A Church Where People Come to Know Christ

Acts 2:41-42; 47b

I have people who come into my office and tell me what's going on in their lives. Then they'll look at me and say, "Is this normal?"

"I don't know. Norm is the name of a guy who lives in Brooklyn. Norm may be something else for you."

We base our lives and how we're doing on averages—by what we see in the average person every day. It's by the way we see other people reacting, given the moment. "Yes, you're grieving. You're supposed to be sad. That's normal." Or, "Yes, this is a good thing—you're supposed to be excited, and ‘lose your mind for a little while.' That's normal. That's what people in your situation do."

But when you start reading the second chapter of Acts and you see how the church is described—when you see what Jesus is doing in those first few days of the church's life—you'll quickly see that what's going on now isn't normal at all: 

"So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. . . And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved." Every day.

Growing up Baptist, I spent a lot of time in Acts 2. It's all about the revival. It's all about how many people come to know Christ. I have been in those meetings where 10, 15 and 20 people came to know Christ in a night. I've been in those meetings when as many as 50 made a decision. So it really wasn't that difficult for me to think that given the right situation and the right expression, 3,000 people could respond in that moment. I've heard stories about thousands of people coming to the Lord in meetings in Korea and in Africa. So I kind of "got my head around that one."

What shocks me from this passage is that last sentence—"every day Jesus was bringing to the church those who had been saved." Every day. Who knew people could get saved on a Thursday?

You know, we have a lot of emergency policies in our church. We know what to do in case a fire breaks out. We go through training in case we face certain situations. I don't know if we've had a training day to tell the staff what to do if somebody comes in on a weekday and wants to get saved. I don't know if we've had that plan or that policy. It would be so unusual for us because all of us know people get saved on Sunday.

We set aside an hour, and that's when you can get saved. It's kind of like a train schedule. It comes through town on Sunday from 11:00 to 12:00, and if you miss it you'll just have to wait until the next time the train comes around. But every day—how did that happen?

This church met in what you and I would call an apartment. We have mystified it into being The Upper Room; but it was an apartment in Jerusalem, and that's where these folks first met and started praying and teaching. They started telling other people about Christ, and somebody's life would be changed. That person would run to find someone else, come back and say, "You need to see what I see. You need to know what I know." Then somebody else's life would get changed, so that in just a few years Rome was stood on its head.