Right, don't anybody shout fire, whatever you do. Okay, I'll begin by reading you a story which Jesus told. Jesus said, if you want to know what the government of God is really like, imagine the owner of an estate. Who went out at daybreak to hire workers to pick his fruit.

After agreeing to pay the regular wage of 120 rand a day, he sent them into the orchard. About nine o'clock he saw some others hanging around the marketplace. And he told them, you can go and work on my farm and I'll pay you a fair wage.

So they decided to accept his offer. He went there again at noon and did the same. Even at five o'clock, there were still some men standing around idle. So he asked them, why have you been doing nothing all day? And they replied, because nobody will give us a job.

And he told them, you can still go and work in my fields. And I'll pay you whatever is right. When the sun set and work stopped, the employer told his foreman, call the workers and pay them their wages, but begin with the last ones we hired and finish with those we got first.

So the ones who'd only worked one hour got their pay first, and found 120 rand in their packets, a full day's wage. So when those at the end of the queue got theirs, they naturally expected much more than that, but they got the same.

When they had double-checked their money, they began to complain about the way they'd been treated. It's not fair, they said. These latecomers only did one hour's labor, yet they got as much as us, and we've toiled all day long under the blazing sun.

But the boss said to their spokesman, I'm not treating you badly. Didn't we agree that 120 rand was a fair day's wage for a fair day's work? Take your pay and be off with you. If I choose to give them the same as you, that's none of your business. I have a perfect right to do what I want with my own money, as you have with yours.

Isn't your real problem envy because others benefited from my generosity? So said Jesus, when heaven rules earth, Roles can be unexpectedly reversed. Those who expect to be first will find themselves at the back of the line. And those who expect to be last will find themselves at the front.

Matthew chapter 20, if you want to read it at home. I preached my first sermon 70 years ago to a congregation of three. My mother and my two sisters, one younger and one older than myself, and my pulpit was the back of an armchair. My father was away with the car, and we couldn't go to church.

So my mother said, we'll have a service here, and you, David, will be the preacher. And I chose this story, and I read it to the three. And then I told them the story again in my own language. And then I took them through the story a third time, drawing out any lesson I could, until finally my older sister said, isn't that vineyard full yet?

And the whole thing broke up in an unseemly mirth. And I never tried preaching again for another seven years. But that story has stayed with me. It's a fascinating story. And it's a very grown-up story too.

In the autumn, back home, we have what we call political conferences. And each political party holds a conference to decide what their policy is going to be, what their manifesto will be, and each of those party conferences has a special service during the conference.

I've preached at one of those, but I'm not going to tell you which party it was. And at both party conferences, we have right and left wing, as most people have. We have the socialists and the capitalists. And at both party conferences, this story was preached.

And at one party conference, we call the capitalists the Tories. At the Tory party conference, the preacher said, this story proves that Jesus would vote for us in the election because we believe that the boss should be able to hire and fire at his own will and that the boss should decide the wages. This, they said, is what we call laissez-faire, the free market.

The only problem was that at the Socialist Party conference, a preacher took the same story to prove that Jesus would vote for the left wing, not the right wing. And he said, this proves that Jesus was interested in a full minimum wage for everybody who worked, whether they had work or not. And this is what we stand for.

So what do you make of all that? I'll tell you what I make, make of Jesus' story, that Jesus has no idea of personnel management. Because this story could end with the words, and they lived unhappily ever after. This boss wrecked the whole labor market in one day. You know this story and what happened.

Every story Jesus told is true to life and is not true to life. And it's the not true to life bit that brings the shock, the surprise. It's like a scorpion. It's got a real sting in the tail. And it usually comes at the end.

It's an ordinary day. The owner of the orchard or estate is looking for workers and he pulls them in and they work. Everything is normal until the time comes to pay at the end. And then this owner tactlessly says, pay the last workers first.

Now, if he wanted to be generous, he should have paid the first workers and let them go and then told the rest, and I'll give you the same as they got. But he didn't. He said, pay first those who've worked for only an hour. And then they found a full day's wage in their pay packet.

And the others naturally said, well, he'll give more to us. But he didn't. They all got the same. And that's when the shock comes in. If you don't believe that this is good personnel management, let me ask you, what do you think would happen the next day when the man went out to look for laborers in the vineyard?

