Good morning. Please do keep your Bibles in your hands and open with me to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1. We’re taking our short break from our fall series in Psalm 119 and as the Advent season begins, we will now be turning towards the mystery of the incarnation. This is a significant moment in redemptive history and it’s appropriate for us to give some concentrated thought to this mystery of the incarnation in this season. So today we’re looking at Luke chapter 1. It probably comes as no surprise to many of you that I would choose to preach on a song! Today we come to Mary’s magnificat. That name, “magnificat,” simply comes from the first word of Mary’s song in the Latin translation of the Bible. This is Mary’s song of praise. We’ll actually read a little of the preceding context as well, so we will begin our reading in verse 39, and we’ll look at this passage this morning under three headings. Firstly, we’ll see the global gravity of Advent. Secondly, we’ll see the genuine joy of Advent. And thirdly, we’ll see divine deliverance in Advent. Before we read this passage, however, let’s ask for God’s blessing on the reading and preaching of His Word. Let’s pray.
Dear heavenly Father, we are grateful for Your Word. We ask that You would give us ears that are attentive to us, that You would help us to understand Your Word. Lord, we pray that this prayer would not just be the thing we do before the sermon, but that we would truly mean it, that we would truly desire for Your Holy Spirit to illumine our hearts and minds as we look to Your Word. Lord we ask that You would be so kind as to strike a straight blow this morning with a crooked stick. It is in the name of our Savior, Jesus, that we pray. Amen.
Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 39. This is God’s Word:
“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’
And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.’”
May God add His blessing to this, the reading and hearing of His most holy, inerrant, and infallible Word. Amen.
I spent an unusually large amount of time in airports and on airplanes this year, and I am truly thankful for that. It is an extraordinary thing to be able to travel and to be particularly with our missionaries who are all over the world. This is an incredible age that we live in. Even only 100 years ago, this type of travel would have been practically unthinkable. An elder, a deacon and I, each got on a plane in November and in less than 24 hours we were in South Africa. That’s amazing! But we get used to extraordinary things really quickly. In airports you can overhear, maybe even catch yourself thinking things like, “Uh, the movie selection is just terrible on that plane!” Or, “I can’t believe the WiFi wasn’t working!” Are you kidding me? You are on an airplane, you are sitting in a chair at however many tens of thousands of feet, at however many hundreds of miles an hour, it’s climate controlled, there’s restrooms, entertainment systems and you are literally flying! This is extraordinary! But we get used to the extraordinary.
We play Handel’s Messiah as background music. We make cheap posters of fine art until we can’t even be bothered to look at it anymore. We get used to extraordinary things very quickly. And I’m afraid that’s often the case leading up to Christmas. We have traditions that have been carried out our whole lives. We sing songs we’ve sung a thousand times and we read pages from our Bible that are worn thin. But my hope today is that God would not allow us to shirk these familiar songs and passages off, but that He would enable us all to see Advent with the anticipation and the excitement that Advent deserves.
The Global Gravity of Advent
So first off, we begin with our first point of the global gravity of Advent. There is urgency here. The coming of Christ is the pivot point for all of history. This is the event by which we literally still mark the eras. Everything is changed by this event so that we refer to what came before as BC, “Before Christ,” and everything after is AD, “Anno Domini,” or “the year of the Lord.” And we see that gravity, we see that urgency in this text. Mary has just been visited by an angel, and in verse 39 we see that she got up and went – how? “With haste.” She is a young, pregnant woman, although admittedly not very far along, and she goes with haste to visit Elizabeth in a town in the hill country that was located almost 100 miles away. Now it’s always dangerous for a man to speculate what pregnancy is like, but I’m going to do it anyway! I just can’t imagine that it would be very common to find out she is with child and then to decide to go on a 100 mile, multi-day journey, by foot, into the hill country with haste. To have this sense of urgency there would have to be a particularly compelling reason; there would have to be a momentous occasion to qualify for this type of urgency.
