As you know from my past columns, I love old westerns.
I remember the oldest westerns on TV with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and John Wayne. They all ended with a message to “do what’s right, good and true.”
But what if, one day, I’d heard a knock on my door and when I opened it, standing there outside my door was one of the aforementioned legends in person telling me to “do what’s right, good and true?”
That’s what happened in the book of Hebrews.
For centuries, God had been sending us messages through his chosen people who the world persecuted and put into ghettos and imprisoned in concentration camps and even now are attacked on college campuses.
Then he sent us the law, and we watered it down and explained it away.
He sent us the prophets to warn us and prepare us for what was coming and we ignored them and attacked them and even killed them.
He gave us his Word, the Bible so that we could hold his message in our hands and read it whenever we wanted.
But we didn’t read it or we re-interpreted it to say what we wanted it to say or we argued with it and cherry-picked the parts we liked and ignored the parts we didn’t like.
Consider this from Hebrews:
“Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession: Jesus; He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house. For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.”
— Hebrews 3: 1-3 Then one day God knocked on our door with the message, and the message was himself — the tangible, visible image of almighty God in a human body — Jesus! He was fully God with a message (the apostle or “sent one”) and fully human bringing the message to us (the high priest or “mediator.”) But sometimes, though, we’re like children who play with the wrappings and ignore the gift. So, the writer of Hebrews is telling us to set the wrappings aside and focus on the gift of God.
God himself who took on flesh to bring his message to us. And the message of Hebrews is to “stop playing with the wrappings and focus on the gift of the Son of God — Jesus!”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
