Luke 1:46-56 – Marys Song

It's uh great to see you here, have you here.

And it's great to be able to say the kids can go out to City Kids this morning.

Hey! We get to be rid of children for a while.

Um, no, that's just me.

Okay.

Um, welcome to you if you're joining us online as well.

We're starting a new series in these uh few weeks of Advent uh in the Gospel of Luke, looking at uh the songs that are sung in the run-up to uh the birth of Jesus, because uh Luke notes a number of different songs.

And the first one is Mary's song.

Next week will be Zachariah.

You'll find out who he is and why he's singing, and then the angels, of course, they come and they they sing uh to the shepherds.

And then the final song will be on Christmas Day.

We will be meeting here on Christmas Day, and we'll fast forward to a song that a man called Simeon sings, uh, an old man who delights over Jesus in the in the temple.

So that's where we're going over the next little while.

Um, it's so good to see faces and not just a green dot on a laptop.

And let's pray as we uh begin uh this time together.

Father, we thank you for bringing us back together again.

Thank you for your goodness and your kindness to us.

Thank you for how Mary reflects on these things.

Help us to see you for who you truly are, who you have disclosed yourself to be, and help us to respond to you in faith and trust and love.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Uh, I don't know, but you've been in past years the run-up to Christmas is normally fairly manic.

Uh, maybe it's still feeling a little bit manic.

It's a you kind of blend of uh uh figuring out, well, what am I gonna get this this ant uh for Christmas?

What are the presents that I'm gonna buy?

Uh I've got this party and this gathering to go to, I've got to schedule it all in, it's all fairly crazy.

And then you're off, you finish college, you finish work, you finish school, and the warm, fuzzy setting, you sit beside the Christmas tree in front of the open fire, and you just let the nostalgia and the turkey just kind of take you through through the Christmas period.

That idea of Christmas, the run-up to Christmas being um manic is a fairly new innovation over the last kind of hundred years or so.

The run up to Christmas, these weeks before Christmas, are known as Advent in the church calendar.

That's these are the weeks of Advent.

We're waiting for the Advent of uh Jesus coming into the world at Christmas.

So we're not really in Christmas time, we're in Advent time.

And Advent historically wasn't a time for kind of mania and and joy, it was actually a time for reflection.

It's actually a time for stepping back and examining the ways in which we need Christmas.

Christmas is the the inauguration of a uh of a rescue story.

An Advent is supposed to help us kind of reflect on those things.

Have you noticed the difference between uh old Christmas carols and new Christmas songs that we sing in the church?

The old Christmas carols, 201, tend to mention death.

Whereas the modern ones don't.

They focus on hope and joy and light.

Why is that?

Were they just miserable 150 years ago?

Maybe they were.

But I think there's something else going on.

You think you're a joy to the world?

Uh he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

You no more let sins and sorrows grow, focusing on sin, sorrow, death.

You mean you look, I mean, it makes sense of winter, right?

Everything's dead.

Because there's a sense in which the creation is anticipating Christmas Day.

It's hoping and longing for Christmas Day.

And what the Christmas cows want us to do is they want to help us reflect and hope and long for Christmas Day.

That's what Advent is about.

We're so used to instant gratification.

I have been loving Amazon Prime this Christmas season.

Uh, I have no idea what I have ordered people for Christmas.

Honestly, like if a if a llama showed up, I was just going, oh, okay, just unbox it.

That's fine.

Like, that's just what I ordered.

You order it the day before, boom, it's there.

But Advent isn't like that.

Advent is about building anticipation.

Anticipation for Christmas.

It's a season of waiting.

Of waiting, yes, with ever-increasing joy.

That's why if you come from a tradition where you light advent candles, there's kind of there's an increasing, you like you're gonna light your second one today at home if you've got an advent wreath or uh or a candle abroad or whatever it is, because you're increasing that joy, that anticipation that comes to kind of pitch on Christmas Day.

I imagine that some of us are anticipating 2021 with some nervousness, kind of want to read the terms and conditions before we go into the new year.

