If you take your Bibles with me this morning and open up to the Gospel of Luke. We're going to interrupt our normal preaching through the Gospel of Mark. We're going to jump over to the Gospel of Luke this morning as we look at a particular passage in light of today being Christmas. We're going to be looking at what is commonly referred to as the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, or the song which Mary sang in response to the news that she was given that she would be bearing the Savior in her body. Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 46. 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 empty away. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. How would you describe what Christmas spirit is to someone who grew up in a completely different culture and had never experienced anything related to Christmas? How would you describe what Christmas spirit is? I think it would be difficult to describe the spirit of Christmas without including in that description the place of music. What would Christmas be without music? It would still be Christmas, but it would be different, wouldn't it? Christmas is a time for music. It's a very appropriate time for music. And I'm not talking about Rudolph and Frosty, of course, but real music that gives expression to the overflow of joy and gratitude that we have in our hearts, and gratitude to God for the gift of grace which he has given to us, the greatest present, the gift of himself, wrapped in a package of humanity. We live in an age where we are constantly surrounded by music every day of our lives. Everywhere we go, music everywhere. We hear it on the radio in our cars. We hear it on our iPhones, on our computers, in restaurants, in stores, in elevators, even in public restrooms. We have music everywhere we go. We hear music all the time. And just like everything that we have far too much of, we tend to not appreciate the beauty of music in the same way that people of past ages did. If you only got to hear music one time a week, would you appreciate it more than you do when you have it constantly bombarding you? Prior to the electronic age, the main place where people heard music was at church. once a week. One of the great blessings of the Reformation was that music was returned to the people of the Church, because in the medieval Church, only the choirs and the priests would sing, and the people would only hear it. The rediscovery of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, among other things, led the Reformers to encourage all Christians to offer up the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God in music as we worship Him, where we magnify the name of God through song, and where we proclaim His glory to all people, singing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another to encourage each other as we glorify God. When God shows extraordinary grace to His people. When God reveals Himself to mankind in a way that He hasn't before, throughout history, it was natural for man to respond to this event by composing and singing a psalm or a hymn or a spiritual song. We can think, looking through the Old Testament, of the song of Miriam, which she composed and sang, and the people of Israel sang, in celebration and thanksgiving to God for delivering his people from the oppressive hand of Egypt. They sang that song as they celebrated on the opposite shore of the Red Sea, knowing that their enemies had been vanquished and that they had been set free. We see also in scripture the song of Moses, the song of Hannah, and many, many more songs that were composed by people after having God's grace revealed to them in a new way. All of these are songs celebrating and giving glory to God for His marvelous works of grace. And in our text this morning, we will be looking at the Song of Mary, which she composed in response after being visited by the angel Gabriel while she was engaged to be married and was visited by the angel Gabriel. The angel told her, behold, you, Mary, will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and you shall call his name Jesus." And he told her, he will be great. He will be called the Son of the Highest. I'm not just going to have a child. He's going to be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. Think about Mary in the historical context she was in, living under Roman occupation, and before that, living under the Greek occupation. 400 years it's been since Israel placed its own king on the throne. Your son, Mary, will reclaim the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. Of his kingdom, there will be no end. Mary must have been amazed, blown away at the marvelousness of this Word. She responds by saying, How am I supposed to conceive a son when I am a virgin? I am not married. And the angel replied, The Holy Spirit will come upon you. And because of this, the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Her head must have been exploding that day. How could anyone possibly take in all that she was being told? The angel also told Mary as a sign to her that what he is saying will be true, that her cousin, Elizabeth, is also going to be six months pregnant at that time, is also with child. And Elizabeth was old and beyond the age of bearing children. The angel said, as a sign to you, you will know that what I'm saying is true. Your cousin Elizabeth is six months pregnant. What? How could she possibly be pregnant? Of course, she was carrying John the Baptist. And this was to demonstrate to her that with God, nothing will be impossible, including your conception of the Son of God, the Son of the Highest. After going to visit with Elizabeth, which is what Mary did next, to see this sign that the angel told her to look for, Mary saw her cousin six months pregnant, just as the angel had said. But not only