Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Luke 1:46-55. The main subject of the sermon is how Mary praises Jesus, the God-Man, who is her son.
Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Luke 1:46-55. The main subject of the sermon is how Mary praises Jesus, the God-Man, who is her son.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I. Let Us Magnify the Lord Together
The kingdom of heaven is like a seed, a mustard seed, that is the smallest seed that you plant in the ground, and yet, when it’s planted, it grows and becomes the largest of garden plants with branches so big that the birds of the air can perch in its shade. What does that have to do with this morning’s sermon? Well, the word of God is like that. It nestles into your soul, and you think about pictures of the seed that germinates as it pushes out a little tap root, and that root gets bigger and bigger, and then other roots come out, and it’s all kind of an invisible movement that relates to the effect of the Word in our souls, within our hearts, and it expands and develops so that we are rooted and established in love, rooted and established in Christ more and more. And one of the principle ways that happens is by meditation on the Word, that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened as we meditate on Christ and on the gifts that he comes to give. Now, we need help doing that. We are not good at meditating on heaven. We’re not good at meditating on Christ and on the invisible riches of the kingdom, so you remember how the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Teach us to pray,” so I think we should say the same thing. We come to Christ and say, “Teach us to praise,” and so this morning, as we look at Luke 1, we’re going to be coming into the presence of a godly woman, Mary, at a key moment redemptive history, and we’re going to be learning from her how to magnify the Lord with her and exalt his name as we talked about last week, Psalm 34:3, to make the Lord greater and greater in our minds, in our heart, so, “magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together!” but we need help doing that, and so as we listen to Luke 1, as we think about what Mary said when she came into the presence of Elizabeth and the two of them were celebrating what God was doing in their lives, Mary, I believe moved by the Holy Spirit broke forth into this magnificent praise, and so we’re going to learn from this Godly woman. We’re going to learn how to praise and how to exalt God, and the reason that we’re going to do this is so that we can be weaned from earth. We are far more idolatrous than we imagine that we are. Our hearts are easily entangled in the things of this world. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, boastful pride of life, these things are attractive and alluring to our flesh, and we have to battle them all the time, and so we need help. We need help through the Holy Spirit, so we have to think not just what was Mary thinking at that time and by speaking those words, but what did the Holy Spirit intend by having Luke write them down for us, and what did the Holy Spirit intend by protecting those words over 20 centuries of redemptive history until they came finally into our minds so that we could read them? I think the reason is that we would be able to magnify God as she did. We’re going to learn how to magnify the Lord.
Look at verse 46. Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” That word magnify on my mind, as it was a week ago when we looked at Colossians 2:3, that we would make much of God. It’s called in the Latin, the Latin translates, “magnificat”, from the word to magnify, to make God greater, and she says, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” This is the essence of Christian worship, that we would make much of God and of Christ. This is the essence, I think of a worshipful Christmas. We know that Christmas has become increasingly secular as our world has become increasingly secular, and the overwhelming emphasis on materialism has always stood as a threat to a worshipful Christ-centered celebration of his birth, and more and more, our society is moving away from its Christian roots and becoming increasingly secular, and so we, Christians, Christian families, Christian individuals, have to fight this secularizing trend, and we do it by meditating on things of heaven, meditating on things of God, and so we’re going to magnify the Lord and exalt his name together for sending the infant Jesus to be miraculously crafted inside Mary’s body.
“This is the essence of Christian worship, that we would make much of God and of Christ.”
We want to stand in awe and wonder at the miracle of Christmas. We want to stand in awe and wonder at the doctrine of God made Man, of the incarnation, of the virgin conception and birth of our Savior, to meditate together on one of the greatest pieces of poetry in the Bible, the Magnificat. Let’s look at the context of Mary’s praise here in Luke 1. At what point was she at in redemptive history? Where was she when she spoke these words?
II. The Context of Mary’s Praise
It says in Galatians 4:4-5, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.” What did Paul mean by those words, the fullness of time? It was just the right moment in history. It was the perfection of time and history for the Savior to be born. The Jewish nation had been dominated for six centuries by gentile rulers, one after the other. Now, it was the time for the Romans. Roman soldiers were trampling through the Judean countryside. They were taking the best of the harvest and the produce for themselves. Puppet kings under Roman domination like Herod ruled under Rome, and the threat of the Roman legions was never far away. Furthermore, in redemptive history, there’d been no prophetic word that we know about, nothing recorded since the time of Malachi, so for centuries, it seemed that God had been silent. Some Jews seemed to be ready to give up on the promises to Abraham. They had been slaves in their own Promised Land for centuries. That’s where they were at in redemptive history.
Who was Mary? While Mary was a Jewish young woman, she was the descendant of David. Her lineage is laid out for us in Luke’s gospel. She was of humble circumstances however. There was no great material or earthly benefit to being descended from David at that point. She was from a poor family. She lived in the northern area of Galilee, in Nazareth. She was from a despised area of the Promised Land, dominated and infiltrated by Gentile culture, by Gentiles, and so despised by the rest of the Jewish nation. She was the sister of Salome. She was related to Elizabeth, cousin, it seems. She was aunt to James and John. She was betrothed to Joseph, who was a godly man, but hardly wealthy. He was a simple man, and so her prospects would be humble, as we’ll talk about more later. She was a virgin. She said, “I know not a man,” she said to Gabriel. She had godly characters, a godly woman, and therefore highly esteemed by heaven. That’s who Mary was.
Now, her circumstances are predated in Luke 1 by what had happened with Elizabeth and with Zechariah. We already know that story as the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah to say the birth of John the Baptist, and Elizabeth is pregnant supernaturally, and that whole account is forced in Luke 1:5-24. Then, the Lord sends the same angel, Gabriel to Mary with even greater news, the birth of Jesus Christ. Gabriel is the same angel that had appeared so many centuries before that to the prophet Daniel, and the same one that appeared to Zechariah.
Now, Gabriel’s news to Mary was remarkable, even more remarkable than the news to Elizabeth. To Mary said, “You’re going to have a son, and your son will be the Son of David. He will be the Messiah. He also will be God’s Son. He will be God in the flesh and your Son’s kingdom will never end.” Mary is amazed. Her stunned response is, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” and Gabriel explained, and this is the centerpiece of the incarnation in verse 35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” Christ, therefore, fully man and fully God, and then Gabriel gives this confirming proof about Elizabeth. She would have no information about this, no other way to know this except that the angel told her what had happened to Elizabeth, that she was pregnant, miraculously pregnant as well, and then, this incredible affirmation that Gabriel makes, “For nothing shall be impossible with God.” Then, Mary gives a submissive, faith-filled answer, “‘I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me, as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.”
