Luke: Mercy is the Mystery (1:36-56)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

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 leapt 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 leapt 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 Saviour, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he that 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 the strength of 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.

And Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and returned to her home.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices, and God my Savior, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

So let's pray.

Almighty God, merciful and gentle.

We come before you today needful.

We come before you perhaps with burdens on our hearts.

Perhaps some of us are celebrating this Christmas, perhaps some of us are grieving this Christmas.

Wherever it is we're coming from, Lord, I pray that you would meet us exactly where we're at.

Meet us in your mercy, meet us in your gentleness.

Direct our eyes, as it were, to this Savior to come to save us.

Grant, Lord, by faith, that the gates of our hearts would be open to the King of glory today and every day.

Speak, O Lord.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So I suspect we all have those moments where we sort of ask ourselves, why is it that I do that thing?

You know, maybe we're traveling, we're in a different culture, and we're seeing our own kind of Canadian culture through a different eye, and we kind of go, yeah, we do do some strange things.

I wonder why it is we go about it that way.

I had a moment like that recently.

Uh often it's with the most kind of ordinary things we end up starting to think about, because we just never really think about the ordinary things.

You know what I'm saying?

Um I had a moment like that recently when uh one of these clips that sort of floats around online kind of came up on my computer, and I watched it, and I want to describe it to you, and I want us to be uh both charitable with it and both, you know, give it a give it some thought because I think it raises some interesting questions.

Uh it is Christmas, so I want us to be charitable with it.

Um it's not Christmas yet, pardon me.

That's gonna get confused.

But I do want to share this because, well, I just think it raises some interesting questions for us to wrestle with this uh this morning.

So this was this is a clip from it's a large church uh south of the border from us, uh, in and with, let's say, uh just a really significant, an international kind of influence.

So this isn't, you can always find clips from kind of backwater, you know, kind of things.

Anyway, but this is one of those, like, you know, it's it's getting broadcast.

So this is uh this is clearly a Sunday morning.

Uh the congregation is clearly gathering, preparing to worship.

And here's what the minister, the leader has to say to the congregation as they kind of gather.

Um and here it is.

I'm gonna quote from it.

The quote goes like this When we obey God, we're not doing it for God.

We're doing it for ourselves.

Because God takes pleasure when we're happy.

Do good, because God wants you to be happy.

When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God really.

You're doing it for yourself.

Because that's what makes God happy.

Okay, so let me just ask you this.

How does that land on you?

Don't worship God because, you know, you're not worshiping God really.

Do it for yourself.

It makes you happy.

So let's be charitable here.

I think the most charitable read of something like this acknowledges that when we gather as a church family, generally speaking, we're made to feel happier, I hope.

You know?

And at least that's what I hear from most folks who visit us or who consider a new song, their church family.

What I hear more than anything else, I think, with regards to our gatherings on Sunday mornings, is how encouraged, how uplifted we're made to feel.

Happy is just a good catch-all word for that, isn't it?

And I sure hope that that's true.

And so I wouldn't want you to think in sharing that quote, boy, I'm made to feel happy on Sunday morning, I should probably be ashamed of myself.

That's not the takeaway here.

It's a good thing to be happy, it's a good thing to delight in the worship that we offer, right?

And if we have an encounter with the God of grace and mercy, chances are we're going to be made to feel that much fuller, encouraged, abundant.

You know what I'm saying?

Okay.

But here's the thing.

For me, this raises this question of why we do this thing we're so used to doing as a church family called worship.

Why do we worship?

And this is just a moment where I'm sort of stepping back, having watched this clip, going, how do we want to respond to that?

I mean, maybe if it irks us and we can't quite put our finger on it, we should pay attention to that.

Because I wonder if we're making just a really subtle but really critical miscalculation here.

Because even if feeling happy is a byproduct of our worship, that's a wonderful thing.

Kind of what's being proposed here is making our happiness the object of our worship, isn't it?

At the end of the day, if I'm made to feel happy about what I do, then that's what really counts.

In a way, we're making ourselves the heart of worship, aren't we?

When we do something like that.

And so the question is, what do we do with that?

Right?

I let's see.

I can't help but think that there are times we come to church and we are feeling less than happy.

You know what I mean?

There are times we come to church and we feel less than jubilant and joyful, and there are times where we come to church and maybe it's just a dry season of the spiritual life.

