POSTED: Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 5:13pm
UPDATED: Monday, July 9, 2012 - 5:12pm
TYLER — This week, we lost a beloved television icon -- Andy Griffith.
Most knew him best as Sheriff Andy Taylor on the Andy Griffith show...a program many Christians credit for teaching real life lessons.
Sunday morning, David Dykes, pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler mentioned Griffith toward the end of his sermon on "goodness."
Dykes -- who has watched the show his whole life and seen every episode -- talked about the one where Andy and Helen get stuck in a cave and Barney Fife organizes a rescue.
They manage to escape on their own, but when they heard Barney had gone to so much trouble to help them...they put their dirty clothes back on and got back into the cave so he could "rescue" them.
"Well as I said to our congregation, we lost one of the good guys this week, because he really was a good man. And all throughout his career, even when he played Matlock, he was always known by the people that worked with him as a good, honest, moral man and was not afraid to let people know he was a follower of Jesus," Dykes told KETK.
Some churches across the nation even do Bible studies using the Andy Griffith show to illustrate.
Pastor Dykes tells KETK, he hopes someday there will be another show like it that teaches strong Biblical morals to families.