Magnifying the Lord or Magnifying Your Problems? (Part 1)

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Welcome to no compromise radio ministry Here I am downtown

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Burbank Buena Vista Street another show Not true.

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I'm in West Boylston 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston, Mass Just north of Worcester.

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I'm using the English accent for my

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GPS and he the man gets it, right Lemonster Worcester It's kind of fun

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Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. No compromise radio. You can get Gospel assurance either the large version or the shorter version on Amazon.

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You can get covenant theology by Pat Abendroth on Amazon And I'm working on the discovering

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Colossians for SOS Johnson. That should be out this summer along with some other projects this morning

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Was nice it's now afternoon I Today on no compromise radio want to do something that I haven't done on 3500 some shows maybe 3700 shows.

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I want to teach you how to sing how to sing Really?

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Can't you just go to the internet and learn about? well if you want to sing warm up your body and vocal cords first make s sounds and f sounds and Practice scales.

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Don't forget about good posture stand up straight. Keep your head level So your chin doesn't

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Jut upward can't you go to the internet to find things like make sure you find your range

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So you don't sing out of your range sing from your chest Improve your lung capacity the practice sing with others and the last one

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I didn't know about On the internet if you'd like to learn how to sing it's stay hydrated

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Okay, I'm trying to obey the internet right now by the way crazy stuff going on the internet

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I just got back from California it was my daughter

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Gracie's College slash University graduation. So I wanted to be there for that Proud of her as I am the rest of my children

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They're all out of school now, and then I also got to see my little grandson Amos I went to swimming lessons with Amos and he's taking swimming lessons

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And I thought you know Seven month old they just you know, Bob up and down sprinkle some water around, you know

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Kind of like a pato Baptist deal a sprinkle on their head. So Jim Redhead says pedo

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Baptist all that to say It wasn't that at all. I was so impressed with the teacher and I love swimming

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Love to teach people to swim and I thought you know If I ever had to give up the pastor, I'd want to be one of these swim teachers

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It was incredible to watch this lady Increase the confidence and build upon every step for little

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Amos now Amos He can't really set up He's he has to get a helmet for his head because he laid in the

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NICU for so long his head is misshapen So it's hard for his neck To hold up his head like a regular seven month old might easily be able to do so you have to kind of prop him

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Up in a funny way He doesn't like to be on his stomach because it's hard for him to lift his head up at cetera he gets a camo

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Helmet next week. So that'll be fun so She the teacher was laying him on his back and you know ears under and he's crying and learning how to float and I said

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Okay, fine floating around She didn't just dunk him under I mean, that's what

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I would do in the shower, right? I would just take him put him under and he closed his mouth, right? And she didn't she didn't blow in his face either that's how

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I would dunk kids When I was in the pool with them younger little ones little infants blow in the face, they cover their mouth

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You don't close your mouth rather and down they go full immersion baptism, I Know I have

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Presbyterians listening That's okay. I I did like it when Scott Clark.

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I said to Scott, you know, I don't think I'm ever gonna be Presbyterian I'm 63 now.

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It's my birthday yesterday. Just not gonna make it. So just FYI Scott And then he said

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I know But you don't think like a Baptist and from coming from Scott Clark.

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I took that as a good compliment highest highest in the land It's probably be nice to him he's gonna be my son's professor at West Cal this fall

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Luke is starting to attend So we'll see how that all works out Anyway back to the story of swimming then back to the lesson today

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She the teacher put Amos Down kind of headfirst under the water about six to eight inches

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Held him there for a second underwater and then pushed him like a little submarine

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Three feet over to Haley the mom my daughter Amos's mom my daughter and then

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Haley caught him and picked him up took him out of the water. I just thought I Actually thought it was so cool.

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I I kind of cried a little bit. I thought man, this is wonderful So anyway, how do you sing a song?

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That's a great question to ask. There's lots of songs in the scripture and there is especially a lot of songs in a book called

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Luke the gospel of Jesus according to Luke and it is called by some ie s

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OS Johnson the gospel of songs Because there are so many songs

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The benedictus of Zacharias, these are all Latin words the nuke Didymus of Simeon the glory of the angelic hosts, it's a gospel of songs and today we're going to look at the

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Magnificat as one of those songs of praise and thanksgiving and magnifying the

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Lord for what he has done and who he is I've been teaching through Luke in Sunday morning worship services and we're just working our way through Luke and I think

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I'm about seven messages in or something like that It's been wonderful it's been hard it's hard to preach narratives

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It's hard to preach songs But today we're gonna look at Mary's song of praise the Magnificat and I'm gonna try to teach you how to sing with joy

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You say why would I ever need that? Well life is difficult life is hard things are are

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Broken fallen wounded. I can't believe I just said broken Broken and wounded and It's hard to have a lot of joy.

