The Great Reversal

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message.

From Pastor Chris Roseberg. Our reading tonight is taken from the Gospel of Luke chapter 1 verses 39 through 56 which reads,. In those days Mary arose, 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. 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 leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

Satan, Human Sin, and the Need to Believe God’s Word

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.

And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home. In the name of Jesus. Satan is a usurper. You have to think of him that way. And his children are just like their father. Here's the thorny part.

We're all born dead in trespasses and sins and we were born under the dominion of the devil and well we were like the devil. This is why Jesus says you are of your father the devil. He's a liar from the beginning.

So here's our problem. Like the devil, we're always exalting ourselves. Always exalting ourselves against others, against God. You think about what goes on in the corporate world. What goes on in the corporate world, they talk about those people who are climbing the corporate ladder.

Well climbing the corporate ladder looks a lot like taking a bunch of human beings, destroying their reputations and then stacking them up like piles of bodies and then climbing the ladder to the top.

That's how it looks. So in our text tonight we will be running into, in fact we've already begun to run into, one of the major themes of Scripture and that is the humbling of the self-exalted and the exalting of the humble.

And so with that we return to our gospel text in which we hear these words. In those days Mary arose and went with haste to the hill country to a town in Judah. She entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. 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 leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

The first part of our text. And so you'll notice how this is all working out. Jesus, even though he is in utero, Jesus who is, well, at the age where if he were around today he'd likely be, he could potentially be aborted.

So there he is, a fetus, and he's already at work. He's already quite at work. At work, well, going to visit his cousin, John, who happens to be his forerunner, and making sure that he is ready for the task at hand.

And he prepares him for the task at hand while he is also still in his mother's womb. Filled with the Holy Spirit, John points to Jesus, jumps for joy, and there's so much Holy Spirit left over, his mother gets some too.

And she's so filled with the Spirit she begins to prophesy. And you'll note here that theologians are all agreed that one is not filled with the Holy Spirit unless one is a believer. Hmm, what does that do with John the Baptist?

He's a believer, even from his mother's womb. Filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. I would beg to differ with those who would say that a fetus is not a human being. Something going on here.

Quite fascinating. And you'll note that they are blessed by Jesus. Blessed to be in his presence, and blessed to be in the presence of the one who believed the words that the Lord spoke to her. And so from here, this wonderful text takes us into a section of Scripture that is referred to throughout church history as Mary's Magnificat.

My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. It's a wonderful, beautiful section of Scripture. But we would be remiss if we did not read it in light of its cross reference. And its cross reference is kind of a funny, funny place in Scripture if you think about it.

Now, have you all seen the movie The Princess Bride? Great movie. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's worthy of Christmas type of stuff, even though there's nothing Christmassy about it. Now you remember that crazy guy Vizzini who would say, inconceivable?

Remember that? And there's this duel to the death that he has, a battle of wits with Wesley. And he thought he fooled Wesley, and his line at this point goes, ha, you fool, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia.

But the only slightly less well-known is this, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. And those happened to be his last words. At that point, he died. There's an even better known blunder in human history, and this blunder is exalting yourself against and over the one true God.

Now I want you to think about this. We all do this in all kinds of ways. We sit there and hear a particular passage of Scripture that teaches that particular doctrine, you know, something thorny like, you know, God created the entire universe in six days, speaking it into existence.

You sit there, go, come on, really? And what you're doing is you're exalting yourself above God, and you're saying you know better than God about how he created the universe. I don't really believe that this, that, or the other thing is as sin.

Oh, you're exalting yourself against God, against what he's revealed in his Word. Remember, Mary is blessed because she is the one who believed the Word of the Lord that was spoken to her. And so God's spoken word comes to us every Sunday and during Advent on Wednesday evenings, comes to us in various forms, and it calls for us to believe, like Mary believed.

Believe the Word of the Lord that was sent to you. Well, we're gonna look at our cross-reference to the Magnificat before we look at the text itself, and it's in all places, Exodus chapter 14. Exodus chapter 14.

Now, those of you who've been paying attention in Sunday school will note, well, this sounds a lot like where we're at in our study of Exodus. I love these coincidences. Aren't they brilliant? We're gonna take a look at Exodus chapter 14, and we'll fast forward just a smidge to verse 10, and we're going to note that the Passover has already taken place.

The death of the firstborn has happened. Those who had the blood of their Passover lamb on their lintels and on their doorposts, God, as he came through and saw the blood, would pass over and they were saved.