We go through deserts sometimes, and we feel like the magic is gone, or we feel like the happiness is drained out of my heart, and we think, well, clearly there is something either wrong with me or there's something wrong with the church, because I should be feeling happy in this moment.

Because happiness is ultimately the heart of worship, if we sort of track with that.

You're you're following me on that?

And that's a burden, isn't it?

It's a burden to have to come on Sunday morning and make yourself feel a certain way.

Make yourself feel happy.

It's wonderful when we feel happy.

I sure hope we feel happy most of the time we're offering our worship, but there will be times where we feel less than that.

Is that wrong?

Is that okay?

Is there something wrong with me?

It's a burden if we just have to work ourselves up into a feeling.

So it raises this question: what is worship?

What is worship?

And here's one uh here's one definition that I found that I really liked.

Worship is the feeling or expression of adoration, especially for a deity, we might add.

Feeling or expression of adoration.

And I like that both because it marries uh our feelings with our actions.

It's a feeling that we render, but it's also the action, it's an expression, it's what we're doing.

Worship is a bit of both.

It's the inside and it's the outside, isn't it?

And I like that definition.

We might say this, and I think we get pointed in this direction.

Worship.

We worship what our soul magnifies and rejoices in.

We worship what our soul magnifies and rejoices in.

I think Mary is pointing us in this direction.

Luke chapter 1, uh, we've already seen, by this point, the annunciation, Jesus' birth has been announced to Mary, uh Virgin Mary, who uh has been called to this extraordinary role of giving birth to the Lord and Savior, God incarnate.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

And now she is going to visit her relative Elizabeth, who herself is carrying John the Baptist, who will herald uh the Savior, who comes into the world.

And there's this extraordinary exchange where John the Baptist as an infant leaps in her womb just to be in the presence of his Lord, right?

And here these two women exchange this extraordinary, like they get it.

They get what God is doing in this moment in a way that is just so profound.

They see God working in the world through this strange and wonderful and easy to miss and overlook way.

He is working salvation through this child, this infant, this promised king and messiah.

In the lowliest way, God is working the mightiest things.

Mary gets it.

And Mary gets it and offers this extraordinary expression of praise.

Arguably the most profound expression of praise there is in the New Testament.

Because I think it just hangs over the rest of the book of Luke in particular, but it weaves together all of the themes of salvation from the Old Testament and into the New Testament.

It's all just weaves together right here in what Mary has to offer the Lord.

Oh my goodness, Mary is just, she gets it.

And she is perhaps the best teacher of worship you could ask for.

What worship is all about, Mary gets, and she wants us to see what the heart of worship is all about.

Sometimes we as Reformation Christians have a sort of peculiar relationship with Mary.

Like, you know, we see some of our brothers and sisters perhaps in our wider Christian family elevate Mary to something like a, maybe we could say like a sub-redeemer or kind of a co-redemptor sort of thing.

And because we're very, I think, rightly kind of wary of that, I mean, we do see Mary acknowledges God as her Savior.

She's in need of salvation herself.

Uh because we're we're a little bit biblically, you know, wary of that for right reasons, we have this weird reactive tendency to therefore completely distance ourselves from anything to do with Mary.

Do you find that to be true?

I kind of generally find that to be true.

And I think that's a real shame.

Because I think Mary gets it.

And she can lead us into the heart of worship.

And I don't think we elevate Christ.

It's right to elevate Christ in all things, but I don't think we elevate him by diminishing his mother.

You know what I mean?

That's not the same thing.

We have this extraordinary expression of praise from someone who gets biblical theology in a deeper way than any PhD or seminary student out there.

Mary puts it all on display, and here's what she puts on display is the heart of worship.

Even more than our happiness, we find the very heart of worship that causes our happiness or occasions our happiness.

And here it is.

Here's what Mary puts on display.

God's mercy is the mystery at the heart of our worship.

God's mercy is the mystery at the heart of our worship.

And I just think that is so important for us to catch.

I think it is so important for us to catch that the object of worship is something outside of ourselves, because that thing that's outside of ourselves can offer us what is truly joyful, what makes us truly happy, what makes us truly content.

And here we are, we're heading into Christmas.

We're not Christmas yet.

We're heading into Christmas, and we're going to sing songs like, oh, come, let us adore him, worship Christ, the newborn king.

We make much of worship, not just at Christmas time, but every time we gather.