That’s the context. Then, she goes and makes a confirming visit to Elizabeth. Mary goes to be together to confirm the angel’s words to her and also just to be together, and so she travels to the hill country to see Elizabeth and the message is confirmed. When she arrives, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says these incredible words, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear, but why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” So that’s the context, and now, we’re going to look at the remarkable praise, and let’s look at the characteristics of Mary’s praise.
III. The Characteristics of Mary’s Praise
First of all, it has remarkable depth. It is deep, theologically rich. Mary, we learn, is a quiet ponderer. She takes information in and thinks about it deeply, and this shows her pondering on scripture as well, and so she’s a thinker. There’s depth. Secondly, there is joy in this. She celebrates. She says, “My soul glorifies in the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” There is great joy in this, in this worship. Thirdly, there is God-centered adoration. You can see God’s attributes on display, his divine power, sovereignty, his holiness, his mercy, his faithfulness. The attributes of God are woven through this adoration. She keeps her mind focused like a laser on who God is and what God is doing. Fourthly, it is saturated in Scripture. Some people link Mary’s praise to Hannah’s praise in 1 Samuel 2, when Samuel is born, but honestly, there’s only some bear points of contact between Mary and Hannah. Hannah’s praise is more focused, it seems, on her personal vindication over her enemy and God’s goodness to her personally. Mary’s praise is greater than that and more lavish and saturated in scripture throughout. Some scholars have been able to discern over 20 allusions or quotations of Old Testament scripture in these brief verses of praise from Mary. What a perfect mother for Jesus. I mean, no one in history has been so saturated with the Bible as Jesus, and imagine the privilege of a woman getting to raise a son like Jesus.
Now, obviously, there must have been some amazing moments. Remember when Jesus was 12 years old and Joseph and Mary lost track of Jesus. That’s quite an amazing moment, don’t you think in redemptive history? You think like Gabriel could come back and say, “You know, had one job to do, and you might want to keep track of where 12-year-old Jesus is,” but clearly, Jesus, his understanding of who he was and what his mission was, was astonishing and says to his obviously worried mother, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house and doing my Father’s work?” and so would’ve been remarkable, don’t you think, and what a journey to be able to raise the Son of God, but she was saturated in Scripture, and how from infancy, we could say, just like Timothy, she had poured the scriptures into Jesus.
And then, fifthly: humility. Mary is just astonished that God would be so gracious to someone like her. This is just foundational to God’s gracious work in our lives. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, so if you want to see that mustard seed of the kingdom of God just grow and develop, then take those same attributes in your own meditation. Let your meditations be deep, and rich, and God-centered, and saturated in Scripture and humble. Let your meditations of Christ and of God be like hers.
IV. The Content of Mary’s Praise
Well, let’s look now at the content of Mary’s praise, and we’re going to look at it in four stanzas, and I’ll just give you kind of a quick outline of what those four stanzas are. First, God’s blessings to Mary. She’s going to celebrate God’s goodness and grace to herself personally. Then, she’s going to extend it to God’s grace and mercy to all generations in the second stanza, God’s goodness to all generations. Then thirdly, what we could call the great reversal, how God turns things around and takes the rich and mighty and sends them away empty, but gives grace to the humble, the great reversal thirdly, and then fourthly, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise to Abraham, God’s covenant keeping, promise-keeping as God. Those are the four stanzas.
So let’s look at the first one, stanza one, she’s exalting in God’s blessings to her personally, verses 46-49, “Mary said, ‘My soul glorifies in the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is his name.’” so Mary’s joy is flowing here. She’s celebrating God’s goodness to her personally. It flows as a result of Elizabeth’s presence and the statements that she makes. Mary is very quiet and humble and submissive before the angel Gabriel, but she’s very open here with another woman, who like her is pregnant, and there’s a connection, and so she opens up a lot more. Whereas Elizabeth’s outburst seems to be passionate and exuberant, Mary’s seems to me more regal and majestic, kind of soaring even above what Elizabeth says. The focus here is God’s blessings to her personally, and so for us, our religion begins here, with the individual sinner and with what God will do for individual sinners. This week, I read a quote by Corrie ten Boom, and said this, “If Jesus were born 1,000 times in Bethlehem but not in me, then I would still be lost.”
So, in the end, Christ has to be born within you, within your own heart, or all of this pageantry and celebration does nothing for you. “Is there room at the cross for me?,” you have to ask. There’s going to be a banquet table in the kingdom of heaven. Is there going to be a place for you to sit at that banquet table? That’s what you have to ask. Paul does this very powerfully in Galatians 2:20, where there he says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” I think every individual has to do that. You can say, “Do I know by faith that Christ loved me personally and gave himself for me? Is there value in the shed blood of Christ for me and the forgiveness of my sins?,” and so Mary is amazed at God’s goodness and grace and mercy to her personally, and it’s rooted in humility. “Why should the Almighty be doing something like this for me?” “Why would the Creator of the universe elevate someone like me so highly?” Look at verse 48. “He has been mindful of the humble state of his servant,” so Mary recognized her low position. She’s a member of a conquered race, perhaps even within the Jewish race, specifically humbled by maybe meager economic circumstances, Joseph’s future economic circumstances meager, and so she’s humbled in that sense, but she also mentions God, her Savior. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” So this statement, I believe, should late arrest any false doctrine about Mary’s sinlessness. I was raised Roman Catholic. In the Catholic tradition, there is a false teaching of the sinlessness of Mary. The immaculate conception does not relate to Jesus directly, but relates to Mary’s birth from her mother and how she was protected from original sin by the doctrine of the immaculate conception, the idea that in order for Jesus to have been born, he had to be born from a pure mother, who was herself protected from any sin at all, but Mary would not have thought that at all. She understood. As much as she was a godly woman, she was a sinner who needed to be saved by grace, and so we have to set aside any kind of idolatrous elevation of Mary as a focus of worship or adoration or any false teaching that she is in some sense a co-redemptrix, or as some have said, the queen of heaven. Any of these lofty thoughts at all are not rooted in Scripture. Mary is a godly woman, but she needed a savior and she recognized that. She rejoices in God, my Savior, and the humble state she felt for herself included a sense of her own sinfulness that she needed forgiveness.
“Christ has to be born within you, within your own heart, or all of this pageantry and celebration does nothing for you.”
Now, Mary, for all of her humility, she would have to take on, and she didn’t understand it fully, we never do, but would take on a great deal of suffering to be Jesus’s mother, and her willingness to take on this role makes her in every respect a woman worthy of emulation by generations of women who would follow, and in her godliness and her piety and her worship, worthy of imitation for us all, but she needed a savior. Now, she could not have fully understood how that salvation would be worked by her own son, how her own son, Jesus Christ must die, a bloody death on the cross for her and for all of God’s people. She couldn’t have fully understood that, and that’s an astonishing thought, isn’t it, that her Savior is her son, and that he had to suffer and die?