Now look down at verse 41. Mary greets Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s baby leaps in her womb. And this leap is actually the fulfillment of the angel’s promise from earlier in this chapter when the angel said to Zechariah, the baby’s father, that “this baby will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” By the power of the Holy Spirit even this child in the womb recognizes the gravity of what is happening. And this word “leap” is not just a little flutter. It’s not just a little shift inside the womb. This is the word that the prophet Malachi uses in the passage that we’ll sing tonight when we sing, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” – “But for you who fear my name, the Son of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.” It’s the same word used to describe what was happening when the twins, Jacob and Esau, were wrestling, wrestling in their mother’s womb, and they are described as “struggling together.” Something significant is happening.
And look down with me at verse 42 as we see how Elizabeth responds to Mary’s greeting. “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’” Now that’s an interesting reaction to a greeting, I think. To exclaim something, to cry out, to make oneself heard – it’s a literal shout. This word “to exclaim” is only found right here in this verse in all of the New Testament. And we only see it a few times in the Greek version of the Old Testament, all in 1 and 2 Chronicles. And every time we see this word, every time we see this word, it’s in the context of worship, and every time we see it, it includes trumpets and cymbals being played. This gives us a clue as to what Elizabeth is doing with this exclamation. This is an outpouring of worship for what God has done. And this is really miraculous worship because the text never actually tells us how Elizabeth knew that Mary was pregnant other than that we read she was filled with the Holy Spirit. But having been filled with the Holy Spirit, she is clued in to what is going on.
Now as a brief sidebar, let me be brief in saying that Elizabeth is not worshiping or venerating Mary here. This is not even pronouncing a special blessing, but she is rather acknowledging a state, an existing state of blessedness already. Ultimately in her explanation she is praising, acknowledging a state, an existing state of blessedness already. Ultimately in her exclamation she is praising God for this life that He has created inside Mary, and she is also praising Mary’s faith. Look down at verse 45. “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” So Elizabeth speaks with excitement about Mary’s simple faith in God’s promises.
But it isn’t just these two women who help us understand that all of history has been leading to this moment. The Old Testament is filled with versions of a very similar scene that we see here – a woman that was barren, she and her husband pray or receive an announcement, sometimes both, from God’s messenger that she will conceive, and that’s followed by an answer to that prayer of fulfillment of that announcement. You can think of Abraham and Sarah who were promised a child when, even in their minds, it was well beyond impossible. But miraculously, Isaac was born. Isaac then, his own wife, Rebekah, was also barren, but they prayed and God opened her womb and she gave birth to Jacob and Esau. There was a woman known only to us in the book of Judges as “Manoah’s wife,” who was barren, and she and her husband prayed to have a child. The angel of the Lord visited them and told them they would indeed have a child and his name was Samson. Then came Hannah and her husband, Elkannah, who were also unable to conceive. And they prayed earnestly to the Lord. They prayed earnestly to the Lord and He gave them Samuel, who they would dedicate to the Lord’s service.
These scenes and a few others like them all came to particularly significant moments in redemptive history, in moments where God is about to demonstrate His great work of salvation. And so as Christians who read our Bibles, these passages ought to be ringing in our ears; they should be ringing in our ears when we read this passage that’s similar to it in Luke. We can’t help but read this passage with great expectation for what God will do. And that’s partially because each of these Old Testament stories left something to be desired. They left something to be fulfilled. Think of the promises that were made that accompanied each of these children. Hannah promises to give Samuel to the Lord and Samuel worked in the temple, he was a prophet, and he annointed the first two kings of Israel. But Mary’s child is the Lord and uniquely fulfills all three of those roles as Prophet and Priest and King. Manoah’s wife was told that Samson would begin to liberate Israel from its oppressors, but Mary’s child will finally liberate all His people from the bondage of sin and of death. As Rebekah left her home to marry Isaac, her family blessed her saying, “May your offspring possess the gate of those who hate him.” Mary’s child will build an rule the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Before Isaac was born, God told Abraham, “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant.” But then God also told Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice.” And at the last moment, as Abraham stood on that mountain ready to sacrifice his son, God spared Isaac and provided a ram as a substitute. But on that very same mountain, Mary’s child would be the substitute. He would be our substitute and God would not spare His own Son whom He loved as He spared Abraham’s.
