Knowing God - Ch 14

Knowing God

J.I. Packer

IVP 1993 Americanized Version

Ch 14 – God the Judge

"People who do not actually read the Bible confidently assure us that when we move from the Old Testament to the New, the theme of divine judgment fades into the background. But if we examine the New Testament, even in the most cursory way, we find at once that the Old Testament emphasis on God's action as Judge, far from being reduced, is actually intensified. 

The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, and by the problem thence arising: How may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time? The New Testament looks to "the day of judgment," "the day of wrath," "the wrath to come," and proclaims Jesus, the divine Savior, as the divinely appointed Judge. 

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Knowing God - Ch 8

Knowing God

J.I. Packer

IVP 1993 Americanized Version

Ch 8 – The Majesty of God

""Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed away from God?" (Is 40:27 RV). This question rebukes wrong thoughts about ourselves. God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people. If you have been resigning yourself to the thought that God has left you high and dry, seek grace to be ashamed of yourself. Such unbelieving pessimism deeply dishonors our great God and Savior." 

Knowing God - Ch 2

Knowing God

J.I. Packer

IVP 1993 Americanized Version

Ch 2 – The People Who Know Their God

Pg. 28 “People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come[s] to expression is in their prayers. In Daniel 9 we read how, when the prophet “understood from the scriptures” (v. 2) that the foretold time of Israel’s captivity was drawing to an end, and when at the same time he realized that the nation’s sin was still such as to provoke God to judgement rather than mercy, he set himself to seek God “in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes” (v. 3) and prayed for the restoring of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are complete strangers.

Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God’s cause – energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer – and the more knowledge, the more energy! By this we may test ourselves. Perhaps we are not in a position to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy. Perhaps we are old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.”