There's nobody around at nine o'clock in the morning. There's nobody around at midday. There's nobody around until five o'clock and then they're all there queuing up for a job that will give them a day's wage.

Can you see it? And some people say, oh, well, Jesus was talking about heaven where we'll all get an equal reward. But if this is heaven, I don't want to go there. We'll be arguing about wages and hours for the rest of eternity.

But you see, with Jesus, heaven came to earth and a whole new operation began according to heavenly principles and not earthly. And that's where the shock comes in. It's about this world. And it's asking a question of every one of us. Do you live by earthly principles or heavenly principles? Or which kingdom are you living in on earth right now?

For the kingdoms of earth are based on merit. M-E-R-I-T. We are accustomed to a meritocracy, whether it's capitalist or socialist. The kingdom of earth stands for human rights. And we have a right to money. We have a right to work. We have a right.

The kingdom of heaven doesn't operate on that basis. In the kingdom of heaven, you don't have any rights. And if you live on earth in the kingdom of heaven, you're in trouble with the world.

Let's try and get into this story. And I believe that when you read the Bible, you should get your heart into it, get your emotions into it. So let me try and help you to do that. Just suppose this happened to you at your place of work. You work all week and then someone is taken on on Friday afternoon.

And they get the same wages as you. Now, how will you feel? Well, I know the answer to that. You'll say, oh, I'm so excited for you. I'm so thrilled. Hallelujah. You've got as much as I have for working the whole week. Congratulations. I know that's how you do it. Isn't it?

No? Of course it isn't. You would be resentful just as these workers were. You would be angry with your boss. You would say, it's not fair.

Do you know, my three children learned to say that. We never taught them to say it, but they learned that. They learned the word no before they learned the word yes. And they had built into them a sense of justice.

And somehow, If anything wasn't fair, they got upset. I was the same when I was a boy. And when mother gave us an apple and said, divide that between the two of you, we watched each other carefully. One began to cut it up and the other was watching. That's not in the middle.

And you know, when you say it's not fair, your face screws up. Have you noticed that's not fair? And every child learns to say that. The tragedy is that many people go right through life saying just that. They never grow up.

And I've watched a strike in England where many people were on strike and where the workers were shouting. It's not fair. And their face screwed up just like a little child's. It's not fair.

You know, I was called on the phone one day by the chief nursing officer of our local hospital. And she said, I've got a man who wants to talk to a priest. And I said, well, I'm not a priest. I'm a pastor, but I'll come.

And I went to the hospital and here's a dear old man sitting in bed. And I went and sat by the bed and I said, I gather you want to talk to someone. What do you want to talk about?

And he said, it's not fair. I said, what's not fair? He said, I'm in hospital. And he said, I've lived a good upright life. What am I doing here?

And I said, well... Have you never been in hospital before? He said, Never. I've lived a good, proper life. I said, How old are you, out of interest? He said, Ninety-four.

And he said, It's not fair. He said, Why has God done this to me? And I said, How long are you going to be in hospital? He said, Ten days. It's not fair.

And there he was, surrounded by all these pretty nurses doing everything for him. And some of us would give a right arm for a bit of that. And he's saying it's not fair. Now you've laughed at him, but there are plenty of old people still saying it's not fair. God's given me a raw deal.

I haven't had what I deserve. I haven't had my rights. God hasn't dealt a fair deal for me. And we go right through life saying just that.

Well, now let's go back to our story. I have a question to ask you. Was the boss being less than fair or more than fair? You got the question? Was he being less than fair?

Many people would say, yes, he was less than fair to the people he only gave the same wage to who'd worked all day. That's less than fair.

And you know, we go through life saying it's not fair if we're not careful. And as long as we live in the kingdoms of earth, we'll say it until we're 94 and say it until we're gone.

In the kingdom of heaven, nobody says that. I believe this boss was more than fair. He was fair to them all. He gave them all what they deserved. He'd agreed on a living wage for a fair day's work for all of them.

But to some of them he gave more because he was more than fair. Because they all needed work and they all needed wages. He was more than fair, not less than fair. He had a quality in him. That is spelt M-E-R-C-Y. Mercy.

