You know, when you preach years after years after years, coming to the Christmas season again, and you look at these passages and you think, wow, what do I preach that I didn't preach last year or the year before or the year before that? You know, you can tell the Christmas story over and over. As you look at the Word of God, Lord, what do we preach? And I tell you, I was reading this over and I got struck with something that I want to share with you here tonight. And so it's a blessing to me, so I trust that it will be a blessing to you as well as we kind of look at these Christmas stories afresh and anew. Wednesday night we highlighted Joseph and the faith of Joseph. Tonight I want to look a little bit at Mary, and most of us, again, are familiar with this. I'm going to preach a message that I've entitled, Praise God for the News. I could say, Praise God for the Bad News. It's a little longer, harder to fit, I guess. We all get news, don't we? Mary got some news, didn't she? Alright, so let's look at Luke chapter 1. And we'll start, I'm going to jump around a little bit in this section. Start at verse number 26. And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin and spouse to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel came and said unto her, Hail thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. I want you to try to picture this year, this evening in your mind. Let's picture it this way because a miracle is a miracle, right? If God can perform a miracle in Mary's life, He can perform it in anybody's life, right? Alright, so think with me. You're Mary. Go about your day, and you're going to get married here to Joseph. Now, men, I guess you have to think of getting married to a woman here, but you know, I want you to try to put yourself in Mary's shoes here. And here she is going about her day and planning her wedding, and all of a sudden this angel comes and says, you are highly favored. And the angel says, verse 30, don't be afraid. Verse 31, you're going to have a son and you're going to call his name Jesus. Now imagine this. You say, well, I'm too old to have a child. Well, God can do anything, right? God could if He wanted. I know it's a little far-fetched, but God could if He wanted. cause men to have babies, alright? So can you use your imagination here just a little bit? I mean, a miracle's a miracle, right? So you've got to use your imagination. And here Mary is all of a sudden told some news that is a little bit troubling for her. She doesn't understand all of this. And Mary says in verse 34, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Maybe you're here tonight and you say, How can this be? I'm a man, or I'm an older lady, too old, or whatever. You've got to put yourself in Mary's shoes. This is pretty disturbing news. This is pretty troubling for her because she knows humanly This thing isn't possible. How often are we faced with human impossibilities? How often do we, we don't have an angel that comes our way and says, okay, Mike Fisher, today you're going to have a big flat tire. All right? We don't have that. But we do have individuals that will call us and say, hey, I'm stuck. Your wife ever lock the keys in the car 30 minutes away? Hey, I love you, baby. Lock the keys in the car, I'm 45 minutes away. All right? You know, those are small things. But we get the emails, the victory chains, which reminds me, I'm glad I thought about that. Pray for Pete's brother, Ken, who has Parkinson's. He's an atheist, and right now listening to a Christmas program, right now, that the Spirit of God will take truth in the Word. Let's do this right now. Let's just pause and pray right now. Lord, we ask, we know that Years, well, not too long ago, I guess, we prayed as a church for Pete's salvation. And humanly, it was impossible. And God, you did that. So Lord, we ask right here, right now, that you would speak to Pete's brother. Lord, I ask that your truth would work in his heart. Lord, I ask you give Pete an opportunity to speak with him afterwards. Lord, your Word is like a hammer that breaketh a rock in pieces. And so, Lord, wherever He is, I ask that you would break that hardness. And Lord, would He see you as the answer? Would He trust you as Savior? Now, Lord, would you meet with us as we continue looking at your Word here and the decisions that Mary made? And I ask, Lord, that you would help us to praise you no matter what. We love you and thank you for your love and what you're going to do in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we're back in this story. And so we put ourselves in Mary's shoes, and this thing is absolutely impossible. The angel says, the Holy Ghost, verse 35, will come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, and you're going to have the Son of God. And it talks about your cousin Elizabeth, With God, nothing shall be impossible. We see, as we look at Mary's life here, we see the challenges she faced. And we face challenges on a day-by-day basis. We face things that we don't understand. We face things in our lives that we don't like. We face things in our lives that we would rather change. All of those, it's interesting, the way we started this morning in Sunday School is kind of the way we're going to end as we look at praising God. All of these things have come into our life for a purpose, for a reason. God allows these things into our lives. We know what God was doing in Mary's life and through Mary. But it's interesting, she really just asked a question. She's given some information. And I was struck with verses 46 to 56, which is really a song of praise to God. Does she understand how this is all going to work out? No. Does she