2020 kind of you know pulled one over on us, and uh, we're wondering what uh this next year will bring.

As Christians, we come together to celebrate the promise of a world renewed.

We anticipate the rescue mission that God has enacted in history, of reuniting humanity with himself.

What kind of God would do such a thing?

What kind of God would act to bring this about?

Well, Mary tells us in her song it is a God who is first mindful.

That is, he remembers people, he looks, he regards, he is mindful, and second, a God who is mighty.

That is Mary's theme.

Let's just back up just for a second.

So we're looking at the Gospel of Luke uh this morning.

As a Northern Irish person, I have to say those two words differently, or I'll just say look and look, and you've got to work out by context.

So I'm deliberately saying Luke and look.

So pray for me.

Um Luke.

Look, look, it's hard, it's hard.

I'm glad I'm glad there are no mirrors in here.

Um this gospel writer uh is where we're going to be over the next few weeks, and we were being in Matthew for weeks and weeks and weeks, but the gospel of Luke is a little bit different than the gospel of Matthew.

It's uh got a slightly different focus, and it's just worth bearing that in mind as we begin these songs.

First of all, Luke was a doctor, right?

He was uh methodical and meticulous.

He went around interviewing eyewitnesses.

That's what he says uh at the very start of his gospel.

He's undertaken to write an orderly account.

That's Luke chapter 1, uh verses uh 1 and 2.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

An orderly account of the things that have happened.

That's what he's seeking to do.

He's a methodical guy, but he's also not a Jew.

Matthew was writing to the Jewish people where the Messiah came from.

Luke's not.

Luke's a Gentile doctor.

And part of his focus throughout his gospel is to show us how the kingdom of God turns the world upside down, how Christianity doesn't work like the systems that we build, the political systems, the cultural systems.

He wants us to see how God came for the outsider, for the downtrodden, for the marginalized person.

The person that we would walk past.

Luke wants us to say, God doesn't walk past them.

And that's a theme in Mary's song.

In Luke chapter 1, there are two women.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

There's Mary, and then there's her older cousin, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was much older, and I'm going to use a much antiquated term because it describes, or it's a biblical term.

Elizabeth was barren, she wasn't able to have any children.

And in that time and in that day, that was a uh a thing of great shame in that culture.

Praise the Lord that we have moved on.

And the Lord blesses her, and Zachariah is her husband, and so we're going to see why he sings next week.

He opens her womb, and by the time Mary arrives, she's six months pregnant.

And Bible quiz: who's she six months pregnant with?

John, John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, is in her womb, and the baby leaps when Mary walks in.

There's a big kick or a big wriggle.

And then we have Mary, not old, this teenage girl, who is engaged to be married.

And she's just been told something quite monumentous.

She's been told that she's going to have a baby who's going to save the world.

That's a big day.

That's a lot of news to take in, right?

What do these women have in common, both Mary and Elizabeth?

They're wonderfully ordinary.

They're wonderfully ordinary women.

That's how God works, isn't it?

He takes normal, ordinary people like you and I, and he does ord extraordinary things through them.

Through us.

Not to show us how great they are, but to show us how wonderful and how great he really is.

Mary goes after the angel Gabriel visits her to be with Elizabeth.

Again, it was a big day, so what does she need to do?

She needs to go and talk to somebody.

And when she sees her cousin Elizabeth, she doesn't talk to her, she sings.

And she sings the first Christmas song in history.

And she sings about a God who is mindful and a God who is mighty.

Those are our two points this morning.

First, he is mindful.

Verse 46, have a look at it with me on your phone, or if you've got a paper Bible with you.

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 word that is translated in verse 48 as looked is the word for mindful.

That is, we can kind of think look is it, oh, he's just ah, I've you know I've looked at Tiana or I've looked at Ben.

No, that mindful has a slightly different uh sense to it.

It's ah, I know who that is, I've seen that person, I know that person.

That's what she said.

He has been mindful of her.

Mindful of her a servant.

Mary begins personally, says that God has been mindful of me.

