we would say.
o The king demanded he pay back the debt.
o The servant said, “I can’t possibly do it.”
o The king ordered that the servant and his wife and his children be sold as slaves.
o The servant fell on his knees before the king and said, “Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything.”
o The king “took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” (Matt 18:27)
● That’s mercy.
● Maybe it would help to contrast mercy with justice and grace…
o Justice = getting what you deserve
o Mercy = not getting what you deserve
o Grace = getting what you don’t deserve

o Illus.: Suppose you’re pulled over for speeding. Justice – the officer gives you a ticket. Mercy – “I’ll have pity on you, I’ll let you off with just a warning.” Grace – “Let’s go grab dinner at Smokey Bones BBQ.”

● But there can be no grace without first there being mercy. And there can be no mercy without an understanding of justice.
● Illus.: My son had an accident in my car…

● I want you to know something today…God loves letting people off the hook. He is (Exod. 34:6) “the MERCIFUL and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love.”

B. Which leads me to my 2nd observation: (meaning) Our need of God’s mercy.

● Earlier in this chapter (vss. 9-10), Paul had talked about some really bad people – “lawbreakers, rebels, ungodly, sinful, unholy, irreligious, …etc.”
● Well, in vs. 13 he says, “I was one of those bad people! I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man! But I was shown MERCY, because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”
● Isn’t this great about our God? He’s not angry at the sort of people that make us angry! He associates with people we wouldn’t want to associate with!

● Here’s a question for you: If you were writing vs. 13, how would it read?
o “Even though I was once a compulsive liar…”
o “Even though I had committed adultery…”
o “Even though I once harbored hateful thoughts toward others…”
o “Even though I was depressed and lonely and bitter and judgmental and…” – you name it.
o “I WAS SHOWN MERCY.”
● Friend, every one of us is like that servant I was talking about. We owe God a debt we can never repay.
● “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
● We have nothing with which to repay God.
● We need mercy.

C. A third observation: Notice (meaning, need) the source of God’s mercy.

● It’s nothing in you. It’s entirely of God.
● Vs. 13, 16 (again) – “I was SHOWN mercy.”
● Vs. 14 – “The grace of our Lord was POURED OUT ON ME” – God does the work…He does the pouring…I am the “pour-ee. He’s the water, I’m the sponge.”
● Mercy is something we receive…not achieve.

D. Fourth & finally, notice the ground of God’s mercy.

● Vs. 15 – “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.”
● I ask you, why doesn’t God give you what you deserve? It’s because Jesus got what He didn’t deserve.
● He got your sin and gave you His forgiveness…He got your guilt and gave you His righteousness…He got your death, and gave you His life…He got your punishment and gave you His reward…He got your hell and gave you His heaven.
● The ground of God’s mercy is the cross.
● See, you’ve got to realize that God doesn’t forgive people because He’s nice. Mercy is not niceness. The cross is not nice.
● Mercy happens because God punished Jesus instead of you.
o He absorbed in Himself the punishment we deserved, and gave us mercy.
o Illus.: The Green Mile – John Coffey (played by Michael Clark Duncan), wrongfully accused of rape & murder, has amazing healing powers…he heals the prison guard (played by Tom Hanks)…he heals a terminally ill woman…he even brings a mouse back from the dead…
● Christ Jesus came into the world to die in your place. And because He did that, God cuts you slack. He “takes pity on you, cancels your debt, and lets you go.”

OK, what have we learned so far?
● We’ve learned that mercy is God’s delight. It’s his specialty.
● And if you are a Christian this morning, you have received God’s mercy.
● He hasn’t voted you off the island…He has not said, “You’re fired!”…He has not criticized or condemned you.
● Instead, you’ve received His compassion, His warm affection, His acceptance.
● And you didn’t achieve this mercy, you didn’t earn it; He gave it to you, and you simply received it.
● And you’re not going to lose it, because it’s grounded firmly in the cross of Christ.

So what?