They were not destroyed. And there was not a house in Egypt that didn't have somebody dead all the way up to the palace itself, and Pharaoh finally said, get out! But remember what Pharaoh is. Pharaoh is, well, he's a stand-in for Satan.

He's one who is exalting himself over God, and so he comes to his senses, gathers up his army, grabs the charioteers, and says, what were we thinking? Let's go get them, boys! What a dumb thing to do.

Only slightly more dumb than starting a land war in Asia. So we read Exodus 14, verse 10. Pharaoh drew near. The people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them and feared greatly.

And the people of Israel cried out to Yahweh, and they said to Moses, this is a wonderful line, one of my favorite lines in all of Scripture, is it because there's no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness?

What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.

This sounds a lot like those complaints that I would get from my kids when we would be on long car journeys, are we there yet kind of stuff, and then you'd be complaining and the fighting and the stop touching me's and the you just want to pull your hair out.

What kind of line is this? Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, didn't we tell you this? No, actually you did not. Okay, and here we are, we're already out of Egypt, and now you're saying this?

So Moses said to the people, fear not, stand firm, see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, you have only to be silent.

Now that sounds fantastic, but that's not exactly what the Lord had in mind. So the Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Now to kind of understand how difficult that's going to be, they have just come up against the Red Sea.

It's in front of them, and Jesus at this point has not done his whole walking on water thing, and so they're not sure what's going on here, because behind them is the Egyptian army. God has them bottlenecked in a wadi with the pillar of fire and smoke.

There they are in the beach there, and they've got the whole Red Sea in front of them, and God is saying, why are you crying out to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Makes perfect sense. So lift up your staff, stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all of his hosts, his chariots and horsemen, and the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.

So keep in mind, Pharaoh's really fighting with God. That's the thing. He's trying to exalt himself over the Lord, and that never works out very well. So the angel of God, who was going before the host of Israel, moved, went behind them.

The pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness, and it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters behind being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left, and the Egyptians pursued and went in after them in the midst of the sea, all of Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

And in the morning watched the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud look down on the Egyptian forces, threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, Let us flee from before Israel, for Yahweh fights for them against the Egyptians.

And then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand over the sea, so the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared.

And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea.

Not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on the right and on the left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians.

Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord, and they believed in Yahweh and in his servant Moses.

And then Moses and all the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider, he is thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song.

He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him. My Father is God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war. Yahweh is his name. And so you can see in this song, the theme now of the Lord triumphing over those who opposed him.

Those who opposed and exalted themselves over his people. And who is it that has opposed and exalted himself over God, that causes us to be in the misery that we're in today? Is it not the devil himself?

And his forces? And unfortunately, each and every one of us has sided with the devil in many and various ways, exalting ourselves over God, not doing his will, not loving God as we ought, not loving our neighbor as ourself as we ought.

We behave a lot like the devil. So what do we do? It's clear that the Lord humbles those who exalt themselves. So humble yourself. The Lord is in the right. I'm in the wrong, and so are you. The song continues.

Pharaoh's chariots and his host, he's cast into the sea. His chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power.

Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries, and you send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up.

The floods stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword.

My hand shall destroy them. I, I, I, my, my, my. It's all of our problems, isn't it? But you blew with your wind. The sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand. The earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed.

You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. And see, you see the theme then. Those who are oppressed are now the ones who are victorious. It's the great flip. It's the great turning of the tables where those who have everything come to have nothing and those who have nothing end up having everything, which calls us to empty our hands of everything so that we have nothing.

Because in having nothing, we have everything given to us by Christ. You have led in your steadfast love the peoples whom you have redeemed. Purchased out of slavery, you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

The peoples have heard. They trembled. Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.

Terror and dread fall upon them because of the greatness of your arm. They are still a stone till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You sit there and you go, but wait a second.

Christ has redeemed and purchased me, a poor sinful being. Indeed he has. This is actually your story. This is your song. You will bring them in, plant them on your own mountain, and the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.

This doesn't sound like earthly Jerusalem, does it? Because it isn't. The Lord will reign forever. For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, Yahweh brought back the waters of the sea upon them.

But the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea. And then Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing, and Miriam sang to them, Shiru la Yahweh, sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and his rider, he is thrown into the sea. And this has everything to do with our text tonight. Because Mary, after Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit from the overflow of her unborn sons, filling of the Holy Spirit by Christ, she says, my soul magnifies the Lord.

She doesn't magnify herself. Mary does not exalt herself. She's humble. And rather than exalt herself over the Lord, the one who believed the words spoken to her by the angel Gabriel, words given to him by God himself, she doesn't exalt herself.