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I mean happiness sometimes is out of our league when things are so difficult

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But could we have joy and we're gonna look at Luke chapter 1 verses 46 through 56 today and tomorrow

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And maybe even in the next week in no co -world and talk about how to sing a song of joy even though There how to sing a song of joy, even though even though like today my back hurts

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Even though I was in California and after the graduation party both my son and my daughter's car my son's

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Car and my daughter's car the catalytic converters were cut out Like what

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You're like, how do you know if they're ever cut out? Oh, you'll know you'll know it's hot rod land it's motorcycles without mufflers land and it's like oh,

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I'm so thankful that I Said to Gracie now I want you to get comprehensive insurance because your car is a little nicer than you know

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What the typical $2 ,000 beater cars that college students have? She got a nicer one.

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So now she only has to pay the deductible and I'll help her some of that $4 ,600 to replace the o2 sensors

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Mufflers tailpipes catalytic converter, etc. That is crazy That's a new car in college land

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Why is this section called the Magnificat? When Mary sings, why do we call it that and the answer is found in verse?

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46 Mary said my soul magnifies the Lord My soul magnifies now the

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Magnificat is Latin and it means my soul magnifies the Lord and it's the first word that Mary says in Latin and in Greek It's something very similar.

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The first word is in Greek Magnify or Exalt or Enlarge And so Mary says my soul magnifies

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The Lord and some have called this something maybe the one of the last Old Testament praise psalms

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And when I say Old Testament, maybe I should say Old Covenant, right of the missus You know all before the resurrection of Jesus, of course, he hasn't even

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Been born and Mary says my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my

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Savior To magnify now, of course when I think of magnification

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I think of I'm old And now I know why grandma and grandpa always had magnifying glasses

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What do you need these for grandma and grandpa, I mean now I've got probably like you a magnifying app on my phone on my iPhone and The other day

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I thought you know what? I've got a bunch of watches Expensive watches but several watches and I Wonder why they're all dead.

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Well because I haven't replaced the batteries and so I opened up the back of the watches Carefully, and I couldn't see what numbers were on those watches so I could replace them and I know a fair bit about batteries being a

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Duracell salesperson back in the early 80s and I mean, they're small.

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Is that a 377? Is it a 364? What are they and so I had to use that app To make it bigger so when we magnify

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God when we Magnify the Lord do we make him bigger? Is it something we can do to make him larger and the answer to that is obviously not

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Kind of similar to excuse me giving God glory Right.

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He's already glorious intrinsically and then we can ascribe to him who he already is and so therefore

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When we magnify the Lord, it's really in our own hearts and minds and soul right my soul magnifies the

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Lord That's what we're after here is not making God bigger but thinking about him properly in a biblical way in which he's revealed himself so that we might have an enlarged view of God and To extol him and to praise him and to talk about his greatness

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To magnify that's what we're after here today Magnify are the Greek word is to make great.

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That's what we're after here on no compromise Radio, I wonder how the message

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Starts, how does the message start with a magnificat and Mary said I'm bursting with God news

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There's a dash. They're not a Meredith Klein dash, but just a dash. I'm dancing the song of my

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Savior God There's no Greek word for dance in there, by the way or Latin God took one good.

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Look at me and look what happened That is so God took one good.

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Look at me and look what happened. I'm the most fortunate woman on earth. Okay, that part's true

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The most blessed what God has done for me will never be forgotten that part's true, but this is you know, so bad

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The God whose very name is holy set apart from all others His mercy flows in wave after wave and those who are in awe before him.