II. God’s delight is our calling.

● What do I mean by that? I mean that we who have received mercy are called to give mercy to others.
● Vs.16 – note 2 words, “display” and “example”
● My daily behavior is to be an illustration of the mercy of God…even in the little things that happen to us.
● Illus.: Standing in line at the Publix deli…someone cut in front of me!

Paul tells us about three specific ways we can display the mercy of God to other people:

A. Being grateful (vs. 12)

● Illus.: Janitor in a church. “How are you doing today, George?” His answer was always, “Thankful.”
● Can that be said of you? Of me? That our constant attitude is one of thankfulness?
● We can be so unmerciful toward people, can’t we?
● The woman at the cash register…the person in front of us at the traffic light who doesn’t see that the light is green…our children who won’t hurry up so we can get to church.
● Kids, are you grateful for your parents, or do you complain about them? You know, many kids don’t have parents at all.
● Students, are you grateful for your teachers?
● Those of you who have jobs, do you complain about having to go to work?
● Those of you who are married, are you thankful for the wife God gave you, the husband God gave you?
● And those of you who are single…

B. Being humble (vs. 15)

● Illus.: Death of Gerald Ford a few weeks ago… many people still can’t let go of him pardoning Richard Nixon for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal. Many of us still want to say, “Wait a minute…that wasn’t right! That guy was a crook! He should have been thrown in jail!” Well, maybe that’s true.
● But what if God treated YOU the way you’d have treated Richard Nixon. You wouldn’t be sitting here today!
● Funny how we quick we are to give mercy to ourselves, and how reluctant we are to extend mercy to others…especially to those who hurt us or offend us.
● Think for a second of someone who’s hurt you lately. Don’t you, down in your heart, think you’re better than that person? And wouldn’t you like that person, just for a few minutes, or hours, or days, to get what’s coming to him?
● Paul shows us the antidote to that kind of thinking: “I’m the worst sinner.”
● You know, it’s interesting about the Apostle Paul. The longer he walked with God, the more he saw himself as a sinner.
o 1 Corinthians 15:9 – “I am the least of all the apostles.”
o Ephesians 3:8 – “I am less than the least of all God’s people.”
o Here – “I’m the chief of sinners.”
● That’s kind of backwards from how we think about Christian maturity, isn’t it?
● We usually think, the longer I walk with God, the better I know the Bible, the more I understand theology, and the better person I am.
● The truth is, the longer we walk with God, the more we see our sin, and the more we know we need the cross.
● That kind of thinking will make you humble, and when you’re humble, you’ll give mercy to others.

C. Being patient (vs. 16)

● Illus.: My grandson Eben – he’s now 2 ½…(show 3 pictures)

o He was born from an abdominal pregnancy…The incidence of abdominal pregnancy is rare: 1 in 10,000 live births. 20-40% of the babies who survive are malformed, and only 50% survive for longer than a week.
o Many of the mothers who carry abdominal pregnancies die, due to massive hemorrhaging.
o So you can tell this little boy is very special to us.
o When I’m with Eben, I try to be very patient.
o And when I lose my patience, I remind myself how special this kid is.

● You are very special to God.
● That’s why He’s so patient with you.
● And he calls you to be patient with others.

Do you remember the story of the servant I was telling you from Matt. 18?
● Want to know how it ends?
● He went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii – that’s a few dollars.
● He grabbed him by the neck and started choking him.
● He said, “Pay back what you owe me!”
● The fellow servant fell on his knees, and said, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.”
● But the servant had the man thrown in prison until he could pay the debt.
● When the king found out about it, he called his servant in and said, “You wicked servant, I canceled all that debt of yours. Shouldn’t you have had MERCY on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”

Those who have received the mercy of God are to give mercy to others.
● I wonder, is there someone in your life from whom you are withholding mercy?
● The Lord’s Supper…
● God delights in mercy…and by His grace, let us delight in it, too.

Topics: 1 Timothy |

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