This is the global gravity of Advent. All of history has led to this moment. So what is the appropriate response to this? How should we respond? And you can actually see it in this text. What do Elizabeth and Mary do? They worship and they want to tell others about what God has done. That’s how they respond. Mary immediately goes with haste to Elizabeth to tell her what has happened and they both sing God’s praises in this passage. Surely they haven’t grasped every detail about God’s plan, they don’t know how all these events are going to unfold, but they know enough to worship and to tell others what they know. And what an opportunity, particularly in this season, do we have to do the same. Christmas is an exciting season and many of our friends and family have no idea why. It’s just like Thanksgiving that we’ve just celebrated. Atheists celebrate Thanksgiving, and they are so thankful, but how absurd is it to be thankful into the ether, to nobody in particular? We have the answer! We know who we are thankful to; we are thankful to God who is the giver of all good gifts.
And the same happens at Christmas. It’s not just an exciting month. There is a reason for it. And you, Christians, have the answer. You know why and you have countless opportunities in this season to invite people to sing carols together that are filled with theological truths, to come to the Music of Christmas or just to say that you are excited to celebrate the birth of Jesus. How many times are we each asked what kind of plans we have for Christmas this year. That’s your opening. What an opportunity to say simply, “Oh, we’ve got lots of plans, but what I’m looking forward to most is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ with my family and with my church.” That may lead to more questions. It may lead to an invitation to church or to one of our Christmas events. Or it may just be a seed planted that is thought about later. But whether that seed grows or not is not your work, but it’s the Lord’s work. But let’s be faithful with the opportunities God gives us to share with others about what He has done for us. So, this is the global gravity of Advent.
The Genuine Joy of Advent
And now we turn to the genuine joy of Advent. Look with me at verse 46. “And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.’” This is the beginning of Mary’s song of praise. And songs that we find in narrative passages like this almost always accompany great deliverance. You can think of the song Moses sang when Israel was delivered from Egypt. The description of Christ’s return in Revelation, another great moment of deliverance, says that “We will sing a new song.” So, it is most appropriate in this moment for Mary also to be singing a song of praise. Her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her Savior. What she is saying here is that she is so impressed by the mercy of God to her and by His presence and by the depth of gratitude that she feels that she cannot help but sing to Him from the very depths, from the depths of who she is. With all sincerity, she wants God to be exalted to be lifted up, to be seen and known by all because she knows His mercy and goodness. And she means what she sings. Right? This isn’t just lip service. She is worshiping sincerely; she is worshiping whole-heartedly. From her very soul, from her spirit she is singing and praising and worshiping.
And you may think, “Well of course Mary can worship that way. Mary has the unique and one for all opportunity to be the mother of Jesus!” And you would be right to think that. She does occupy a unique place, right, in God’s plan as Jesus’ mother. But my argument to you, Christian, is that Mary’s highest joy, her highest joy in all eternity is not that she is the mother of Jesus. Her highest joy in all eternity is that she is a child of God. And so, if you, like Mary, trust entirely for your salvation on your Savior, then you are also a child of God. You are received into the number of God’s children. You have His name put upon you. The Spirit of His Son is given to you. You are under His Fatherly care and dispensations. You are admitted to all of the liberties and to all of the privileges of the sons of God. You are made heirs to all of the promises. You are fellow heirs with Christ in glory. You have the same source of eternal joy that Mary had.