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He bared his arm and showed his strength Scattered the bluffing braggarts

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Why? He knocked tyrants off their high horse pulled victims out of the mud

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The starving poor sat down to banquet the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced the chosen child

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Israel He remembered and piled on the mercies piled them high It's exactly what he promised bringing with beginning with Abraham and right up till now

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Well, I don't recommend that at all But what I do recommend is a good thorough reading of the

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Old Testament Which will help us see How Mary goes about praising

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God? I mean she was a Jewish person. She understood the scriptures We'll see even in this passage all kinds of sometimes even people think 15 allusions to the

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Old Testament if not direct quotes in Her song and it's almost like you say well

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Zechariah the priest He was at the temple and he was praying and he knew his Bible and therefore there was more judgment on him when he said

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In fact, I don't believe you Gabriel I don't believe in God's promises and of course he was mute after that until John was named

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John the Baptist was named well It's true that we have an old man and a young girl

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Could be 12 13 15 something in that area most likely But we don't have a person that's biblically literate and a person biblically illiterate although Mary is in a little place

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Obscure she's not in Rome. She's not in Jerusalem. She's in Nazareth Does anything good come out of Nazareth, but she knows her

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Bible and and you can just hear things in this Magnificat this magnification of God that come right from the

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Old Testament And if it's not an exact quote the tenor of it Psalm 34 I will bless the

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Lord Yahweh at all times his praise shall be continually in my mouth My soul makes its boast in the

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Lord. Let the humble here and be glad Oh Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together

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David is is is Beckoning he is inviting he is saying come and worship the

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Lord with me join with me as we sing about him and praise him for his kindness his generosity his generosity his his greatness and As Spurgeon would say not just with your heart, but also with your mouth

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Spurgeon said quote our thankfulness is not to be a dumb thing. It should be one of the daughters of music

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Our tongue is our glory and it ought to reveal the glory of God What a blessed mouthful is

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God's praise how sweet how purifying how perfuming? If men's mouths were always thus filled there would be no repining against God or slander of neighbors

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If we continually rolled the dainty morsel under our tongue, the bitterness of daily affliction would be swallowed up in joy

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God deserves blessing with thought from the with the heart and extolling with the mouth good thoughts in the closet and good words in the world and Charles Haddon Spurgeon quote

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Today, we're talking about Mary magnifying the Lord Speaking well of the

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Lord and of course, we're going to get to how we should do that And is that going to be our song as well, of course?

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You could say she's in a difficult situation right, she's going to have to receive the scorn of those looks of the community she

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You know, I don't know if she's faced Joseph yet or not. I can't remember that in the chronology of the whole thing.

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I Don't know what's going to have to happen here, but she knows in spite of circumstances who God is and she wants to magnify

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The Lord she wants to speak well of the Lord. And of course we see that in the

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New Testament. Do we not with even the word gospel the word gospel in the

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Bible talks about good news and We magnify the Lord when we talk about who he is and Jesus Christ is the gospel, right?

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The gospel incarnate of course when I say Jesus We're thinking about the father who sends the Son and the father and the son who send the

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Spirit when you think of the one you think of the three and you think of the three you think of the one when it Comes to persons within the singular one triune

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God Yes, that's that's all true When you think of the descriptive phrases in the

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Bible in the New Testament modifiers of the word gospel of good news They're just everywhere the gospel of the

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Son Romans 1 the gospel of the grace of God Focusing on grace in Acts 20 the gospel of the kingdom the gospel of peace the gospel of the glory of Christ there's a theme that God is great and we're to think rightly about his greatness and Magnify the

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Lord to others. Yes, but even in our own hearts that are so prone to wonder

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We need the expressions found in the Bible Christ was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification

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Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord My father gives you the true bread from heaven.

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This is the promise that he's promised us even eternal life We're talking about Good news because we're talking about the good news of God we might even say the good news of a resurrected

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Savior the Lord of Jesus and Doesn't that motive but doesn't that make you want to praise the

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Lord? It's amazing to think that our sins have been washed

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We have been forgiven. We have been pardoned not just now up to now but for our entire lives

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Everything has been pardoned and As Casper oliviana says all of this

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God freely offers and gives to us in the gospel Without any regard to our past present our future merit or piety

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He applies it to us by grace through faith so that whoever boasts boasts in the Lord Jeremiah 9 and 1st

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Corinthians chapter 1 Today, I know compromise radio. We're talking about magnifying

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The Lord as we sing and of course Mary had the

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Old Testament promises. That's true. But we have we have the completions. So we know all about the ultimate praise of God and ultimate magnification

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For who he is and what he's done this word gospel I think it helps us when we think okay

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Luther was right when he said this is a word Which one sings and tells with gladness?

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And I good because it's about God and and so we want to magnify God for who he is and then the benefits that we receive like no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus In this poem in this song.