that, when Mary came into her home, the baby inside of Elizabeth leapt, and being filled with the Holy Spirit herself, Elizabeth prophesied over Mary and said, 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? This is her little cousin she's talking to, saying, I'm not worthy for the mother of my Lord to come visit me, she says to her cousin. This is astounding. This is amazing. The angel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus as a virgin. And her cousin, Elizabeth, prophesied the same thing to her. That the son that she is carrying is her Lord. The Messiah for whom the Jews had eagerly been waiting for literally thousands of years was about to be born. And God had chosen Mary, of all people, to be His mother. And Mary understood this. The promises that God had given to Eve, that a son of the woman would come and crush the head of the serpent. The promises that God gave to Abraham. The promises God gave to Isaac, to Jacob, to Moses, to David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., etc. All of the promises that God had spoken to all of these people for thousands of years about the coming Messiah who would set things right. was about to come to reality. These promises were about to happen through her, this young girl. And she was just told that. How in the world should a young girl process all of this? What should she say? How should she respond? Well, she responded the same way that Miriam and Hannah and Deborah and Moses and many other people did. long ago, she composed a hymn of music to sing to the Lord. A hymn of rejoicing, a hymn of praise, a hymn of thanksgiving, but first and foremost, a hymn that exalted and magnified the Lord for what it was He was about to do for His people through her. Some have argued that a simple fourteen to seventeen-year-old girl, which is what people assume she was, simply could not have composed a hymn of such beauty as this. But if we assume that Mary knew her Old Testament rather well, as I do, assume she knew it much better than I most likely, it would certainly not have been a difficulty for her to compose this hymn, because most of what she writes here in this hymn is found in various places throughout the Old Testament. She's just putting the puzzle pieces together after what she's been told, and recognizing that all of these things are coming together, and her heart overflows with this hymn that she writes. Her song is often referred to by the first word of this song in Latin, which is magnificat, and it can be divided into three different parts. First, She sings praise and thanksgiving to God. Second, she celebrates God's holiness and His mercy. And third, she applies these truths to her own present situation in anticipation of the redemption that her unborn son would bring as God had promised to men of old. First, she opens her song with these words, My soul magnifies the Lord, which is the theme of her whole song. My soul magnifies the Lord. That's how she responds to this earth-shattering news that she was given, that she was to bear the Son of God. She is overwhelmed at the blessing that the Lord has bestowed upon her, of all people. And she begins with these great words of worship. The word magnify literally means to make larger. Like a magnifying glass, we magnify things, make it bigger. but it's often used to refer to making one great, or to making one powerful, or glorifying someone. And it is not as though Mary's song in any way actually made the Lord bigger than He already was, or magnified Him, or made Him more glorious than He was, but rather Mary had come to realize in a very personal way that the Lord was truly much bigger and far more glorious than she had previously recognized. And in her hymn, she is proclaiming and praising the greatness of God. We don't make God more glorious. We don't make God bigger. We simply, at times in our lives, have that in our minds where we recognize that God is so much bigger than we thought before. And we sing and we rejoice. And we try to proclaim and to teach others about how big God is and how glorious God is. And as we try to reveal the truth of God's glory to people, like lifting up a curtain of God's glory, that is what it means to glorify God. It doesn't make Him more glorious, but it reveals who He truly is to other people. That is what Mary is trying to do here. She's magnifying the Lord because God, is so much bigger than she thought before. Note also that as she sang, she did not sing as many hypocrites do, with their mouths open and going through the motions. And they may sing without any affection in their heart whatsoever. They're only singing with their mouth. Or they're only singing in order to hear the beauty of their own voice, or hoping that others hear the beauty of their own voice. which is not worship, is it? Other than worship of yourself. But rather, Mary was singing with her whole being here. She doesn't simply say, I magnify the Lord, but she says, my soul magnifies the Lord. My soul magnifies the Lord. And in the next verse, she states, my spirit rejoices. These two words, soul and spirit, are used throughout scripture in various senses. They're almost interchangeable a lot of different times you see them used in the New Testament. But when they are used together like this, in this close proximity, they are referring to two different faculties of the soul. The spirit referring to the understanding, the inward understanding that God has given man. And the soul referring to the seat of the affections, from which all of our passions arise. And to put what she is saying into more modern-day parlance, what she is saying is that with all of the affection in her heart, she is magnifying or declaring the glory of God to any who will hear her, and with her mind she is rejoicing as she considers and contemplates the sheer gravity of