This study was first taught on January 14, 2014

Topic: What We Are Talking About (4): A One Time Encounter With Jesus?

(use the audio to study)

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Background
Last week, we saw another kind of knowledge which many Christians have of the Lord Jesus, but which is not what we are talking about when we say we want to know the Lord Jesus; and that is knowing about Him. To know about the Lord Jesus is to have heard some things about Him, without necessarily having any interaction with Him. Hence, everything we know about Him is really hearsay, and not based on a personal experiential knowledge of Him.

We saw from the example of the Queen of Sheba, who heard about King Solomon, his wisdom, wealth, and splendor; and even though she did not believe what she had heard at first, nonetheless travelled to Jerusalem to prove those things, whether they be true or not. And after her encounter with King Solomon, she confessed that she had not been told up to half of his majesty, wisdom, and wealth! If a queen, who is burdened with the affairs of her realm could leave behind her realm to seek out someone whom she heard about, and which she at first, found hard to believe, how much more we, in relation to the Lord Jesus, Who is “a greater than Solomon”?

We said that hearing about the Lord Jesus through sermons, as laudable as that is, is not enough to prove that you know Him. And since the taste of the pudding is in the eating, it means that you should seek to know the Lord Jesus for yourself. Job had heard about God and had made some comments about Him on the basis of what he had heard, but when he had a personal encounter with God, he repented, and confessed his ignorance! There are very many Christians today, whose knowledge of the Lord Jesus is confined to the sermons that they hear in church. They have unfortunately, not probed deeper than what they have heard over the years, and are thus, unable to convincingly speak of the Lord Jesus to people who don’t know Him. This was why the Lord said “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.” (Matthew 12:42).

Those of us who have been saved by grace through the finished work of Jesus on the cross at Calvary, ought to emulate the Samaritans who were not just content to hear about Jesus from “the woman at the well”, but went out to seek and hear Him for themselves. We ought to emulate Mary Magdalene, who refused to go away from the tomb in which the Lord Jesus’ body was laid, until she had known what had happened to it, and in the end, she became the first person to see the risen Lord! We ought not to be content to only hear from other people about the Lord, because, some of the things people say about the Lord may not be true, just as the people in Jesus’ day thought that He was a reincarnation of some old time prophet, including John the Baptist, who had only recently been beheaded! Rather, we ought to go further to prove those things which we have heard about the Lord Jesus, through personal encounters. We need to learn from the Holy Spirit Himself, Whose role is to convince and convict us of Who the Lord really is.

Scripture Text(s)
Acts 9:1-30
Tonight, we shall be looking at personal encounters which will not qualify an individual as having the kind of knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that we are talking about. As always, we pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal the Lord Jesus to us, as we learn from Him, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
We have seen that merely hearing about someone is not enough to claim to have knowledge about that person. It is also clear that meeting with a person is more significant than just hearing about him. However, a one-time or one-off meeting, is not what we are talking about. Had the encounter of Saul of Tarsus, been that one-time meeting with the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, he probably would have remained blind, which would have turned many people away from desiring to meet with the Lord!
Matthew 2:1-11; 15:21-28; John 9:1-38; Mark 10:46-52; Galatians 1:13-17.

Conclusion
While it is absurd to hear of, or hear about, someone, and claim to already know the person, it is equally absurd, on the strength of one encounter with a person, to claim that you already know him. In much the same way, it is absurd, on the basis of a one-time encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, to claim to know Him.

Knowing someone requires more than a one-time encounter. Frequent and repeated; and, deep and meaningful interactions with a person, is required before you can truly lay claim to knowing him. Similarly, it will take more than a one-time encounter with the Lord Jesus to come to know Him. If your knowledge of the Lord is based on such one-off encounters in which you received a healing, a miracle, a deliverance, etc., your claim to knowing the Lord Jesus is spurious—that is, doubtful, bogus, unauthentic.

Like Saul of Tarsus, we need to take time out, away from the ‘noise’ of human presentations, and go to the Holy Spirit, to receive direct revelation, through the word of God, as to Who the Lord Jesus Christ truly is. We need to desire to know the One Who opened our blind eyes, and our deaf ears. We ought to desire to know the One Who gave us speech when we were dumb, and, strength in our ankle bones when we were lame, thus enabling us to walk. We need to seek to follow the Lord in the way, as did blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, after his eyes were opened. We need to seek to know the One Who saved our souls, and Whose desire it is for us to come and be with Him in eternity! This is the task that lies before us, and that, by the grace of God, we shall make our pursuit in the weeks to come in this study, and for the rest of our lives!

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