Which goes way beyond justice. Now the owner of the vineyard was just to everybody. He was fair to everybody. He gave a full day's wage for a full day's work.

But he was more than fair to some. And that's a picture of God. God will give everyone what they deserve, but he will give some people more than they deserve.

He will be absolutely just with everyone, but he will be merciful to some, and they will get more than they deserve. Now let's just expand that.

When you're in the kingdom of heaven, you don't have any rights. You live by mercy. Now, we have an unusual thing happen at home that I don't think you have. Milk is delivered to our doorstep every morning.

Do you have that here? No. Long time ago. Well, we're still living in the past back in England. So every morning there's a bottle, a cold bottle of white milk on our front doorstep.

Now, when we married, my wife had a bad habit. She has to have a daily fix before she gets up, otherwise known as a cup of tea. And she's introduced me to this daily fix.

When I wake up in the morning, If I feel like a Christian, I go down and make the tea. If I don't feel like a Christian first thing in the morning, she makes it. I'm not going to tell you how often she has to make it. But if I go down, I go out into the cold, out of the front door, and I pick up this cold white thing, the bottle of milk.

And I always remember a verse from the book of Lamentations, which says, your mercies are fresh every morning. And as I carry it in, I say, thank you, Lord, for your mercies this morning, which I don't deserve. I'm 80, but I still have work to do.

What a mercy. I have my health. What a mercy. Have a house to live in, a wife to love, and none of those things did I ever deserve. I tell you the truth. If God had dealt with me as I deserve, if he had been just and fair to me, you wouldn't have a preacher tonight.

But you have. And I'll tell you something else. If God was absolutely just to you, this place would be empty of every person. Because in the kingdom of heaven, we live by mercy, not merit. We don't deserve a thing. But God in his mercy gives us what we don't deserve.

I don't know how much longer I'll be here on earth. I'm much nearer. To the end, and some of you, especially down here, and my children tell me I've got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. And I accept that.

But every day now is a mercy, a gift. I have no rights to it. But ever since a man called pain... A Norwich farmer in the east of England wrote a book, The Rights of Man, and that book has been written into the United Nations, document 244, the Declaration of Human Rights.

Almost everything he said has gone into the United Nations today. And he was writing a few hundred years ago. And his book was almost immediately followed by a woman writing the rights of women. Though her book took a little longer to come to the surface. But it's there now.

And the feminists are talking about the rights of women as well as the rights of men. But the kingdom of heaven isn't like that at all. In the kingdom of heaven you have no rights whatever. But there are mercies.

Now I want to say two things about mercy before we get down to practicalities. The first thing is that justice and mercy are not opposites. They travel together.

The only difference is that justice goes so far down the road and then mercy takes over and goes much further. They're not in conflict. Our God is just and merciful and those things don't conflict with each other. They go together.

But mercy goes so much further. Then justice can go. God will be just with every human being on earth when he decides their eternal future. But he will be merciful to some. And justice and mercy meet in one extraordinary event in history.

They meet in the cross. And there's a lovely song that begins beneath the cross of Jesus. I fain would take my stand. But it goes on.

O trusting place where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet. And they do meet there. If you want to know if God is just, go to the cross. If you want to know that he's merciful, go to the cross.

But he's both, and neither is in conflict with the other. The second thing I want to say is that the person who shows mercy has a perfect right to choose those he shows mercy to. He's not under any obligation to give anybody mercy, so he can choose, as the owner of the vineyard did here.

He chose those who got more than they deserved. And it was his choice. Because as he said, it's my money. And I'm free to do with my money what I choose. And if I want to give you all the same wage, that's my right.

The person who shows mercy has a right to decide who receives it and how much they receive. It's his right. Nobody has a right to mercy. You can plead, I have a right to justice, even with God. But I don't think you'd welcome his justice.

But you have no right to plead, I have a right to your mercy. God is under no obligation to show anybody mercy. Which brings us to the most important question tonight.

Who does God choose to receive his mercy? You're all here together in one room and yet God will give mercy to some of you and not to others. And some of you will go home full of his mercy and others will go home to have roast preacher for supper.

So it's a very important question. How does God decide? Who's going to receive more than they deserve?

