December 14, 2025: Rejoice in God - Luke 1:46-56

If you have your Bibles with you, I'd encourage you to turn

to Luke's Gospel Chapter 1. Luke's Gospel Chapter 1.

It's where we'll be this morning.

This can be a very happy time of year, but it can also be a very

difficult time of year if you experience loss.

And when you are around a lot of people joyfully celebrating,

sometimes their joy can make your pain harder and worse.

So as we enter into this Advent sermon this morning and we

consider joy, when I talked this morning about how our joy is

commingled with grief and loss during this time, you notice

there's only one pink candle. There are three purple candles.

An Advent comes during the darkest time of the year, when

we are thinking the most perhaps about our sin and the darkness

of ignorance, the darkness of pain and loss and the people of

faith in hope light, a candle as an act of resistance to push

back against all of the even satanic darkness that we

experience in this in this life. And certainly this.

Haven't many in our congregation, our church family,

and those that we know are suffering greatly?

And our prayer for them and for ourselves is that we may light

the joy candle today and even in the midst of suffering and loss,

experience the consolation that comes from the gospel.

Even as we rehearse these stories together, we have

profound need for the consolation that comes through

the gospel by the Holy Spirit. We need purpose in a time of

madness, when we experience senseless loss.

We need provision for our needs, some of whom even have physical

needs, whether they are cold or hungry.

We need freedom from oppression. We need forgiveness of sins.

And all of these themes come together during Advent,

propelled and powered by the words of the text, but also by

the songs that we sing. And I don't know if you've ever

noticed this before, but particularly in the words of the

text, there are songs embedded in the Nativity stories.

We're going to talk about one of those songs this morning as we

highlight and focus on Mary, the mother of our Lord.

She sings a song. The fancy Latin term for her

song is the Magnificat comes from the Latin version of her

song. We'll explore the themes of her

music as we think also about the scenes from her life, explore

them and wonder what it means for us to have joy in the midst

of our sorrow and pain. So if you're in Luke's Gospel,

chapter 1, we'll begin with the Annunciation.

This is the scene when Gabriel the Angel comes to give Mary

some amazing news. Luke's Gospel chapter 1,

beginning in verse 26. In the sixth month, the Angel

Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth

to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the

House of David. And the virgin's name was Mary.

And he came to her and said, greetings, O favor one favored

one. The Lord is with you.

How would you react? Somebody shows up, a stranger

you don't know, claiming to be an Angel from God.

You're going to believe him or you're going to think you're

crazy. There's lots of options here,

Verse 29 says. But she was greatly troubled.

She was greatly troubled at this saying, and tried to discern

what sort of greeting this might be.

And the Angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you

have found favour with God, and behold, you will conceive in

your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High,

and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father

David, and he will reign over the House of Jacob Forever.

And of his Kingdom there will be no end.

Sounds like great news, doesn't it?

The Messiah is coming. And Mary, you're the one that's

been picked by God especially to be his mother.

All sounds great until you're thinking about it from Mary's

perspective. Wait a second, wait a second.

And so she asked the question that you all have in your minds.

Verse 34. And Mary said to the Angel, How

will this be, since I am a virgin?

And the And the Angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come

upon you, and the power of the Most High will over shadow,

shadow you. Therefore the child to be born

will be called holy, the Son of God.

And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has

also conceived a son. And this is the 6th month with

her whom was called barren. For nothing will be impossible

with God. Interesting answer to the

question. There will be no Father.

OK, how does she respond? Verse 38 And Mary said, Behold,

I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to

your word. And the Angel departed from her.

Lest we be too quick to think that this is all good news of

special honor and glory to Mary, let us first remember how

devastating this is to her status as a young virtuous

Israelite maiden. Yet we find this stunning

response. Behold, I am the servant of the

Lord. Let it be to me according to

your word. Thy will be done, O Lord, on

earth as it is in heaven. First point this morning is the

heart of faith is open to God. The far the heart of faith is

open to God. For Mary, this may mean

eventually profound glory and privilege, but right now what it

means is having to come back home and tell an unbelievably

scandalous story to her mother, to her father, and to her

betrothed, and to their neighbors.

How are they going to believe me?

How will any of them believe me? Do I even believe me?

And it's not just the shame of being looked at like you're

crazy. It's offensive.

It's scandalous. If these are faithful, God

fearing Jews, they may pick up stones to stone her.