have all the answers? No. Do we understand everything that we face in our lives? No. Do we understand how it's all going to work out? No, we don't. But yet, we are given about ten verses of praise to the Lord. Verse 46, Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with his arm. He hath scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath opened his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever. And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house." Even though she didn't understand it all, even though her life was about to change. I mean, we looked at this a little bit Wednesday as we talked about our favorite characters and those in the Christmas story and the faith they exercise. She was about to probably go through some persecution in the sense of people not understanding how is this. Obviously, God had to do a work in Joseph's life so that Joseph would say, OK, I'm going to follow through and go through with this. Can we call it turbulence? As she tries to process all of this, she bursts forth in genuine praise from her heart. The word magnify means to praise the greatness of, to make large, to honor. She says, my soul doth magnify, the soul speaking of her inner self. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced." The word rejoice there is to be extremely joyful. And I was struck as I saw her response here from her innermost being, from the deepest recesses of her soul, if you would. She genuinely praised God. And as I looked at this, I thought, wow, the changes and all that was going to happen. And yet, she lifted her heart in praise to God. I am convinced that as God's people, we need to live lives that praise God no matter what. It is so easy to praise God. Oh, look at this Christmas present. This is great. It's so easy to praise God when things are going well. Praise the Lord. God's good. It is very rare that we say, praise the Lord, God's good, I just got a bill for $500. Sometimes that short-circuits our brain. We don't like to think that way, right? But yet, deep within our being, there ought to be a joy no matter what we face. And from the inner being of Mary there was genuine praise. And I want to give you four ingredients tonight that the Lord showed me from this passage, as I look at this afresh and anew, that I think will help us to become people of praise no matter what the news is. Good news, bad news, no matter what. I'll give you four ingredients. Number one, I want to look at her face. Mary's faith. And this is the one that stands out real quick. As I look at Mary, Mary, number one, she listened to the Word of God. The angel comes and she takes time, she listens, and she even asks some questions. How shall this be? She's got a heart to listen to the Word of God. She was responsive to it. She wanted to hear it. As we look at this, verse number 37, not only does she listen to the Word of God, but she believed the Word of God. Nah, are you really an angel? Ah, I don't know if you're really telling me the truth. We live in a society where we're all skeptical, right? How many of you trust used car salesmen? Some of them could be Christians. What do you mean you don't trust them? You know, it's a little skeptical. Mary believed the Word of God. Okay, angel, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and how can this be? And the angel says, with God nothing is impossible. She listens to the Word of God. She believes the Word of God. And this is really key, number three, as we look at her faith, and that is she surrendered to it. This is really the issue. This is really one of the reasons why we struggle in our lives with complaining, with grumbling, murmuring, and this is really it. In many cases, we know what the Word of God says. But we say this, and I should have done this, but I thought of it too late, right? Now give me a Bible verse on fear. Okay, good. We're going to do it right now. Give me a Bible verse on worry. Thanks for nothing. You see, we could go down the list. Is it really an issue of head knowledge? It really boils down to her faith. She says this in verse 38, And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. You see, I'm convinced that the reason why we struggle is because we're more full of ourselves than we like to admit. Did Mary say, I'm out, I need more information. Mary said this, with God nothing is impossible, alright, don't figure this all out, but she says, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departs. She was surrendered to the word of God. You think about the children of Israel. God takes them from Egypt to the Promised Land, and God promised them a bunch of things. I'll take care of you, I'll meet your need. What happened? They come up and they see this big red sea. What do they do? Then I wish we were back in Egypt. They begin complaining. Then God says, hey, I'm going to take care of you and park the red sea. They get into the wilderness. What do they have need with? They have need for food. They complain about that. They have need for water. They complain about that. They have need for protection. They complain about that. And what does God do? God delivers them on all sides. That can kind of be hard on us a little bit because they didn't have that story. The Bible says in Numbers 11, verse 1, when the people complained, it displeased the Lord. They're complaining displeased God. Now if you think about it, they didn't have that story to look at. They didn't have what we have. We don't only have God's promises, and they had God's promise, didn't they? God promised them He'd take care of them, He'd provide for them. They also had some demonstrations of God's providing and what God could do, right? He