Filled with Joy (Kirk Giles) | Expectant

Take your Bibles turn to the Gospel of Luke chapter 1.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 1. It's page 908.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

If you're using one of the Bibles in the seat around you as

you're opening up to Luke 1, I have the privilege of welcoming

another new member to our church family.

So would you join me in welcoming Elsa Dublik in the

membership here at Forward? And if you call forward your

church home, but you're not yet a member, I want to encourage

you to take that step, joining us in in this covenant that we

have together to love each other and to live on this mission that

God's called us to together. You can just text the word

member to our text line and that'll get the process started

for you. Many of you have grown up in

church your whole life or since you were a young child.

And so, you know some songs that you learned as a kid in church.

And so you're going to have to help me.

Otherwise we're singing a solo right now.

So we're going to sing a song. I'm going to start it.

I want to make sure. I want to see if you remember

this song for those of you who didn't grow up in church.

Just bear with the rest of us for a second.

OK? All right.

So I've got the where where. Where?

Wow, very good. All right.

Then there was another one that was, I'm not going to sing it,

but there was like, I've got peace like a river, love like an

ocean, joy like a fountain in my soul, in my soul.

Forgot about that part, right. For those of you who are new to

church, I'm sorry we're not normally this weird.

I know that thinking about those songs brings all kinds of things

to our minds. There's literally hundreds of

things that can bring you joy in life, things that make you

happy. But I also know that for a lot

of us, as we go through life, life has a way of sucking the

joy out of us. If you're like most Canadians,

you're actually losing your sense of happiness. 10 years

ago, Canada was considered the 5th happiest country in the

world. Today we are ranked as the 18th

happiest country in the world. If you want to be happy, move to

Norway. That is the apparently the

happiest place in the world is Norway.

I don't know why, but that's the way it is.

I deep down inside every single human being, I, I know we all

just want to be happy. We want joy.

Every day. We're making decisions with our

lives that is based on the idea of how can I find happiness?

What's going to make me happy today?

What's going to bring that joy into my life?

It's something we long for in life, and that's what Advent is

all about. Advent is about this sense of

longing for something. So this week as we continue

through our Advent series, we're going to look at the longing for

joy that we all have as humans by exploring the story of a

young woman who had just had her entire world turned upside down,

and yet somehow she is incredibly happy and filled with

joy. So look at verse 46 of Luke

Luke 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1. And Mary said, my soul magnifies

the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

I want you to put yourself in Mary's shoes just for the next

couple of minutes. You're a young teenage girl.

You're betrothed to be married to a guy by the name of Joseph.

And betrothal is like engagement, but more serious

than engagement. It actually comes with some

legal binding agreement that you make to get married to this man.

And then one day out of nowhere, an Angel shows up and says to

you, fear not, which immediately would make you what?

Be afraid because an Angel just showed up and said, don't be

afraid. And then the Angel says that not

only should you not be afraid, but you're going to have a baby.

And you're thinking to yourself, but I haven't been intimate with

anyone yet. How am I going to have a baby?

And the Angel says it's going to be the Holy Spirit's baby.

And on top of all that, not only are you going to carry a baby,

but the the baby is going to be the Messiah that everybody's

been waiting for. Now, if you have ever been a

mom, a first time mom, you remember all the pressures that

you felt bringing a child into the world and raising a child.

Those pressures don't compare at all to being told, hey, you're

going to be a first time mom who's also raising the son of

God. Life just got really complicated

for Mary. She's, she's dealing with a

pregnancy outside of marriage, which is going to carry this

incredible social risk. She could be rejected by

everyone. How in the world is she going to

explain this to her family? How is she going to explain this

to Joseph of all people? She could have faced public

punishment because she was having a child outside of

marriage. Her present and her future are

incredibly uncertain. And here she comes in verse 46

and 47, these verses we just read, and she comes across as

the happiest person that you've ever met.

She's rejoicing. She says her heart is

overflowing with joy in this moment.

Now, all of us have met those people that we think you are

annoyingly happy. And sometimes it seems like no

matter what's going on in their life, they're just happy all the

time. And I think that some of us

would have felt this way about Mary.

