Mary's Song of Praise (December 18 2022)

The Joy of Singing as Christians

You know, one of my favorite things about Christmas time is the music. And so choir, thank you for the work that you put in preparing for singing several songs this morning. And Pastor Gary, thank you for the work that you put in and the work you do all year long putting songs of praise on our lips.

So I'm grateful for that. Because you know, music and singing are integral to the Christian life. I remember when we lived in Turkey, I had a friend named Tolga. He was a music teacher. And we would visit with him often, he lived about an hour away.

And I remember one night, sitting at his house, and I had a friend of mine from Virginia there with me, and my friend Matt, he leads worship at his church, and so he was strumming along on the guitar and playing some Christian worship songs, and I was translating the lyrics from English into Turkish for my friend.

And Tolga, he played guitar as well, so he was looking, kind of watching Matt and seeing what chords he was playing. And he was joining along. Now Tolga, he's not a Christian, he's a Muslim, more or less.

And I remember he remarked, he said, I wish we sang like that in the mosque. We don't sing. And that struck me, and it made sense. If you're still dead in your sins, what do you have to sing about? But we're Christians.

And we sing. And this makes sense as well, because poetry is glorified speech, and song is glorified poetry. And so transferring things from one degree of glory to another is, that's just what God does.

And so Christians, having been made in the image of God as man, and restored to the fullness of that image in Christ, we also participate in the glorious transformation of things from one degree of glory to another.

And so, we sing. As we continue to anticipate Christmas during this Advent season, I want us to look this morning at one of the songs of Christmas in Scripture. In Luke chapter 1, verses 46 through 55, we find Mary's song of praise.

This song is traditionally called the Magnificat, Latin for magnify, that we see in verse 46. My soul magnifies the Lord. I want us to look at this song this morning. And so let's read from Luke chapter 1, verses 46 through 55.

And the Word of God says this,. And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever.

Amen. This is the Word of the Lord to us this morning. This is Mary's song of praise. I want you to remember the context of this song. The context is that the angel Gabriel had appeared to Mary shortly before this, to Mary, a virgin betrothed to Joseph, and he had told her that the Lord was with her, that she had found favor with God, that is, she had found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

He had told her that she would conceive a son in her womb, and that she should call his name Jesus. For he will be great, he will be called Son of the Most High. And the Lord God would give to him the throne of his father David, and he would reign forever.

Of course, Mary asked how that could be, since she was a virgin and not yet married, and Gabriel told her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and the power of the Most High would overshadow her.

He told her that her barren relative Elizabeth had conceived in her old age, for nothing should be impossible with God. And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.

And the angel departed, and Mary went to go visit Elizabeth. And she came to see Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth's womb, leapt in the presence of Jesus when Mary greeted her. And Mary, excuse me, and Elizabeth blessed Mary, and noted the fulfillment of what the angel had spoken to her.

And then we come to verse 46. And then Mary sings. But what does she sing? What does she sing about? That's what I want us to see this morning. I want to see eight things that Mary sings in praise to God, in response to what he has done for her.

The Bigness of God

And so the first thing we see is that Mary sings of the bigness of God. My soul magnifies the Lord. The first line of her song. My soul magnifies the Lord. Magnifies means to make bigger. Now, of course, no one can make God any bigger than he is.

What this means is that Mary, in her inner person, in her soul, she is expanding her conception of God. She is seeing God for how big he is. She is getting a more accurate view of how big God is. So you can think of it this way.

If you were to go out at night, and you were to look up at the moon, you could take your thumb and place it in between you and the moon, and you could completely cover the moon where you couldn't see it anymore.

And you might think that, well, the moon must not be very big, you know, if my thumb can cover it where I can't see it. But that's only because of the distance between you and the moon. If you were to get in one of Elon Musk's rocket ships, and you were to go into space, you'd see that the moon is, well, much bigger than your thumb, right?

Or if you look through a high-powered telescope, it would magnify the moon such that you could see how big it is. You could make up the distance between here and there, and see how large the moon actually is.

Mary's meditation of God works like that telescope, in that her soul magnifies the Lord, and she gets an accurate picture of who God is, and what God is like, and how big God is. And the result is joy.

Her spirit rejoices in her Savior. So I'd ask you, do you want joy this morning? Do you want to sing for joy? Well, then think about God. Think about the bigness of God. See the bigness of God. Meditate on the godness of God.