But I want you to note that this is not just the appearance of joy or just outward happiness. This is genuine joy. This is genuine joy. Imagine for a moment where Mary is in her life. She is in an unbelievably impossible situation. She is a young woman, pregnant outside of wedlock, in a culture that takes that very seriously. She is basically seen as an adulterous before she has ever been properly married and she has no explanation for this. What could she possibly say? And you can imagine that conversation. “Mom, Dad, I know this is going to sound impossible, but you have to believe me. An angel appeared to me and said I would conceive as a virgin and give birth to a child who is the Son of the Most High God.” How do you think that’s going over? That’s a tough sell! The reality is that it would have been easier, almost, for her to lie than to actually tell the truth, which is its own special kind of misery and yet she sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!” This is genuine joy. This is joy even if sung in a minor key.
This morning we have already sung one of my very favorite hymns that captures this reality so beautifully – “O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. O come, thou dayspring from on high, and cheer us by thy drawing nigh. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death’s dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice!” Mary can rejoice and so can we, even in a world that is filled with sin and misery and impossible situations and sadness and sickness and sorrow and loss and war and death because Jesus, because Emmanuel has come and He will come again. We can have genuine joy that transcends every single circumstance of our lives because God is with us.
Now before we move on from this point, I think it’s worth asking this question. If Mary was overwhelmed by goth gladness on the one hand, to be in the position that she’s in, but also sadness because of all the challenges she would now have to endure, where does she find the words to sing to God? Where does she find the words to sing to God when she is overwhelmed? Now if you have a Bible that has cross-references in it, you’ll see that practically every line from this song has a verse from the Old Testament behind it. It is dripping with quotations and references and allusions to other passages in Scripture. Mary has clearly spent time with God’s Word. She was obviously a good Jewish girl and maybe here synagogue even had a teaching theme entitled, “The Lamp to Our Feet: Knowing and Loving the Word of God,” and she took it to heart! In fact, Mary actually personifies the one about whom David was preaching about last week. The one who has developed a taste for God’s Word and has found it to be sweeter than honey. She has spent so much time with God’s Word that it is radiating from her in this spontaneous worship. And how sweet must it be to God when we pray and sing His Word back to Him. What could be better worship? What worship could we come up with that could be better than God’s own Word prayed and sung back to Him?
If you happen to be someone who does not typically attend evening worship, let me encourage you to come and hear God’s Word opened again this evening, but if that’s not incentive enough, come for the ruling elder prayers. It’s always encouraging to hear our elders praying earnestly for this congregation and to hear how they do it, often stringing together verse after verse, like pearls on a string, as they pray on our behalf. They’re using the language of the Bible and of redemptive history to lead us in confessing our sins, giving thanks, and making our petitions made known to God. This is what the love of God’s Word does to us. This is what the love of God’s Word does to us. It changes us.
In 1890, there was a man from Michigan named Samuel Zwemer. He arrived on the Arabian Peninsula in 1890. He had gone to serve there as a missionary in this extremely difficult place. After several years, he met and married his wife, Amy Elizabeth Wilkes, who was a tough lady. She was a single woman working as a nurse in Baghdad. Together they started a family and they moved to the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. They distributed Bibles there. They opened the island’s first hospital and they opened a school for girls as they evangelized the Muslims living there. But in 1904, dysentery swept through their community and within the space of one week, they buried both their oldest child and their youngest child, Amy and Ruth, 7 years old and 3 years old. And in the midst of unknowable grief and sorrow, their mother took it upon herself to compose what would be written on their shared tombstone. And she wrote what the choir sang for us. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches.” This is someone who knew and loved God and His Word. So when you are overwhelmed by either joy or sorrow, when you don’t know how to pray, follow the example of your elders, follow the example of Mary, and use the language of Scripture. Open it. Know it. Love it. And let it guide you as you pray.