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I want you to remember Your hermeneutics and when it comes to hermeneutics one of the things that you should remember

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Even if you have an ESV Bible, I'm sure NES is the same. There's some indentations here That at the end of verse 45 you see the

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Margins are the same and then the margins indent a little bit in verses 46 and following and that's a little clue to tell you

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Matter of fact, this is a different kind of genre. We've gone from a narration to a song or to poetry or a hymn

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This is Mary's a song of praise. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my

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Savior we have soul there and spirit. And of course with poetry you have Parallelism and this is not like my soul magnifies and my spirit rejoices.

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This isn't Tripartite ism. This is not I have a body soul and spirit and so therefore with my soul and my spirit

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I praise the Lord, of course we have material and immaterial parts to us as we are one person and This is just saying with my soul parallel with my spirit

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I rejoice I magnify it repeats with just a minor Difference my soul exalts in The Lord This is real worship.

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This is from the soul This is like David who in Psalm 103 said bless the

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Lord Oh my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name bless the Lord Oh my soul and forget not all his benefits

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Who forgives all your iniquity who heals all your diseases who redeems your life from the pit?

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Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy who satisfies you? With good so that your youth is renewed like the

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Eagles now, let's think about this for a moment Mary is calling for us

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I Would say because it's not just it's like Ephesians 1

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Paul praises God the triune God for election redemption and sealing

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He doesn't say praise God like this, but that's that's what he's doing With this model and so to Mary here saying my soul has done that but this is this is good for us to look at As well, because if we're not magnifying the

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Lord thinking about him the right way Then I know what I do. Here's what I do. Of course.

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I know none of you were weak like me We're sinful like me. I magnify my problems The problems are really bigger than they are

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The trials are in more enlarged than what they should be The people become more difficult

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The situation seems untenable and you're either gonna magnify the Lord You're gonna magnify your problems you ever do that you ever make mountains out of molehills

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Yeah, of course Magnifying problems that really aren't that big Health problems

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To my shame when I got prostate cancer diagnosis in December of 2015 Probably for a year or two.

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The first thing I thought of when I woke up every single day Was not

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God is good. Good morning Lord. Not even good Lord. It's morning. It was I have cancer

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Now that's a magnification of problems and I don't want to do that Health issues are real

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Personal issues are real. It's a fallen world with fallen people. There are big trials out there huge trials

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But I don't want to magnify that magnifying problems is not good nor is it healthy There's a book by Ed Welch that was written years ago

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I think he redid it but the idea is right with a magnifying glass on the cover No less when people are big and God is small

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So we have a small view of God and a big view of people When it should be the other way around and Mary's saying make sure you have a big view of God And then you'll have the right view of people the subtitle to Ed Welch's book is overcoming peer pressure

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Codependency in the fear of man how to sing for joy in a difficult world

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Hard times personal trials and it has to be done by enlarging or magnifying your view of the triune

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God That's what has to happen Mary's song we could just analyze and say this is what the word soul means is what the word magnify means is what the

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Lord word Lord means But remember what's the scope of Scripture? What is

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Luke trying to tell us even in chapter 1 verse 4 for his purpose statement really verses 1 through 4?

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The scope of Scriptures really help us and I don't mean

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Even local context, I mean bigger context. I was reading a

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Richard Barcello's article He said Reformation post -reformation reform theologians understood scope in two senses two senses

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It had a narrow scope the scope of a given text or passage But it also had a wider sense the target or bullseye to which all

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Scripture tends Referring to the center of the target of the entire canonical revelation

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It is that to which the entire Bible points So you study

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Scripture and you realize that's exactly what I should be doing John Owen said Christ is the principal end of the whole of Scripture That that's what's happening here we are singing the song with Mary in light of the purpose of Luke and that is to be certain and sure and Resolute and the fact that Jesus is the representative substitute and risen

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Savior That this what this is is pointing to and this song of praise will do that very thing

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Well, I see time has gone by so fast. What am I gonna do? Time goes by so fast and here we have this this

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Great poem and one of the things that poems do is it makes you slow down to see some of the detail and so I should

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Be slowing down even more so we can see some of the detail how to sing for joy with Mary. I Never got to it

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But we know we're supposed to that's the main thing we know we're supposed to sing the song With Mary, but why should we?

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Well, how should we? Well, those are things we're gonna look at next time on No Compromise Radio.

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My name is Mike Abendroth You can write me Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com If you're in the area and you don't have a good

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Bible teaching church, we invite you to come to West Boylston, Massachusetts 1015 on Sunday mornings as we have the

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Word of God opened up in the Gospel of Luke Week by week and when I'm not around Pastor Steve the

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Tuesday guy will open up the Bible to another book of Luke called the Acts of the