So think about His power, that He can create Niagara Falls or Mount Everest with just a word. Think about His knowledge of everything that has ever happened in the history of the world. And not only everything that has happened, but everything that would have happened if something else had happened.

His knowledge is vast. Or think about His mercy, which forgives even the worst of sin and sinners. Even the worst of your sin. Think about His love, which is steadfastly loyal to a thousand generations.

Think about His presence. How Psalm 139 says it, if I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. God is present everywhere. Or think about His providence. How He controls every detail of everything on earth.

Seven billion people on the face of the earth. And God's in control of every last one of us. And not only the people, but the animals. And not only the animals, but the plants. And not only the plants, but every molecule is in the providence of God.

I heard one preacher years ago, he was talking about how sometimes he would just look at a glass of Diet Coke and all the fizzy bubbles popping up out of it and worship. Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

The way he explained it was this, he said, you know, because God providentially controls every one of those tiny bubbles popping up out of the Diet Coke. And on the entire face of this planet, there is not one rogue bubble.

Not one tiny molecule is outside of the providence of God. Think of the bigness of God. Think of the providence of God. Think about these things and get an accurate view of the godness of God. And magnify Him.

Let your soul magnify Him. When we sing, we ought to be magnifying the Lord with our hearts. We ought to be magnifying the Lord with our voices. So Mary sings about the bigness of God. The second thing she sings, she sings about her humble estate.

Mary's Humble Estate and God's Grace

She says, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. Mary is not proud. She knows her frame and she knows her place. She knows that she was not chosen for this honorable task because of any merit in her person.

She knows that she has found favor with God. Verse 30 of Luke 1 says she has found favor with God. The word for favor there is charis. The same word for grace. She found grace with God. This reminds me of Noah.

If you look back in Genesis 6, it says Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And what did he do? He built an ark to carry the image of God. Well, Mary finds grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And she becomes an ark that carries God. Jesus Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God. Mary knows that she has been blessed because of God's grace to her. We first see God's grace to Mary in the previous verse where she rejoices in God her Savior.

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. This is important because some traditions hold that Mary was sinless. This isn't true. She too needed a Savior because she too was born in Adam's corruption and she too sinned.

Now Mary is honorable and we ought to honor her. But she, like us, by her own testimony, needed a Savior. And so we ought not to worship her even though we honor her. And she knew this to be the case.

She recognized her humble estate and she recognized that God had looked on her in her humble estate. This calls to mind Hannah's prayer back in 1 Samuel chapter 1. And her song here recalls Hannah's song in 1 Samuel chapter 2.

Now Mary, she was not barren and childless after years of marriage like Hannah. But Mary represents Israel here, which in a sense is childless as Israel waits on the birth of the Messiah and waits on the deliverance of the Messiah.

And so like Hannah, who cast herself helpless on the Lord, as the Lord being the only one who could help her and come to her aid, Mary and Israel must rely upon God. He is their hope and He is their help.

In other words, she sings of her dependence on God and of God's concern for the lowly, which is something that we see throughout the Bible. If you were to flip over a few pages to Luke chapter 4, Jesus stands up in the temple and He reads the scroll from Isaiah and He says that He came to preach good news to the poor.

Or if you were to read the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek. See God's concern for the poor and the lowly. The psalmist said it like this, God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Mary's song is the song of the humble, of those who having seen how big God is, having seen His transcendence, having seen God high and lifted up, realize how small they are. And yet, God has looked on her.

God has looked on her in her humble estate. You see, God is big and we are small, but God still knows your name. God still knows your frame. God still knows your situation. God still knows the number of hairs on your head.

God knows you. Not only is He eminent, high and lifted up, He is also transcendent. And high and lifted up, He is also eminent. He is also Emmanuel. He is also God with us. You are not forgotten in this universe.

His eye is on the sparrow and He watches over you. Third thing Mary sings about, after she sings about the bigness of God, she sings about her humble estate, she then sings about the blessing on her life.

Mary's Blessing and the Blessing of Those in Christ

For behold, from now on, generations will call me blessed. And this is held true. We tell her story every Christmas. We honor Mary as a faithful mother in the faith and as a picture of the Christian church.

And she sings of this gracious gift of her blessing, of her being remembered. She sings of this gracious blessing of God on her life. And we too can join Mary's song of praise because we too have been blessed in Christ.

Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, but delights in His law and meditates on it day and night, Psalm 1 says. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are those who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, who are pure in heart, who are peacemakers, who are persecuted for Jesus' sake. Blessed, he says. We have the blessing of having our sins forgiven.

