Unlike with many of the psalms, we do not know the writer of this psalm. We can guess from the language of the psalm that its origin is likely the song of the remarkable woman Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Her story is told in 1 Samuel 1. She was married to Elkanah, but her womb had been shut up by Jehovah. No doubt that explains why her husband took another wife, Peninnah. That woman mocked Hannah, provoked her, and vexed her spirit because she had no children. Besides, Hannah was a member of the church during the terrible time of Eli and his drunken, profane, and adulterous sons, whom he restrained not. The state of the church troubled such a woman deeply. Jehovah looked on all her troubles, her affliction, and all the sorrow of her heart; and he gave her little Samuel. With joy in her heart and thanksgiving flowing from her soul, she prayed an absolutely lovely prayer:

6. The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bring-eth down to the grave, and bringeth up.

7. The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.

8. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes. (1 Sam. 2:6–8)

There is the lovely, exalted language of Psalm 113. And Hannah no doubt taught that prayer to her son as she held him on her lap and rejoiced in him as God’s gift to her. Samuel, having been well taught by his godly mother, may have been moved by God to write down her prayer for Israel and for us not only in the book of Samuel but also as a song for God’s people in their sin. And that prayer and song came from faith, in which God was everything and in which Hannah was nothing. Jehovah—high and mighty—looked on her—weak and lowly, beggar, and poor.

You can easily imagine the glory of God as described by Hannah. God looks low. I can remember being a little boy in church, and, as little boys are wont to do, I would make my way to a group of men who were talking about I knew not what. I would stand at the side of one of the men whom I knew had a pocket full of candy. After a bit he would stop talking, look down at me, come to my level, ask me how I was doing, and give me a Wilhelmina peppermint. He looked at me. He did not need to do that. It was wonderful.

Or you can imagine that a man is in deep legal trouble. Accused of some crime and facing the certain loss of his freedom, his property, and perhaps his life, he appeals to the president of the United States, who then stops what he is doing and takes notice of the case and writes the pardon that frees the man from the charges.

To an infinite degree and far more gloriously, that is true of God. He is high and dwells on high, and he looks low, even into the depths, to take notice of our case, our situation, and our affliction, and lifts us up. That is the incomparable condescension of God.

God dwells on high. Do not understand the psalm as saying God dwells on high in the heavens and humbles himself to look on the earth. The glory of God expressed in the psalm is not about God’s dwelling in the heavens.

The glory of God expressed in the psalm is the absolute transcendence and independence of God. God is above the heavens. He inhabits eternity, dwells in a light that no man can approach unto, and is God blessed forever. The exalted heavens themselves are beneath God. The heavens themselves are not eternal, as God is. The heavens, even the heaven of heavens, are a creation of God, with all their inhabitants.

God must humble himself and stoop down even to enter the heavens, as high and lofty as they are. The psalm is not praising the fact that God dwells in heaven. The psalm is praising the fact that God in himself is absolutely above the heaven. He is very high; he is absolutely transcendent. He is God alone. He is eternal; he is exalted above time and above every succession of moments. Time is not a category of his existence. Time is his creature. He is before time; and in the endless and infinite realm of eternity, he is the eternal. He alone is, and in him is the eternal reality of all things.

As the eternal God, he is absolutely self-sufficient. He has his being of himself. His glory is of himself. His life is of himself. His praise is of himself.

He is holy. God alone is good—absolutely, perfectly, transcendently, infinitely good. He is holiness; he is righteousness; he is power; he is sovereignty; he is love, grace, mercy, and wisdom; and he is all these and more to an infinite degree. He is most holy, most wise, most just, most gracious, most kind, and most tender. As the only good, his holiness is the absolute separation of God and the consecration of God to himself and his glory as the only good, only perfect, and only blessed God.

Who is like Jehovah! The i am that i am. He is what he is in all the instant and constant fullness of his divine being from eternity to eternity. He does not change but is perfection and the implication of all perfection—the God who is his perfections and is eternally the same in all his perfections. He does not grow, develop, change, or learn, but he is eternally perfect and perfectly blessed.

Belonging to that word high is also this fact: he exalts himself. That is really what that word high means: to make high or to lift up. God’s exaltation is his constant activity. He delights in his glory as the only good and ever blessed God. He seeks that glory and glorifies himself. His height and majesty and honor and glory are not the result of what another gave him; they are not the result even of what he has done in creation; they are not the result of what he will do in creation. What he does and what he will do are the revelations of the glory that he possesses of himself from all eternity. His glory, majesty, and excellence are who he is of himself.

Who is like Jehovah our God! There is none like him. There is no other God besides him. He is perfect in power and majesty. He is perfect in praise and glory. He is God alone and God blessed forever.