The Divine Deliverance in Advent
We’ve now seen the global gravity of Advent and the genuine joy of Advent, and lastly, we turn to divine deliverance in Advent. Look down at verse 49. Mary began by singing of her joy and now she tells us why. She begins with three attributes of God there in verses 49 to 50. Do you see them there? God is mighty, God is holy, and God is merciful. And how beautiful and remarkable it is that Mary puts these three attributes together. God is mighty. He can do all His will. He has created everything in the world, including this baby in the womb. Each star in the universe was hung as easily as we hang up ornaments on our tree. He spoke the entire cosmos into existence, and He not only made it all, He sustains it all. He knows all. He sees all. He is everywhere. But what a terror such a raw force would be if that raw force were not also entirely holy. But God is holy. He is pure. Mary says that, “Holy is His name.” God is holiness. He cannot commit sin. He cannot tolerate sin. He is not just holy; he is thrice holy – “holy, holy, holy.” He is the perfection of holiness. And what bad news this would be for us as sinners if there existed a mighty God, absolutely mighty, who is also perfectly holy, except that He is also merciful. God is rich in mercy, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. When God’s goodness is shown to those in misery, that’s mercy. He has been so merciful towards us that He has provided a way for us to dwell with Him, a holy God, forever. So praise God that He is mighty and holy and merciful.
But as David mentioned last week, God’s attributes are not just for listing. They’re not just for knowing. They’re not even just for worshiping. God’s attributes are also for experiencing. So after praising God for these attributes, Mary tells us how they work themselves out in time and space. She tells us what God will do in this great salvific act. Look down with me at verse 51. You’ll see there a whole list of things that God will do. In fact, God is the subject of every verb in the second half of this song. He has shown strength, He has scattered the proud, He has brought down the mighty, He has exalted those of humble estate, He has filled the hungry, He has sent the rich away, He has helped His people, He spoke to our fathers. It is all in praise of divine deliverance.
The point is that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. In every verb of our salvation, in every verb of this story, of our personal salvation, each one of us here, God is the subject. You’ll also notice that these verbs appear in the past tense, but that their content doesn’t seem yet to have come to pass. In some places, Mary might be referring to herself when she says that “God has exalted those of humble estate.” However, it is more likely that she is rehearsing what God will do but with a verb that indicates completed action. Think of Romans 8 where Paul writes, “And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified, one day He will glorify?” No, “He also glorified,” Paul says, also using the past tense. He uses the past tense all the way through, but maybe you’ve noticed that you have not felt very glorified lately. That’s still to come in the future. Glorification is yet to come. So what’s the point of this grammar lesson? Paul and Mary are both speaking of the future. They are both speaking of ultimate realities that will come to pass. They’re speaking of the end of days in the past tense because of the confidence they have in God’s promises. They are so confident it is as if they have already been fulfilled. When God says, “I will do this,” it is as if He said, “I have done it.” We can be so confident in His promises that we can speak about their future fulfillment in the past tense. He has done these things.
And you might ask, “Well, what do we then bring to our salvation? Surely we bring something.” And the answer is, “Yes, you do bring something to your salvation.” You bring the sin. You bring what you need to be delivered from. The deliverance that we celebrate at Advent is only a divine deliverance.
But for all the gravity and the joy and the deliverance that we see in this short passage, there is a sobering note that rings out as well. Look down at verse 50. “His mercy is for those who fear Him.” Christ’s coming at Christmas is good news. He has come with grace. But when He comes again, He will come in glory and in judgment and His mercy is not for everyone. His mercy is not for everyone. His mercy is for those who fear Him. So this is the question for you to answer before you leave today. “Do you fear God?” Or we could ask that in a different way, “Do you honor God?” If you think that you have not been fearing God, or if you don’t know how to answer that question, you are in danger of meeting a mighty God and a holy God whose mercy is not for you. This is not a position you want to be in. So I plead with you today to answer that question and to know the global gravity of Advent, to know the genuine joy of Advent, and to know the divine deliverance in Advent.
Let’s pray.Heavenly Father, how grateful we are for Your mercy. Lord, we thank You for sending Your Son to deliver us. We thank You that it is not up to us because we could never obey the way Jesus obeyed. We could never be the person in the covenant that fulfills all its requirements. We could never do it. So we thank You for a substitute. We thank You for a Savior. We thank You for Jesus Christ. Help us to take Your Word seriously. Help us to think about it, to meditate on it, to dwell on it the rest of this day. We pray all of this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.