Chip Bell is Senior Pastor of Fellowship Bible Church Arapaho in Texas. In his sermon, “If Looks Could Kill” (Matthew 5:21-26), he said the following:
The Kingdom Code
Last week we began a new section called: The Kingdom Code.
In it, Jesus tells his followers that being forgiven doesn’t mean we can live a life of lawlessness. In fact, as the King of the Kingdom, Jesus heightens the requirements of the law. He tells us what the law really means: not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, the law’s intent.
We finished last week with Jesus’ statement that “your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees”, the most carefully righteous people of his day. I’m sure his followers then wondered how that could be possible that they could be even more righteous than the Pharisees.
But what Jesus meant was that although the Pharisees were very concerned with obeying the external requirements of the code, they followed it in a very legalistic, wooden, joyless way. Jesus called them “actors”. They cared very little about whether they were doing what God wanted. They only cared that they did exactly what God told them to do. In fact, they had even added a few extra rules (and some of them were actually the opposite of what God wanted).
And so, Jesus tells his disciples that the true meaning of the law, the Kingdom Code, is to honor God not just with your actions, but also with your thoughts, your motives and your attitudes. The Kingdom Code is deeper and more personal than the law of any country. It delves into the innermost parts of a man that no other man can judge and only God can know.
What follows are six comparisons between external performance of the law and internal obedience to the law. Jesus deals with anger, lust, divorce, lying, revenge, and hatred. In each case, he calls us, his followers, to commit ourselves not just to obeying the external requirements of the law, but also to allowing the Kingdom Code to govern our thoughts, our motives and our attitudes.
To listen to or print out the entire sermon, click here at bible.org
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