And still more, he dwells on high. He is the God who dwells. Most blessed of all the revelations concerning God: he dwells. In his height, glory, and praise he dwells. He does not merely exist. He does not merely live in the superficial sense of that term. He dwells in eternity. He dwells in his high and lofty place.

Dwelling is a covenantal term. It presupposes a household, and in a household there is the constant bustle of life and activity. Dwelling takes us into the realm of the household and the family. It presupposes likeness, love, communion, friendship. Dwelling is covenant fellowship and friendship.

So God, who is high, is no lonely monad in eternity. He dwells. His life is full of friendship and fellowship and is a constant, eternal stream of activity and life. The Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit is breathed back and forth between them. The Father clasps his Son in his embrace, and the Son presses himself into his Father. The Father speaks his eternal Word, and the Word returns to him in the Spirit. The Father delights in his Son, and the Son delights in his Father, and that delight is the Holy Ghost. Willing, planning, counseling, and decreeing from eternity to eternity.

Who is like Jehovah, the triune God, the covenant God, and the living God?

As God, then, he is also perfect and absolutely self-sufficient in that life. He has need of none, for he is sufficiency itself. He needs no praise, for he exalts himself. He needs no company, for he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He needs no help, friendship, or fellowship, for he has that in perfection in himself.

Who is like Jehovah, who dwells on high?

Who is like Jehovah, who humbles himself to look in heaven and in earth? He looks low. He humbles himself.

Man never does that. If man gains a high position, he fights with all that he is and all that he has to keep it. If he gets wealth, he will remain rich. If he gets power, he will remain in influence. If he gets some honor, he will have everyone beneath him acknowledge it. Man does not humble himself. He would rather go to hell than humble himself. God may humble him for his salvation. But man never does that himself. One man might be thrust down by another man, but he rages about that and rebels against it. He builds himself a kingdom, a life, and a position in this world, and he will not give them up.

And we see that every day. Man struts about as though he is something, when in fact he is nothing. He boasts as though he is something, when in fact he is a damnworthy sinner, who daily increases his debt. He boasts before God. Man will even boast that God does not see his wickedness. Man boasts in his strength, his wisdom, and his ingenuity. He boasts even in the matter of salvation, claiming what is God’s for himself. Such is man.

But God, who is everything and who dwells on high, humbles himself. Therein is the glory of God revealed! The God who dwells in a high and lofty place, who is perfectly blessed in himself, who has need of nothing and no one, humbles himself.

An act of his own. None humbles him. He humbles himself. As he exalts himself out of himself, so he humbles himself out of himself as an act of his free will and his incomparable goodness, eternal grace, everlasting mercy, and boundless love.

For that humbling of God is for salvation. The incomparable condescension of God for salvation and that all things might be glorified in him and that his creatures may understand and know him as the only good and ever blessed covenant God. The psalm does not merely magnify the fact that God looks into creation, takes thought for the creation, and cares for the creation that he made.

In one sense God is immanent in the creation. He is present in the creation and in every particle and subatomic particle of matter with the whole of his divine being. He is not separate from the creation, but in him we live and move and have our being. That all by itself is astounding. God takes delight in the great whales that play in the deep. He knows all the stars by name. He helps the mother animals bring forth their young. He feeds the little ravens and the lion cubs, and he clothes the lilies of the valley. Oh, that is astounding condescension of God, that he looks low and takes care of his creation.

But at the heart of all that activity of God stands the most astounding condescension of all: the condescension of his grace. The psalm here praises God’s condescension to his people in his saving grace toward them. The psalm makes this clear when it says that he is our God, that is, that he is our God in grace. The psalm says that he sets the poor and needy among princes. That is simply a picturesque way to describe the exaltation of God’s people in salvation. He sets us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The psalm says that he makes the barren woman to be a joyful mother of children. That emphasizes his salvation in the covenant of his grace, for there he speaks of joy in children, and the only children who bring joy are the children of his grace, of his covenant, and of his promise; for the children of the flesh are the fruit of a barren womb and barren race and bring nothing but trouble and sorrow.

God humbles himself to look! He looks low! Of course, he looks low. He cannot look up because there is none above him. He cannot look to the side because there is none equal to him. He looks low. He delights for the praise of his excellent majesty and for the exaltation of his glorious grace to look low.

Where does he look, then? He must humble himself to look into heaven. Heaven is a high and lofty place, a spiritual realm, the dwelling place of the myriad of angels and of just men made perfect, the place of the throne of Jesus Christ, the dwelling place of the ancient of days, and the location of the sapphire-paved throne of judgment, before which all will stand.

