[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was Christmas time and a little boy about six years old had a lot of questions about God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was asking his dad questions like, where is God and what exactly can he do and what does he see and his dad explain, well, God is everywhere and God sees everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: This caused the little boy to think, and he pondered for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked around the room at the Christmas decorations and then ativity, and he just started a question, what did this mean for him?
[SPEAKER_00]: And after a long period of silence, he broke it and turned to his dad and said, so dad, between God, Santa, and that elf over there, is there anywhere in this house I can go to pick my nose?
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that a great question?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when kids ask good God questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe that's not the best question you could ask, but he was thinking about the practical implications of the theology of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, God is omniscient.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows everything, he sees everything, and so what does that mean for me and my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love it when kids ask good God questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite things to do is baptism interviews with kids who have placed their faith in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it because I get to see and ask questions about when did it click for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: When did you understand?
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course with kids, you have to ask those questions carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm trying to figure out, okay, do you really understand what Jesus did for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why you need it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why you need to save your in your life?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that you're a sinful person, you do think and say bad things, but God wants to forgive you,
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you ask those questions and realize, wow, they get it, they understand it, it's so exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I like to give them chances to ask me questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And wow, some of the questions our kids are asking about God would blow you away.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some very impressive young people in this church, and they are thinking through spiritual things at a deeper level than maybe a lot of adults do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is so neat to see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to find out when did you place your faith in Jesus or when did you understand the gospel and for some of them, it happens in our kid connection ministry downstairs where they first get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of them, they hear the gospel in one of my messages here and then they go home and ask their parents about it and their parents get to lead them to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then to watch their faith develop and grow as they start to work out what this means for them and understand more about God and God's Word, the Bible and how the Holy Spirit works in their life and it's just so exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some very impressive young people in this church who take their faith very seriously and are soaking up God's word in their life, whatever they can take of it right now at their stage of development.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the person we're going to talk about today in today's message in Luke chapter 1 is a very impressive young girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably 12 or 13 years old, which as strangers at may seem in this culture, 12 or 13 was the age charted to think about getting married.
[SPEAKER_00]: at 12 years in one day, they were considered an adult, young woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their parents in the Jewish culture would arrange for a marriage for her to a man who was a few years older, so also generally a teenager, but a few years older so that he had enough time to apprentice somewhere and earn enough money to be able to support the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the young girl that we are going to talk about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who is in this waiting period of anticipation, where she is not yet married, but she is engaged, or as they used to say, betrothed.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's engaged to a man, and she's not married yet, and the middle of all that anticipation and waiting and build up and ready to start her own family, God sends a messenger to her that turns her life upside down.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 26.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth a village in Galilee.
[SPEAKER_00]: To a virgin named Mary, she was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gabriel appeared to her and said, greetings, favored woman, the Lord is with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: infused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be afraid, Mary, the angel told her, for you have found favor with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will conceive and give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will be very great, and will be called the son of the most high God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor, David, and he will reign over Israel forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: His kingdom will never end.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a virgin, the angel replied, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you, so the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's more, your relative, Elizabeth, has become pregnant in her old age.
[SPEAKER_00]: People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived the Son and has now in her sixth month for the Word of God will never fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary responded.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am the Lord's servant.
[SPEAKER_00]: May everything you have said about me come true and then the angel left her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luke starts off by introducing us to this messenger of God and angel named Gabriel, but this was not his first assignment.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had already visited Zechariah and told him about the miraculous pregnancy that would happen with Elizabeth and get this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the messenger who 500 some years earlier talked to Daniel and prophesied about this very event.
[SPEAKER_00]: We studied Daniel a year ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here is what Gabriel said to Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, now listen and understand, seven sets of seven plus 62 sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler, the anointed one comes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses despite the perilous times.
[SPEAKER_00]: After this period of 62 sets of seven, the anointed one will be killed appearing to have accomplished nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, don't pay too much attention to all the 62 seven, six seven, all that kind of stuff in there, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: See, it's nothing new.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything goes back to God's Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can make any, we're pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can make any connection to the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to worry about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you want to worry about that, go back a year in our archives.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can watch the whole series on Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I want you to focus on here are two predictions that Gabriel makes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is that Jerusalem, the Holy City, will be rebuilt with strong defenses despite perilous times.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second one is that an anointed one would come and be killed appearing to have accomplished nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: 90 years after this prophecy, Nehemiah comes onto the scene, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem under heavy opposition just as Gabriel predicted.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in this picture on the screen, you see, I'm standing on top of the wall that Nehemiah rebuilt, it really happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then,
[SPEAKER_00]: 400 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gabriel's words just hung in the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Israel waited, waited for the anointed one to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that same angel who talked to Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now 500 some years after that initial prophecy, he shows up in a kitchen and Nazareth to a young girl and says the waiting is over.
