Knowing the Lord
Meditation for the week of May 23, 2010
Exodus 6:7 I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
What can the Lord do to make believers out of unbelievers? In the old testament, over and over again we have the phrase, then shall you (or they) know that I am the Lord your God. But in most cases, the people that should have known Him really didn’t know Him. The idea of knowing the Lord meant more than knowing about Him. It meant entering into an intimate relationship with Him.
In the nation of Israel’s case, they were delivered from Egypt in a miraculous way. But even so, not everyone who had a physical deliverance had a spiritual one where they actually came to know the Lord. In Jude verse 5 we read, “But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Over and over again, the children of Israel turned away from the God of creation who proved himself to be their God through signs and wonders to serve idols and pagan superstition. Even the Egyptians who were subjected to the judgments of God because they would not let His people go, thought that their pagan religion could defeat Jehovah. Their army died in the Red Sea because they would not be convinced. Pharaoh had said, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I DO NOT KNOW THE LORD (Exodus 5:2).” He became the object of God’s judgment after declaring himself to be an unbeliever.
In the new testament knowing the Lord means that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew 16:15, Peter was asked, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered in verse 16, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Peter believed that the Lord was who He claimed to be and that He was the Savior of the world. He knew the Lord.
I have been wondering why in the Bible as well as in real life it seems easier to turn away from the Lord than to turn away from idols? Is it because some of us haven’t been truly convinced that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God and that He is going to be judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42)? We know that we aren’t saved by what we do, we are saved by Who we trust. But if the Lord is the One we believe in, wouldn’t we want to worship Him and only Him in the way He has asked? Should we who have turned from idols to serve the Living and True God (1 Thessalonians 1:9) be turning back to the idolatry of this world as the Israelites often did?
It seems to me that many Christians are assuming that everyone who says they are following Christ have actually been convinced that Jesus is THE ONE AND ONLY CHRIST or messiah or savior. Even if what people believe and practice is not Biblical, we do not want to be considered judgmental and unloving today by asking too many questions. But what is really unloving is to accept people who obviously are not serving the Lord of the Bible without pointing out to them that only those who truly “know the Lord” will be saved from an eternity in the Lake of Fire. We have become so shallow in the way we preach the Gospel that it is easy to assume that everyone who says that they are believers actually believe in (or trust) the Lord.
Those of us who were delivered from the religious confusion of the world to serve the Christ, the Son of the Living God, are grieved when we see people turning back to the idolatry of this world from which they said they were delivered. Today, light and darkness are being mixed since the Bible is not always accepted as the final authority. New age practices are being promoted in many churches. Being spiritual in a mystical sort of way is accepted while being Biblical is considered narrow.
I wonder how many of us have really been convinced that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God? Do we really “know the Lord?”
Bruce Collins