Mary also recognizes future blessing that’s coming toward her. “From now on,” verse 48, “all generations will call me bless, for the Mighty One has done great things for me,” so Mary knows that this moment is of eternal consequence, and that people in the future would understand the level of her blessedness by being chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. These are great gifts that God has given to Mary. Verse 49, “The Mighty One has done great things for me.” Great things, so what great things has the Lord done for Mary? We’ll start with the virgin conception, which is an incredible miracle. In an ordinary conception, there are 46 chromosomes in the normal birth, 23 from the mother and 23 from the father, but in this case, God supernaturally created the 23 chromosomes that would’ve come from a male father, like he created the universe out of nothing by the word of his power, like Jesus would later, as we mentioned last week, create an ear for Malchus out of nothing, and so that’s the miracle of the virgin conception.
God’s great gifts to Mary also include the fulfillment of prophecy, a prophecy made centuries before speaking ultimately of Mary. In Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son.” I doubt she ever read that scripture the same again. Imagine, in the scroll of Isaiah, “That’s talking about me. The Mighty One has done great things for me. I am the virgin who was with child,” and the amazing role of raising the savior in this world, just the access to Jesus, being able to see him, the things that happened as he was a boy that we know nothing about other than that 12-year-old vignette, but just the memories that she had. There must have been more and more and more that she treasured in her heart. Jesus’ first miracle was at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, so we didn’t know miracles growing up, but just a sinless human being, watching a sinless boy grow up to be a sinless young man, and then finally, at age 30, being presented to Israel, sinless, being able to have that kind of access and observe it, and so these are remarkable things that she’s celebrating, and the holiness of God. Holy is his name. This is a distinguishing characteristic of God, the holiness of God, freedom from all immorality and wickedness. Now, what will happen to Mary will lead some people to imagine uncleanness, to imagine fornication. As a matter of fact, it’s even insinuated in reference to Jesus. In John 8, some of his enemies said, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” It’s incredible statement to make to another human being, when Jesus said in reference to that, “I honor my Father and you dishonor me,” but they didn’t just dishonor him, but dishonored his mother, implying that she had had immoral relations with a Samaritan man, but the whole conception and birth was perfectly holy. Look back at verse 34-35 as she says to the angel, “‘How will this be since I am a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born of you will be called the Son of God.’” All right, so that’s stanza one, celebrating God’s grace and mercy to her personally as an individual.
Stanza two: extending to God’s blessings to the entire world, to generations even as yet unborn. Look at verse 50, “His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.” So Mary now widens her focus and praise to include believers who had not even been born yet. This is the nature of Christian faith: we start with us, and then we start to realize it’s not just about us. As Ron mentioned earlier, there’s going to be a multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation standing around the throne, wearing white robes and saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into the land.” You’ve got a lot of your best friends that you haven’t even met yet, and you’re going to spend eternity meeting them and getting to know them, and you’re like, “Wow, there’s a lot of people to get to know.” Yeah, you got a lot of time. You’ll have plenty of time to get to know them and their stories and to celebrate what God did in and through them, brothers and sisters who live centuries before you, and so she says her mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation. Perhaps at this point, she’s thinking about Gabriel’s prediction concerning the future of her son’s kingdom. In verse 32-33, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of David forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Now, her focus on generations yet unborn has to do with God’s mercy. God’s mercy is his kindness to those in affliction and suffering, his kindness to those in affliction and suffering. Frequently, those suffering from afflictions would cry out to Jesus saying, “Have mercy on us,” like the blind man, Bartimaeus, “Have mercy on me,” but there is no suffering on earth that compares with eternal condemnation in hell. It is the greatest suffering there is, and so the ultimate mercy of God is not to alleviate temporal circumstances such as would be found in an AIDS clinic in Botswana or in a slum area, poor area of a city in Asia where there’s very, very low standard of living, or even in a work camp in a communist country. All of those places of affliction have greater affliction we can possibly imagine, but nothing, nothing compares to the terrors of hell, and so the mercy in verse 50 that extends to those who fear God from generation and generation is to be delivered from the torments of hell, that God sent his Son, that we would not be condemned, that we would not hear the words, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That’s why Jesus was sent, and his mercy extends to those who fear him, it says. It’s not for everyone. Some people don’t fear the judgment of God. They don’t fear what will happen on judgment day. They’re not afraid of what will happen when they die, and after that comes judgment. They don’t have that fear, but what God does when he saves a soul is he first teaches you to fear, and then relieves those fears, as John Newton said in “Amazing Grace”, and so his mercy extends from generation to generation to all those who fear Him and flee to Christ for refuge.
Stanza three has to do with delighting in God’s surprising ways with the full and the empty. This is what we call the great reversal. Look at verse 51-53. “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” This is the great reversal, the world reveres wealth and power and prestige, conquest, domination, and ostentation, but as already quoted, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” James 4:6. Mary speaks of the mighty deeds that God has done with his arm.
Now, at that point in redemptive history, what is she looking back on? Well, how about God’s mighty deeds in creating heaven and earth with the word of his power, or God’s mighty deeds in making a huge nation out of one man, Abraham, or God’s mighty deeds in rescuing the Jews out of bondage in Egypt through the 10 plagues and the Red Sea crossing, and then all of the things he did to protect the little nation of Israel from her enemies time and time again, the mighty deeds of God. Now, we’re further along in redemptive history, and now, we can celebrate more of God’s mighty deeds done through his Son, a lifetime of miracles, a river of miracles. Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross and his powerful resurrection from the dead, his mighty deeds can celebrate all of those, but here, she’s speaking specifically of God’s opposition to the proud. In their inmost thoughts, they are proud, and she speaks of God bringing down tyrants from their mighty thrones. Perhaps two come to mind right away, Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, and Herod the Great, who will soon give an order after the baby is born to kill all the babies in Bethlehem and its vicinity who are two years old and under. So these tyrants, God is going to bring them down from their throne. God rejected these halls of power in these mighty rulers. He did not send his Son through one of them, but has chosen a humble Jewish girl through which to bring his Son, and so he has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. So God has sovereign over rulers. He raises one up and lowers the other, but his grace he gives to the humble.
Then, she speaks of God’s banquet table. Verse 53, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” I can’t help but think about Isaiah 55:1, which is the great banquet of grace and of salvation. There the prophet says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat without money and without cost,” and so God spreads a salvation table before you. Now, you can’t see anything physical, but it’s by the promises and the words of God, and he’s inviting you to come and feast at the table of God’s grace and mercy. God’s feast is the kingdom of Messiah. It’s a rich welcome into the kingdom of God, and the central feast of that grace of mercy is this, the forgiveness of all of your sins, that you would stand forgiven before the eyes of a holy God, whose eyes are too pure to even look on evil. He cannot tolerate wrong, and imagine standing before him, blameless and unafraid, because you are covered in the righteousness of Christ. That’s the banquet of God’s grace.