[SPEAKER_00]: The time is now, this is happening and it's happening
[SPEAKER_00]: Luke tells us that she was confused and disturbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably would be too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If an angel showed up right in front of you in your home, the angel tells her not to be afraid, which I can understand, you would probably be afraid too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I certainly would.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then he shares this message sent from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You found favor with God and you've been chosen to bring the Son of the most high into this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing news, but it's also scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary is a good Jewish girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: From a little town where everybody knows everybody knows that she's engaged to Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know that they're going to be married in less than a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if this message is true then she's going to become pregnant and then it's going to show and Joseph's not going to be the father and that's going to be a scandal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so everybody's going to know something is wrong here and how do you explain to everyone around that this is a god thing and not a sin thing and will they believe you?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way you can get the truth to everyone because the rumors always spread farther and faster than the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is gonna wreak havoc on her social life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna mess up her family life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to ruin her marriage and maybe any chances of marriage with anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna be giving birth and raising a child without the support of a husband and a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't the sort of thing that you can just sleep off.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not going away tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the one comforting thing is that now she knows, Gabriel told her, hey, Elizabeth is going to have a miraculous pregnancy as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not quite as miraculous as yours, but it's a miraculous pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe Elizabeth will understand, but other than that, this is just a mountain of uncertainty.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, Mary response, I am the Lord's servant.
[SPEAKER_00]: May everything you have said about me come true.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an impressive young girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we have that kind of faith?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we have that kind of faith, the faith of this 12 or 13 year old girl that we could say, God, whatever you wanna do, no matter how uncomfortable it is, I'm willing to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm willing to go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, if you have to ruin my relationships, if you have to ruin my reputation and my social life, if you have to mess up my plans for the future, if you have to put me through all kinds of stress and anxiety, but it's gonna advance your kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I'm willing to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm willing to step outside my comfort zone and be used by you in a way that I don't necessarily enjoy in the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, that's a hard thing to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the situation that Mary was faced with and sometimes it's the younger people that have more faith in God to be willing to take those kinds of risks and do those sorts of things because let's face it us adults we have a lot to lose too much that we've learned to cling to too much that we've become dependent on too many idols that we've allowed to hang around in our lives and tolerate and maybe we need to learn to have the faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: of young Mary.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we often wait until kids grow up to give them big responsibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't do that, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you look in Scripture, over and over again, God uses the up and coming generations, the young people to do really big things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looks at Mary and says, I'm not going to wait for you to have a house or have a family or have a degree or a 401k.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready to use you now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she says, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy for us to forget how much God loves working through young people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You look at King Josiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was 16 years old when God used him to reform the nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Samuel was a young boy when God started to work through him.
[SPEAKER_00]: David was a teenager.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel was a teenager.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus picked as apostles, they ranged an age from 15 to 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Paul put Timothy in charge of the church in Ephesus, he was around 30 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the Christian revivals.
[SPEAKER_00]: that have happened because young people got involved and took risks and shared the gospel with people and committed to prayer and studying God's Word and wouldn't be quiet about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the first grade of awakening and Jonathan Eftar Edwards was a teenager, the second grade of awakening, the Welsh revival, the Jesus people movement, the Asbury revivals, both of them were launched by young people who said, yes to God, yes to someone comfortable, things, yes to some risks and were willing to live out their faith in God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll part of the reason for our capital campaign next year, not all of it, but part of it is we want to invest in future generations.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to see God work through us to reach young people and do great things for them in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I've been working on this year is a programmer, a guide, to try to help our young people better understand what we believe and be able to answer tough questions about our faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we're looking forward to releasing that next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's been a big project for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think it's important that we prepare our young people to represent their faith well in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God loves to use the up-and-coming generations to make a difference for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to say two things right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing too, anybody that's younger that happens to be in here, you can decide whether you're in that category, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody under 50?
[SPEAKER_00]: Has that sound good?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I cut some people off.
[SPEAKER_00]: 55, no 60, do I hear 75?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: for everybody, but especially for the younger people that might be in here, the kids, the teens, the adults, listen, take your faith seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: dig into God's word, study it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let people distract you or get you off track from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you take your faith seriously and if you put yourself out there for God, like Mary did and say, God, whatever you wanna do, whatever you say, so be it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna be a part of your plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Watch what God will do through you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are never too young to be used by God in a powerful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just be willing, just be willing to say yes to whatever he has for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now for the adults, again, you choose whether this applies to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the adults, are we too grown up to have that simple child-like faithful yes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we too grown up and distracted and mature and busy to be willing to be interrupted by God?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the middle of whatever we were doing in that little home and Nazareth to be willing to say,
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to work through me in a way that I've never been used before, I'm there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to do something special to me to reach these people to share the gospel, to minister, to serve, to do something in my church, whatever it is, I'm willing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we willing as adults to have that child like faith in God and say, yes, to whatever he wants to do through us?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think too many people who believe in Jesus decide to mostly sit on the sidelines and not get involved in what God is doing in this world and in his kingdom when God says, I've given you spiritual gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I prepared good things for you to do so you would walk in them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have stuff I want you to do in my kingdom which is way more important than getting the grass cut or whatever you were gonna do.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more that God has for you are we willing to say yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we could end the message right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of you might be feeling the conviction right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's more to this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a beautiful part of this story that we need to get to.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in verse 39.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few days later,
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the town where Zechariah lived, she entered the house and greeted Elizabeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the sound of Mary's green, Elizabeth's child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, God has blessed you of all women, and your child is blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I so honored that the mother of my Lord should visit me when I heard your greeting?