parted the Red Sea and they walked along. Shouldn't that in and of itself have caused them to say, you know what? We're never complaining again. Because look at what God did there, part in the Red Sea. And by the way, God rebukes them in Numbers 14. He's ten times, ten times, you've tempted me, you've provoked me. When we look at us and all that we have, the Old Testament and all God's provision, the promises, how God has manifested His care and all that, it's through the whole Word of God. We've got Philippians that tells us to do all things without murmuring and disputing, right? We've got clear-cut commands. We've got all of the promises that we all know and we all could quote. Where's our problem? Is it an issue of listening to the Word of God? Well, obviously, if you're not reading your Bible, you don't have God's Word in your mind and your heart for that day. But the fact of the matter is, sometimes it's not a matter of head, it's a matter of surrender. It's a matter of us saying what Mary said. I don't understand how all this is going to work out. I don't understand how I'm going to pay for all this. I don't understand how these needs and this problem. I don't know. I don't know at all. But I do know this. God promises me that he'll take care of me. And all Mary did was she said, be it unto me, whatever you want with me, Lord, that's what I want. It's an issue of surrender. By the way, Is Mary in the will of God? Absolutely. The thing that strikes me about, remember the passage with Peter and he's in the boat and, Jesus, if it's you, let me walk on the water. You remember that? The beginning of that passage, if I remember correctly, is the passage where the Bible says, Jesus got them, get into the boat, you boys. Then he went up and prayed. and they faced a storm. And Jesus came and met them in the midst of the storm. Isn't that interesting that Jesus allowed them to go into this storm and then he met them right there in the storm? Okay, in Mary's life, she's in the center of God's will, and God comes to Mary and He says, okay Mary, you're going to have a child of Jesus. There's nothing else Mary can do but to say, I surrender to truth. I surrender to what you're saying. And when we look at our lives, our faith, it is vital this area of, I am going to believe God. You look at the area of tithing. Say, well, I know God wants me to tie, and I want to obey the Lord. I see it. It's really an issue of, am I going to surrender or not going? You look at it, command to be baptized. Sometimes God's people will be saved and go a long time and not be baptized. You know clear what the Word of God is. What does it matter? I am going to surrender to truth. Okay, when it comes to our lives and the things that come our way that we don't like, sometimes it's a matter of us saying to God, I don't like this, I don't understand this, and maybe I wouldn't choose this, Lord, but be it unto me according to Thy will. And I'm going to believe you through this and for this." See, it was faith that Mary exercised. She didn't fight God's will. She surrendered to it. Number two, if we look at this passage, I'm going to stick with four words that begin with F. Alright? This will make it easy for you to remember. Number two is this, her friendship. We move from the announcement to coming to see Elizabeth. Verse 40, actually 39, pick up there. And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste into the city of Judah and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, she said, what in the world are you doing? I can't believe you're having this baby. You aren't even married. What's going on? I can't believe this. That's not in there. I know you're all looking up at me. Good. You ought to. I want you to see a couple of characteristics in Elizabeth's life. Elizabeth, number one, she saw that God was in this. She was, the Bible says at the end of that verse, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. She was filled with the Spirit. Now, I'm convinced that what helps us to be people of praise is when we hang around people of praise when we hang around spiritual people. Some people are just negative. There's nobody here, right? Nobody outside. Negative spin on things. And you think about it, Elizabeth could have responded in a lot of different ways. This could have stressed her out. She could have asked a billion questions. Now, maybe she did after we don't know we have what the Word of God tells us. But the fact of the matter is, she saw God was in this situation. She had a positive faith perspective. You hang around somebody, you get bad news. You know, you get bad news, and they say, yeah, I got bad news too. They'll hear, my day was terrible. You think your day was terrible, my day was terrible. You know, some people just have a way. You ever go to somebody, maybe you have a sore finger, And you go in and say, man, my finger bothers me. And they say, oh, yeah? See, my grandmother had a problem with her finger. Left finger? Yeah, she had a problem with her finger and she died. You don't want to say those kind of people. And they got the negative twist on things. You know, it is absolutely vital that we surround ourselves with spiritual people. with people that are faith-filled, with people that can help us to see God's perspective on our own circumstances and our own situations. I heard a preacher preach once, and he said he would get up every morning and have his coffee, and he'd read his devotions, read the Bible, and then he'd read the newspaper. And he said he found himself sometimes just down. He found himself down throughout the day and he tried to analyze what was the problem. I'm getting up and I'm reading my