Daily Devotional

-August 28, 2021-

Good morning, happy Saturday,

-The Most High God Regards The Lowly-

“Though the Lord is on high, yet He regards the lowly; but the proud He knows from afar.”

(Psalm 138:6).

Psalm 138 is a Psalm of David. It is entitled, “The Lord’s Goodness to the Faithful.” In David’s day, as today, there is a very small group of believers who are walking with God and serving Him. In Scripture, they called the righteous, the saints, the saved, the humble, the children of God. God looks down from His throne in heaven and beholds both the saved who are His people, the apple of His eye, and the unsaved that He also loves and desires to be saved.

David calls these two groups the lowly and the proud. James wrote of this contrast, “But He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). We never want to be proud and have God resist us. We need His grace.

He also said in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lifted you up.” We see here in our text that God regards the lowly; but knows the proud afar off. There is a sharp contrast between the two and how God deals with each group.

• Though the Lord is on high, yet He regards the lowly – Our God sits on His throne in heaven, ruling over the universe. He is called the most High God. When Jesus ascended back to heaven after His death, burial, and resurrection, He sat down at the right hand of the Father, the place of majesty, glory, and honor. When Isaiah had his vision of God in Isaiah 6, he wrote, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” No one who has seen the glory of the Lord by faith or by sight is ever the same again. We see God for who He is, and our own sinfulness and vileness.

God regards the lowly. Another word for lowly is humble. In Psalm 136:23 in speaking of the Lord it says, “Who remembered us in our lowly state, for His mercy endures forever.” Solomon recognized this in Proverbs 16:19 when he wrote, “Better to be of a humble spirit with lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.” Mary, the mother of Jesus said, “For he has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call be blessed” (Luke 1:48). She also said in Luke 1:52, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.”

• But the proud He knows from afar – God knows and loves those who are lost, unsaved; He continues to reach out to them until their last breath. He loves the sinner but hates their sin. That is why God sent His Son to die for our sins. Knowing the proud from afar does not mean He has given up on them. Everyone who comes to Christ must humble themselves before the Lord, confess their sins, believe that Jesus died for them, and receive Him as Lord and Savior.

Only the Lord can break the hardest heart. He turns the heart of stone into and a heart of flesh as it tells us in Ezekiel. Only God can changes lives. The proudest man can become the most humble man through the cross of Jesus Christ.

May we live humble, lowly lives with contrite hearts. David wrote in Psalm 51, his penitential psalm, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise.”

Have a blessed day living in a humble lowly way before God. He will regard you, He will exalt you. Stay safe and healthy.

In His grace,

Dean