So we want to ask, what is worship?

What's the heart of worship?

And here Mary wants us to see it.

It's God's mercy that he is working through Christ.

That's at the heart of worship.

And boy, if we can catch that heart, oh, our hearts can be enlarged.

Bigger than the Grinches, right?

Our hearts can be full.

Our hearts can be content.

Our hearts can rest assured.

So let's catch the heart of worship this morning.

God's mercy is at the mis is the mystery at the heart of worship.

So I want us to ask two questions, and then I've got a few things for us to take away.

I want us to ask two questions of the first couple of verses here.

One, what do we worship?

And two, why do we worship?

What do we worship and why do we worship?

So pull out your Bible, pull out your order of service.

Yeah, and let's walk our way through these first uh few verses of Mary's song and see what the Lord has in it for us this morning.

What do we worship?

Let's look at verses 46, 47 here as Mary begins her song.

Mary says, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.

Simple enough, isn't it?

But Mary is identifying an object of her worship, something outside of herself, and what is that?

The Lord.

God, my Savior.

Worship for Mary is a lot more, a lot less to do with how she's made to feel, and a lot more to do with who she's directing her worship to.

We're catching that?

So far.

So far, pretty straightforward, right?

My soul magnifies the Lord.

My soul rejoices in God, my Savior.

God is the object of our worship.

This is the difference between, like maybe I maybe on Rachel's birthday I say to her, Rachel, come in here, and I've got the guitar, and I play her, you know, our favorite song.

I played a song when I propose to her.

So maybe I play that song.

It's called One Day Like This by Elbow.

I highly recommend it.

And uh so maybe I play that song for Rachel.

She goes, Oh, thank you for playing that for me.

That's so considerate of you.

And I go, Well, not really playing it for you.

I just this song makes me happy, so I just really want to play this song.

Rachel would probably be right to be like, that's a little disingenuous, don't you think?

Like, you know.

But you catch the difference here.

We, I mean, it works in our we know this to be true in our real life relationships.

We know it to be true of our relationship with the Lord.

It's, you know, of course it makes me happy to play that song for Rachel.

I shouldn't feel ashamed of myself for feeling happy about it.

But of course, that's not the purpose for me offering that to Rachel.

It's it's an expression of my love.

It's an ex- She's the object of my affection, and so that's what I want to express to her.

I'm just winning a lot of points right now, so I'm gonna put them in the head.

But we catch that, right?

We're we're tracking with that, right?

The object of Mary's affection is the Lord.

It's God, it's her Savior.

He's the object of our worship.

And friends, this is just so crucial for us to catch.

I know you're you might be thinking something like, boy, Creighton, you had to go get a theology degree to tell me that God is what I need to worship.

Like, okay.

But it's so crucial that we catch this because it makes all of the difference.

The object of our worship defines who we are at the most profound and deepest level.

And I want to read you this quote because I just it's one of the most profound quotes I think I've ever read.

It's by uh an author who lived in the last century named David Foster Wallace.

And David Foster Wallace was by no means a believer, he was not a Christian.

So he's not speaking as someone who's trying to convince you to go to church, if you know what I'm saying.

But he offers one of the most profound observations of human nature that I think I've read in uh in a long, long time.

So let me read it for you.

It's a little lengthy, but hang in there.

I think it's worth it.

David Foster Wallace offers this observation that there really is, at the end of the day, no such thing he says as atheism, which is a pretty big uh claim to make, probably because we all of us know someone who identifies as an atheist, right?

So anyway, okay, help me understand what you mean, David Foster Wallace, no such thing as an atheist.

He says this in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as not worshiping.

Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they're if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough.

Never feel you have enough.

It's the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly.

And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

On one level, we know all this stuff already.

It's been codified in myths and proverbs and cliches, epigrams, parables.

It's the skeleton of every great story.

The whole trick, he says, is keeping the truth up in front of our daily consciousness.

We catch what David Foster Wallace is saying there.

I think it is so profound.

There is no such thing as not worshiping.

There is no such thing as saying, there is not one ultimate thing that my soul magnifies that I rejoice in.

We all have some kind of fill in the blank.

The question is, what do we fill in the blank with?

And then the next question is, is it worth it?

Does it deliver?

Does it give me what it promises?

Because David Foster Wallace, like I say, he's not a believer, but he gets that worshiping false gods never deliver on their promises.