Bible and spending time in prayer. I'm reading the newspaper. Then it dawned on him. I'm reading the newspaper. Not that we shouldn't be informed. We've got to read the newspaper before we read our Bible so our Bible can straighten it all out, right? It's that perspective. We ought to want to be around positive people. We ought to want to be around people who believe that God can work. Some people, some Christians, and you want to ask them, did your God die? Did God die? Because it's all doom, and it's all gloom, and it's all a problem, and it's all... And granted, we do have problems, and I understand there are real needs, and I understand all that. And sometimes we do have downs, don't we? And sometimes our perspective gets off a little. And sometimes we do get discouraged. And sometimes we get down about things that aren't that important. And we all know that. Sometimes we get down about, sometimes we face big things. And we're humans and we say, man, I do feel kind of hard. That individual in your life, that believes God will really come alongside in those situations and give a God perspective on our situation. She was spiritual. She believed that God was in it. But not only did Elizabeth see God in this, Elizabeth believed that God would do it. If you look at verse number 45, she says, And blessed is she that believeth, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. She saw, wow, this is God. This is of God. Oh, that we need a perspective that whatever comes in our life has first come to us through the filter of our heavenly Father that loves us and cares for us. But it wasn't just that she said, hey, I think this is of God. It was, I believe that God's going to do this thing. I believe that this thing is going to happen, that God's going to take it all the way to fruition. The individual in Mary's life was a help to her, an encouragement to her. I think of David. Went out and saw the army of the Philistines there, and everybody's scared to death. And David says, I'll go out and fight Goliath. And he goes out and he wins the battle. And ever since he wins this battle against Goliath, If life kind of gets real rough, old Saul gets jealous, and what does Saul do? Loses his purpose, loses his focus, and he begins to make David his focus. Imagine the times, and we see it in the Psalms, the up times and the down times in David's life. The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel 23 and verse 16 that Jonathan, I think Jonathan is a spiritual guy, Jonathan, humanly, would have been the next one to be the king, as the son of the king. And Jonathan goes and strengthens David. He goes and encourages David. He is a help and an encouragement to David through that difficult time in his life. There are many different applications we could take here. We ought to seek to be an encouragement to people, shouldn't we? We ought to seek to point people. Do you know who your friends are? Someone said your friends will determine your future. You know, a lot of people don't have any close friends. The reason why people don't have a close friend is a man that has friends will show himself friendly. There's got to be a little bit of openness, a little bit of humility, a little bit of transparency. I'll tell you, the blessing of a friend is a huge thing. The blessing of someone that can help keep You, if you would, encourage as we try to serve God in the ups and downs of life. Elizabeth responded in a tremendous way. Hang around people that believe God. Hang around people of faith. And that will help you to become an individual of faith, to see things God's way. God's in this. God's going to do something. Do we ever think of that? Do we ever blow out a tire or hear bad news and we think immediately, God's in this. God's going to do something here. Great. No, we don't think that way either. All right, what do I do now, God, to get you mad at me? God's mad at me. He don't like me. Why have you forsaken me, Lord? He, that's our human life. Because we don't like what we're going through. Mary says, Elizabeth says, I see God in this. God's going to do this. This is great. All right. Number one, her faith. Number two, her friendship. Number three, her focus. Look at verse 46. She has her focus. It's not on herself. Her focus is on God. Two things she says, number one, that we'll look at. Number one, she views God as her Savior. Number two, she views God as her Master. Verse 46, Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. I am always struck with conviction when I think about God's saving work. I am trusting that someday, when I die, I'm 110% sure that I'm going to heaven. And so are you. Have you ever been there? Me neither. You know anybody who'd go there? Well, yes, but they didn't come back and tell us. What do we have? We have the Word of God. We're 110%. We stake our whole life on the fact that when we die, we're going to spend eternity in heaven. And we ought to. But the God that saved us, and we're 100% sure that He's on His way to heaven, is big enough to take care of us here while we're here on earth. We're going to be all in eternity forever, right? 