tagged: Church, Culture, David Rogers, Unity, Worship

God’s Multi-Colored Wisdom

Posted by David Rogers in Bible & Theology, Church & Missions

Yesterday, we had a wonderful Easter morning service at Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett, Tennessee, where my family and I are members while we are home on Stateside Assignment. There were various soul-stirring choir specials, a fantastic sermon by Pastor Danny Sinquefield, and a real sense of the wonder-working presence of the Lord among us, as we celebrated together his resurrection.

As I was there, at the same time, my thoughts lit upon the people of God at Iglesia Luz para las Naciones in Pensacola, Florida, where I had been the previous Sunday, who were no doubt enjoying an equally blessed time of worship, but with a slightly different format and music style. Then I thought about the various congregations with which my family and I have had the privilege of worshiping together the past 18 years in Spain. And then, of the churches I visited last Fall in India. And then, the tremendous panoply of churches all around the world, in many different countries, and many different contexts, all worshiping the Lord in many different ways.

Some of them mega-churches in Brazil, some of them house churches in China, some of them gathered together underneath a tree in a village somewhere in Africa… Some with organs and formal liturgy, some with festive dancing and tambourines, some with open sharing and spontaneous prayers of gratitude to the Lord…

And then… the Body of Christ down through history, who have no doubt met together in circumstances and contexts that many of us today might have a hard time recognizing, if we were to “peek in” on them, as “church.” I also thought about what the believers in, let’s say, North Africa 1,500 years ago might think if they were to somehow be mysteriously transported to our Easter service at Faith.

In Ephesians 3:10-11, we read about God’s purpose for the church, what I would call the next step, on the heels of the victory won that first Easter morning, of God’s strategic plan for eternity:

God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord. (NLT)

The greek word translated here “rich variety” is the word polupoikilos for which the lexicon gives the following definition:

1) much variegated, marked with a great variety of colors
1a1) of cloth or a painting
2) much varied, manifold

If I understand this correctly, a substantial part of what God is doing in the world today has to do with variety. The image is that of a beautiful painting God is painting, or a tapestry He is weaving, comprised of a vast amalgamation of believers He has redeemed down through history and around the world. I believe we can see this multi-colored wisdom of God through the church illustrated in verses like 1 Cor. 12:4-6:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. (NIV)

We see the glorious culmination of this same eternal plan in Revelation 7:9 where we see “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” (NIV)

Yes, one day we will experience worship in all of its fullness together with the saints from all the ages gathered before the throne of the Lamb. In the meantime, though, each of us live within the particular context, with the corresponding customs, traditions, and “local color,” in which God has placed us for now. And, that is fine and well. We are, after all, to a large extent, products of our environment and cultural trappings.

At the same time, though, I think it is good, every now and then, that we catch a greater glimpse of what God is about in the world around us. As we live in the “already, but not yet” reality of this present age, we ought to experience an ever-increasing manifestation of the amazing unity in diversity that God is artistically fashioning together as his crowning demonstration of wisdom down through the ages.