Jesus, sideburns and the Law
Do you ever wonder how ‘that’ became ‘this’?
How that random pile of parts became this object of beauty?
How the oddities of your shared DNA and your mixed-up experiences gave such life to your fabulous children?
Today, we’re asking how did that of the Old Testament become this of the New Testament? How did law become love? And, let’s be honest, who hasn’t at times wondered how the Old Testament and New Testament sit together?

Jesus said:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Wow. What did he mean?
Was Jesus saying He stood by every law and regulation found in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy? For example,
o	Leviticus 15 says don’t sit on a chair that a woman on her period has sat on within the last 7 days?
o	Leviticus 11 says don’t eat certain birds, such as eagles, red kites, ravens, cormorants, the screeched owl. 
o	Deuteronomy 25 says if two men are fighting and the wife of one of them intervenes to rescue her husband by grabbing the private parts of the other man, cut off her hand.
Is this the law that Jesus had come, not to abolish, but to fulfil?
Then there’s all the violence and brutal punishments. Deuteronomy 21 says, if a son persists in disobeying his parents, he should be stoned to death. Had Jesus come to fulfil that?
And what about the polygamy? Numerous ‘heroes’ of the Old Testament had multiple wives at the same time. Was Jesus saying He stood by that too?

We’ve basically got two options:
First option, is that God dictated word for word everything contained in the Old Testament, just as it is. Everything that was said, written or happened, was all precisely as God designed, wanted.
So, when it says in Leviticus 19, “Don’t cut your sideburns” that’s because, if you want to live God’s way, He says you got to have big ‘siddies’.
This first option says, all those rules, regulations, laws are just as God demands of us. He wants us with ‘siddies’. Hence why Jesus said:
“Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
So grow ‘em for the Lord – it’s your spiritual duty.
The problem is, it’s hard to square this with the life, teaching, ministry of Jesus. His Kingdom of God agenda was not, how big your ‘siddies’ are; it was love: Love God with all your heart, love others and love yourselves. No mention of ‘siddies’.

So, what’s the other option?
That’s that the whole Bible is the Spirit-inspired, unfolding story of God and us, His people. It’s a collection of writings that trace humanity’s growing realisation that there is more to life than this. That our story is part of a far bigger story – God’s story.

It begins, as it ends, with God. Genesis opens, In the beginning, God…
•	All that we see around us is beautiful, awe-inspiring.
•	Such beauty and detail doesn’t come out of nothing, everything has a source, a beginning.
•	What or whoever made all this must be even more beautiful, bigger, more powerful…
•	We surely owe our existence to this Maker. We instinctively find ourselves saying thank you and wanting to ‘do right’ be it.
•	What’s more, this Creator seems interested is His Creation, like He wants us to know Him.
Jump ahead to Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and the issue of ‘siddies’. By now humanity was coming to realise, how we live matters. Just as there’s natural order, rhythm, structure in creation, so life just seems to go better when we people live with some order, rhythms and structure.  It matters how we live, treat one another, show respect to God.

In an age of lawlessness, when it was an eye for an optician, and a tooth for a dentist, the emerging Law was radical, it said at least make it an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  Live together in peace, work for justice, care for the poor, be good stewards of Creation, and, when things go wrong between you, get reconciled to each other. How you live matters to God and how well life goers for you.

The Law wasn’t that Sideburns are good and a ‘number 1’ side shave is bad. There was a much bigger story emerging.

Another word for law is the Way. It’s the Way to know God and enjoy life. The Way is living as God wired us to be.
Then, BOOM. God revealed His Way in widescreen, vivid colour.  Jesus, God the Son, was born as one of us, in an unclean stable, to a teenage, unmarried mum, surrounded by unclean witnesses who worshipped without following the right sacrifices.  Re-set the clocks! It’s Year Zero.

And Jesus declared, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  What you’ve been searching for, gradually working out, is me. That Way, is ME. It always was. Remember Genesis, In the beginning God... That’s me. That’s why John’s Gospel begins:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”
Jesus hadn’t come to replace the Old Testament and its Law. He wasn’t releasing God 2.0. Scrap the old format/ model.  Nor was He releasing a “patch” to fix the defective Old Testament code.  Jesus was fulfilling what the Law was always about – the Way to God, which is also the Way to live well.

Think about Leonardo (Not Leonardo DiCaprio, nor Leonardo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle) Leonardo Da Vinci, 15th Century Renaissance Man. Born the result of an affair between a wealthy Italian lawyer and a peasant girl, he had no surname, “Da Vinci” means “of / from Vinci” – the town of Vinci. He also had very little education. And yet Leonardo Da Vinci became possibly the most multi-talented person of all time. He’s probably the world’s most famous artist, despite on 25 of his paintings surviving, such as The Last Supper, the Mona Lisa,,, But he was also hugely influential in the fields of science, anatomy, and engineering. His famous sketch books included detailed drawings from what we now know as helicopters, parachutes, scuba-diving gear, cranes, self-propelled cars… Leonardo was ahead of his time. We now take for granted much of what he intuitively ‘saw’ in the 15th Century. 
OK, some of his detail was a bit off but he had seen what others hadn’t.

In the same way, the ‘prophets’ that Jesus referred to - the likes of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah – had seen something that others hadn’t. They too were ahead of their time. Through the gradually lifting fog, they had seen the Way, God’s Way, and over time the detail gradually got sharper.  Until, that BOOM - Jesus.

The Pharisees talked the talk about following the Law. But it was obvious to Jesus - and others suspected – they didn’t walk the talk. They had so zoomed in on the micro detail of what previous generations had been grappling with, that they had lost sight of the bigger picture.  They had become so fixated with the letter of the law – or at least, cherry picked bits of it – that they couldn’t see the Way – God’s Way.  

Jesus was saying it’s not so much the letter of the law, more the spirit of the law – the bigger picture. Oh, and that spirit? That’s me. The Spirit of Christ. 

So, don’t get stuck, like the Pharisees, in the micro detail of Leviticus.

But don’t abolish it either. See it as an accurate, historical record of where humanity had got to in our gradual. Growing understanding of the Way - God’s progressive revelation. Just remember, it’s completed, fulfilled in Jesus.
Later, when an expert in the Law tested Jesus asking, what’s the most important law? Jesus said, Love. Love God, others, yourself. That’s what the law – the Way – was always about.  Not, should you grow or shave your sideburns.

That’s what I’ve come to fulfil, to complete for you. I have not come to abolish the Way, I’ve come to fulfil the Way – I am the Way, I am the Truth – the God reality - and the Life.

For you Scrabble players in search of big word scores, I give you, ‘Christo-centric’ ‘hermeneutic’. We interpret the whole of Scripture through the revelation of Christ, the Word made flesh. The Word is NOT the law or even the Bible – the Word is Jesus, the Way is Jesus.

So, if you and I want to live the fullest life, do what you like with your ‘siddies’, the Way is Jesus.
DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk