The Magnificat (Part 1)

I just slammed into the microphone. Could you hear that? That was not an extra beat with some bass guitar. That was me taking my iPad, slamming it against this microphone. Mike Abenroth here, welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Glad you tuned in today. Do we tune into things anymore or do we just download them on our pod catcher? I still use the iPhone podcast thing. I don't really know how to do the other ones. I have tried, but some of the other cooler ones cost money.

And while I spend money on all kinds of things, I haven't really spent much money on podcast catchers and such. Maybe email me at mikeatnocompromiseradio .com and tell me which one I should use. And if it's not too hard to figure out, I'll try it as the music keeps going.

The Theme of the Show Is Jesus

All right, today I want to talk to you a little bit about Jesus. That is the theme of the show. I talked to somebody not that long ago and they said they didn't like No Compromise Radio because I critique everyone.

And I said, well, I understand exaggeration and hyperbole, but it's changed. It's not a discernment ministry anymore. We've got the new intro music. We've got a lot of talk about duplex gratia, Christ for pardon and Christ for power.

We've got the Beza briefing. We've got Pastor Steve on his best behavior. And I think it's different. I hope it's different. I think I've been doing this now for 15 years, daily radio for 15 years. I hope there's maturation.

What does Paul say to Timothy? You know, let your progress be evident to all. I hope I'm progressing in godliness and growing in grace. Sometimes it's hard to see in yourself, but hopefully you see it in other people.

And therefore preaching about Jesus is the theme of the show. I have been working through the gospel of Jesus according to Luke and I'm in the Magnificat and that's Mary's song. And it's like a Psalm in the Bible.

Reading the Magnificat as a Song of Praise

And one of the things that we could do with this Magnificat and the other songs in the gospel of Luke, you could just read them and dissect them and say to yourself, oh, this is what she said. Or if I ask you this question, how do you read the Psalms?

Well, I think you read them as poetry with parallelism and all those other things, that's true. But I hope you read them not just, oh, Psalm 51, David sins against God, against Uriah, against Bathsheba, against the nation.

And I'd like to learn about how David confesses his sin and ask for a clean heart to be created in him. That's a good step, but it doesn't end there, right? I hope you go farther and say, that's a song I sing.

That's a Psalm I believe in. That's a prayer to the Lord that I engage in because I have sinned against the Lord in many ways. And I hope that's what you do when it comes to songs, even in the New Testament.

If you look at Exodus chapter 14 and Israel's got their proverbial back up against the wall, the sea, literally, mountains on each side and Pharaoh's army on the other side, what do you do? They are to stand back and watch the Lord and keep silent.

And then after the Lord delivers them, salvation is from the Lord and of the Lord, there's a time to respond. And that response is found in Exodus 15 with this great song. And when you read that song of deliverance and praise to the triune God, I hope you don't just say, yes, this is how they praise God.

That's true. You say, this is how they praise God. And then you move further and say, what a great template for me to praise God. So that's what we're after today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, looking at the Magnificat, Mary's song of praise.

And we get that title, as I said last time, from the first word in the original language, Greek, and the first word in the original Latin. And Latin, it's Magnificat. And in the Greek, it's where we get our English word magnifies.

So that's what happens. This is like magnification. And of course, if you think about a magnifier, I don't know if you know this or not, but I did a little research. The earliest written evidence of something that magnified was found in 424 B .C., where they used a magnifying lens to light something.

And then you also had, in Pliny the Elder's writings, a magnifier used to cauterize wounds, right? The sun would go through the magnifying glass. And instead of burning up bugs, like we would do in Nebraska, or moths or grasshoppers, you would use this to cauterize a wound.

Basically what happens is you have a convex lens, and then you magnify things. Sometimes people would find these glasses, these magnifying glasses, and they would use them to even read. And that's how we got the idea for eyeglasses, because if you get some kind of magnifier, some crystal, some shiny stone that you could see through, sometimes it was curved properly, and then you could use it as a magnifying glass.

So it later turned into eyeglasses or spectacles. Why don't we call them spectacles? And then we would also get microscopes from these as well. Well, Mary is magnifying the Lord. And she says, my soul magnifies the Lord.

And with some wonderful parallelism, she says, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. And we work through a little bit about this great song that helps us all magnify the Lord, reminiscent of David when he said, oh, magnify the Lord with me in Psalm 34.