God must humble himself to look into heaven, so high and so mighty, so transcendent and so glorious is God. He must stoop down to enter that place and to look into that place and to the goings-on in that place and to the work of his mighty angels. That is an astounding condescension of God, that he would take notice of the affairs of heaven.

But more glorious, he looks into the dust, into a dunghill, and into a barren womb.

Incomparable condescension of God!

Who is like Jehovah our God, who looks low!

He must look into the dust because that is what man is. As Jehovah is high, man is low. He is of the dust originally: a dirt man. Jehovah looked down into that dust, and there in the dust he found that which was suitable to make a man. So he made something out of nothing. And what did that nothing, that dirt man, do? He returned to the dust in his sin and by the sentence of death. And still God looks into the dust. He looks upon man as he is fallen and lying under the curse, and he raises man up out of that dust.

But more glorious still, he looks into a dunghill, the place of human garbage and waste; a place of excrement piled and stinking and rotting. Have you ever looked into the bottom of a trash can or into the back of a garbage truck, with the garbage rotting and crawling with maggots? Man turns away in disgust from that nauseating and revolting sight. That is where God looks. It is the glory of God that he looks there. The high and lofty one humbles himself to look into the dunghill that is man and that is this creation fallen in sin and lying under the curse. The high and lofty one humbles himself to look into the garbage can crawling with maggots that is man and that is this creation.

Because man is not merely dust, but he is also a rotting, stinking, dead man. A bag of maggots. He is that because of sin and because of the curse of God—and there God humbles himself to look, to take notice of those disgusting and revolting things.

And he looks right into the barren womb. Barren is the cutting word that describes a woman who is unable to have children. That is the cutting word that Peninnah used to torture the spirit of Hannah by mockery and ridicule. That is the cutting word that describes man, woman, child, and the whole human race spiritually. Barren! Utterly devoid of life and life-giving power. Utterly devoid of anything spiritual or worthwhile or useful to God. Barren, barren, barren man is; signified by that barren womb. All of humanities’ wombs are barren, unable to bring forth the seed of God and unable to bring forth any seed of God. Barren, so that he is unable to be fruitful to God. There is a windswept and barren landscape blowing with winds absolutely hostile to God and to anything good—a land in the grip of death.

God must humble himself to look there. And so he did. The Son made himself of no reputation and came to look on a barren womb. And there the Holy Ghost came upon Mary, and the power of God overshadowed her, and God became man, so that the holy thing that was born of Mary was called the Son of God and Immanuel.

And when he became man, he made himself of no reputation in order to look into our squalor, our misery, and our sorrow, affliction, and sin. He took notice of our case, and, having pity on us, he took that all on himself. He looked right into the terrible depths of hell on the cross in order to take away our sin, which was the cause of our misery, and to earn grace, blessing, righteousness, and eternal life for us.

If man does not humble himself, he surely does not look low. Oh, he looks down on all his fellows. He puffs himself up in his pride and his self-seeking and his self-
aggrandizement. But he does not look low. Man turns away from the scenes of squalor and poverty, blood and death, and excrement. They revolt him. He will not look into the plights and sorrows, the anguish and the suffering of his fellow man. Man is by nature high in his own estimation, and all are beneath him. He is by nature implacable, unmerciful, and cruel, so he only adds to the suffering.

Man also will not make himself low so as to be found of God when God looks low. Man is born in the bottom of a pit toilet, in a dunghill, and in a maggot-infested trash can, and he insists that he is something. He shouts and boasts and struts and parades. But God does not look there. He resists the proud. He looks into the bottom, into the depths. He looks low. God humbles himself to look low.

It is our salvation that he does that. It is God’s glory and for the praise of his excellent name that he does that. That is who he is and who he reveals himself to be: the God who looks low.

And he always does that for his people. He delights to look at the mess that we have made of things and at our cases and all our afflictions, our sorrows, and our troubles; and, looking upon his people, to lift them up and make them great. All God’s works from the beginning are to make something out of nothing. So he made the creation in the beginning. So also he works in salvation: choosing nothings, nobodies, inhabitants of the depths in order to lift them up and set them among princes, in high places, in heaven; and to glorify them with salvation.

That God is our God. That is why he is our God. We did not look to him. He looked on us, and he made himself our God. What a lovely and comforting phrase. He is our God, and so we are his people: because he looked low; because he looked into the dust, into our dunghill, and into the barren womb, and there he found us, and from there he lifted us up.

Our God.

From all eternity our God. To all eternity our God. Our God who condescended to us of low estate. In his astounding grace and mercy and out of his infinite love. Our God also for this year again, as he has been our God through all the ages of the world and will be to the end of it.

Jehovah our God. Who is like him? Who looks low!