what it is she has just been told. She is to give birth to the Son, And God Himself is the Father of that Son, or as Gabriel put it, the Son of the Highest. Not only that, but this Son that she will bear will reclaim the throne of David and reign forever on it. Gabriel also told her that His name is to be Jesus, which is a name that means Savior, One who saves His people. So when she rejoices with her mind, And as she responds to the overflow of her affections in her heart, she directs her joy to God, my Savior. That's how she, that's who she addresses this to, to God, my Savior. The Greek word used here for Savior has a fuller and richer meaning than just the English word Savior. It means more than the One who delivers, but it also includes the idea that He is the author of eternal salvation. It's not simply One who saves me from something, but it is an author of eternal salvation. Until we recognize in our own minds that not only is God God, but God is also our Savior. Until we recognize that, our minds are not free to indulge in true or complete joy. Have you ever thought about that? You are not able to have true or complete joy until you recognize that God is God and God is your Savior. But rather, you will remain in doubt and anxiety if you do not own God as your Savior. A God who is not our Savior is a terrifying thought. A God who is our Savior incites celebration and rejoicing and singing at the peace that has been established between us and God that is promised to us in the Gospel. And this is the first thing that every Christian does when they recognize God as their Savior. The first time in their lives they are enabled to actually have true joy. and they can't contain it. And their heart overflows with this joy. And they're ecstatic. They rejoice. And what follows our rejoicing is to offer God our thanksgiving. We celebrate and rejoice, and then we fall on our knees and say, thank you. Rejoicing in who God is, and what He has done, and being grateful for what He has done for us. are the two primary motivations of all of the worship that we offer to God. Rejoicing over who He is, being thankful for what He has done for us, are the two primary motivations for all of our worship of God. That's why we worship God. Gratitude for what He's given to us. Not only in our worship of Him on Sunday mornings, but our worship of Him every moment of every day of our lives. The first two lines of Mary's song strike the two chords, which are the melody and the harmony of the Christian's heart, from which flow the entire symphony of our worship of God throughout our entire lives, from now until everlasting, forever. She hits both of these, rejoicing and thanksgiving, right at the beginning, and it strikes a beautiful note of worship. In order to be able to rejoice in the salvation of the Lord and to live a life of gratitude for what He's done for us before the Lord, we need to not only recognize that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, but to recognize and believe that He is your Savior, as Mary does here, saying that her spirit rejoices in who? In God, my Savior. She recognizes God is her Savior. Her joy and her thankfulness resulted from what God had done for her personally. And she continues to praise God for what He has done for her in the next few verses. If Mary was sinless, as some of our Roman Catholic brothers teach, would she need a saviour? No. She rejoices in God her saviour. She knows her need for a Savior, and she is ecstatically worshipping God and rejoicing and being grateful to God for the salvation that is being accomplished for her, but also through her, because she is bearing the Savior in her own womb. She states the reason for her joy and gratitude, saying, He has looked upon the humble estate of His servants. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me She's recognizing that because of who it is she is going to give birth to, that every generation of humanity from here on out will know who she is. For He who is mighty has done great things for me. Mary is a perfect example of how God lifts up the humble and contrite who tremble at His Word and lifts them up. She acknowledges that God has looked upon the humble estate of His servant, as she calls herself. She refers to herself as God's servant, yet she does not say that God has blessed her because of her service to Him. But rather, she simply acknowledges that she is His servant, a humble servant at that. And that she is still unworthy of the tremendous blessing that she has been given by God. That's her attitude. I'm not worthy of this, yet you have given me this gift, this blessing. It's so great that every human will call me blessed from here on out, forevermore. And we see the heart here of true faith working in Mary, which acknowledges that we truly deserve nothing from God, apart from punishment for our sin, and that His blessings are given to us by grace alone. She's overwhelmed by the graciousness of this gift to become the Mother of God. She's overwhelmed with the knowledge that every generation of mankind from this point on will call her blessed. And she was right in that, wasn't she? We still call her blessed by God 2,000 years later. But contrary to what the Church of Rome teaches About this, she is recognizing here that she has been blessed by God as an act of sheer sovereign grace, not blessed because she herself had somehow earned this special favor of God. She was not chosen to be the mother of our Lord because she set herself apart above all other women, but rather because God set her apart and gave to her the gift of bearing and raising His son. The fact that God chose Mary, a simple Jewish girl, from an obscure country town of Nazareth, which didn't have much of a reputation, or any reputation it had, was kind of like, you don't really want to go there, if