By Rick Blackwood | Senior Pastor of Christ Fellowship, Miami, Florida
God Is a Multi-sensory CommunicatorThumb through the pages of the Old Testament, and you quickly discover that God is into multi-sensory communication. In fact, He is the pioneer of multi-sensory communication. God designed us with multiple senses to receive information from the environment, and He constantly seeks to connect to those sensory receptors.
Multi-sensory Natural Revelation: God teaches us about Himself from what we hear, see, touch, smell, taste. This is what theologians refer to as
natural revelation because God is revealing Himself and teaching us through what we sense from nature. The multi-sensory nature of creation captivates our attention, helps clarify our understanding of God, and is absolutely unforgettable. Edwin Hubble said, “Equipped with five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure
science.” God gave us this amazing universe; He communicates the universe through sound, vision, feel, smell and taste; and He gave us the five corresponding senses to perceive it.
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God also teaches us in a multi-sensory form when it comes to
special revelation, i.e. the Bible. All through the Old Testament, God taught theological and practical truth though the medium of multi-sensory communication. His sensory teachings were graphic, explicit and directly connected to the truth He wanted to communicate.
For example, God often called on His prophets to use extreme multi-sensory teaching methodologies in order to connect to the audience He wished to impact. The prophets used verbal communication mixed with visual elements as well as interactive techniques to heighten the levels of attention, understanding and memory of the people.
Hosea: Drama Ahead of its Time: For those of you who imagine drama is an unscriptural form of teaching, you need to read the Book of Hosea. In this book, God is the teacher; and to make the lesson stick, God uses a real-life drama. God Himself sets up this real-life multi-sensory sermon by having Hosea marry an adulteress woman.
Jeremiah: Video Ahead of its Time: This teaching prophet was called by God to carry an ox yoke on the nape of his neck, and the image spoke to the people as graphically as possible. Calvin Miller writes, “This image was video ahead of its time.”
2 God was using Jeremiah as a walking, three-dimensional, visual object lesson to teach Israel a truth.
One could find other multi-sensory teaching examples in the Bible from God. The entire tabernacle set up, which was prescribed by God, was a visual picture of the worship of heaven. The Passover drama played out in Egypt was a visual picture of the blood of the Lamb of God on the cross. The pastor who teaches in a multi-sensory form is not mimicking the culture—he is mimicking the Creator.