Now, the basic principle is, if you are hungry, he will feed you. If you feel yourself poor, he will make you rich. If you feel yourself naked, he will clothe you, but if you are satisfied and don’t need all of that, he will give you nothing. He’ll send you away empty-handed, so imagine if you had brought your own dinner to where Jesus fed the 5,000, and you look at what you brought, and it’s better than barley, loaves, and fish, and you don’t partake of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, or imagine you brought your own wine to the wedding at Cana in Galilee, and you think it’s better than anything that could have come from those stone jars this late in the banquet, and so you don’t partake of the wine that Jesus made, so it is, for us, if you feel you don’t need Jesus, if you feel you’re healthy and strong and capable, he won’t do anything for you. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I’ve not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Those who are desperate for forgiveness, who know themselves to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness and for salvation, he feeds them, but for those that are satisfied with their earthly condition, he gives them nothing.
“Those who are desperate for forgiveness, who know themselves to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness and for salvation, he feeds them, but for those that are satisfied with their earthly condition, he gives them nothing.”
Stanza four: celebrating God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham, verses 54-55. The final stanza is of special interest to Mary as a Jewish woman, a descendant of Abraham. She knew very well the promises that had been made so many centuries before that to Abraham. Genesis 12:2-3, “God said to Abraham, ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.'” However, for six centuries, the Gentiles have trampled on the Promised Land. The Jews were marginalized and seem to have been bypassed. There are psalms that cry out to God saying, “Will you forget us forever? Where are the promises you made to our father Abraham?” but Gabriel’s message to Mary and Elizabeth’s Spirit-filled utterance are more proof. God has not forgotten his promises to Abraham. Look at verse 54-55. “He has helped his servant, Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and to his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Mary celebrates the renewal of God’s covenant promises to Abraham. The time has come at last for God to be gracious.
Now, I would say the overwhelming majority, if not, 100% of those in here today are Gentiles and not of Jewish descendency, there may be some that have a Jewish background. I’m so delighted that you’re here, welcoming, but for us, I’m a Gentile. Most of us are Gentiles. Friends, we are grafted into a Jewish tree. We derive nourishing sap from a Jewish root system. We are feeding on the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are adopted sons and daughters of Abraham, and through Abraham, we have been blessed with a Savior who is a descendant from Abraham, and from him, we receive all the blessings of our lives. And so for us, as we read this like, “Well, what does this have to do with me?” it has everything to do with you, for apart from Abraham’s blessing and the blessing spoken of to Abraham, we get nothing, but through him, we get the new heaven, new earth, the forgiveness of sins, and adoption to the family of God.
So this is the detailed look at the content of Mary’s praise in four stanzas. First, celebrating God’s blessings to Mary personally, secondly, celebrating God’s mercy and grace to all generations of those that fear him, thirdly, the great reversal, God’s sending the rich and powerful and full away empty, but blessing those that are hungry and poor and needy, and fourthly, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises made to Abraham.
V. Application: Magnifying Christ at Christmas
What applications can we take from this? Well, first and foremost, Mary’s son is her Savior, and he is the only Savior there is for the world. It’s amazing to me that Mary never directly mentions her son in her praise. She never directly mentions who Jesus is or, it’s cause she doesn’t know. Her worship is really kind of an Old Testament worship, looking ahead with limited knowledge to what’s coming, and Mary has an education that she’s going to have to get in her life. The Lord is going to have to put her in her place at a certain point, and it’s a difficult process. She has to learn who Jesus is. There’s one particular difficult moment when Mary and her other sons, hearing what’s going on in Jesus’ ministry, it’s in Mark 3, go to take charge of Jesus. Think about that. Mary is going to take charge of her grown son, because they thought, “he’s out of his mind.” I would say that was a low moment for Mary, and Jesus is inside. There’s a crowd around him, and some messenger comes in saying, “‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you,’ and Jesus said, ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ Then, he looks at those seated in a circle around him and says, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother,’” so put yourself in Mary’s place hearing that answer. He’s saying, “Will you do God’s will?” And what is God’s will? But to believe in the one that he has sent. “Trust me, even though my ministry may make no sense to you, trust me.” And that journey would be painful for her because she would be among the very few followers of Jesus, standing at the foot of the cross, watching him die. As Simeon said, “A sword will pierce your own soul as well,” so it’d be difficult for her, so application for you is to make that same journey, to go from underestimating Jesus and not really understanding who he is, to following his mission right to the cross and understanding his bloody death under the wrath of God is for you, because you are a sinner and you need to be saved by grace. That’s first greatest application.
Secondly, Mary’s praise is foretaste of an eternity of worship we’re going to do in heaven. I picture Mary in heaven, not as the queen of heaven, not sitting on some throne to be worshiped as co-redemptrix. Not at all, but she’s there with all of the godly women and men who are saved by grace through faith, worshiping and celebrating Jesus. The apostle Paul said in Corinthians, “Though we knew Jesus in an earthly way, we know him that way no longer,” so you might have had some kind of earthly contact with Jesus. Jesus is high and exalted far above all of that on the throne of God, and so all of the themes of this worship we’re going to spend eternity developing in heaven, so do some of it now. Do some of it now. Celebrate and worship what God has done through her son, Jesus, and then personalize Christmas. Say, “Jesus came for me. He came and died on the cross for me,” and so just let that meditation make you humble. We all need to be continually humbled. Just say, “The death that Jesus died, he died in my place,” and then universalize it. Think about people that have never heard the name of Christ. Think about generations that followed that first generation, even to our generation. We don’t know how long it’s going to be until the Lord comes, but say, “Christ didn’t just come from me, but Christ came for us,” and there are people, even in our community who haven’t yet come to faith in Christ, so pray for them and be a bold witness for them. And marvel at God’s sovereign rule of history has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. As we look at the history of government, both in our own country, presidents come, presidents go, we look at other nations and their forms of government. God is sovereign over all of that. He’s ruling over all of that for his own purposes, so let’s be confident in the face of that.
Finally, rely on God to be faithful to his promises. God kept his promise, and he’s keeping his promise to Abraham. He’s going to keep his promise to you, and the central promise, and we’re going to return to this God-willing next week, the central promise he’s making to you as a sinner is he’s going to raise you up on the last day. You’re going to spend eternity, through faith in Christ you’re going to spend eternity in a glorious resurrection body, worshiping your Savior. Close with me in prayer.