And yet she answers, Would it be to me according to your word?

And then you have this, this openness, this willingness to

enter into this shame, this scandal, this loss of status.

The story continues. And we learned that she goes to

visit Elizabeth. I'm in verse 39.

If you're following along 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 loom, 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. At this point, we don't know who

believes Mary's story or not, but it's certainly in this

telling. In Luke's telling, it must have

been so comforting and reassuring to be met with the

faith of her older, wiser cousin Elizabeth, to experience the

sign of fertility in their long, barren infertility, and to be

greeted with such warm enthusiasm and a filling of the

Holy Spirit, even to the point of John the Baptist within the

womb of Elizabeth, her mother, to leap for joy.

It's tremendous, tremendously encouraging to Mary in this time

of her need. And at this point, at this point

in the story, is when Mary's song breaks forth.

Now I don't think that we're necessarily supposed to imagine

her singing, but in the telling of this, we have poetry, we have

music. And though Mary meets the angels

and announcement with a question, now she's ready to

magnify the Lord here and praise verse 46.

And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit

rejoices. There's that word again,

Rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked on the humble

state 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, 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.

And Mary remained with her about 3 months and returned to her

home. The song of faith rejoices in

God. The song of faith rejoices in

God, often in spite of very difficult circumstances.

Song of faith rejoices in God. We can look at this song and

just notice a few things. We don't have time to go into it

in a lot of detail, but some things to notice from the song

of Mary 1st, we see that she magnifies in the Lord.

Her adoration is to the Lord in His person before she mentions

any of His deeds. Obviously, that should be how it

is with us that we worship and love the Lord for who He is

before we think about what He's done.

If you're giving gifts at Christmas, you're hoping that

your kids love you too and not just the new toy that they got.

The mark of faith is to adore before we bring our requests.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God and my

Savior. And you're going to notice that

if she's going to talk about things that He has done

specifically for her, He has regarded her in favor.

His grace comes out of who He is as a person to save her and to

raise her up from her humble estate, which has been brought

down even further by the whisper of scandal.

He has looked on the humble state of His servant before.

Behold, from now on, all generations will call me

blessed. Me, the one that has scandal

painted all over. I will be blessed, for he who is

mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

So she talks about her personal benefits for being the favored

one that got his picked for this part of his story that that will

give her honor in perpetuity from generation to generation.

But she also zooms out a little bit and talks about His mercy.

Now for all the God fearers, all who have put their faith in Him

will experience His mercy. Look again at verse 50.

And His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to

generation. That has to do with faith and

trust, honor and reverence for God.

He has shown strength with His arm.

He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their Thrones, and exalted

those of humble estate. He is filled the hungry with

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

The people of faith will experience a great reversal of

their fortunes, a great reversal of their sufferings, if not in

this life, then in the next. This is amply illustrated by the

parable of the rich man in Lazarus, isn't it?

That's possible to have arrogant poor people, and it's also

possible to have humble rich people, but it generally runs

true that the rich have a harder time trusting God.

Mary experiences the oppression of living in a state that is

controlled by Rome from a poor family, from a throw away, no

town village like Nazareth. And she looks past all this to

see a great exaltation, a great reversal for the God fears that

is generally all people. And then she's going to focus

and specifically mention how God is going to keep his promises to

Israel, most specifically to father Abraham.

And I love how this goes so well with our Genesis story as we've

been talking about how God is making promises to the

patriarchs that are coming down the generations and that they're

not just for him and his family, but for all of those, the

nations who will bow the knee and join his forever family.

And so we have these beautiful sentences about God's grace,

first to the Jew, then to the Gentiles.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as

he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring

forever. So she situates herself in God's

story hooks into the Old Testament.

Another most interesting thing about this song is that it has

many parallels to Hannah's song in the Old Testament.

Remember Hannah, Hannah who is barren, infertile for years,

begging God for a child and has finally given a son, Samuel, who

becomes a great prophet. And so these you can put these

songs side by side and see how the Bible is one story fully

integrated, that Mary. Mary is in a long line of God's

promises. He has regarded her because of

his great grace and favor given to her.

So she sings this song of faith. She's rejoicing in God and she's

going to have to continue to cling in faith to Him, even

though her story is going to go through much sorrow and shame,

ups and downs. And So what I'd like to do at

this point in the sermon is to just zoom out and take a few

vignettes, some snapshots of her life, to think about the ups and

downs of her life as she walks through her story as the mother

of our Lord. First, we've already talked

about how her own status plummets initially because this

scandal will live on her the rest of her days.