She she would have come across as being a little bit annoyingly

happy. That's how overflowingly happy

she is. But if we're honest, there's

also a part of us that's a little envious of people who are

happy all the time because deep down side, all of us want that

same kind of joy. Every single person I've ever

known wants to be happy. And the question we all ask and

wrestle with day in and day out, whether we're thinking about it

consciously or subconsciously, is where do I find that kind of

joy? Where do I find that kind of

happiness? The story of Mary teaches us

that joy is the fruit of what you trust to bring you life.

I think about the things that make you happy besides the Blue

Jays. For me, one of the things that

makes me so happy is experiencing little kids running

around our house again. One and two year old kids.

There's just something about sitting on the floor watching a

toddler come running at me to give me a big hug and kind of

tackle me to the ground. It's the most amazing thing.

And listen to them giggle as they do it.

Now I might throw my back out sometimes and not be able to get

back up, but it's amazingly fun when they do that.

What are the things that make you happy?

The truth is, the strength of your joy will be directly

connected to the strength of what you're placing your trust

in. We've all experienced this.

When people rely on things that are temporary to make them

happy, their joy's like a roller coaster.

You're only as happy as life is good.

When life gets rough, we lose our joy.

Like if you're a sports fan, when are you the happiest?

When your team's doing well. Your joy disappears.

When your team can't score any more runs in the bottom of the

ninth inning. This game seven of the World

Series, I'm not bitter. I'm just getting it out.

When you are at work or you are at home, we're all the happiest.

When things are going well, when your relationships with family

are in a good spot, you're happy.

When you've had a good productive day at work and

things are going well at work, you're happy about it.

But as soon as someone starts to let us down, as soon as somebody

does something that makes life more difficult other at work or

otherwise, you're going, man, my joy is just gone.

I'm I'm not happy anymore. And so we pursue more money,

thinking money can make us happy and money can buy you some

things that you'll feel happy in a moment, but it's only going to

take you so far. If you go back to verse 44 and

45, in Luke 1, Mary's visiting her cousin Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is also pregnant, and she hears Mary greeting her off

of the distance. And as Elizabeth hears Mary

greeting her in the distance, her own baby leaps for joy

inside of her, which is just amazing when you think about it.

In a world that wants to say a baby isn't a baby until they're

born. I got to tell you something.

A baby leaping for joy inside their mother's womb, that's a

human life right there. It's amazing that joy can start

even in the womb for a baby. And Elizabeth says, Mary, you're

blessed. Happy is the one who's believed

the Lord. And Mary's response is, I

rejoice in God my Savior. Her joy is not manufactured.

She's not the greeter at your local store who's just putting

on a happy face because she has to.

She's genuinely filled with joy. Why?

Because she's put her hope in God and she's at complete peace

that God's in control. If you're struggling today to

find joy in your life, I want you to think about something,

whatever it is that you wish would happen so that you could

be happier. That is simply an indicator of

what you are placing your hope in to bring you joy.

But Mary's response teaches us that joy grows best when God is

magnified the most. See, every single one of us

magnifies someone or something all the time.

What what you talk about and what you think about and what

you trust in, that's what you are magnifying.

You're, you're lifting up something in your mind and in

your words and your conversations.

You're magnifying that person or that thing.

And when you're feeling good about life, what are the things

that you think and talk about? That's what you're magnifying in

your life. And when you're not feeling good

about life, what are the things that you're focused on that

you're lifting up and magnifying and talking about?

Like when life is not going good?

If if you're like me, you're saying things like, well, if I

just had and you just fill in the blank, I'd be happy.

Or if that other person would just do this, I'd be happy.

And when all else fails, I'll just work harder to try to

figure out how to make myself happy.

And so you focus all of your attention, your energy on

strategizing and planning on how you're going to make yourself

happy. And I'm not saying that you

shouldn't talk about your desires or the good or the hard

things in life. But what I am saying is that

what you magnify the most, what you talk about and focus on the

most, what you trust in the most, that's going to influence

and shape your level of happiness and joy.

In all the chaos that Mary's experiencing here and all the

uncertainties for her own life, she makes a choice to magnify

God. She she doesn't focus on

anything temporary that could have made her life a little bit

easier. She magnifies the eternal God

that she believes is in control of all things and has her good

at heart. Now I know you hear somebody say

things like magnify God. We sing songs about magnifying

God, but we don't even know what that practically looks like in

our lives. You can grow up in church your

entire life and have heard the phrase go and magnify God.

What does that really mean and look like day-to-day?

And so for the rest of this message, I want to unpack how

Mary magnify God over her circumstances and see how that

can help strengthen joy in our own lives.

The first thing that I want you to see is that God is magnified

when you celebrate his favor in your life.

Look at verse 48 and 49. Because He has looked with favor

on the humble condition of His servants.

Surely from now on all generations will call me

blessed, because the mighty One has done great things for me,

and His name is holy. Mary enters into what is often

called the Magnificat here. The Magnificat is a beautiful

and powerful song or poem that she is singing and declaring

that's coming from her heart to magnify God.

You know, when we think about our own lives as humans and we

ask ourselves what is it that makes us happy?

If you are like most people, the thing that makes you happiest

are the relationships in your life.

Harvard did a study recently and said that it's not money, it's

not knowledge, it's not living out your dreams, it's not your

social status or your health or your sex life that makes people

the happiest. It's when our relationships are

in a good spot. Relationships at home, with our

friends, with the people we work with.

When those relationships are in a good place, we just feel

satisfied and filled with joy. I want you to think about

something. We love and we find joy in

relationships. And the reason why we find joy

in relationships is because you and I have been created by a God

who made us for a relationship. And the joy that you find in

relationship with other people is meant to be a taste to give

you a sense that there is actually a greater relationship

that you get to have. It's meant to give you a little

taste that you get to have a relationship with God Himself.

When you are adopted by God to be His child, you get to be in a

relationship with the Almighty God.

There is no greater relationship you can possibly have.

That's the favor of God on your life.

If you're here today and you don't know what I'm talking

about, I want to invite you to consider knowing the same Savior

that Mary knew. God knows your search for

happiness, but He also knows that there's only one place you

can go to have that search, that longing for joy, satisfied He.

He wants you to know His favor and His grace in your life, that

there is nothing you can ever do to make God love you more.

There's nothing you can do to earn favor with Him because He's

done it all. He wants you to receive His gift

of salvation from the sin of your life and all that this

world has to offer, and trying to satisfy that desire for joy,

He wants you to know Him so that you can know the only joy that

lasts. The Bible says that Mary

believed what the Lord had spoken to her and salvation is

available for you by believing God with all of your heart and

receiving the salvation that He came to give you.

I think one of the reasons why we sometimes struggle to find

joy even for those of us who are Christians is because we have

too low a view of God. Mary starts off this song by

declaring like you are the Almighty God.

There is. You are holy.

There is nobody like you. You are unique.

Your thoughts are higher than my thoughts.

And who am I as Mary? I'm I'm a nobody.

I'm a young girl living in a village in the middle of

nowhere. And for some reason you have

chosen me for this moment. You've shown your favor to me.

You've chosen me to be part of unfolding your story in this

world. Sure, Mary's life was

complicated, but she says for all of human history, people are

going to call me blessed. I can't get over how kind God

has been to me. I want you to know this.

God shows His favor to save people, but when He saves you,

He also shows His favor by making you part of the story

that He is unfolding in human history, just like He did for

Mary. See, it's not only Mary who gets

to be part of the big story, you and I, we get to be part of it

as well. Ephesians chapter 2 says that we

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that

you are saved by God and he brings you into this grand story

that he is writing for all of human history to accomplish his

redemptive purposes in this world.

You little you sitting here in Cambridge, ON, of all the

billions of people who've ever walked the face of the earth,

God chose you and you and you and you and you.

He chose you to save you and to make you part of his redemptive

purposes, to show his favor to you.

Like for some of us, the story of God's grace has become so

normalized that we just like it bypasses our thinking all

together. For somehow, somehow we act like

we deserve God's grace in our life.

But when you see God properly for who He is and who you are,

you can't help but be filled with joy, because the Sovereign

Almighty God has shown His favor to you.

Mary's response to this reality that she's experiencing, she

says her spirit rejoices in God, her Savior.

It's a tangible thing. It's overflowing out of her.

Now, I get that part of us wants to be in awe of the majesty of

God and be reflective in our worship around that.

But Mary teaches us that God's grace and favor in our life was

never meant to be something that leads Christians to become more

somber. Church should never feel like a

funeral service. It leads Mary to rejoice because

she's experienced this grace of God.

It's deep down inside and overflowing out of her.

It's good for people who've experienced the favor of God to

celebrate and get excited that they've experienced the grace in

favor of God. Some of you need to try truly

celebrating God's gift of grace in your life.

It might make you a happier person.

The second thing Mary teaches us is that God is magnified when

you reflect on the mercies that He's shown for generations.

Look at verse 50. She says His mercy is from

generation to generation on those who fear Him.

Mary would have known the Old Testament stories and prophecies

of what would need to happen for the Messiah to be born.

Somehow, for dozens of generations, over two dozen

generations, God orchestrates a whole series of events to bring

things to the point where would be Mary, who would carry the Son

of God into the world. That is remarkable mercy.

Think about all the ways that God would have had to show up in

generation after generation after generation, and little

ways and big ways to have it all culminate in this moment where

Mary is now going to have this child.

All the prophecies that had to be fulfilled to come to this

moment in time. When life gets hard, the natural

response that most of us have is to focus on the moment of today.

How am I going to fix this? Is this ever going to change and

get any better? But what we lose sight of is how

God has constantly shown His mercies through generation after

generation after generation in the past.

And if God has shown His mercies from generation after generation

after generation, why is he suddenly going to stop now?

He's not. He's the same God yesterday,

today, and forever, like you here in this room today.

For some of you, if you just think back to the story of your

own family or your own life, for some of you, it's crazy to even

imagine that you'd be sitting here today.

You've got stories of brokenness in your family.

You've got stories in your own life of brokenness.

Maybe at one point in your life you were just mad at God and

wanted nothing to do with them. And yet here you are.

It's the mercy of God in your life.

Some of you've gone through terrible things through

generations of your family, and you're still standing.

It's the mercy of God in your life.

For some of you, you can look back at generations of your own

family and you just see faithful Christians over the course of

your history as a family. You see people who've just built

beautiful families. But I want you to know that's

the mercy of God as well, that one generation after another

generation after another generation, God has shown his

mercy. God is constantly showing his

mercy from one generation to the next.

He sees the brokenness of our lives.

He sees the pain, the things that we're longing for, and he

acts with a desire to bring relief to our lives.

And when we remember the mercies of God from one generation to

the next, suddenly the things that feels so powerful, that

feel like life is never going to get better, the things that

don't make us happy, they lose their power because we're

reminded that there is a God who is clearly greater than all the

challenges of life. But it's not just the past where

God has shown his mercies today. Today there are new mercies for

you. Lamentations chapter 3 tells us

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

that every day His mercies are new every morning.

And if you're struggling today to find where are God's mercies,

where are they showing up? I challenge you.

I encourage you today, pray and say, God, help me to see your

mercies that are new today. You guys, I, I promise you, part

of the problem is God's. It's not that God's not showing

His mercies, it's just that we're miss seeing them.

We we need to have our eyes open to pay attention to the mercies

that are showing up every day. God is alive and active every

single day showing His mercies to you.

When life is sucking the joy out of you, ask God to help you see

His mercies today. You'd be amazed how many times

they're there now. I know that reflecting on God's

mercies don't always change the present circumstances of life,

which is why Mary's song also reminds us that God is magnified

when you speak about His faithfulness to keep His

promises. Look at verse 51, Mary

continues, and she says He's done a mighty deed with his arm.

He scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts.