Lord, thank you for the chance we’ve had to learn from Mary, a godly woman, in an incredible moment in redemptive history, to be able to learn from her how to worship, how we can celebrate the goodness of God to us individually and also universally to God’s people in every generation. Thank you for Mary’s words. Thank you for the Holy Spirit, inspiring her to say them, and then inspiring Luke to record them and write them down. We thank you for the meditations we can do based on them. Help us to take the time, oh Lord, to meditate on your Word, to meditate on your goodness to us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Luke 1:46-55. The main subject of the sermon is how Mary praises Jesus, the God-Man, who is her son.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I. Let Us Magnify the Lord Together
The kingdom of heaven is like a seed, a mustard seed, that is the smallest seed that you plant in the ground, and yet, when it’s planted, it grows and becomes the largest of garden plants with branches so big that the birds of the air can perch in its shade. What does that have to do with this morning’s sermon? Well, the word of God is like that. It nestles into your soul, and you think about pictures of the seed that germinates as it pushes out a little tap root, and that root gets bigger and bigger, and then other roots come out, and it’s all kind of an invisible movement that relates to the effect of the Word in our souls, within our hearts, and it expands and develops so that we are rooted and established in love, rooted and established in Christ more and more. And one of the principle ways that happens is by meditation on the Word, that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened as we meditate on Christ and on the gifts that he comes to give. Now, we need help doing that. We are not good at meditating on heaven. We’re not good at meditating on Christ and on the invisible riches of the kingdom, so you remember how the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Teach us to pray,” so I think we should say the same thing. We come to Christ and say, “Teach us to praise,” and so this morning, as we look at Luke 1, we’re going to be coming into the presence of a godly woman, Mary, at a key moment redemptive history, and we’re going to be learning from her how to magnify the Lord with her and exalt his name as we talked about last week, Psalm 34:3, to make the Lord greater and greater in our minds, in our heart, so, “magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together!” but we need help doing that, and so as we listen to Luke 1, as we think about what Mary said when she came into the presence of Elizabeth and the two of them were celebrating what God was doing in their lives, Mary, I believe moved by the Holy Spirit broke forth into this magnificent praise, and so we’re going to learn from this Godly woman. We’re going to learn how to praise and how to exalt God, and the reason that we’re going to do this is so that we can be weaned from earth. We are far more idolatrous than we imagine that we are. Our hearts are easily entangled in the things of this world. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, boastful pride of life, these things are attractive and alluring to our flesh, and we have to battle them all the time, and so we need help. We need help through the Holy Spirit, so we have to think not just what was Mary thinking at that time and by speaking those words, but what did the Holy Spirit intend by having Luke write them down for us, and what did the Holy Spirit intend by protecting those words over 20 centuries of redemptive history until they came finally into our minds so that we could read them? I think the reason is that we would be able to magnify God as she did. We’re going to learn how to magnify the Lord.
Look at verse 46. Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” That word magnify on my mind, as it was a week ago when we looked at Colossians 2:3, that we would make much of God. It’s called in the Latin, the Latin translates, “magnificat”, from the word to magnify, to make God greater, and she says, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” This is the essence of Christian worship, that we would make much of God and of Christ. This is the essence, I think of a worshipful Christmas. We know that Christmas has become increasingly secular as our world has become increasingly secular, and the overwhelming emphasis on materialism has always stood as a threat to a worshipful Christ-centered celebration of his birth, and more and more, our society is moving away from its Christian roots and becoming increasingly secular, and so we, Christians, Christian families, Christian individuals, have to fight this secularizing trend, and we do it by meditating on things of heaven, meditating on things of God, and so we’re going to magnify the Lord and exalt his name together for sending the infant Jesus to be miraculously crafted inside Mary’s body.
“This is the essence of Christian worship, that we would make much of God and of Christ.”
We want to stand in awe and wonder at the miracle of Christmas. We want to stand in awe and wonder at the doctrine of God made Man, of the incarnation, of the virgin conception and birth of our Savior, to meditate together on one of the greatest pieces of poetry in the Bible, the Magnificat. Let’s look at the context of Mary’s praise here in Luke 1. At what point was she at in redemptive history? Where was she when she spoke these words?
II. The Context of Mary’s Praise
It says in Galatians 4:4-5, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.” What did Paul mean by those words, the fullness of time? It was just the right moment in history. It was the perfection of time and history for the Savior to be born. The Jewish nation had been dominated for six centuries by gentile rulers, one after the other. Now, it was the time for the Romans. Roman soldiers were trampling through the Judean countryside. They were taking the best of the harvest and the produce for themselves. Puppet kings under Roman domination like Herod ruled under Rome, and the threat of the Roman legions was never far away. Furthermore, in redemptive history, there’d been no prophetic word that we know about, nothing recorded since the time of Malachi, so for centuries, it seemed that God had been silent. Some Jews seemed to be ready to give up on the promises to Abraham. They had been slaves in their own Promised Land for centuries. That’s where they were at in redemptive history.
Who was Mary? While Mary was a Jewish young woman, she was the descendant of David. Her lineage is laid out for us in Luke’s gospel. She was of humble circumstances however. There was no great material or earthly benefit to being descended from David at that point. She was from a poor family. She lived in the northern area of Galilee, in Nazareth. She was from a despised area of the Promised Land, dominated and infiltrated by Gentile culture, by Gentiles, and so despised by the rest of the Jewish nation. She was the sister of Salome. She was related to Elizabeth, cousin, it seems. She was aunt to James and John. She was betrothed to Joseph, who was a godly man, but hardly wealthy. He was a simple man, and so her prospects would be humble, as we’ll talk about more later. She was a virgin. She said, “I know not a man,” she said to Gabriel. She had godly characters, a godly woman, and therefore highly esteemed by heaven. That’s who Mary was.
Now, her circumstances are predated in Luke 1 by what had happened with Elizabeth and with Zechariah. We already know that story as the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah to say the birth of John the Baptist, and Elizabeth is pregnant supernaturally, and that whole account is forced in Luke 1:5-24. Then, the Lord sends the same angel, Gabriel to Mary with even greater news, the birth of Jesus Christ. Gabriel is the same angel that had appeared so many centuries before that to the prophet Daniel, and the same one that appeared to Zechariah.
Now, Gabriel’s news to Mary was remarkable, even more remarkable than the news to Elizabeth. To Mary said, “You’re going to have a son, and your son will be the Son of David. He will be the Messiah. He also will be God’s Son. He will be God in the flesh and your Son’s kingdom will never end.” Mary is amazed. Her stunned response is, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” and Gabriel explained, and this is the centerpiece of the incarnation in verse 35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” Christ, therefore, fully man and fully God, and then Gabriel gives this confirming proof about Elizabeth. She would have no information about this, no other way to know this except that the angel told her what had happened to Elizabeth, that she was pregnant, miraculously pregnant as well, and then, this incredible affirmation that Gabriel makes, “For nothing shall be impossible with God.” Then, Mary gives a submissive, faith-filled answer, “‘I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me, as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.”
That’s the context. Then, she goes and makes a confirming visit to Elizabeth. Mary goes to be together to confirm the angel’s words to her and also just to be together, and so she travels to the hill country to see Elizabeth and the message is confirmed. When she arrives, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says these incredible words, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear, but why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” So that’s the context, and now, we’re going to look at the remarkable praise, and let’s look at the characteristics of Mary’s praise.