But we also noticed in the story these highs and lows and Mary's

life, but also in the story as a whole.

You know, for all of the, the joyous celebrations of the

heavenly choirs and the the shepherds and everybody happy at

the nativity, Matthew's Gospel points out that crazy King Herod

commits genocide on a bunch of little kids.

It's right there in the text, right side by side, joy

commingled with genocide and sorrow and senseless madness.

Not only do we have this commingling at the nativity, we

go on and we see Jesus next in the temples.

You know, he's born. It's time to bring him to the

temple for him to be presented them to offer a sacrifice.

And they meet Simeon there, and they meet Anna.

Very interesting prophetic words coming from Simeon specifically.

And it's a happy time. You know, Jesus is being

presented at the temple. But then he they're given sort

of an ominous prophecy that this little kid here, he's going to

be the cause of the rising and fall of many in Israel.

And sorry, Mary, but a sword's going to Pierce through your

heart, too. I just thought we were here for

the circumcision. What's this sword piercing my

heart, too? What does all this mean?

He's going to be the Messiah. He's going to rise up and get

rid of Rome and usher in the Kingdom.

What? What is this?

Later, Luke gives us another scene.

Several years have gone by. Jesus, probably 12.

They're taking them to the temple.

This time, there's a missing child story commingled with the

celebrating time in Jerusalem. As a parent, I can admit to you

that the closest I've ever been to outright panic is when I

didn't know where my where my kids are.

The worst, The worst story we have is when we lost Johnny for

about 30 minutes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Just so you know, that's not the mall, y'all 30 minutes.

No idea where he was. So what's it like for Mary and

Joseph? Oh, he must be in the caravan

somewhere. Where is he?

Where is he? Where is he?

Where is he Finally they finally they finally found him and we

obviously finally found Johnny too finally find him and it's

kind of mingled again and they're amazed by his wisdom.

But he only young man says to them, didn't you know I was to

be about my father's business? And as your mom, as his mom, you

got to be like, what does that even mean?

Let's go. So this commingling continues.

We have this wonderful high point, Jesus making the wine for

a wedding in Cana in Galilee. John 2, his mom's there and

they're out of wine. And Mary's like, do something.

Won't you do something about this?

Mary's like, well, it's not my time yet.

But OK. And he makes the most amazing

wine probably the world has ever tasted.

What does it mean here? Probably has to be a high point

for Mary. That's my boy.

This is the good wine. Use the masala.

But then you find other confusing texts where she seems

confused about his mission. And maybe is we know that his

brothers and sisters didn't believe in him and there's a

division even within the family. And they they go to him and they

try to pull him aside to talk to him.

Excuse me. Jesus, your your mom's here.

She wants to talk to you. And he doesn't say, OK, you're

right, just a second. Let's go.

He says, my mom, these folks are my family.

This, these are my brothers and my sisters and my mother.

That's another head scratcher. What am I supposed to make of

this boy now, man, this Messiah, my Lord, whom I brought into the

world, What is he doing? Then we finally get to the

lowest of the lows. She is pictured at the

crucifixion. She is there, the most shameful,

impossible tragedy in the history of the world.

What was that like for her? What kind of disillusionment,

what kind of devastation, what kind of maternal agony must that

be like? If you've ever walked with

parents through the suffering of a child or through the burial of

a child, you get just a glimpse of unspeakable suffering.

I am profoundly moved by Michelangelo's masterpiece.

Now, you may be thinking of the Sistine Chapel that is a

masterpiece, but that's not what I'm thinking of.

I'm thinking of his sculpture named the Pieta.

Not going to show it to you. You can look it up later.

It's massive sculpture of G, of Mary holding her adult son dead

in her lap with her head bowed and sorrow.

I think that I could just stare and stare at it because it steps

into the maternal grief. What does it mean for Mary's

soul to be pierced? It means that her son's body was

pierced for our transgressions and our iniquities, and she bore

a significant aspect of the sorrow as his very mother who

raised him. So we get this low point, this

lowest of lows when the sword pierces her heart to.

But then she's also mentioned mentioned one more time in Acts

Acts 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1, where she is with the church praying.

She's experienced something of the resurrection of her Son and

she knows that the glory is yet to come.