Well, one answer that people give is luck. It'll be your luck if God shows you mercy tonight. If he picks your number out of the hat.

People talk as if God is the biggest lottery on earth. There are people who go to healing meetings hoping that they might just be one chosen by God to be healed.

As if it's a lottery. Now listen, there's no such thing as luck or chance in the kingdom of heaven. God and luck are opposites.

And it's not a matter of luck. Does God take the telephone directory and go like this? Oh, I'll give mercy to David Pawson today. There's his name come up. Do you think God is like that?

Never. And God in his mercy has told us who will receive his mercy. And in the rest of tonight's talk, I'm going to answer that question and tell you just three things which will tell you whether you're going to go out of that door tonight with his mercy.

So would you like to know the answer to the question? It might just be your day.

All right then. Here are the three things he has told us about who will receive his mercy. Number one, he gives his mercy to those who ask for it.

That's simple enough, isn't it? If you ask God for mercy, it's a prayer he finds

Here is the cleaned and formatted sermon transcription:

We need health. We need guidance. We need money. We need all kinds of things. So we ask. We have a shopping list for God. And we run through it. Mercy is not often on the shopping list. And the reason is very, very simple. We're not that bad. And therefore we don't ask. It's only those who are really bad who ask for mercy, who are so sure that they don't deserve anything that that's the one thing they need.

When I work in prisons and preach in prisons, I often hear the prisoners ask for mercy. They know they're bad. They know they need it. They know they don't deserve anything from God. And therefore they say, God be merciful to me.

Now Jesus told a story about this. He said one day two men went into the temple to pray. One went to the back and one went to the front. And the one who went to the front said, God, I'm just so thankful that I'm not like other people. I fast twice in the week. I give a tenth of all that I possess. And he's using a little word in his prayer. Did you notice it? Five times. I, I, I, I. It's all about himself. And it was true. It was all true.

And Jesus said his prayer got no higher than the temple ceiling. In fact, he said he's praying with himself. What a phrase. It was a good prayer. It was a true prayer. It was a prayer of gratitude. But he was really praying to himself.

The man at the back was just the opposite. He was a tax collector. Not a very popular person. But a tax collector in those days was a good deal worse than a tax collector in South Africa. And the reason was that he was collecting taxes for an enemy occupying power.

And the tax collector had been told by the Romans, here's your allocation, you collect that much for us each month and anything you can get out of the people above that goes into your pocket. And they were pretty good at that. A little man called Zacchaeus was charging four times too much for the Romans and three quarters went into his own pocket. It's someone who's in the extortion racket. It's someone who's a blackmailer, someone who's forcing people to give more than they needed to because he's greedy.

That's what a tax collector was then. Do you know I read in World War II when the Germans occupied Poland and they shot 250,000 Jews into a ghetto? And made them live so close together that disease spread just like that, they appointed some Jews to collect tax for the Germans. And they said, you can charge anything you like from your fellow Jew, and if they refuse to give to you, we'll shoot them. But you collect the taxes, and anything you can get above your quota is yours.

Now, can you imagine how Jews who took that job on, can you imagine how the others felt about them? That's the situation. And in the temple, said Jesus, there was a tax collector at the back and he wouldn't even look up. And he beat his breast and he said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, for an extortion blackmailer.

To say that is quite a miracle. And Jesus said, the man at the back went home justified. I told you about the Pigeon English translation in the New Guinea Bible earlier today, where justified is translated, God, he say, him all right. And that's what justified means. God, he say, he's all right.

And it was the man at the back who was all right in the sight of God. Come right up to date, or at least up to date in my life, not some of yours. I'm coming to Germany just after World War II is over. One day I went to Nuremberg. To a large prison in Germany where the Nazi war criminals were put in prison and put on trial after the war, accused of murdering 30 million Jews and many thousands of others.

Sorry, 30 million people, including 6 million Jews who had never even been fighting. And those men were put on trial. And they were each given two things free of charge. They said, we'll give you a lawyer to defend you and a chaplain to look after your soul. And so every one of them was given a lawyer.