III. The Characteristics of Mary’s Praise
First of all, it has remarkable depth. It is deep, theologically rich. Mary, we learn, is a quiet ponderer. She takes information in and thinks about it deeply, and this shows her pondering on scripture as well, and so she’s a thinker. There’s depth. Secondly, there is joy in this. She celebrates. She says, “My soul glorifies in the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” There is great joy in this, in this worship. Thirdly, there is God-centered adoration. You can see God’s attributes on display, his divine power, sovereignty, his holiness, his mercy, his faithfulness. The attributes of God are woven through this adoration. She keeps her mind focused like a laser on who God is and what God is doing. Fourthly, it is saturated in Scripture. Some people link Mary’s praise to Hannah’s praise in 1 Samuel 2, when Samuel is born, but honestly, there’s only some bear points of contact between Mary and Hannah. Hannah’s praise is more focused, it seems, on her personal vindication over her enemy and God’s goodness to her personally. Mary’s praise is greater than that and more lavish and saturated in scripture throughout. Some scholars have been able to discern over 20 allusions or quotations of Old Testament scripture in these brief verses of praise from Mary. What a perfect mother for Jesus. I mean, no one in history has been so saturated with the Bible as Jesus, and imagine the privilege of a woman getting to raise a son like Jesus.
Now, obviously, there must have been some amazing moments. Remember when Jesus was 12 years old and Joseph and Mary lost track of Jesus. That’s quite an amazing moment, don’t you think in redemptive history? You think like Gabriel could come back and say, “You know, had one job to do, and you might want to keep track of where 12-year-old Jesus is,” but clearly, Jesus, his understanding of who he was and what his mission was, was astonishing and says to his obviously worried mother, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house and doing my Father’s work?” and so would’ve been remarkable, don’t you think, and what a journey to be able to raise the Son of God, but she was saturated in Scripture, and how from infancy, we could say, just like Timothy, she had poured the scriptures into Jesus.
And then, fifthly: humility. Mary is just astonished that God would be so gracious to someone like her. This is just foundational to God’s gracious work in our lives. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, so if you want to see that mustard seed of the kingdom of God just grow and develop, then take those same attributes in your own meditation. Let your meditations be deep, and rich, and God-centered, and saturated in Scripture and humble. Let your meditations of Christ and of God be like hers.
IV. The Content of Mary’s Praise
Well, let’s look now at the content of Mary’s praise, and we’re going to look at it in four stanzas, and I’ll just give you kind of a quick outline of what those four stanzas are. First, God’s blessings to Mary. She’s going to celebrate God’s goodness and grace to herself personally. Then, she’s going to extend it to God’s grace and mercy to all generations in the second stanza, God’s goodness to all generations. Then thirdly, what we could call the great reversal, how God turns things around and takes the rich and mighty and sends them away empty, but gives grace to the humble, the great reversal thirdly, and then fourthly, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise to Abraham, God’s covenant keeping, promise-keeping as God. Those are the four stanzas.
So let’s look at the first one, stanza one, she’s exalting in God’s blessings to her personally, verses 46-49, “Mary said, ‘My soul glorifies in the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is his name.’” so Mary’s joy is flowing here. She’s celebrating God’s goodness to her personally. It flows as a result of Elizabeth’s presence and the statements that she makes. Mary is very quiet and humble and submissive before the angel Gabriel, but she’s very open here with another woman, who like her is pregnant, and there’s a connection, and so she opens up a lot more. Whereas Elizabeth’s outburst seems to be passionate and exuberant, Mary’s seems to me more regal and majestic, kind of soaring even above what Elizabeth says. The focus here is God’s blessings to her personally, and so for us, our religion begins here, with the individual sinner and with what God will do for individual sinners. This week, I read a quote by Corrie ten Boom, and said this, “If Jesus were born 1,000 times in Bethlehem but not in me, then I would still be lost.”
So, in the end, Christ has to be born within you, within your own heart, or all of this pageantry and celebration does nothing for you. “Is there room at the cross for me?,” you have to ask. There’s going to be a banquet table in the kingdom of heaven. Is there going to be a place for you to sit at that banquet table? That’s what you have to ask. Paul does this very powerfully in Galatians 2:20, where there he says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” I think every individual has to do that. You can say, “Do I know by faith that Christ loved me personally and gave himself for me? Is there value in the shed blood of Christ for me and the forgiveness of my sins?,” and so Mary is amazed at God’s goodness and grace and mercy to her personally, and it’s rooted in humility. “Why should the Almighty be doing something like this for me?” “Why would the Creator of the universe elevate someone like me so highly?” Look at verse 48. “He has been mindful of the humble state of his servant,” so Mary recognized her low position. She’s a member of a conquered race, perhaps even within the Jewish race, specifically humbled by maybe meager economic circumstances, Joseph’s future economic circumstances meager, and so she’s humbled in that sense, but she also mentions God, her Savior. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” So this statement, I believe, should late arrest any false doctrine about Mary’s sinlessness. I was raised Roman Catholic. In the Catholic tradition, there is a false teaching of the sinlessness of Mary. The immaculate conception does not relate to Jesus directly, but relates to Mary’s birth from her mother and how she was protected from original sin by the doctrine of the immaculate conception, the idea that in order for Jesus to have been born, he had to be born from a pure mother, who was herself protected from any sin at all, but Mary would not have thought that at all. She understood. As much as she was a godly woman, she was a sinner who needed to be saved by grace, and so we have to set aside any kind of idolatrous elevation of Mary as a focus of worship or adoration or any false teaching that she is in some sense a co-redemptrix, or as some have said, the queen of heaven. Any of these lofty thoughts at all are not rooted in Scripture. Mary is a godly woman, but she needed a savior and she recognized that. She rejoices in God, my Savior, and the humble state she felt for herself included a sense of her own sinfulness that she needed forgiveness.
“Christ has to be born within you, within your own heart, or all of this pageantry and celebration does nothing for you.”
Now, Mary, for all of her humility, she would have to take on, and she didn’t understand it fully, we never do, but would take on a great deal of suffering to be Jesus’s mother, and her willingness to take on this role makes her in every respect a woman worthy of emulation by generations of women who would follow, and in her godliness and her piety and her worship, worthy of imitation for us all, but she needed a savior. Now, she could not have fully understood how that salvation would be worked by her own son, how her own son, Jesus Christ must die, a bloody death on the cross for her and for all of God’s people. She couldn’t have fully understood that, and that’s an astonishing thought, isn’t it, that her Savior is her son, and that he had to suffer and die?