We have the blessing of promised eternal life with God. We share in the blessing and so we can share in Mary's song of praise. We can join and sing of the blessings that we have in Christ. You may be poor in spirit, you may even be poor in your bank account, but you are rich in Christ.

And so sing of your blessings in Him and sing of your blessings from Him. The fourth thing that Mary sang about was God's power. Mary sang of God's power. She says, for he who is mighty has done great things for me.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me. God is mighty in power. We saw a couple of weeks ago when we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, that one of the titles for Jesus is mighty God. He's mighty, he's powerful.

Mary sings of God's power and his mighty deeds. I think here of Acts, Acts chapter 2 and at Pentecost, people from all over the known world heard in their own languages, what does it say? The mighty acts of God.

The mighty works of God. If you read the Psalms, you'll find this theme repeated as well. You'll see Israel singing about God's mighty acts in their history. God's powerful acts to deliver them. One example is Psalm 136.

A Psalm which recounts how God struck down the firstborn of Egypt and delivered his people with an outstretched arm and cast Pharaoh and his host into the sea. How he killed the mighty kings like Sihon of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan's land.

And then in 136, 23, we see this familiar phrase, it is he who remembered us in our lowest state and rescued us from our foes. What do we see here in Psalm 136 that's recapitulated in Mary's song? We see the mighty acts of God.

We see God in his power and we see God seeing us in our lowest state and by his power delivering us from our foes. Mary knew the Psalms, she knew Psalm 136 and she incorporated some of the same ideas into her own song.

She sang about the power of God and the might of God and how he used it to deliver her. And so we too sing about our deliverance in Christ, deliverance from Satan, sin and death. So we too sing the power of God to slay Satan, that ancient dragon, to overcome death and to set us free from the guilt of our sin.

Let us join in Mary's song. She also not only sang about God's power, she sang about God's holiness. In the verse 49, and holy is his name, and holy is his name. Think about the great song, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

It's what the seraphim sang around the throne of God in Isaiah chapter 6. The holiness of God refers to his absolute moral perfection. God is utterly and always righteous and just. God is holy. The holiness of God also refers to his otherness from us, what we called his transcendence earlier.

He is creator and we are but creatures. He is high and lifted up. He is holy. The holiness of God also refers to his being completely devoted to his own glory. God acts in this world for his own glory.

This is not narcissistic or selfish of God, for if God was devoted to the glory of something other than himself, then he would be an idolater and would not be God. No, he is devoted to his own glory perfectly and completely.

He is holy. He is holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty. And so in our singing, let us never lose sight of the holiness of God. Remember that our God is, as Hebrews says, a consuming fire, whom we are to worship with reverence and with awe.

Let us remember the holiness of God. Mary sang not only about God's power and holiness, but about his mercy. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. Verse 50. God's mercy refers to his compassion, to his heart to forgive and cover our sin, to his loyal love and steadfast kindness.

His mercy is seen in the deliverance of his people, those who trust in him. He rescues the humble and he exalts them. And this is the mercy of God. Has God shown his steadfast love and kindness to you?

Has God forgiven your sin? Has he stuck with you closer than a brother? Then sing of his great mercy. His mercy is for those who fear him. What we see here between verses 50 and 51 is a shift in this song.

She shifts from offering, singing personal praise to God, to singing corporate praise for God. She shifts from focusing on how God has blessed her to how God has blessed Israel. And how God is acting to bless and save and deliver Israel as a whole.

And so here we see God's mercy expressed in God's actions to rescue Israel and defeat her enemies. And like Isaiah did in chapter 9, Mary too, she starts using the past tense to emphasize the certainty that she has for what God is going to do.

And so in verses 51 through 53, Mary sings about God's actions. She's saying about who God is and his power, and who God is and his holiness, and who God is and his mercy. And now she is going to praise God for what God has done and what God is going to do.

She sings of his judgments and she sings of his mercy. She sings of his curses and of his blessings. Of those he cast down and those whom he lifts up. 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. And so here Mary sings of these great reversals that God has worked in history and that she anticipates in working again.

Great reversals. So you think about the story of the scriptures. Pharaoh was high but God brought him low and delivered his people Israel out of Egypt to give them the promised land. The book of Esther.

Haman was high but then he hung on the gallows that he had built while Mordecai was elevated to a place of honor in the king's court. Absalom set himself up as king and a rival to his father David. But he hung in the tree and was struck down by Joab's sword.

