Today I should like to begin a study of the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew's Gospel. Before we begin, however, I think we need to recognize that in dealing with the Sermon on the Mount we are dealing with the need for a new life—a new birth—rather than with a legalistic system of morality. And this is true, not only of the Sermon on the Mount, but of the New Testament generally. 

But now I want you to look at something else. I want you to turn from thinking about those enemies of Christ, who are exemplified by the soldiers and the priests on that first Easter Sunday, and instead I want you to focus on Christ's friends, those who learned of the resurrection and who met with Jesus Christ following his resurrection. Consider people like the women who came to the tomb, or Peter and John, who ran there because of the women's report, or James or any of the others who saw Jesus later. 

The soldiers had left their post, and the tomb was empty. They must have been terrified, wondering what was going to happen to them. After the religious leaders met together, they did not seek to have the soldiers punished. Instead, the guards were told to lie about what had happened. They were to go out and say nothing about angels or a stone being rolled away, but simply to say that while they were asleep, his disciples came and stole the body. This is the way the text says it: “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, ‘You are to say, “His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.” And if this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’”

A lot of people you know are going around with a bleached gospel today that’s not saving anybody. What we need is a gospel that is blood red. We need the gospel—the only gospel—that finds its saving power in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who died for our sins upon the cross, rose again, and who is coming to judge the quick and the dead. May God give you grace to hold that gospel up before a world that desperately needs it. May God bless your efforts according to his own wisdom, and his own perfect plan, and his grace through Jesus Christ.

Given the demanding nature of this charge that Paul gives to Timothy, we come now to the incentives Paul lists. Paul, no doubt, knows that Timothy needs these encouragements to help him do all these things in and out of season in order to faithfully carry out his ministry.