And then they were divided up by denomination and there were 16 Lutherans and 5 Roman Catholics. So they looked around for men who could look after their souls. And they found for the Protestants a Lutheran pastor who was a chaplain in the American army. A man who had a German name, Gerica. For his forebears had come from Germany to America years before.

And they asked this man, you speak German? Yes. You're a Lutheran? Yes. Would you come and look after 16 of the Nazi war colonels? And he said, no. They killed my two boys. I couldn't go and look after their soul. But God had other ideas.

And said to Padre Erika, you go. And he arrived at the Nuremberg prison. And the first Sunday morning, he is facing 16 Nazi war criminals who are guilty of the most atrocious murders. And he thought, what do I preach to them? So he preached the cross.

And he said, Jesus died for each of you so that you might be forgiven. One of the men was called Salkal, and Salkal was the first one to throw himself on the ground and cry out, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Goebbels was another. No, not Goebbels, who am I thinking of? Well, there were all there, Sizingkart, Keitel, all of them.

And one by one, they begged for mercy from God. And one by one, they got it. And when the time came to Mount the Gallows to be hung, one of them cried out just before the trap door fell down and he hung. He cried out, Jesus, have mercy on me. And these hardened war criminals, whom the nations were condemning to be hung, found God's mercy one by one.

There were two who didn't. One was Rudolf Hess. He wasn't hung, but he was put in prison in Berlin for 40 years. And he finished up hanging himself with an electric flex from a light. Hermann Goering, the big fat head of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, he refused to listen to the Gospel.

And when his wife and little girl came to say their last goodbye to Herman Goering, the little girl said, Daddy, please trust in Jesus. I want to see you in heaven. And he pushed her out. And he said, you believe in your way and I'll believe in mine. And an hour later, he took cyanide and committed suicide in his cell.

Somebody had smuggled it in. But the others found grace, mercy. You know, I told that story in the church where I was pastor in Guildford, Surrey, England, and afterwards a big man who was an architect came up to me and he said, do you know that I was a British soldier in Germany after the war, part of the occupying forces?

And he said, some of us in the British Army were Christians. And he said, when that trial was on, we spent nights in prayer for them. And he said, until this day, I never knew they got hurt. I was in a small house, not far from where I lived, in a place called Newborough, Thames.

There were about a dozen people there. And I decided to tell them about this. And a young couple became hysterical. They were laughing and crying at the same time. And I said, would you like me to pray for you? They said, no, go on, go on. I said, but you're obviously upset.

Would you like my wife to take you into the next room and pray with you and talk to you? No, carry on, carry on. So I carried on. And then when the little meeting was over, I went to the couple and I said, what did that story disturb you so deeply?

And the little wife said, Keitel was my uncle. And she said, for the last 25 years, we've been running away from his memory. But wherever we've gone, and they found out that Keitel, who was the chief of the imperial general staff for Hitler, as soon as they found out, they won't talk to me.

And I went, I'm just his niece. And she said, we emigrated to Australia. They found out. We left Australia, we went to Canada, they found out. And then we came to England, and now they've found out. But she said, now you tell me that Uncle Keitel is in heaven? She said, it's as if a dark cloud has rolled away.

And she said, if anybody says to me now, you're Keitel's niece, I will say to them, yes, I am. But my uncle Keitel is in heaven. Will you be? She said, that's what I'll say to them now. But you see, they were the worst men in Germany.

But when they asked for mercy, they got it. Then why don't we ask for God's mercy? Because we don't think we need it. We're good churchgoers. We do our bits. It's only really bad people who need mercy, because that's all they can ask for.

But we ask for so many things, Lord, bless our church, bless the family, keep us all safe and happy and comfortable, but not, Lord, have mercy on us. Many churches that have what we call liturgies, fixed prayers every week, always include, Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us. Lord have mercy upon us.

But for many it's just words. They wouldn't dream of asking for mercy if they were having to make up their own prayer. Are you with me? That's the first of three answers that I'm going to give you. And I've spent most time on that. That's just a warning to you of where we're going.

But let me move to the second and the third. First answer, who does God show mercy to? Those who genuinely ask for it, need it, want it. They will have it. The second answer is, God shows mercy to those who pass it on. To those who pass it on.