Nebuchadnezzar set up a golden image of himself and commanded everyone to worship him. But God drove him from among men and made him eat grass like the ox. His son Belshazzar committed debauchery in a drunken stupor while drinking from vessels that he had brought from the temple.

And he was killed that night. Yet Daniel remained high in the court of the new king. Repeatedly throughout the Bible we see that God opposes the proud and exalts the humble. And this is most fully seen in Christ who dealt the death blow to Satan when he walked out of the tomb on Easter morning.

But he had lowly beginnings on earth. The lowly babe born to a virgin in a stable on Christmas grew up in wisdom and stature and now stands with his foot on Satan's head. He has brought about the great reversal because in Christ the dead live.

In Christ the sinners are made righteous and Satan licks the dirt. And those who have nothing to offer are given everything and they lack nothing. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.

And then lastly Mary sings about God's covenant faithfulness. She sang about who he is. She sang about what he has done and what he is going to do. And here again we focus in on God's actions. His loyal love and his covenant faithfulness.

His remembrance of his people. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and to his offspring forever. God has promised Abraham to make his people great.

He had promised Abraham to make his people great. To give them land and to bless all the world through his offspring. And here Mary calls to mind the promises of God. She sings about the fact that God remembers.

In remembrance of his mercy she sings. God remembers his promises. He never forgets. And God always, always, always keeps his promises. He is faithful to his covenant. He is faithful to his promises. And he is faithful to his people.

That means you can rely on God. No matter what it is you're going through you can rely on God. You can depend on God. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He remembers his mercy. And his mercy is for those who fear him.

He remembers his promises and he will never go back on them. God remembers. And so we sing of God's faithfulness. Think of the great hymn. Great is thy faithfulness O God my Father. There is no shadow of changing with thee.

God is faithful. So we've seen eight things that Mary sang about. And in light of Mary's song of praise I want to end with two quick exhortations for you. Two quick exhortations. The first comes from the theme of Mary's song.

Humility, Singing, and God's Faithfulness

Humility and dependence upon God. Recognizing the grace of God in looking on her humble estate. She recognized that she needed the Lord to act on her behalf. And she sang about how God scatters the proud and exalts the humble.

And so the first exhortation I just want to read to you from 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 6 and 7 says, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. The exhortation is to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he might at the proper time exalt you. So do not be proud. Remember that God opposes the proud.

But God gives grace to the humble. The humble find grace in the eyes of the Lord. God cares for the humble. His mercy is for those who fear him. So fear God and be humble. And then the second exhortation is to imitate Mary in singing about these very things.

We are Christians. We are a singing people. And so sing of the bigness and the godness of God. Sing of how he looks kindly on your low estate. Sing about how he has blessed you in Christ Jesus. Sing of his power and his holiness and his mercy.

Sing of his righteous actions in history to cast down the proud and to lift up the humble. Sing of your hope that he will continue to do so in our day. And sing of his covenant faithfulness. Sing of his steadfast love to a thousand generations.

Take your thoughts about God and glorify them in song. Take your prayers to God and glorify them in song. And take your Christmas celebrations and glorify them in song. And you're going to have an opportunity to do that in just a little bit.

Down at lunch sometime when I see that most people have kind of had their dessert, I'm going to get us started on a Christmas carol or two. Nothing fancy. Just God's people glorifying God in song. Because we're Christians.

And we found favor with God. So let us be a singing people. Singing of the greatness and the mercy of God. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, our souls magnify you this morning. We magnify you for your love.

Your love that is made known to us in the fact that you sent your son. You love the world in this way that you sent your only son. That whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

So we magnify you for your love. We magnify you for your power. Your power is great and there is none like you. We magnify you for your knowledge. Which is too great for us. We magnify you for your mercy that we have received.

And that you have washed away our sins. We magnify you for your providence. That you care for every detail of our lives. And not only of our lives but everybody on this planet. We magnify you God. We thank you that you see us in our humble estate.

And seeing us in our lowly estate. You don't cast us off but you welcome us in. Father I pray that we would express our praise to you for your faithfulness. In song, in obedience, in kindness, in love, in joy.

Let us express that Lord in these ways. And not only us but Father I pray that all peoples would know the love of Christ. And that all peoples would know of your power and your might. And that they would sing of it.

Like Psalm 67 says. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. Well we pray that you would do these things because we ask them in the name of Jesus. Amen.