He's toppled the mighty from their Thrones and exalted the

lowly. He has satisfied the hungry with

good things and sent the rich away, rich away, empty.

He's helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy to Abraham

and his descendants forever, just as he spoke to our

ancestors. Mary looks both at God's

promises in the past and God's promises going into the future.

She points back at a promise that God made to Abraham, a

promise to bless all people through his descendants.

And now, as she's carrying this baby, she knows this promise is

about to be fulfilled, that this baby was going to be the king of

a Kingdom that was never going to end.

He would breakthrough into a world where people were living

for themselves and people were oppressing other people, and he

would be the one who would come to bless all people.

Not just Jewish people, but all people that no matter what

culture you come from or what country you call home, no matter

what language you speak or how much money you have or don't

have, He would be the one who is coming to bless all people.

The baby that Mary is going to deliver is the evidence that God

always keeps his promises. It's not just looking back at

the promises of God. She's also looking to the

promises of God in the future as well.

See, she knows that this baby hasn't actually accomplished all

the things that was yet to accomplish.

So she's looking to the future and reminding herself that God

is a God of justice for people who have suffered at the hands

of other people. And this baby was going to

initiate bringing that justice into the future.

She says, like here, here's what God's going to do.

Here's the promises that God's going to do.

There are proud people in the world who think they can act

like God, who think that they are all powerful.

God picks up the proud, picks them up like a bunch of sand

from a sandbox and just goes and they just float into the wind.

That's what God's going to do. That's a promise.

There's the mighty who think they're all powerful and God's

just going to come one day and he's just going to kind of flick

them like they're a little mosquito on your arm, knock them

down like a set of dominoes. There's the rich who live to

make more for their for themselves, no matter what it

costs other people. And God just goes delete to the

bank account. What Mary is saying here in her

prayer, in this, in this song that she is singing, is that not

only is there a God who is keeping his promises from the

past, but there is a God who has promises he's still going to

fulfill in the future. And the promise of justice is

part of that promise that He's going to fulfill, that there is

no contest between God and those who have committed any

injustice. I want you to know, whatever it

is that is happening in your life today, it does not get the

final word. God does.

When you look at the world and you read the news and you look

at things that are happening, whether it's wars or famines or

political leaders who are doing things want you to know there is

not one politician or multi billionaire in the world who

gets the final say. God gets the final say.

Don't ever get caught up in the fear of all that's going on

around us because God is not done yet.

He has kept his promises in the past.

Jesus is the is the reminder to us that God has kept his

promises, but he's also still got promises yet to fulfill and

complete and he's going to do it.

Mary hasn't experienced the fullness of this justice yet

that she's singing about, but she knows it's coming, which is

why she's singing about it from the bottom of her heart.

Want you to think about how often do you really talk about

God's promises? Like be honest.

How often do you really talk about God's promises?

How often do you talk about how God has kept his promises in the

past or how he's keeping his promises today?

What what about the promises that are still to come in the

future? One of the greatest gifts that

you can ever receive or pass along is to tell stories of God

keeping His promises. I would love, I would love for

Forward to be a storytelling church.

I'm so grateful for Amanda sharing that story today of just

how God met her in answer to a prayer.

It's a reminder to us that you can cast all your cares on God

because He cares for you. That's a promise.

Guess what? God kept His promise.

When you talk positively about anything science says, you

activate mood lifting chemicals in your brain.

But when you talk positively about a God who keeps His

promises yesterday, today, and forever, you are rewiring your

brain and your soul to see the entire world through a different

lens. But it's not just you that

you're helping. When you tell stories of God's

faithfulness, you're helping to encourage other people as well.

See, it's, it's a domino effect. Elizabeth finds joy because her

baby found joy in Jesus. So tell stories to your family,

tell stories to your friends, Tell stories of God's

faithfulness when you meet with your discipleship group because

you might be the instrument that God's going to use to bring joy

to another person. Now, I know for some of you, it

might feel like a big stretch to magnify God because life just

sucks right now. You know why Mary's able to

magnify God in this way? It's because she's bringing two

things together in her life. She she knows God's Word, and

she's looking at her life through the lens of what she

knows to be true from God's Word.