And Jesus himself said, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And Jesus told another story about a king who had a cook, who owed the king a huge amount of money. And he couldn't repay that money, so he went to the king and he begged for mercy. And he said, I can't pay up today. Give me a little more time, please, and I'll find the money somehow.

And the king said, I'll do more than that. I wipe out the debt. You don't owe me anything. And that cook went from the king's presence down to the palace kitchen. And he found another cook who only owed him a little bit of money.

And it says he got that cook by the throat. And he said, when are you going to pay me that money you owe me? He'd been forgiven something like a million pounds sterling or whatever that is in your rent. And he was a man who owed him one.

And he was strangling him because he didn't pay off. And the king heard, said Jesus, called the man back into his presence and said, you wouldn't even forgive that man a little money and I forgive you all that. The debt is back on and you go to prison until you pay the last cent.

And Jesus added, this is how my heavenly Father will treat you. If you do not forgive others. If you want mercy for yourself but will not pass it on, you don't receive it. Do you know that in every congregation I find people who will not pass it on? Who are resentful and bitter.

I was in one congregation in the south of England, and a man came up to me afterwards, a lovely man, he was well-dressed, well-spoken, well-educated, but he said, David, I'm stuck. I'm not making any progress in my spiritual life. He said, I was, and then I got stuck.

And he said, what can you do about it? Can you get me going again? I said, the Lord can get you going again. And I said to him, do you know the saying, where there's a will, there's relatives? Do you know that proverb?

I said, that's what the Lord has put into my mind. Why would that be? Oh, he said, I think that would be because of my father's will. He left all his money to my brother.

I said, can you remember when you got stuck in your Christian life? Can you remember when you stopped making progress? He said, you know, that's a strange thing. It was about the same time as my father died.

I said, don't you see the connection? I said, I can tell you what to do to get going again. I want you to go to your brother and tell him I'm glad that you got dad's money. I said, you'll get going again.

And then I just stood and watched his face. I wish I'd had a camcorder. The expression on his face changed and changed. He went, it was extraordinary. And then he looked at me and he said, I'll do it. I'll do it.

And he got moving again. See? Mercy, not passed on, can stop you in your tracks.

That's the second one. I remember going to a town hall in England to speak, and three people came to me afterwards. The first was a middle-aged lady, and she said, you know, I have never forgiven my brother.

And I said, why? What did your brother do? She said, when I was ten years old, he forced me to have sex with him, and she said it hurt.

And ever since, I don't like boys. She said, I've never married. Been single all my life. But she said, tonight I've forgiven my brother.

And she said, it's all changed. It's gone. All the bitterness, all the resentment, it's gone. I said, now you'll receive the mercy of God.

The second person came up, another middle-aged lady. And she said, 20 years ago, I had an awful neighbor living next door.

And she said, we met over the garden fence and we were chatting. But then suddenly the neighbor called me, you devil. And she meant it.

And she said, I have never forgotten that. I've never forgiven it. She said, it stuck deep in my heart.

But she said, David, you won't believe this. I forgave her from my heart tonight. And when I turned round, she was sitting behind me in the meeting.

Would you believe it? The third was a little couple, lovely little couple. And they came up and... She was saying, you tell him, to her husband.

And he was saying, no, you tell him. No, you tell him. And I said, somebody tell me what's going on.

And finally, they both told me. They'd been married two years, deeply in love. And then she got pregnant.

And then they got the baby. Beautiful little boy baby. But she said, the doctor told us that there's something seriously wrong with the baby and it is not likely to live beyond five years of age.

And she said, oh, I've been so bitter towards the Lord. I said, Lord, why do you give other people normal babies? Why did you give this baby to us? Why, why?

And she said, I even got to cursing God. But she said, tonight, I've said, thank you, Lord, for a boy, for five whole years.

I said, now you're going to discover God's mercy. As long as you don't pass it on, you're blocking the channel for it to come in. And so that's the second answer. If there's any resentment in your heart against your boss, against your parents, against your children, against your colleagues, against your husband or wife, if there's any unforgiveness against anyone else in your heart, then frankly you don't get mercy.

It can't flow in because mercy has to flow through. It's like electricity. So are you beginning to know if you're someone who's going to get mercy tonight?

