God’s desire is His Work

Ps. 37:4 Delight your self in the Lord, and HE WILL GIVE You the desires of your heart.

Since the fall of mankind (people functioning under the headship of the first man Adam) there is distance between them and God. When man seeks God in the guilt of his conscience he will seek to use the law (legalism, works of the flesh) to TRY to remove the distance between him and God.

Yet, the law teaches to see God’s greatness, but not His loving and gracious care. (Ps. 55:22; 1 Pet. 5:7). This is what Zophar was TRYING to teach Job, and what he was teaching is no different from legalistic teaching today—to make what man does the measure of how God acts, how He deals with people.

Job’s “friends” were TRYING to occupy him with God as a judge, to see the removal of temporal mercies as a punishment for sin and implies the gift of them is the contrary.

The evil of man under satan did create distance from God (Ps. 97:10; Hab. 1:13)—from the love that He does love man with.

The law says “see the distance because of you,” BUT GOD says “see the distance between you and Me that you CAN DO NOTHING about?” “My Son, Jesus Christ HAS REMOVED!”

The law does not move or take one step to help (see Heb. 7:19=Rom. 7:12-24=25) BUT Jesus Christ came, filled up with all of God’s grace and truth, and meets you and I, and initiates His love for us. (See Rom. 5:6-10, 20-31; 8:31-39).

God does hate the evil of sin (Ps. 51:4), but He loves the sinner. (See 2 Pet. 3:9).

The only way out of the evil of self is through the gift of God’s Son. This teaches positional truth. The only way for us in Christ to experience the truth of Christ’s finished work is not through the law-works of the flesh (Rom. 4:1-8; 7:18; Jn. 6:63; 15:1-5) but only with our wills submitted to God so that our only experience is the reality of who God has made us to be in the Son of His love. (See 2 Cor. 5:16-17; Col. 1:12-13).

The heart that is connected to the Giver, is the heart that is severed from self and all of its evil selfishness.

In Christ, we “have this treasure in our fragile clay jars, that the excelling excellence of the power may be (and is, 1Cor. 1:24; 2 Tim. 1:7) OF GOD, AND NOT OF US. 2 Cor. 4:7.