Almost everything that Mary sings about in this song are

quotes from other parts of Scripture.

She knew God's Word, and now she's singing it out loud

because she knows it's true. So God is magnified when you

filter the good and the heart of life through His Word.

One of the reasons why we encourage you to read your Bible

on a regular basis is because it's so critical that you are

grounded in who God is, how God operates, what God has promised

to do. If you don't read your Bible

regularly, I want to challenge you to sign up for our Bible

reading plan that comes out every day.

You just text the word Bible to the text line.

Hundreds of people in our church are already reading this and

accessing this every day. Want to encourage you to do

that? Read your Bible.

Get into places where you can study your Bible, get into a

discipleship group or be part of an equipped class.

Meditate on the Bible. Let God's Word soak into your

heart and your mind, because when you know God's Word, it

gives you a filter to process everything else in life through.

Now you're looking at everything through God's perspective, and

I'll tell you, all of life looks very different when you look at

it through God's eyes. Now let's be honest, there are

some of us who know our Bible. We've read it for years, but we

have no joy. Why?

Why are Christians sometimes some of the crankiest people on

the planet? Here's why.

You can know your Bible, but unless you use your Bible to

teach, to remind yourself who God is, it won't matter.

You have to know your Bible and then filter, use your Bible to

filter everything else in life through the truth of what God

says in His Word. When we take the good and the

bad of life and we filter it through the lens of Scripture,

things will change. I'll be honest with you, I find

one of the weird things about preaching is whatever you're

preaching on, you seem to struggle with it through the

week. So if you were to ask my wife,

hey, how was Kirk's joy this week, she would have a very

different story to tell you than the one that I'm preaching to

you right now. I struggled with joy throughout

this week. I'm I'm, I'm preparing this

message and I'm like, man, I am cranky as anything while I'm

getting ready to teach people about joy.

But I will tell you, there is just something about being able

to open up the scriptures, read a great Advent devotional that

shifted my thinking and shifted my heart.

There's something about putting on some worship music that sings

songs about the truth of who God is that just goes, yeah, you

know what? That's where the real joy is.

When you know God's Word and you filter it through what you know

to be true, it's always going to bring you to one place.

It's going to bring you to Jesus.

We can have joy because Jesus is the reminder that God has not

forgotten us in the waiting and in the darkness of life.

That Jesus is the reality that God is with us in every moment

of life. We can have joy because Jesus is

the gift that God gives so we can know His grace and favor in

our lives and we can have an eternal relationship with the

God of the universe. We can have joy because Jesus is

the promise that all things will be made right.

The desire you have for joy is real because God placed it

there. God wants you to have joy.

He wants you to be happy, Charles Spurgeon once said.

Humans are in their right element when they're happy.

It's just that God knows the limitations and even the harm of

everything that we think is going to make us happy.

So he gives us Jesus so that we can put our attention somewhere

else and magnify Jesus over all the other things that we try to

magnify. Try it this Christmas season.

Try it. Try every day when you find

yourself focusing on whatever it is that's sucking the joy out of

you. Try every day to change your

focus and say, I'm going to magnify.

I'm going to put my attention, I'm going to talk about God and

watch what God does. Joy isn't something you

manufacture. It's the fruit of what you're

putting your hope in. Focus on Jesus, magnify him.

Watch what God does in your life.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that you've made us

with a desire to be happy. What a wonderful, beautiful

gift. God, I pray that as we enter

into this Christmas season, I pray for every person in this

room who's struggling with joy right now.

Just life feels hard and the weight of it is strong.

Can I pray for the help of your Spirit to lift our eyes off of

magnifying what is taking us down and help us to fix our eyes

on the One who came to bring us life.

God, I pray that as we do that you would be the one who

produces joy in us, that we would experience the joy that

you came to give us. And I asked this in the mighty

powerful name of the King who was born as a baby, King Jesus.

Amen. Amen.

Stand together and magnify our Lord.