Mary also recognizes future blessing that’s coming toward her. “From now on,” verse 48, “all generations will call me bless, for the Mighty One has done great things for me,” so Mary knows that this moment is of eternal consequence, and that people in the future would understand the level of her blessedness by being chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. These are great gifts that God has given to Mary. Verse 49, “The Mighty One has done great things for me.” Great things, so what great things has the Lord done for Mary? We’ll start with the virgin conception, which is an incredible miracle. In an ordinary conception, there are 46 chromosomes in the normal birth, 23 from the mother and 23 from the father, but in this case, God supernaturally created the 23 chromosomes that would’ve come from a male father, like he created the universe out of nothing by the word of his power, like Jesus would later, as we mentioned last week, create an ear for Malchus out of nothing, and so that’s the miracle of the virgin conception.
God’s great gifts to Mary also include the fulfillment of prophecy, a prophecy made centuries before speaking ultimately of Mary. In Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son.” I doubt she ever read that scripture the same again. Imagine, in the scroll of Isaiah, “That’s talking about me. The Mighty One has done great things for me. I am the virgin who was with child,” and the amazing role of raising the savior in this world, just the access to Jesus, being able to see him, the things that happened as he was a boy that we know nothing about other than that 12-year-old vignette, but just the memories that she had. There must have been more and more and more that she treasured in her heart. Jesus’ first miracle was at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, so we didn’t know miracles growing up, but just a sinless human being, watching a sinless boy grow up to be a sinless young man, and then finally, at age 30, being presented to Israel, sinless, being able to have that kind of access and observe it, and so these are remarkable things that she’s celebrating, and the holiness of God. Holy is his name. This is a distinguishing characteristic of God, the holiness of God, freedom from all immorality and wickedness. Now, what will happen to Mary will lead some people to imagine uncleanness, to imagine fornication. As a matter of fact, it’s even insinuated in reference to Jesus. In John 8, some of his enemies said, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” It’s incredible statement to make to another human being, when Jesus said in reference to that, “I honor my Father and you dishonor me,” but they didn’t just dishonor him, but dishonored his mother, implying that she had had immoral relations with a Samaritan man, but the whole conception and birth was perfectly holy. Look back at verse 34-35 as she says to the angel, “‘How will this be since I am a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born of you will be called the Son of God.’” All right, so that’s stanza one, celebrating God’s grace and mercy to her personally as an individual.
Stanza two: extending to God’s blessings to the entire world, to generations even as yet unborn. Look at verse 50, “His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.” So Mary now widens her focus and praise to include believers who had not even been born yet. This is the nature of Christian faith: we start with us, and then we start to realize it’s not just about us. As Ron mentioned earlier, there’s going to be a multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation standing around the throne, wearing white robes and saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into the land.” You’ve got a lot of your best friends that you haven’t even met yet, and you’re going to spend eternity meeting them and getting to know them, and you’re like, “Wow, there’s a lot of people to get to know.” Yeah, you got a lot of time. You’ll have plenty of time to get to know them and their stories and to celebrate what God did in and through them, brothers and sisters who live centuries before you, and so she says her mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation. Perhaps at this point, she’s thinking about Gabriel’s prediction concerning the future of her son’s kingdom. In verse 32-33, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of David forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Now, her focus on generations yet unborn has to do with God’s mercy. God’s mercy is his kindness to those in affliction and suffering, his kindness to those in affliction and suffering. Frequently, those suffering from afflictions would cry out to Jesus saying, “Have mercy on us,” like the blind man, Bartimaeus, “Have mercy on me,” but there is no suffering on earth that compares with eternal condemnation in hell. It is the greatest suffering there is, and so the ultimate mercy of God is not to alleviate temporal circumstances such as would be found in an AIDS clinic in Botswana or in a slum area, poor area of a city in Asia where there’s very, very low standard of living, or even in a work camp in a communist country. All of those places of affliction have greater affliction we can possibly imagine, but nothing, nothing compares to the terrors of hell, and so the mercy in verse 50 that extends to those who fear God from generation and generation is to be delivered from the torments of hell, that God sent his Son, that we would not be condemned, that we would not hear the words, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That’s why Jesus was sent, and his mercy extends to those who fear him, it says. It’s not for everyone. Some people don’t fear the judgment of God. They don’t fear what will happen on judgment day. They’re not afraid of what will happen when they die, and after that comes judgment. They don’t have that fear, but what God does when he saves a soul is he first teaches you to fear, and then relieves those fears, as John Newton said in “Amazing Grace”, and so his mercy extends from generation to generation to all those who fear Him and flee to Christ for refuge.
Stanza three has to do with delighting in God’s surprising ways with the full and the empty. This is what we call the great reversal. Look at verse 51-53. “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” This is the great reversal, the world reveres wealth and power and prestige, conquest, domination, and ostentation, but as already quoted, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” James 4:6. Mary speaks of the mighty deeds that God has done with his arm.
Now, at that point in redemptive history, what is she looking back on? Well, how about God’s mighty deeds in creating heaven and earth with the word of his power, or God’s mighty deeds in making a huge nation out of one man, Abraham, or God’s mighty deeds in rescuing the Jews out of bondage in Egypt through the 10 plagues and the Red Sea crossing, and then all of the things he did to protect the little nation of Israel from her enemies time and time again, the mighty deeds of God. Now, we’re further along in redemptive history, and now, we can celebrate more of God’s mighty deeds done through his Son, a lifetime of miracles, a river of miracles. Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross and his powerful resurrection from the dead, his mighty deeds can celebrate all of those, but here, she’s speaking specifically of God’s opposition to the proud. In their inmost thoughts, they are proud, and she speaks of God bringing down tyrants from their mighty thrones. Perhaps two come to mind right away, Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, and Herod the Great, who will soon give an order after the baby is born to kill all the babies in Bethlehem and its vicinity who are two years old and under. So these tyrants, God is going to bring them down from their throne. God rejected these halls of power in these mighty rulers. He did not send his Son through one of them, but has chosen a humble Jewish girl through which to bring his Son, and so he has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. So God has sovereign over rulers. He raises one up and lowers the other, but his grace he gives to the humble.
Then, she speaks of God’s banquet table. Verse 53, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” I can’t help but think about Isaiah 55:1, which is the great banquet of grace and of salvation. There the prophet says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat without money and without cost,” and so God spreads a salvation table before you. Now, you can’t see anything physical, but it’s by the promises and the words of God, and he’s inviting you to come and feast at the table of God’s grace and mercy. God’s feast is the kingdom of Messiah. It’s a rich welcome into the kingdom of God, and the central feast of that grace of mercy is this, the forgiveness of all of your sins, that you would stand forgiven before the eyes of a holy God, whose eyes are too pure to even look on evil. He cannot tolerate wrong, and imagine standing before him, blameless and unafraid, because you are covered in the righteousness of Christ. That’s the banquet of God’s grace.