you can help it. The fact that God chose her, from a place like this, does not show us how great Mary's spiritual walk with the Lord was, but rather it shows how great God's grace and favor is and how far it extends, especially to those whom the world looks at and sees as plain and common and ordinary. I think if we met Mary before she had Jesus, we would think of her as very plain, very common, very ordinary. I'm sure she had some great qualities about her, but compared to all other women throughout all time, she's just a girl. A girl who loves the Lord, but she's just a girl. And the fact that God chose her to be the mother of God both surprised and overwhelmed her. She was not worthy of this honor, and she understood that, and she owned that. She herself did not consider her worthy of it, but she trusted in the Lord's wisdom over her own. And she submitted herself to His will. May it be done to me as you have said. I'm not worthy of this, God knows better than I do. She makes herself nothing and praises God alone. Mary was not just pretending to be humble here. She was speaking plainly and honestly out of true conviction of her own unworthiness to receive this blessing. Then in verse 49, Mary is saying, For he who is mighty has done great things for me. Here we see Mary using Old Testament language by referring to God as the Mighty One, which is a way that God is referenced in a number of different places in the Old Testament. The prophets, when they used this particular title for God, they frequently linked this description of God as the Mighty One with His acts of redemption and salvation. If you look up every time Mighty One is used to refer to God in the Old Testament, it's always talking about God's act of redemption and salvation. And Mary recognizes that and she recognizes who God is. He is the Mighty One. The God who redeems and the God who saves. The God who has repeatedly brought temporary deliverance to His people Israel throughout their history. Temporary salvation. Salvation from Egypt. Bringing them back from the Babylonian captivity. Protecting them from invading armies here and there. He saved them many times in very temporal ways, but now He has come to bring eternal salvation to all mankind through her. The second section of her song here begins with Mary affirming that God's name is holy, that she rejoices in that. When sinners come into contact with the holiness of God, how do they respond? Whenever an Old Testament saint came into contact with an angel, what do they do? Boom, they fall on their face and they're terrified. When they come into the presence of the holiness of God, they fall down and they're terrified. As Isaiah did, when he beheld the Lord seated on his throne, sinners coming into contact with the holiness of God immediately recognized their own sinfulness in a way that they hadn't before. or in a way that they were denying to themselves before. Convincing themselves, I'm not really that sinful. Look at Joe next door. That guy, woo! But you come in the presence of the holiness of God. You're not looking at Joe. You're looking at yourself and you're realizing that God sees you. And like Isaiah, they recognize that because of their sin, and because God is holy, that they are ruined. They are undone. They deserve to be destroyed. That word that Isaiah uses there, Oh, woe is me, for I am undone. I deserve to be uncreated and do not exist. I'm nothing. That's what a sinner does when he comes into contact with the holiness of God. The holiness of God brings ruin and judgment upon sinful man. And it's horrifying to men. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. We think of holiness of God a lot of times and think, oh, that just means God's really good and nice. No! It's horrifying. Yet Mary here, how does she refer to God's holiness? His name is holy. She praises Him for it. She's not terrified of His holiness. She has come into contact with the holiness of God. She didn't do what Isaiah did. She didn't do what Moses did. She didn't do what all of the Old Testament saints did when they came into the contact of the holiness of God. Rather, she rejoices in the Mighty One whose name is holy. The Mighty One, remember. The name of God attributed and affixed to His redemption and His salvation. Only a sinner who has first experienced the sovereign grace and mercy of God and the salvation of God, whose heart has been humbled by Him and who has turned to faith and trust in God alone for their salvation, only that person is able to rejoice in God's holiness. Everyone else is horrified by it. Mary rejoices in the salvation of the Holy God. And she sings on in verse 50, and His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation. Mary recognizes here that the salvation God is bringing through the fruit of her own womb will not only bring salvation for her, but for all men who fear the Lord from generation to generation, Old Testament, Covenantal language she's borrowing, recognizing by using this language that all of the promises given to Abraham are about to be fulfilled. We read, as we continue in verses 51 and 52, and let me just mention, I'm just giving a very brief overview of this hymn. As I started studying this hymn this week, I was thinking, I could have done the whole month of December on this. There's so much here. So forgive me for doing Such a brief fly-by. In verses 51 and 52, He has shown strength with His arm, and 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 empty away. There's a lot here, but let me draw your attention to one thing. one of the most striking things I think about this, the third section of her hymn. It's that she is describing here what will take place in the future as a result of her yet-to-be-born son and what he will accomplish in his life. Yet she describes it in the past tense. She describes