Good morning and welcome.

On Sunday mornings we're going through the Bible verse by verse and we finished last week's Second Thessalonians.

And today we are going to begin a new book, the book of First Timothy.

And our text today is going to be chapter 1 verses 1 and 2.

And so you can turn there if you're not

there already. And those of you that are here, if you're able, I'll ask you to stand. And you

can follow along as I read. If not, that's the right where you're seated is fine. The apostle

Paul is writing to Timothy and by the Holy Spirit in verse one by way of an introduction says Paul

an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus, our hope.

Might I add our only hope?

Verse two, to Timothy, my true son in the faith.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Let's pray if you would join with me. Lord, thank you so much for your word and for this portion

that we have here before us today here in your word.

Lord, we need now for the Holy Spirit to get our attention and hold our attention

so that we can give you our undivided attention so that our minds don't wander or get distracted

and in so doing we miss that which you have for us today. Lord, I'm really looking forward to

what you have for us in just these two verses. In Jesus' name, amen. And amen, you can be seated. Thank

you. So I want to talk with you today about what I see as the lost art of kindness and compassion of Christians being merciful toward others.

Actually, I was thinking about this over the last several months.

I've sensed and even said that I wanted to devote an entire sermon to just this

one topic. So this is probably that sermon. I want to talk about kindness. I want to talk about

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