Missing God's Grace

This is a song of submission and humility. It is also the confession of a man who has learned to live in the grace of God. His undivided heart is seen immediately in v. 1 when he says he will praise God with all his affections, decisions, emotions, desires, will, conscience, and motives because he does this in the face of all the other idols that seek to seduce his heart. It could be compared to looking at those things that seem to be worth living for more than Christ and saying: “Jesus truly is God and He really does satisfy better than anything else.” When he acknowledges that God has exalted His name and His Word above everything else, he already has learned that in his daily life. When he speaks of the Lord being on high and looking on the lowly he is describing those who in submission depend on God’s grace for their whole day. It is best seen in the contrast that God is not closely relating to those who are living areas of their lives in their own wisdom and ways. That is what proud really means: I will do it my own way. James speaks of this in his epistle beginning in 3:13 and continuing the whole thought through 4:10. But in reading that the little phrase “resist the devil” seems almost out of place. It is not. The wisdom of Satan is seen in 3:13-16 which is why these people were having conflicts among themselves: they were doing things their own ways rather than submitting to the wisdom and Word of God. Thus when David closes out Psa 138 he is assured of God’s working in his life because he is committed to living it by God’s wisdom as revealed in His Word and by submitting to the ways of the Lord revealed in His Word even when he would rather not. God pours out His grace on those who humbly recognize how much they are bent to do life their own ways. God draws near to those who draw near to Him when they would rather not.