Be it money or sex or money or sex or success or fame or whatever it is, they never seem to deliver what it is that they promise.

So what we worship matters.

Mary understands that the object of her affection delivers on his promises.

He is God, her savior.

God who reaches into her world, who reaches for her.

And that's why the rest of her song is all about God.

For he, for he, for his mercy, for he has shown, he has scattered, he is brought, he is filled, he is helped, he has spoken.

Who's the object of these sentences here?

Mary delights in herself and God, not to whip up a feeling, but because she is overwhelmed by God's mercy for her.

God has reached out to her in gentleness and mercy and grace and is working her salvation from sin and death through this child.

So what else can she do but respond to the great object of her affection?

Because he delivers on his promises.

See, we gather to do much the same, you song, don't we?

We gather to magnify and rejoice in the Lord.

Why?

Because we just want to whip ourselves up into the nice feelings.

I mean, the nice feelings are nice, I'm not gonna lie.

But the nice feelings themselves don't always deliver, do they?

And God is the promise keeping God.

God is the one who reaches into our lives.

Who's reaching into our lives right now, if we have eyes of faith to see it?

And we can acknowledge He is good.

He is worth magnifying, He's worth rejoicing in always and all times.

What do we worship?

We worship God, the Lord, our Savior.

We worship God for who he is, we worship God for what he has done.

Here's the second question I want us to ask.

Why do we worship?

Why do we worship?

See, what do we worship is the object, right?

But why we worship is the subjective part of that, isn't it?

This is our inner motivations.

Why is it that we would worship?

And here Mary has an answer for us as well.

Verse 50.

His mercy, God's mercy, is for those who fear him, who reverence him, who give him honor and exalt him with their lives.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation, that is, for all time.

His mercy is for those who fear him.

What is God's mercy?

One way you could translate this, maybe other Bible translations have compassion, which is a great word.

You know, to feel compassionate is to be drawn towards someone in need.

And that is a great word, but I almost wonder if it doesn't quite go deep enough with what Mary is expressing with this word mercy.

It's something like God's mercy is something like his committed and binding and self-sacrificing love.

It's not just, you know, God who tosses a couple of coins on his way past the salvation army guy, you know, kind of compassion.

I'm not saying that that's not worth doing, of course it is, but God is showing us far more than just a sort of passive kindness.

God is coming into our world and showing us his very heart.

He is sacrificing himself for our sake.

God's mercy is shown in his extravagant self-giving.

And this is what Paul marvels at in his letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2, he writes this of our spiritual condition.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

He says, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

In other words, it's game over apart from God's grace.

But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

Why would God do a thing like that?

Why would God work salvation through this newborn child, through the crucified Messiah, through the resurrected one?

Why would God go do something just that insane?

Because he's rich in mercy.

Because of the great love with which he loves you and with which he loves me, that is why God goes to the cross and back.

That is why God moves into our neighborhood on the first Christmas.

Because of his great self-sacrificing, committed mercy.

When we encounter God's mercy, the sort of mercy that is not a passive kindness, but a real, profound, complete self-giving.

How can we not be moved to worship?

I mean, one of the things that makes me want to sing to Rachel is I know how much she loves me back.

We know that to be true.

Love calls forth love, doesn't it?

And when we feel like worship is just not something that I really feel keen on, maybe it's because we haven't encountered the profound, inestimable, insurmountable mercy and love of God towards us in Christ.

If we can look at the cross and glimpse that, if we can look at the manger and glimpse that, oh, our hearts are moved, aren't they?

Oh, we're moved by God's profound commitment and self-giving towards us.

The heart of worship is God's mercy.

It's the mystery that we can't figure out like a Rubik's Cube.

He simply loves us.

He's simply merciful towards us, and that is at the heart of our worship.

That's at the heart of Mary's worship.

And that's the heart of our worship as well, new song.

We come to magnify and rejoice in him.

So let me give you a let me just suggest a few takeaways.

What do we want to do with something like this?

God's mercy is the mystery of the heart of our worship, and here's what I want to suggest that we do.

Remember.

We remember that.

We remember God's great mercy.

See, through the whole Old Testament, God keeps reminding his people to do one thing more than anything else.

And do you know what that one thing is?

Remember.

Remember, I'm the Lord your God.

Remember I'm the one who brought you out of slavery into Egypt.

Remember that I'm the one who delivers you.

Remember, remember, remember.