David says it explicitly, sing this with me, come along, I invite you. And Mary doesn't say that, but Luke is writing so that we do say that. As I talked about earlier in the show, that we might say from the inner being, not just with our lips, lips are good, using our voice is good, but from the soul, bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me.

Bless his holy name, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of his benefits, Psalm 103. When you read a Psalm, Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. You say to yourself, I'm reading the Psalm for me.

And that's the same thing with this Psalm. This is really a Psalm of Mary written to praise the Lord in light of her son that's in her womb, right? Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, that's the conception.

And while that's not happening to us, you don't even notice that in the Psalm, it doesn't say for those things that were done. This is a song about who God is. And when we think about who God is, we say to ourself, okay, that's where our focus needs to be.

Remembering Sin, God's Character, and Christ's Work

So in the past, I think I said in the outline, how do you sing for joy? And we looked at before, remember your lost condition. When Jesus is your savior, when she called God my savior, Mary did in chapter one, verse 47 of Luke, she talks about a humble estate, she talks about mercy, she talks about holiness.

That's a good way to have joy when you realize who you are. And then you say to yourself, oh, I need a savior. And I know where I was gonna go without the savior. And I know the savior has done great things for me that helps you with your joy, right?

If you don't really need to be saved that much, if you're a pretty good person, and God's not really that great of a savior, the praise is probably pretty small. But if you know what you deserve, eternal hellfire, and you know what you get, eternal bliss in the presence of the triune God, then there's going to be praise evoked, right?

Praise evoked. How do you sing for joy with Mary? Remember your lost condition. Number two, we looked at, rehearse the truths about who God is. That is to say, when you look at Luke chapter one, verses 46 and following, you'll see all these titles and attributes, but we mainly looked at titles.

Titles of who God is. Lord, God, savior, mighty, holy. When you think about who God is, you begin to say, oh, I should praise him. I mean, first you think of your lost condition, then you start remembering all these attributes of God and all these names of God, and even Lord, sovereign and mighty, powerful to do whatever he wants, a savior.

You say, this is evoking praise. This helps me. And the focus is not on circumstances. The focus is not on other people. Remember we talked about when you magnify other people who are problem people or magnify your own problems, and if you've got a health concern, and the first thing you do is look up WebMD and all the side effects, and I would never do anything like that, by the way.

I think air horn is better, but then that reminds me of Presbycast when they have the air horn. I think they do it like double. That's how they do it, I think. So anyway, I listened to Presbycast. You used to listen to every show.

Don't listen to every show now, but good guys over there at Presbycast. I think I was on their show once, and I think they were on my show once. And then after that, it's one and done, right? Presbyterians, it's one and done.

That's all. Three, how do you sing for joy? Well, you remember your lost condition, you rehearse the truths about Jesus, and then you reflect on what Jesus did or will do. In other words, we're looking at, of course, who we were without Christ, but then we look to Christ and we say, this is who he is and this is what he's done.

So that's really the psalm. And when you look at other psalms in the Bible or praise songs, you're praising God for who he is and what he's done. It's super simple, right? When you think about the ACTS acronym, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, the adoration is who God is and what he's done.

That's plenty to praise God for. It's plenty to praise God for just who he is, that's true, but we praise him for what he's done because he's done wonderful things for us. When I tell people to write resumes, and I mean, everybody knows it now, you put in a lot of verbs, right?

Officiated, led, guided, instructed, planned. You use a lot of verbs in your resume, a lot of action words. And in this song of praise of what God has done, you see things like rules, saves, regards, does, pities, humbles, exalts, fills, helps, speaks.

This is what God does. And therefore, Mary praises God for not only who God is, but what he does. And if you look at verse 49, he has done great things for me. This reminds me of Psalm 71, verse 19, your righteousness, oh God, reaches the high heavens.

You who have done great things, oh God, who is like you. Or even Deuteronomy chapter 10, you shall fear the Lord, your God, you shall serve him and hold fast to him. And by his name, you shall swear. He is your praise.

He is your God who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 persons, and now the Lord, your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

That's wonderful. And now Mary here is saying, you've done great things for me. Well, she could talk about a great thing that she was created, great thing that she was alive and sustained, healthy, but we know what that great thing is.

We've learned it just in the passage previously that not only did Gabriel show up and say to Zechariah, you're going to have a son, John the Baptist, a forerunner to the Messiah, but Gabriel shows up and talks to Mary.