He has been mindful of her personally.

He could have chosen someone else, someone richer, someone of noble birth, someone powerful, but no, he hasn't.

He has chosen a young girl of seeming insignificance in the eyes of the rest of the world.

And this fuels Mary's praise.

That the God of the universe would be mindful of her, would see her, would regard her, would choose her, would elevate her.

How many days over these last nine months, ten months, have we sat either alone or in the bubble of our household and felt so cut off and isolated from other people?

Mary this morning is teaching us an important lesson.

He's saying that God, she is saying that God is personally mindful of individuals.

He is personally regarding and concerned for every single person.

Not only does he see her as an individual, not only is he mindful of her personally, he is mindful of a whole people.

The song zooms out, it starts personal, and then it goes, it has a wider scope.

Verse 50, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

Or verse 55.

Sorry, verse 54, he has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever.

She's saying, not only does God remember me, but he remembers the promises that he made long ago.

God doesn't forget his promises, he doesn't break his promises.

He made promises long ago, and this is perhaps where a little bit of history help helps us.

Two thousand years before Mary sings, God made promises to a man called Abraham, who's referenced in this song.

He made promises that from him an old man who with his wife was childless, that from him a great nation would come, and that through him all of the nations of the earth would be blessed.

That promise hangs over the whole Old Testament.

If you want to read that promise, you can take a note.

That's Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 to 3.

Genesis 12:1–3

And that promise uh goes fulfilled or unfulfilled in different ways through the whole Old Testament.

And towards the close of the Old Testament, there's this anticipation of when will the promise to Abraham really come to fruition?

A thousand years before Mary, uh, David the king of Goliath slaying fame took the throne.

And he was made another promise by God that kind of wraps around this Abrahamic promise to say that the one who would bless the nations, the one who would who would uh establish the nation forever, would be a king, a king from David's line.

And then we go to 700 years before Mary sings, and the prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah chapter 9 that the one who would come, who would establish this eternal kingdom, who would bring the blessing to the nations, he would be a baby.

Isaiah 9 · chapter mention

And he would be called wonderful counselor, everlasting father, mighty God, Prince of Peace.

Mary is singing because she realizes that in her womb is the fulfillment of those promises.

That God's forever king, who would bring blessings to the nations, would come through her.

That everything was coming to a climax in the birth of her son.

This is what our God is like.

He is mindful.

That is, he is personally involved with the individual and with humanity.

He doesn't forget his promises.

He doesn't break his promises.

Not in his removal from us, not in his isolation or in his detachment, but in his nearness.

In his coming and becoming vulnerable.

This totally flies in the face of how our world works, doesn't it?

Or of how human notions of power and greatness operate.

How do important people show their greatness today?

They show their greatness by being removed from you.

You cannot, you could try, but you cannot just walk into the Aris and say, uh, I'd like to have tea with Michael D.

As fun as that might be.

You cannot uh knock on the door of Buckingham Palace.

Unless you're that guy in the crown who climbed over the fence and went, yeah, camera said, Yes, watch the crown.

That's an unusual exception, right?

We can agree on that.

You can't do that.

Because those people, presidents and monarchs, reveal their greatness in their isolation from us.

Not God.

Not God.

He shows us his majesty in drawing near to us, in showing us that he knows us.

He knows our name, our hopes, our fears, he knows the responsibilities and anxieties that we carry, what keeps us awake at night, he sees us.

If you struggle to believe in God because you think that God is distant and uncaring and unloving, I struggle to believe in that God too.

Because that is not the God of the Bible.

That is not the God that Mary sings of this morning.

The God of the Christmas story is mindful of the individual and of the promises that he has made to you in his word.

The second thing that Mary sings about, second and finally, you're welcome.

The second thing that Mary sings about is not just that God is mindful, but that he is mighty.

He is powerful.

And we want that, right?

You kind of think you do you want a God who's loving or a God who's powerful?

Well, actually, you want both.

Because if you have a God who's just all power and no love, well, that's terrifying, right?