100, 200, 1,000, 10,000, million. We're trusting God will take care of it all. Is He not big enough as our Savior to take care of us in all these nitty-gritty details? Absolutely. Mary's focus was on God as her Savior. Her focus was on God as her Master. She was humble. She didn't focus on herself as much as she focused on God. We live in a day where people think, I deserve, people live in a day of handouts. I deserve this, what we deserve. Mary was humble. He has, verse 48, He has regarded the lowest state of His handmaiden. You know we ought to focus on what we do have, not what we don't have. You ever walk into the kitchen, Sometimes teenagers are famous for this, right? You walk in the kitchen, and you open the cupboard, and there's lots of stuff in there, but it's corn and green beans and Cheerios that aren't honey nut flavored or frosted flakes, you know? And there's cookies, but there's not Oreo. You know, there's them old, stale, cheap, great value brand. You open up the refrigerator, nothing in there, you know? And there's nothing in this house to eat, right? Nothing in this house to eat. What do you mean? The fact is, there's a lot in the house to eat. There's nothing in the house to eat. Or really, the bottom line is, that you watch. See, we have a tendency to focus on, look at all of my problems. You know, Paul said, the sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the glory, right? God says, the Bible tells us, that God daily loads us with benefits. What Mary's doing is she is focusing on God. She's focusing on the fact that it's Him. Let's go to the fourth point, because I'll just combine these together. Number four, I want you to see her fervency. As we look at verse 50-55, what she is, is number one, she's fervent about God's ways. And His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation. He has showed strength with His arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent away empty. He hath opened His servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy." She knows how God has worked in the past. She knew of God's work in the past. She understood how God worked then, and she would understand how God could and would work now. By the way, She was fervent, as we look at this, the second thing I want you to see under this, and I'll mess them all together. She was fervent about God's Word. There's a footnote in my Bible right here that says there are 15 discernible quotations from the Old Testament in this poem showing how much the Old Testament was known and loved in the home in which Jesus was reared. She was fervent about God's ways. Do you know when you spend enough time with somebody, you kind of know how they operate? You say, what do you mean? All right, let's ask you this. When you were a kid and you wanted a piece of candy, who did you go to? Mom or dad? You say, I went to the one that would say yes. If you wanted to go out with the friends, or play, you say, hey, I'm going to ask, I think I'll start with mom in this case, or I think I'll start with dad in this case, in order to get, right? Why? Because you know them, right? If you have a, you know, maybe a child and you want to watch them, hey, let's have a, a popcorn and pajama night, right? We'll watch a little video or something. That's a great idea. Kids get together. And who do they go to? Let's see, does Mom or Dad like videos better? Let's go to the one that likes them better and try. Right? We do this all the time. We do this all the time. Why? As you get to know somebody, you get to know, you ever think, uh-oh, Dad's going to be mad at us. We broke this. Or Mom's going to have a cow. Right? Why? Because we spend time and we know how they operate. This is so vital. We see this. Mary was fervent. She understood how God operated. She may not have understood everything about her situation, but she did understand some things about God and how He operated and His Word and what was included in the Word of God. The Bible says, Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I am convinced that her fervency for God's Word is seen in this passage. I'm convinced that her fervency in knowing how God operates. And I tell you this, we may not understand everything about our circumstances, but we can praise God because we know how He operates. He is always out for our good. Always. When we get that in the fabric of our being, that enables us and helps us to praise Him even when we don't completely understand our situation or our circumstances. By the way, if we don't surrender to it or we don't see our circumstances from a faith perspective, Satan will come along as quickly as he can and he will try to convince us that the answer is to be removed from the circumstances. As Matt said this morning so wonderfully, God wants to change us. We want to change our circumstances. We kind of want the good life. You know, the life of ease, no problems. But it's funny because we want to be as spiritual as... How many of you love to plant as many churches as Paul? How many of you love to see as many sages as Paul? God, don't you? You want to see that many? How many of you like to be shipwrecked and beaten with a rod and left for dead? You see, we want the product. We don't want the process. And see, as we understand God and how He works, we can praise Him, knowing that He is good and always works things out for our good. In John Wesley's journal, April 21, 1764, this was listed, I visited one who was ill in bed, and after having buried seven of her family in six months, She had just heard that the ape, her beloved husband, was cast away at sea. I asked, Do not you fret at any of those things? She said with a lovely smile upon her pale cheek, Oh no, how can I fret at anything which is the will of God? Let Him take all besides. He has given me Himself. I love, I praise Him every moment. God dearly loads us with benefits. God wants us to believe Him. God wants us to serve Him. God wants us to praise Him no matter what. As hard as we are on the children of Israel, I think our complaining grieves God a whole lot more than theirs when we have a whole lot more of truth a whole lot more examples of faith. May God help us to praise Him no matter what news comes our way. Lord, we love you tonight.