Tommy Mann

Have you ever been to a wax museum? Most of these attractions have wax statues of celebrities, and they are admittedly quite lifelike. Visitors can pose for pictures with the fake figures and make it seem as if they met someone famous.     So you can go to a wax museum and take a picture with a wax Jack Sparrow (or pick your favorite celebrity). But if given the choice between the wax version or meeting Johnny Depp in his famous Pirates of the Caribbean costume, which would you choose? We would probably all agree that the real deal beats the fake figure every time.    In the absence of Johnny Depp, the statue is cool; but if Depp is in the room, I’d rather pose for a picture with the human. An artist’s rendering is great, but it is unnecessary when the person is there in the flesh.   The author of Hebrews spoke about an artist rendering. In 8:5 he said, “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” The word  copy  has been translated elsewhere as artist rendering. What is he t

In many places the New Testament tells us Jesus is sitting to the right of the Father. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record an exchange Jesus had with Pontius Pilate shortly before the crucifixion; Pilate asked Jesus point blank if He was the Christ, and Jesus replied, “If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I ask you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God (Luke 22:67-69).”   Many people know that the right hand was the seat of prominence in their culture. The seat to the right of the one throwing a banquet was reserved for the guest of honor, and it is why the disciples argued internally over who would sit at Jesus’ right side in the kingdom.    But the seat to the right also has another cool meaning. In ancient Jewish courts there was a scribe seated to the left and the right of the judge. Once his verdict was rendered one of the scribes would go to work. If the verdict was guilty, the scribe to the judge’s left

  Hebrews 7:25 says this of Jesus: “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”   The Greek word that is translated uttermost only appears one other time in the Bible, and that is in Luke 13 where Jesus heals a woman. Luke, himself a physician, said the woman had a disabling spirit that rendered her unable to fully straighten herself, but “he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight (v.13).”    The word means completely, not halfway. Jesus did not heal this woman until she could stand up a little bit straighter, but until she was  fully  erect. When Jesus heals, He heals to the uttermost.    But the author of Hebrews tells us that when Jesus saves, He saves to the uttermost. He does not forgive some of our sin, make us a little better, and help us break some bad habits. No, He goes all the way, making us God’s children, bringing us fully into the family, and cleansing

  Do you know the difference between a dentist and an orthodontist? If you are like me, you don’t. According to WebMD, “ An orthodontist is a dentist trained to diagnose, prevent, and treat teeth and jaw irregularities. They correct existing conditions and are trained to identify problems that may develop in the future .” They use devices such as braces, retainers, and bands and correct issues such as overbites, crooked or crowded teeth, and jaw misalignment.    If you are like me, you did not go to dental school, but you may have been called to be an orthodontist. In his letter to a pastor named Titus, Paul told him,   “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you (1:5).”   That phrase “put…into order” is a pair of Greek prepositions attached to the word  orthoō,  which means “to make straight.” Orthoō, as you might have guessed, gives us our word orthodontist. Just as an orthodontist corrects crook

I recently wrote about the importance of milk in our diet. Paul scolded the Corinthians for still being on the milk of the Word rather than the meat, meaning that the church had not grown to maturity the way a baby likewise progresses from milk to meat.    I said that we often create a false dichotomy, asking people if they are on milk or meat, as if Paul’s point was to choose one or the other; we need both the basics and the advanced doctrines. The author of Hebrews makes that point better than I can, writing, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food (12:12).”   We sometimes think of milk as the stuff of babies when it should be thought of as the building block of health. We should move toward maturity, but we all need to be constantly reminded of the basics. We might call this the ABC’s.    We cannot read sentences or paragraphs if we do not know the alphabet. As Ch

  I love oxymorons. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms, like small crowd, jumbo shrimp, original copy, and old news. We use oxymorons when we call a painting pretty ugly, or a comedian seriously funny. Even the word oxymoron is a combination of the prefix meaning “keen” and the word for foolish.   Oxymorons are funny and make things easier to remember. The author of Hebrews employed a clever oxymoron in 4:11 when he wrote, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”   Strive, of course, means to work hard. Work hard at resting. Those two concepts would typically cancel each other out, but the author instructs us to work at rest.    What does he mean by entering rest? In the previous passage he looked back at the exodus when the ancient Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Joshua 21:44 says the Lord gave them rest as they were able to settle down and live in peace in a lan