She magnifies and exalts the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. Mary, like you and I, needed a Savior. So much for the immaculate conception. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant, slave.

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 need I remind you, he who is mighty has done great things for you, too.

One of the mighty things he has done is that he was born of this humble servant girl who was still a virgin. He came into the world and suffered under Pontius Pilate, died for you on a cross. He has done mighty things for you.

Holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. And see, the one who exalts himself does not fear God. Not at all. The one who exalts himself over God doesn't believe that he exists or suppresses that fact and isn't fearful of him at all.

He kind of thinks in his own heart, well, if Yahweh is so powerful, if God is so, well, mighty and going to punish evildoers, then why hasn't he done a thing to stop me from doing the things I like to do?

Right? Give it some time. He's not sleeping. But see, he's merciful to those who fear him from generation to generation. And it's not his will that even you should perish. 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 he has exalted those of humble estate. Have you ever looked at those magazines at the grocery store?

Oh, it's a train wreck. It's just glorious. You open up the magazine and you find out which movie star or celebrity's life has come to a train crash. The paparazzi has caught Kanye sleeping with this woman, or that woman who's really well-known, well, it turns out that she has a drug addiction.

And we love to watch these things. But then you sit there and you realize that all of these people whom we worship as a society, and that's what we do, we worship them. We worship them and we laud them with all kinds of glory, with fame and wealth and mansions and photo shoots and movie star roles.

Oh man, they get to drive the best cars, stay at the best resorts. And then the tabloids teach us that they're just as screwed up as the rest of us. It's kind of fascinating how that all works. And you know the reason for that is?

Because they are. Because they are. I always find it fascinating when a movie star kind of disappears. And you don't hear from them 15, 20 years. And then all of a sudden you're just looking at the news and it says such-and-such a person died.

And then they remember them. And what do they remember them for? They remember them for their make-believe roles. They remember them for the things that they did while they were pretending to be somebody else.

And they did a great job of pretending to be somebody else. Because that's what acting is, isn't it? And we all say, oh our lives will never be the same, it'll never be the same. Now that this person is gone, two days later, it's the same.

And see that's the thing. We've exalted these people, and many of them have exalted themselves. In their ambition they have sought this fame, they have sought this fortune, and they have achieved it. To what end?

They end up in the same place we all do. In a box, in the ground. It's a little colder in the boxes here than they are in Southern California, but it's still the same. And see that's it. This is the big theme of Scripture.

You see Christ, they stuck him in a tomb, and he walked out of it three days later. And the theme there, if you follow it in Philippians chapter 2, Christ who was by nature God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself.

And being found in the form of a servant, he humbled himself, became obedient, obedient to death, even death upon a cross, the lowest of the low. See Christ was the highest of the high, and he on purpose became the lowest of the low to serve you, to serve me.

The most despised man among us, the one we were all saying crucify him, he doesn't deserve to live. He's the one who humbled himself to the point of death on the cross, and therefore God has exalted him.

And he has the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. See the Bible is rich in this theme, and the reason it's rich in this theme is because the devil is the one who said, I will ascend to the highest heights, and I will be like the Most High.

Pah! The text continues and says, but you will be thrown to the greatest depths of Sheol. So 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, from their photo shoots, from their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he has exalted instead those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry, the hungry with good things, and the rich, he sent them away empty-handed.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, and as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. And so begins the great reversal, the powerful, the rich, the wealthy, the mighty.

Those who exalt themselves will be brought to nothing, but those who realize the truth that all of that fame, power, and wealth is a mirage. It's an illusion. It's an exalting of yourself over God. It's thin, it's evil, it's self-centered.

It says, Lord have mercy on me, I have nothing. Blessed are the poor in spirit, not the wealthy, the poor. God fills them with good things, remembers his mercy that he spoke to our fathers and to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

And you, brothers and sisters, are Abraham's offspring. You have been made the offspring of Abraham in the waters of your baptism. You grow as the offspring of Abraham, strong and stock, through the preaching of his word, through the preaching of the gospel, the proclamation of Christ and the magnifying of his name.

And through his law given to the descendants of Abraham, we see that we are empty-handed and brought low in need of a Savior, and through Christ we have all of our needs met. And rather than have our heads torn down in shame, he is the lifter of our heads because of Christ.

What a great and amazing God we have. And we thank God for his mercy, and we pray that he would ever continue to keep us humble, so that we may ever be believing the words spoken to us through the apostles and through the prophets, telling us the great deeds that he has done, so that we, like Mary, may magnify the Lord rather than ourselves.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Christ’s Humility and the Great Reversal in Philippians 2

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