it long before it's actually taken place. She speaks of things as though they have already happened. The accomplishment of the Kingdom of God is what she's referring to here, and how it will affect and change all mankind. She's speaking of it as though it already took place. Such is her faith that the promises contained in the Old Testament about the Messiah whom she is carrying would certainly come to pass. She's praising God for something that hadn't taken place yet. The Gospel, or said another way, which I kind of like, the great reversal of the Fall had already begun in a temporal way, in a typological way, through Israel. God had showed Israel through these temporary ways that He saved them from Egypt, the way He saved them from Babylon, the way He saved them from this people and that people, He showed them what he was planning to do. He showed them glimpses of the true salvation that was yet to come. The great reversal of the fall had already begun in a temporal way through Israel, but Christ would come to establish an everlasting kingdom whose foundations cannot be shaken, a kingdom established in both justice and might. The Messiah would bring about the overthrow of every proud nation and every proud heart. Mary was familiar with the Old Testament, and I assume that included the book of Ecclesiastes as well, where the author of that book is tormented in his soul and he's struggling and wrestling with the reality of how sin has perverted and distorted justice and what is right. And he looks around and he knows how justice ought to operate, and it doesn't happen. And he's frustrated with that, and he's wrestling with that. He knows how men in societies and in relations to one another ought to function and treat one another, but he's not seeing it happen. Rather, what he does see is that the wicked prosper, and the righteous suffer. And that's wrong. And He knows it's wrong. And He also knows that He can't fix it. The Messiah will bring about the great reversal of the lament and the frustration of the author of Ecclesiastes. The proud and the wicked will be brought to justice. The poor and humble will be lifted up. They will be fed. They will be nourished. They will be taken care of. Again, when Mary sings her song, none of these things have taken place yet. the Kingdom of God has not yet been established by Christ. Yet even now, Christ has established His Kingdom here on earth, but in an already-not-yet way. We have been able to taste of the firstfruits of the Kingdom of God, yet we are awaiting the Second Coming where Christ will usher in the fullness of all of these things, which we experience only small tastes of as we participate the Church in His Kingdom on Earth. Yet Mary sings in faith and confidence that the Messiah will accomplish all these things. She's speaking of things as past tense that still haven't happened yet, but she knows they will, in faith. Do you know they will, in faith? That these things will certainly happen? So much confidence should we have that these things will take place, that we too should speak to them, could speak about them in the past tense. Mary's song closes with these words, he has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of mercy and he has spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Mary sees the child that she is bearing as the one who fulfills the promises given to Abraham, whom her people have been waiting for, for so long. She connects all of the redemptive threads that run throughout the Old Testament directly to the single person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Son of the Highest, who was being formed in her womb as she wrote this song. The promised seed of the woman spoken to Eve. The promised seed of Abraham, through whom all of the promises given to Abraham would be consummated and fulfilled. These seeds were inside of her and growing as she wrote this hymn. What was happening to Mary was nothing short of God fulfilling all of His promises made to His people for centuries and millennia. Mary sees all of the Old Testament prophecies coming to fulfillment in Christ who was within her. Realizing these things, she was humbled by this beyond words. So she had to do more than speak mere words. She was compelled to compose and sing the very first Christmas carol. Yet it's more than a Christmas carol. It's evangelistic. It's all about the Gospel. When you understand this hymn that she wrote, it's not about us or what we do. It's all about Christ. Notice she never actually mentions Christ in the whole hymn. Yet the whole thing is about Him and what He will accomplish. And what His coming to earth as a man means for humanity. That God is in the process of fulfilling His many prophecies promises to reverse the effects of the fall of man into sin. It's going to be reversed. Every human ever born struggles with and suffers from the effects of sin because of what Adam did. The hopes and the fears of all the years are met indeed in the birth, in the life, in the death, in the resurrection, in the ascension of the priestly work, and in the return of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Highest, the Son of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Knowing this, how can we possibly prevent our own soul from magnifying the Lord and our own spirit from rejoicing? How can we keep from singing? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do come before you this morning, again, rejoicing in the salvation, Father, that you have given to us, though we don't deserve it, yet you have blessed us, Father, with the gift of your Son. We thank you, Father, for glorifying yourself through your Son, whom we can refer to not only as a holy God, but as our Savior. And we can rejoice in your holiness. Father, thank you. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.