And you know what the people of Israel keep doing?

Forgetting.

They keep forgetting.

And it doesn't work out well when we forget the mercy of God.

So we remember.

Israel forgets, but Mary remembers.

Mary remembers.

We ought to remember too.

We ought to remember how great God's mercy is towards us and be confident.

The author of Hebrews says, let us then, given that Christ is our great high priest, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.

We come not groveling, but confident before the Lord, because he is abundant in grace and his heart is moved towards us in Christ to give grace to us, to give mercy to us.

So we're confident in drawing near to God together and in our own time with the Lord.

We remember how great God's mercy is.

We remember how needful we are of God's restoration.

We remember how needful we are of God's restoration.

This is what Mary goes on to say in her song.

He's scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he's brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

He's filled the hungry with good things, the rich he has sent away empty.

Yep, let me stop there.

Mary understands that God's kingdom is breaking into the order of the world.

And to our eyes, it's reversing the order.

Those who are self-exalted, those who are proud, those who have power, those who call the shots, those who exploit others, the ones at the top of the ladder, they're the ones being brought down.

And the humble, the lowly, the gentle, the meek, they're the ones being raised up.

To our eyes, it's a reversal of the world's order.

But to God's eyes, it's putting things the right way around.

Right?

God is breaking into the world and doing a work of restoration, restoring the world the way it ought to be.

And it's his work, not our own.

See, 2,000 years before Karl Marx came up with the bright idea that to have justice in the world, everyone needs to be brought low.

Mary understands that needs to be the case, but it's God's work, not ours.

And that's the difference between revolution and restoration.

That's what Mary is calling us to, God's restoring work.

And here's where it all results in.

Revelation 21, one of the last chapters of Scripture.

John sees a vision.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven, the first earth had passed away, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

Boy, that sounds like what's announced at first Christmas, don't you think?

But here's the final result.

Death shall be no more.

Neither shall they be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

The former order of things have given away to God's restoration.

Friends, we need that in our world, don't we?

We need that in our hearts, don't we?

We need to come to worship mindful of how needful we are of God's restoring work in heaven, on earth as it is in heaven.

Why?

Because earth lags behind.

Okay.

We remember how great God's mercy is, how needful we are of his restoration, and how sure God's promises are.

Verse 54.

God has helped his servant Israel, his covenant people, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

What's Mary talking about here?

She's citing the promise that God has made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, all the way at the beginning of the Bible.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God says to Abraham, I will make of you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and those who dishonor you I will curse.

In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

In other words, God is going to work, his blessing is flourishing through Abraham and his descendants.

And here's what Mary understands.

This is happening.

It's happening right now.

It's happening through this child that I'm bearing into the world.

He is the promised offspring who will bring God's flourishing and blessing into the world.

God's promises are coming true right in front of me.

And so I can rest assured.

And that's why Paul in Galatians chapter 3 can conclude this: In Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

See, God's promise of blessing belongs to us who are in Christ as well.

We come rest assu, just assured of God's promises, because he keeps them, because he has kept them in Christ.

And that is why Christ has come into our world.

We remember.

We remember that God's mercy is the mystery at the heart of worship.

We remember how great his mercy is, how needful we are of God's restoration, how sure God's promises are to us in Christ.

John Calvin writes that Scripture frequently makes mention of God's mercy and truth, because we shall never be convinced of his fatherly kindness towards us, unless his word by which he hath bound himself to us be present to our recollection.

In other words, we will never know God's fatherly mercy if we're not constantly recollecting what we see here in Scripture, what Mary remembers in front of us.

So we come, we remember.

God's mercy is at the heart of worship.

Little deeper than our own happiness, don't you think?

But don't you think this inspires the kind of happiness that we're aiming for?

Don't you think this inspires the kind of true and eternal contentment that we really long for?

God's mercy is at the heart of our worship.

So let me conclude with one last quote from a pastor named John Piper.

Piper writes this the best news in the world is that there is no conflict between your greatest possible happiness and God's perfect holiness.

Being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus magnifies him as the greatest treasure and brings you more joy, eternal, infinite joy, than any other delight ever could.

Because all the alternatives don't deliver, do they?

Friends, if you're searching this morning, searching for what truly satisfies, searching for what gives your heart rest in a way that you are restless.

Come to Him.

Remember His mercy.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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May God bless you and keep you today and every day.