And unlike Zechariah, who didn't believe, Gabriel essentially didn't believe God, Mary does believe. And Mary believes that this can be true. And that in fact, she's going to be the mother of God. By the way, there is a right way to say that.

Theotokos, I think is the Greek mother of God, something like that. There's a wrong way to mean that in a right way. And I'll let you study the right way, but don't study the wrong way. Now let's just say for the sake of those that don't like any of that kind of language, and I get why you don't, kind of like birthing God, but she's going to be the mother of the Messiah.

Does that make it easier for you to take? In front of me, I have a drink and I know I'm not supposed to drink on the air, but you know how we are at NOCO, super creatine in a bang, potent brain and body fuel, blue razz, zero calories, only chemicals.

If I'm really tired like I am today, I'll probably have a drink like that. Somebody said, I think it was one of Luke's friends, was headed to drive a few hours and they drank four Red Bulls. How does anybody drink four Red Bulls and not have a heart attack?

Wow. Today in real time, it's May 19th, Friday. And yesterday, Harry Reader was in a car accident, Pastor Reader, very large PCA church. I like Harry Reader. I liked Harry Reader. And anyway, I don't know if he had a heart attack, he fell asleep, he misjudged something.

And I think he ran into the back of a dump truck and died. So that was really sad. And today, of course, if you have been looking at social media, Tim Keller died at 72. He was the leader of the gospel or the co-founder with D .A. Carson of the Gospel Coalition and pastor and influential author.

And so I don't know if you knew of Harry Reader, you probably know of Tim Keller. But anyway, that's just my rambling as I had to take a drink. I guess if I'm gonna drink so much of these, then maybe I'm next.

I could be next. I just was working on some things with the will. I hope if you're a parent, you have a will. And I also hope that if you're older like me, I mean, I'm thinking about this already. I've got to turn over or put everything in the children's name.

So that they'll look back, whether it's three years or seven years or whatever it is, if I have to go to a rest home, it needs to be in their name for all those years, not within the look back period.

Otherwise they lose the house as the nursing home has to get the house to take care of their dad. So I don't wanna have that happen. Anyway, house in order is a good thing. Never too late. Mary says he's done great things for me.

The virginal conception, that's what she's talking about. Of course, she understands that. For me, God has favored me. The mighty one has done something for me. As I've said many times at No Compromise Radio, it's either Machen or Luther or a conglomeration of those two through Avendroth.

And that is Jesus died as history. Jesus died for sinners. That's theology. Jesus died for sinners like me. That's doxology. That's praise. That's wonderful. I know it was Luther who regularly said, make sure you talk about how Jesus died for you.

Jesus died for me is what you say. Jesus died for me. Don't say Jesus died for I. That would be bad. And when you watch what Jesus does through the lens of Luke's gospel, you see how great the father's love is for his prodigal son.

You see how the penitent publican responds, have mercy on me, a sinner. God is so great. You see the man who's born blind and what happens in the gospel of John and the great shepherd of the sheep, John 10.

When you read the gospels about Jesus, that's exactly what you do. And she praises God for what he's done for her, virginal conception of the Messiah. And then she expands it. So what the point of this is, the point of what I'm saying is this, Hebrews 8 .1, we have such a high priest.

She praises God for who he is, but now she's praising God for what he's done. Virgin conception, yes. And also now showing mercy to other people and his mercy verse 50 is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

And we move from first person singular to third person plural, from the individual to the general. That's a good way to praise God. God, I praise you for saving me, sanctifying me, one day glorifying me.

And I praise you for what you're doing in the world, in the lives of other people. And you keep doing it year after year, generation after generation. Doesn't this sound like Psalm 103, verse 17? But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children.

We here see God's mercy is for those who fear him. There's an old scholar named David Edmund Hebert, D. Edmund Hebert. And he wrote commentaries that are really wonderful, kind of digest. I think he did first Peter, second Peter, Jude, first Thessalonians, James.

And I think there's one other, oh, Mark. And he defined mercy this way, quote, the self-moved, spontaneous, loving kindness of God, which causes him to deal in compassion and tender affection with the miserable and distressed, period, end quote.

Close quote. His kindness, his mercy, his loyal love, he gives in this particular case to those who fear him. And we've talked many times at No Compromise Radio the difference between servile fear and filial fear.

