Psalm 10:1 Why do You stand afar off, O LORD? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble? 2 In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted; Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised. 3 For the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire, And the greedy man curses and spurns the LORD. 4 The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.” 5 His ways prosper at all times; Your judgments are on high, out of his sight; As for all his adversaries, he snorts at them.
One of the key thoughts in this text is that the proud (haughtiness in countenance) do not seek God. We may think that this is limited to the outwardly wicked, but it is not. What we see throughout Scripture is that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. The proud do not seek God because they seek themselves, not only in worldly things but in the things of religion. Though the section of the text above does not specifically include the religious proud, if one goes on in the context of Psalm 10 it will be clear. The man not seeking God was really a man that had some belief in a god of some kind but it was one he dreamed up.
One of the hard things for religious people to accept (including those within Christendom) is that God cannot be sought in any way other than by grace alone. One cannot earn or merit or move God to show grace because of anything that the person does, but the only way that the true God can be sought in truth is by grace and grace alone. God is not moved to be kind and merciful to people because they are holy, but instead people grow in holiness because God is being kind and merciful to them. God does not love people because they are worthy or because they do something religious or good, but He loves because of who He is and not because of anything they have done. Keeping the commandments does not move God to love people, but people keep the commandments of God because He works love for Himself in them.
In essence, and boiled down, one can only seek God by grace and all other ways are efforts to seek God by works in some way and to some degree. If one can only seek God by grace, and clearly God only gives grace to the humble, the ramifications of this are simply enormous. All those who have proud hearts are not seeking God regardless of whether they recognize the pride in their hearts or not. All those who have proud hearts are not seeking God for God (regardless of their words) because apart from grace they will only seek self in some way. God can only be truly sought by those seeking to be emptied of self (humility) and pride.
Habakkuk 2:4 “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith.
As can be seen from the text above, the proud one does not have a soul that is right within him. But in contrast to that we see that the righteous live by faith. This shows us again that pride and faith are opposites. When we see that a soul is declared just by God by grace alone through faith alone, we can see the great danger of pride. As long as the soul is proud, it cannot have true faith and as such a soul without true faith cannot have true grace. When people, therefore, read their Bibles and are moral and yet they do not do those things from humble hearts seeking grace and seeking God Himself, they are doing nothing but feeding their pride.
We are also commanded to walk by faith, but the reason that is true is because faith receives grace and lives by Christ alone. All the fruits of the Spirit come to the soul by grace and so the soul must live by what faith receives or it is not truly alive. Believers live by grace and not by their efforts and works, but instead efforts and works must come from grace in order to be right, true, and holy. The proud in heart cannot walk by grace and as such the proud heart cannot seek the Lord in truth and love. The heart that is greedy to get things from God does indeed spurn the Lord for it is not seeking Him but things from Him. That proud heart will not seek God on the basis of grace alone because it loves itself and is blinded by that love and so cannot see its pride and the real nature of God and His grace. God gives grace for His own glory, but proud souls don’t love His glory but instead seek their own.
God Loves... Himself 
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