Now, the basic principle is, if you are hungry, he will feed you. If you feel yourself poor, he will make you rich. If you feel yourself naked, he will clothe you, but if you are satisfied and don’t need all of that, he will give you nothing. He’ll send you away empty-handed, so imagine if you had brought your own dinner to where Jesus fed the 5,000, and you look at what you brought, and it’s better than barley, loaves, and fish, and you don’t partake of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, or imagine you brought your own wine to the wedding at Cana in Galilee, and you think it’s better than anything that could have come from those stone jars this late in the banquet, and so you don’t partake of the wine that Jesus made, so it is, for us, if you feel you don’t need Jesus, if you feel you’re healthy and strong and capable, he won’t do anything for you. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I’ve not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Those who are desperate for forgiveness, who know themselves to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness and for salvation, he feeds them, but for those that are satisfied with their earthly condition, he gives them nothing.
“Those who are desperate for forgiveness, who know themselves to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness and for salvation, he feeds them, but for those that are satisfied with their earthly condition, he gives them nothing.”
Stanza four: celebrating God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham, verses 54-55. The final stanza is of special interest to Mary as a Jewish woman, a descendant of Abraham. She knew very well the promises that had been made so many centuries before that to Abraham. Genesis 12:2-3, “God said to Abraham, ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.'” However, for six centuries, the Gentiles have trampled on the Promised Land. The Jews were marginalized and seem to have been bypassed. There are psalms that cry out to God saying, “Will you forget us forever? Where are the promises you made to our father Abraham?” but Gabriel’s message to Mary and Elizabeth’s Spirit-filled utterance are more proof. God has not forgotten his promises to Abraham. Look at verse 54-55. “He has helped his servant, Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and to his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Mary celebrates the renewal of God’s covenant promises to Abraham. The time has come at last for God to be gracious.
Now, I would say the overwhelming majority, if not, 100% of those in here today are Gentiles and not of Jewish descendency, there may be some that have a Jewish background. I’m so delighted that you’re here, welcoming, but for us, I’m a Gentile. Most of us are Gentiles. Friends, we are grafted into a Jewish tree. We derive nourishing sap from a Jewish root system. We are feeding on the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are adopted sons and daughters of Abraham, and through Abraham, we have been blessed with a Savior who is a descendant from Abraham, and from him, we receive all the blessings of our lives. And so for us, as we read this like, “Well, what does this have to do with me?” it has everything to do with you, for apart from Abraham’s blessing and the blessing spoken of to Abraham, we get nothing, but through him, we get the new heaven, new earth, the forgiveness of sins, and adoption to the family of God.
So this is the detailed look at the content of Mary’s praise in four stanzas. First, celebrating God’s blessings to Mary personally, secondly, celebrating God’s mercy and grace to all generations of those that fear him, thirdly, the great reversal, God’s sending the rich and powerful and full away empty, but blessing those that are hungry and poor and needy, and fourthly, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises made to Abraham.
V. Application: Magnifying Christ at Christmas
What applications can we take from this? Well, first and foremost, Mary’s son is her Savior, and he is the only Savior there is for the world. It’s amazing to me that Mary never directly mentions her son in her praise. She never directly mentions who Jesus is or, it’s cause she doesn’t know. Her worship is really kind of an Old Testament worship, looking ahead with limited knowledge to what’s coming, and Mary has an education that she’s going to have to get in her life. The Lord is going to have to put her in her place at a certain point, and it’s a difficult process. She has to learn who Jesus is. There’s one particular difficult moment when Mary and her other sons, hearing what’s going on in Jesus’ ministry, it’s in Mark 3, go to take charge of Jesus. Think about that. Mary is going to take charge of her grown son, because they thought, “he’s out of his mind.” I would say that was a low moment for Mary, and Jesus is inside. There’s a crowd around him, and some messenger comes in saying, “‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you,’ and Jesus said, ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ Then, he looks at those seated in a circle around him and says, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother,’” so put yourself in Mary’s place hearing that answer. He’s saying, “Will you do God’s will?” And what is God’s will? But to believe in the one that he has sent. “Trust me, even though my ministry may make no sense to you, trust me.” And that journey would be painful for her because she would be among the very few followers of Jesus, standing at the foot of the cross, watching him die. As Simeon said, “A sword will pierce your own soul as well,” so it’d be difficult for her, so application for you is to make that same journey, to go from underestimating Jesus and not really understanding who he is, to following his mission right to the cross and understanding his bloody death under the wrath of God is for you, because you are a sinner and you need to be saved by grace. That’s first greatest application.
Secondly, Mary’s praise is foretaste of an eternity of worship we’re going to do in heaven. I picture Mary in heaven, not as the queen of heaven, not sitting on some throne to be worshiped as co-redemptrix. Not at all, but she’s there with all of the godly women and men who are saved by grace through faith, worshiping and celebrating Jesus. The apostle Paul said in Corinthians, “Though we knew Jesus in an earthly way, we know him that way no longer,” so you might have had some kind of earthly contact with Jesus. Jesus is high and exalted far above all of that on the throne of God, and so all of the themes of this worship we’re going to spend eternity developing in heaven, so do some of it now. Do some of it now. Celebrate and worship what God has done through her son, Jesus, and then personalize Christmas. Say, “Jesus came for me. He came and died on the cross for me,” and so just let that meditation make you humble. We all need to be continually humbled. Just say, “The death that Jesus died, he died in my place,” and then universalize it. Think about people that have never heard the name of Christ. Think about generations that followed that first generation, even to our generation. We don’t know how long it’s going to be until the Lord comes, but say, “Christ didn’t just come from me, but Christ came for us,” and there are people, even in our community who haven’t yet come to faith in Christ, so pray for them and be a bold witness for them. And marvel at God’s sovereign rule of history has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. As we look at the history of government, both in our own country, presidents come, presidents go, we look at other nations and their forms of government. God is sovereign over all of that. He’s ruling over all of that for his own purposes, so let’s be confident in the face of that.
Finally, rely on God to be faithful to his promises. God kept his promise, and he’s keeping his promise to Abraham. He’s going to keep his promise to you, and the central promise, and we’re going to return to this God-willing next week, the central promise he’s making to you as a sinner is he’s going to raise you up on the last day. You’re going to spend eternity, through faith in Christ you’re going to spend eternity in a glorious resurrection body, worshiping your Savior. Close with me in prayer.
Lord, thank you for the chance we’ve had to learn from Mary, a godly woman, in an incredible moment in redemptive history, to be able to learn from her how to worship, how we can celebrate the goodness of God to us individually and also universally to God’s people in every generation. Thank you for Mary’s words. Thank you for the Holy Spirit, inspiring her to say them, and then inspiring Luke to record them and write them down. We thank you for the meditations we can do based on them. Help us to take the time, oh Lord, to meditate on your Word, to meditate on your goodness to us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