It'd be terrifying to live under the rule uh of a of a of a monarch or of a god like that.

But it'd be equally bad to live under a God who is simply love and no power.

Who sees the suffering that you go through and goes, ah, well, I really love you, but hands are tied.

He kind of send you a sympathy card.

No.

We want a God who is not just mindful, but who's mighty.

Who's not just loving, but is actually powerful to effect change, to do things.

And that is the God that Mary sings about.

Look at verse uh 49.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy in his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm and has scattered the pride 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.

Notice how God uses his might.

Again, he uses might in a way that completely subverts how this world works.

People often use their might to consolidate their position, they use their riches for their own abundance.

Not so God.

He flips the kingdoms of this world on their head.

Does three things.

He scatters the proud.

He doesn't let proud people remain on their perch forever.

Second, he brings down the mighty from their thrones.

We see that time in.

Time and time again, don't we?

We've just had uh, well, the Americans have just had a president.

Isn't it funny that we're just like, oh, the whole world has just elected a president?

No, the Americans have just had a presidential election.

I don't know if you realize that.

You might have been living under a rock.

And so there's a political change happening.

Here's the thing to remember about all of that.

Every president, every Taoiseach, every prime minister, they're a footnote.

They're a footnote to history.

That's worth remembering both when your preferred candidate wins and when they lose.

They're a footnote.

God brings down the mighty from their thrones.

And he sends the rich away empty.

And he fills the hungry.

What a beautiful picture.

Why does God do this?

Why does he do this?

Isn't all of this scattering, this tearing down, isn't it at odds with his love?

Isn't it at odds with his mercy?

No.

In fact, it's precisely because he is loving, because he is merciful, that he uses his might in this way.

He uses his might to disavow humanity of the notion that we are independent, self-reliant, in complete control of our destiny.

As COVID taught us nothing, that we're not actually in control.

All of our plans get written in pencil.

God uses his mind to wrestle from our grasp that desire to be lords over our own lives.

Because ultimately it's not good for us.

We harm ourselves, we harm other people.

I know I share it.

I know that we hate being dependent.

I don't enjoy it either.

I hate the thought of being dependent on anyone.

But here God, in his mercy and love, uses his might to bring us to our senses.

The idea of utter self-sufficiency is a delusion that our culture has taught us.

There is good to be found in recognizing our need and in reaching out in faith and dependence on the one who fills us.

That's what we need to remember.

He fills those.

Maybe you think about God as somebody who rations his blessings, as God who is paltry in his goodness towards you.

No, no, that's not what Mary says.

He fills those who recognize that they are hungry.

That's what we saw in the Beatitudes, right?

If you were with us in our series through the Sermon in the Mind, He quenches the thirst of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

He satisfies them.

He fills those who recognize your hungry.

That is the recognition of dependence.

That's the recognition of repentance, of what it needs to come to God.

Recognize I'm not full on my own.

See all the things that I'm chasing after, all of the things that I desire, all of the things that captivate my heart, they're not actually filling me.

You know that.

You know that when you are lying awake at night.

You know that you are not fully satisfied by those things.

God says, I will fill you if you would come to me with your hunger.

It's exactly what Jesus, it's the conversation that Jesus has with the woman at the well.

She's there wanting a drink, but Jesus is going to show her just how thirsty she is.

Because she's been chasing after intimacy and acceptance from what, four, five different men, Jesus says.

He says, I want to show you.

If you come to me, if you drink from me, you will never thirst again.

He fills hungry people.

Once you have realized that you are hungry, you can feast at the banquet of God's mercy and grace.

And of course, this great subversion of toppling pride, of bringing down kings from their thrones, it is fulfilled in the incarnation itself, is it not?

When the divine takes on flesh, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, heal the incarnate deity.

The infinite embraces frailty.

The word becomes flesh and lives in our skin and walks our road and finally displays the surpassing might, his surpassing might, he displays his grandeur, he displays his love.

Higher, how not in ascending some earthly throne, but by being crowned with a crown of thorns.

You want to see the might of the mighty God?