Then there's a third answer I must give you and I will be very brief with this one. I want you to imagine you're down at the beach here. Am I pointing in the right direction? Somebody tell me.

There. There. I've got people doing this. There. You're down at the beach and someone's in the water struggling and shouting, I'm drowning, I'm drowning. Can't swim. Save me, save me.

And you're there and you pull your jacket off, you push it, pull your shoes off and you dive in and you pull him to the shore and you pump him dry and he stands up and he says, oh, thank you so much. You saved my life.

And then he turns around and he jumps back in again. And shout, save me, save me, I can't swim. And you were just putting your jacket back on.

And you pull it off again, you dive in, you pull him out. And he says, oh, I'm doubly grateful to you. You saved my life twice. And he turns around and jumps in again. Be honest with yourself, how many times would you pull him out?

70 times 7? 490? No, I wouldn't. I'd say to him, you don't want to be saved. Right? You're going to keep jumping back in. You don't want to be saved.

But I confess, I've done that with the Lord. And so have you. You say, Lord, I've got myself into a real mess. Lord, if you'll just get me out of this mess, I'll be so grateful.

And then six months later, you're back in it. We've all done it. And it shuts off God's mercy. This time I'm going to refer not to a story Jesus told, but to an incident in his life when a woman was brought to him who'd been caught in the act of adultery.

And very few Gentiles understand what is a very Jewish story. And let me tell you the story from a Jewish angle. The first is this, that the Jewish law said that the man as well as the woman had to be stoned to death, and she was caught in the act, but they let the man go free.

That's the first thing that's wrong with the case. The second thing is that in Jewish law, You are not allowed to be a witness for the prosecution if you have ever committed the same crime. And that's only fair.

And Jesus is referring to that when he says, he that is without sin can throw the first stone at him. He's not meaning that you have to be perfect before you punish someone. That would mean no parent could punish a child. The police couldn't operate.

He's not meaning that you've got to be totally without

Here is the cleaned sermon transcription:

That's a very important part of the story. And one other thing. The woman hadn't done it once. She'd done it many times. As the New International Version puts it, "leave your life of sin." She's been doing it all along. It's not just an occasional sin. It's a regular habit. And he says, "don't do it again."

What do you think would have happened if she went on in that way and was brought to Jesus a second time or a third time? What she would have been doing if that had happened was to exploit the mercy of God, to take advantage of it.

And those who go on taking advantage of the mercy of God will come to the point where there's no mercy left for them. That's very clear from Scripture. We are living in a day of mercy now, but that day won't last forever.

And so he says, "don't sin again." Well, I've finished.

I've given you three answers to the question, who will God show mercy tonight in this meeting? Who will receive his mercy and go home full of mercy? Those who ask for it. Those who pass it on. And those who don't take advantage of it. There's my answer from Scripture. Very simple.

I'm going to ask you a question now. I want you to put your hand up. I won't ask for anything more than that. But I'd like to know if God has spoken personally to anyone here tonight through what you've heard. Has God spoken to you personally? Pop your hand up. Good. Well, pop it down again.

I'm now going to pray for you. Father, I pray that those who've heard from you will reply. I ask that you'll give them the grace to know not only that they should tell you something, but that they should do something about it. Maybe ring someone on the phone, send a letter, go and visit someone.

But whatever it is, Lord, for all those you've spoken to personally, I ask you, in the name of Jesus, show them what to do about it so that the moment is not wasted. Send them out of this building determined to put that situation right. Determined to repent and not to go on doing it.

So, Lord Jesus, thank you that you've been here in our midst as you promised you would be. And thank you, Lord, for speaking to us. Now you wait for the answer. And I pray that every one of you who put your hand up will now have an opportunity to share what God has spoken to them.

We'll now talk to him and ask him what to do about what he said. Lord of mercy, pour out your mercy on us tonight and send us out to put things right in your sight. All the resentment, the unforgiveness, the bitterness at being treated unfairly. Lord, we give it all back to you and ask you to take it away.

And to you we shall be careful to give all the glory and the praise. For it belongs to you. You're a merciful Father. And we thank you for that. But we're not going to abuse that mercy. And we're not going to forget it. We're going to live in it. And rejoice in it. And thank you, Lord.