And So what we learn from Mary is not only this open

heartedness to God, even if it means the suffering.

What we learn from Mary is not only sort of the the rejoicing

that comes commingled with sorrow and pain, but she she

points us to her son because her son too is a sorrowing, joyful

person, a joyful, sorrowful person.

He's named as a man of sorrows. This Advent's been particularly

hard on us. And the line from a hymn that

just keeps turning in my mind as I walk day by day with you all

through this time as Man of Sorrows.

What a name for the Son of God who came.

Man of Sorrows, What a name for the Son of God who came.

Do you feel it? Do you bear that burden?

Do you walk with some of that sorrow?

Man of Sorrows, what a name. But then it goes on to say ruin

sinners to reclaim Hallelujah. What a savior in the hymn sort

of opens up with this, this Hallelujah exclamation point.

And that's what Evan's like, suffering and exile and

loneliness and despair. The blackness of night.

But then the belligerent face that lights a candle anyways and

pushes back the darkness. It's the darkest point of the

year. And yet we put these little tiny

lights on the trees to remind us there's hope.

There's even joy in that kind of pain and that kind of sorrow.

Man of Sorrows. What a name.

And in the Advent Carol that we sing over and over, oh, come,

oh, come, Emmanuel. We're in lonely exile.

Mourning, mourning. The song is a dirge.

And then you get to the opening part.

It's just flowers opening. What does it say to you?

Rejoice. Rejoice.

Like, well, what if I don't feel like it?

That's OK. I don't feel like it either

sometimes. But we sing the song anyways,

and sometimes what happens is a candle is lit and it spreads

through the room and you hear the faith of somebody else

coming through in a moment of joy, and it brightens a little

bit and you just take one more step with God.

Nana Sorrows. What a name.

He's not just a man of sorrows, though.

He is a man of joy. Underneath that sorrow is a well

and infinite well of profound joy, the joy of the Holy Trinity

itself. Endless fountain of joy.

GK Chesterton and one of my most favorite quotes from Orthodoxy

says this. There is something that he hid

from all men Jesus, something that he hid from all men when he

went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he

covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.

There was something that was too great for God to show us when he

walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it

was his mirth. You notice that about the

Gospels. Maybe get the wrong idea about

the guy. There's no jokes.

He's not kicking it with his Bros, ha ha ha, funny time.

But there must be underneath this man of Sorrows, A profound

and important wellspring of joy that is infinite, so much

greater than all of our pain and sin and death and madness and

despair. And indeed, He not only had that

within himself, He also had that in His view of His own future.

For the book of Hebrews tells us this.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud

of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which

clings so so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that

is set out before us. Look closely looking to Jesus,

the founder and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was

set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and

is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

And that's what Mary is singing about.

She despises the shame and says, let it may it be unto me.

As you have said. Christians, we say the same

thing when we say not my will but yours be done, or we say

your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven, which brings

us to our applications. And the first thing that I want

to talk about is openness to God, openness to God.

The heart of faith is open to God.

It's receptive. Hands like this instead of hands

like this. Bible has a very powerful verse

in Revelation chapter 3 verse 20, when Jesus is saying,

Revelation 3:20

behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone opens a

door, I will come in to be with him and he will eat with me and

I with Him. This beautiful image of a closed

offness and an opening that is the spiritual story of every

converted believer, but also the ongoing story of a believer's

trying to walk with the Lord and has to keep their ears open and

their heart open to God, their hands open to God, their feet

open and willing to go where He has us to go.

You know, in these sermons, preachers love and we're no

exception to talk about our favorite Christmas movies.

It's a nice and easy way to connect with you.

What's your favorite Christmas movie?

One of my favourites, one that we watch every year, is called

The Nativity Story. The Nativity Story is a dramatic

reenactment of these of these stories.

And one part of that film that just always kind of has me by

the throat, especially as a dad and a husband, is when Joseph

and Mary are entering into Bethlehem and Mary is in

pressing labour. The scary part of Labour and

Joseph is trying to do everything that he can to help

her to the point at one point he's he's carrying her, running

through the town screaming out for help.

Won't anybody help me? Pounding on doors and everything

is just shut off to them, closed.

And you're thinking about the idea that they can't get in,

that Jesus is on the outside. Even when he's in the womb, he

can't get in. And then later he's standing at

the door and he's knocking. And we sing about this idea in

Christmas when we refer to our own hearts.