Do you want to see the wisdom of the wonderful counselor, the love of the everlasting Father, or know the peace of the Prince of Peace?

You see it all displayed in full array in the cross of the Lord Jesus.

There is nothing more subversive, nothing more topsy-turvy about God's kingdom than that.

That the inauguration of God's king is when Jesus is strung out on a Roman gibbet outside of an ancient city some 2,000 years ago.

God's kingdom doesn't work like our kingdoms.

That is how God shows that He is both mindful and mighty.

And isn't that the kind of God that we want?

We want a God who sees, a God who knows, a God who loves, and a God who is able to act in order to comfort you in your grief, help you in your affliction, and give you hope and joy for the future.

That is the kind of God our world needs.

That as we sit in this season of Advent and glimpse the death and hopelessness around us, that we could pierce through it and see chinks of joy, chinks of light beginning to break through that come to fruition on Christmas Day.

So what's the application?

What do we do with this?

Well, look at how Mary begins.

She says, My soul magnifies the Lord.

My soul magnifies the Lord.

That is, in the very core of my being, I am seeing God as great.

I am seeing his might.

I am applying that to the various areas of my life.

I'm magnifying the Lord.

I'm looking at the Lord and who he is and his promises, and I'm applying it to my anxieties.

Yes, I'm not in control, but he is and he loves me.

I'm applying it to my hopes for the future.

I know that he sees me, he knows the thoughts and desires of my heart, and I know that he will lead me in paths that form Christ in me.

And so I'm going to trust him with that.

It's taking those things that you don't want to bring to him and saying, I want you to have your way with that.

You magnify the Lord in your soul.

Another way that you can do that, another way you magnify the Lord internally is by magnifying him through your speech.

Through how you speak, how you speak to others about him.

Because speech is organized thought, right?

You speak or you may be a verbal processor.

Well, what does that mean?

It means that this jumble of Christmas tree lights that is your brain, you need to get right.

You need to untangle in some way.

And so speech helps you do that.

Writing helps you do that.

Writing is basically just silent speech.

You're organizing your thoughts.

That's a way of magnifying the Lord.

What do I believe about?

What are the things that I'm grateful for?

What are the ways in which I can magnify the Lord in my life?

Where have I seen him at work, even in these last nine or ten months?

What has he taught you about yourself, about how the world works, about him?

And speak them to somebody else around you.

Speak them to somebody at City Church.

Speak them or write them down in your journal.

It helps your heart to swell with thankfulness.

That's the application.

Magnify the Lord who is mindful of you and mighty to save you.

Magnify him.

Magnify him in your speech.

Magnify him in how you pray to him.

The song is a prayer.

It is a prayer recounting what God has done and has hope for what God will do.

Prayer in itself is an act of dependence.

It's an act of recognizing that I'm not in control.

It's not all down to me.

And we pray not just for ourselves, but for others.

And Mary, she's not just not just talking about herself.

She's not saying, soul you know, rejoices in God, my Savior.

He's been mindful of me.

Now please can I have no morning sickness?

No.

He's been mindful of his promises for the nations.

Be mindful of other people.

You magnify the Lord in praying for others.

And then stepping back and seeing what God will do.

Let us pray now and come to the Lord, who is both mindful and mighty.

And then if there are, I mean, I haven't done this in ages, and I'd love to do it.

If there are any questions, either about the incarnation or Mary or Luke's gospel or anything, if there are any questions, we can do five minutes of QA, uh, and then we'll sing, and we should be done by the top of the hour or thereabouts.

Let's pray together.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are mindful of us, that you see us, that you saw Mary in her humble estate, and that you elevated her, that you blessed her.

Thank you that you see us, that you see our world, you see the grief that we carry, the anxieties that we have, the hopes and dreams and longings that are ours.

Thank you also that you are mighty, that you will answer the longings of our hearts in wise and good ways, according to your good pleasure.

Help us to trust the mighty ways that you act in our lives and in our hearts and with our speech to magnify you, to show you as great this Advent season and forevermore.

Amen.