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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Jeffrey Harper

Is the Church a Social Club?

Today's message is entitled, Is the Church a Social Club?

It's good to be in God's house, isn't it?

Let's go ahead and have a word of prayer, and then we'll begin.

Father in heaven, we come before you, the infinite, all-knowing God of the universe.

And Father, we come to this place because our desire, Lord, is to meet you.

Our desire is to grow in our understanding of the plan of salvation, to grow, Lord, in our obedience to you.

And I pray that as we study scripture, that you would speak to hearts in a way that human wisdom cannot accomplish.

And We pray these things in the name of Jesus, amen.

Perhaps you've heard of the rather terrible experiment that was done in the 13th century.

There was a German king, Frederick II, that conducted a rather diabolical experiment intending to discover what language children would naturally grow up speaking if no 1 ever spoke to them.

Children are raised by their parents and they're spoken English or Spanish or whatever language that might be and he had the idea, I want to see what language they would speak if they didn't have anyone to speak to them, and he thought it would be German.

So this is what King Frederick did, unfortunately.

He took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were forbidden to speak in their hearing.

These nurses agreed to that, but unfortunately a second rule was imposed.

The nurses were also not allowed to touch those baby infants.

And to his great dismay, Frederick's experiment was cut short.

But the reason it was cut short was not because people were uninterested in the experiment, it's because all of those babies passed away.

The babies who grew up with no 1 speaking to them, and no 1 touching them, died literally for want of a human touch.

Modern medicine calls this phenomenon failure to thrive.

And for some reason, human beings flourish under the influence of love and care and connection.

In fact, humans gradually will die as that experiment showed without that connection.

For example, consider the research of Dr.

In his national bestseller, Love and Survival, Ornish presents study after study showing that love is a chief influence for mental, emotional, and also physical health.

In his book, Love and Survival, he writes, anything that promotes the feelings of love and intimacy is healing.

Anything that promotes isolation, separation, loneliness, loss, hostility, anger, cynicism, depression, alienation, and related feelings often leads to suffering, disease, and premature death from all causes.

So modern science, non-spiritual, secular scientists are discovering through studies that human beings are engineered for love and connection.

Now we know as Christians exactly where this come from.

But the way that our world explains it is this way.

As I was just researching online this week, notice this explanation.

Why are we engineered for connection and love?

Back when we roamed the plains, do you remember that?

Back when we roamed the plains, we had a much better chance of survival if we had other animal friends that we could depend on.

And while we don't have these same threats today, we've kept our social nature and continue to have a deep need to be with others.

So back when we roamed on the plains, we needed our animal friends, and we've kept that social connection.

I'm not quite sure, friends, if that's the best explanation of why we're engineered for love.

Why are they finding out that we're built for connection?

The answer is because The infinite God of the universe, our creator and our maker is a God of love.

1 John 4, 8 and several other places in scripture make it very clear that God is a God of love.

In fact, God Himself is a community of 3 persons in 1.

We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And the doctrine of the Godhead, or the Trinity, That doctrine in and of itself urges that God be essentially social, communal, and interpersonal.

And it's actually a very unique vision of God's character that is unique to Christianity, In contrast to deism, which teaches that God set up everything in our world, but then He stands back and lets everyone mill about and He is not involved at all.

In contrast as well to polytheism, which teaches there are many gods that need to be appeased, in contrast to pantheism, which teaches there's really not a God at all, but the universe or even reality itself is divine.

In contrast to those religions, the Bible claims that there is a God and his character consists of interpersonal relationship and divine benevolence.

That there is a loving character to our gods.

Because when we love someone else, we want to share that experience with them.

Just a few weeks back, I was in Asheville for a lunch appointment at 1 of my new favorite restaurants.

And that is an Indian restaurant called Andaz, or Andaz.

This place, I'm just smiling thinking about this place.

This had 1 of the best lunch buffets, Indian buffets that I've ever had.

And at this lunch appointment, enjoying myself with the person I was having the appointment with, and we spent some time talking about some things and praying together.

But I will admit that as I was consuming this incredible Indian food that I was thinking about my wife.

Because my wife and I have enjoyed Indian food together.

When we lived in Bering Springs, we used to travel down to South Bend, 30 minutes south of us, and there was an Indian restaurant that had an incredible buffet.

When we were there in Loma Linda area and some of my Loma Linda friends, where are you, there you are.

My Loma Linda friends perhaps are acquainted with several of the Indian restaurants there but there's some wonderful Indian restaurants there that my wife and I enjoy together, and that's something that we enjoy.

And as I was eating this food, I was thinking about her, I have to share this with my wife.

I have to let her know about this incredible place because that's what love does.

When you're experiencing something by yourself, you think, you know, I want to share this with someone else.

And the God of the universe in the Godhead, in the Trinity, had such a beautiful circle of love, he thought to himself, I can't keep this to just us.

So we have the other worlds that God has created.

We have the community of angels in heaven.

That's why John 17, 23 says this, I in them and you in me, that they may be perfect in 1.

He's praying in John 17, a prayer of unity for his disciples.

He says that the world may know that you sent me and that the world may know this.

This line struck me this week as I was reading in Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing as the author drew attention to this passage.

That the Father, here's Jesus talking to his Father.

Lord, I want the world to know that you love them just like you love me.

That the love that we know is there between the Godhead, the infinite, perfect love that exists between the Father and Son and the Spirit, that that same love that the Father has for the Son, He has for you.

And that's why we're also told in John 14, 18, that This love that the Father has for us is so great that God actually wants to adopt us into his family.

That heaven's family wants to be united with the family of earth.

That We are not left to struggle on our own.

Jesus says in John 14, 18, I will not leave you orphans.

I heard the story of a five-year-old girl with beautiful brown eyes and curly hair.

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Is the Church a Social Club?

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