Sermon on the Mount: The Merciful - James Nored (1 March 2020)

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" (Matthew 5:7). It would be interesting to think about how a first century Jew would have heard these words from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They were oppressed by the Roman government. Tax collectors who stole what little they had. They faced debtor's prisons when they could not pay. If anyone deserved mercy it was God's people, the Jews. If anyone did not, it was surely their hated Roman oppressors and anyone allied with them. In this lesson, we will look at what it means to be merciful, why we should be merciful, and what effect being merciful would have upon our relationships and the world.