The servile fear is one of God is judge and I've broken his rules and I ought to be afraid. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. That's servile fear, kind of a cringing fear, afraid, afraid fear, a scared fear.

I said that on purpose, but probably in the past I would not have said that on purpose. I said it, but I didn't mean to purpose it. But what if our relationship to the creator is now different because of the Lord Jesus?

And by the way, it is. We don't have to cringe anymore. There's no condemnation. There's no fear of expulsion. You have eternal life. You're in Christ. This is not like federal vision, where if you don't obey enough, you lose union with Christ that you got at your baptism.

No, no, no. When you believe God grants you saving faith and you exercise it. Knowledge, assent, and trust. You're sealed to the day of redemption. The spirit of God makes that so. And God, the triune God, has more writing on your salvation than you do.

Because if he doesn't save you to the very end, he's not faithful and he's not true. And therefore he's not God. So what God starts, he'll finish. And if he calls you, he's going to glorify you. And right on down the chain of events, we go from predestination for knowledge, calling, justification, and glorification.

Your glorification is so set, it's even in the past tense. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit. So the fear of God now for the Christian is while you love God, you want to honor him. There's respect, there's awe.

It's not fear of condemnation. So filial means son. So like a son or a daughter, you have a lot of respect for your father because he's so great. If on earth you didn't have a good father and you didn't respect him, well, the heavenly father, you can respect him.

And so when you fear God, when you have this, what Charles Bridges called an affectionate reverence, that's the right response. And a lot of times fearing God is equivalent to faith. And that's what happened with Abraham.

Now that I know you fear God, right? Yet you believe God. And so we respond with faith and we say to ourselves, of course, God generally loves everyone, but he specifically loves and pours out his blessings on those who are in Christ Jesus.

And he does that to generation after generation. That's exactly what he does. Mary continues in verse 51 and verses 51 through 55 are all these things that God has done. So the point of what I'm saying is this, when you want to praise God, magnify his name, so you're not magnifying all your problems, you praise him with an attitude of, I know what I deserve.

And you praise him for who he is, names and attributes, and you praise him for what he's done, for you and for others. Isn't that a good template? Well, I think that's a good template. And you'll see that template with Zachariah's praise pretty soon and Simeon's praise.

And there's a woman, I can't remember her name. Who is the woman? Prophetess, I think that's later in Luke chapter one. I'm gonna have to look it up right now. It's Mike Abenroth, No Compromise Radio.

If you order Sexual Fidelity online at nocompromiseradio .com, we send you an extra sexual fidelity and things to go bump in the church. So Jesus is born, that's Luke chapter two. He's presented in the temple, that's also chapter two.

There's a devout man, Simeon, in chapter two, who was righteous and waiting for the consolation of Israel. And there was a prophetess, verse 36, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was 84.

She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day, and coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Well, I thought maybe there was gonna be a praise there and what she did, but here it just says, giving thanks and speaking of him to all who are waiting. And I'm sure she spoke of him exactly the way we're talking about now, for who he is and for what he's done, for who God is, names and attributes and for what he's done, not just for her, but for Israel, for others, et cetera.

The Verbs of Mary's Song and the Certainty of God's Future Work

Well, my name is Mike Gabendroth. We're looking at now a lot of the verbs in verses 51 through 55. They have a common theme. First of all, there's a bunch of verbs, shown strength, scattered, brought down, exalted, filled, helped, spoke.

And they're all in the past tense. Now, we've got a couple options when we see these past tense verbs. Option one, and this is certainly apropos, is to praise God for what he's done in the past. That seems the normal, the natural.

Oh, exodus, redemption, sustaining in the wilderness, that kind of thing. But there's also something what people call a prophetic tense, a prophetic aorist tense. And that's basically saying something like this.

We're going to look forward to the ministry of the Messiah in this particular case. And these are as good as done, like the glorification passage in Romans chapter eight. You're justified, you're glorified, but you're not glorified yet, but it's as good as done.

It's the same thing. Mary is looking forward to the results of what her child will do for believing Israel. So I guess I have to stop there because, hey, No Compromise Radio has got to stop on time. I never do that anymore.

It used to be 24 minutes a show, 2430. Now it's a little longer, we're up to 26. So we're going to talk a little bit more next time about looking at these events that are certain to occur that Mary praises God for.

My son in the womb is going to do these things. Mike Abenroth, No Compromise Radio.