Is there room in our hearts for the Lord Jesus?

We all think we would open the door.

Sure, come on in, have your baby right over there.

Sure, come on, Jesus, let's eat together.

But what if it means shame and suffering and hardness and

despair sometimes? Are we going to shut the door in

his face or are we going to open it and say, come inside, your

will be done? I don't even know what that

means, but it's better than leaving you outside.

So I don't know what your story is.

Maybe you need to open the door for the first time and let Jesus

in and become a Christian. You can say, Lord, I open the

door, come in. I give my life to you, let it be

done unto me according to your word.

But maybe you're closed off in other ways right now.

There's a relationship and you've just got the door

slammed, or the Lord's trying to get through to you in your

devotional life or through a persistent friend that's saying

there's a problem, there's a problem, there's a problem, and

you're just like this. So let us, let U.S.

Open our hearts to Him, open our ears to Him, open our hands to

Him, that we may experience His joy even in the midst of

suffering. Second move has to go along with

the musical themes, Sir. One of our favorite times of the

year, We bring out the good songs.

We have good songs all year long, don't we?

But there's something particular about the Advent songs and the

Christmas carols. And if you notice, and you

continue to think about it, how often sorrow and joy are

commingled in those songs. They're just so deeply honest.

They're just loaded with all kinds of theological truths

about our resources in the gospel.

As the God of grace has regard for you and regard for me, maybe

you don't feel like singing. Maybe singing is hard right now,

but one of the ways we can continue to keep our openness to

God is to sing even when it's hard.

Because through the rehearsal of those words, sometimes even

lamenting reward words, we are amazed at how often a a candle

is kindled. We're given hope for one more

day, light for one more dark night.

Let us sing and sing together. And the third move has to do

with rejoicing. And that that could be hard too.

You don't want to tell somebody who's grieving to just be happy.

Now we lit the pink candle. That's unhelpful, but it is very

telling and helpful when you walk with somebody in a way that

they understand and experience as a cons, A consoling presence.

When that person blesses you with an embedded joy through

their profound suffering, you'll be like, oh, that's that's what

that means, to grieve with hope. That's what that means when the

gospel comes through horrible shame and sorrow and suffering

and despair and refuses to be snuffed out.

As a pastor, I've gone and through hard things with people,

and I've been with them through very difficult moments.

And you kind of go in full of like, fear and trembling and

you're nervous. I hope I don't say anything

wrong and make it worse. And so often you go in there and

just plan to be with them, perhaps have a word of Scripture

or a prayer. And I'm amazed at how often

these believers turn the tables on Pastor Dan and give me a gift

of consolation. I went in there intending to say

something to you and you blessed me.

And I will come away from another hospital drive or

Funeral Home thinking, do I have any faith at all?

Because those people are are true believers.

Because look, look at how the Lord meets them in their deep

need. They are still honestly crying

and dealing with their grief and allowing it to go through the

lament and the cry of the heart, even the anger.

But yet they still like the Psalms.

They turn the corner often and say, and yet, Dan, you know, I

just have to tell you. There's all these little graces

that I'm noticing. Can I tell you about?

And I'm just like, yes, thank you.

And I don't want to stand up here and sort of prescribe that

to y'all as totally normal. I think it's a miracle of divine

love and it's a testimony that it happens often.

But I don't want to be like the jerk friends in the Book of Job

that press people too hard into that space before they're ready.

So there's this right way to walk with people in their grief,

and you're going to get it wrong.

I do. And yet we can admit and learn

from Mary and from Jesus and from countless Saints that have

gone before, that we are a people of sorrows.

But underneath our sorrows is a an infinite fountain of

unquenchable joy, and it will burst forth like a geyser when

the Lord Jesus returns and finally wipes away all the tears

from our eyes and settles once and for all the sin question.

And we live forever with him as the light radiating into our

existence. Perfect love.

That's our story, that's our song.

So to conclude, we see in Mary that Mary teaches us to receive

God's grace with faith and joy even when it means suffering as

well as glory. Will you pray with me?

Father in Heaven, we thank you for Holy Scriptures that are

able to make us wise and godly by the miracle of redeeming love

in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We pray, Lord, that it would go down deep into our hearts and

continue to bear much fruit. We pray for a joy that's

underneath it all, especially for those in our communion who

are going through very hard time.

Lift them up, bless them, we pray.

It's in Jesus name We pray by the Spirit.

Amen.