[SPEAKER_00]: The baby and my womb jumped for joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a greeting from Elizabeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is exactly what Mary needed to hear, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: She needed this encouragement of an older person during these uncertain times that she's going through with all of the confusing things that are ahead of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she doesn't know what it's gonna look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's her older relative who is saying, I'm right with you on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know God is with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know God is blessed new.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know this is an amazing thing that's gonna happen to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly what Mary needed to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at some point, she responded.
[SPEAKER_00]: with a beautiful poem of praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Latin, it's called the Manifikat.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Manifikat is the first word of this poem, which means it magnifies or I magnify the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: in English, in our beautiful language, you could say Magnificat.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Magnificat doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of sounds like a superhero cat, the super power is zooming in, but Manifika just sounds so much more refined, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we read through this, I want you to think about the contrast between the situation, Mary's in.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just heard her described as confused, disturbed, and afraid with good reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've explained to you all that she has before her.
[SPEAKER_00]: The challenge is that she is facing right now in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What she is having to deal with, it is such a huge thing for a 12 or 13 year old girl to have to grapple with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, listen to her response because it is not a cry of why me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is something entirely different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse 46, Mary responded, oh, how my soul praises the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: how my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for He took notice of His lowly servant girl, and from now on, all generations will call me blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the mighty one is holy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he has done great things for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He shows mercy from generation to generation to all who fear him.
[SPEAKER_00]: His mighty arm has done tremendous things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has scattered the proud and hot he ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful.
[SPEAKER_00]: For he made this promise to our ancestors
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary's poem, her song, her hymn is really impressive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so impressive that many scholars have suggested she couldn't have been the one to write it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just too impressive.
[SPEAKER_00]: 12 or 13-year-old girl from Nazareth to have produced.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe somebody else wrote it and she really did praise God there and then Luke later said, you know, I'm going to just replace Mary's praise with this thing someone else wrote because it's so beautiful and eloquent.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll just pretend that Mary said it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others have suggested, well, maybe Luke wrote it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, you know, Mary said, you know, I praise God and Luke was like, okay, I'm gonna really make this look beautiful here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I've studied it this week, I've come to the conclusion that the evidence overwhelmingly says, Mary really did write this.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the biggest reasons for that is that all of the ancient manuscripts attribute it to Mary and say, Mary said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a few manuscripts from hundreds of years later that attribute it to Elizabeth, but they are the outliers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it seems almost certain that Luke's original said, Mary said this, and I don't think Luke would have lied to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't just throw it in there and let us guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, Mary said, whoop, there's the Manifika.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think Mary really did it right this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suspect that she wrote this or maybe not wrote this, but crafted this, she may not have been able to write.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was an oral society.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a young girl from Nazareth, she may not have been able to read her right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were very, very good orally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she probably crafted this in the three months that she was with Elizabeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: She might have been inspired and said it right there on that day, or she may have crafted it over some period of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: All we know is that at some point Luke says Mary responded with this, this is how she prays God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not a direct copy of any Old Testament scripture, but it is filled with inspiration from and references to all sorts of Old Testament scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it matches the style that you would expect to find from the Old Testament prophets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here's what I think happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that Mary was a great listener of the scriptures in the synagogue every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that she heard the Scripture shared over and over again, and she learned the styles and the structures that the Old Testament prophets used to write.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she took that to heart and her own response of this poem of praise is based on the same things that she heard from Scripture all the time, but she crafted one of her own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspired by the Holy Spirit, probably in the process of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But inspired by all of those scriptures that she heard every week in the synagogue, that's what I think happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the statements of this poem show us incredible familiarity with Hebrew poetic styles.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a thing called synonymous parallelism.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where one phrase follows another phrase and uses similar words to reinforce the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, she says, oh, how my soul prays is the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she says, how my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: See that second phrase reinforces the first phrase, but with different words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or she says, oh, how his mighty arm has done tremendous things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you reinforce the first point with a second point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other statements in this poem use antithetic parallelism, and that's where the second phrase actually contrasts the first phrase, but to make an important point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, for example, he has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two contrasting points meant to make an important point.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's antithetic parallelism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, by putting multiples of these together, such as the antithetic parallelisms, you get what's called a chiascic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And chiascic structure is where you have different things that form sort of an overall pattern in the form of like an A, B, B, A, or an A, B, C, B, A kind of a structure to make a point to have something really important right in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's an example of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says he is brought down trenches from their thrones, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And exalted the humble, he has filled the hunger with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a chastic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I do hope you're paying attention because this will be on the quits.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to remember synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, and chastic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got all that?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you don't have to remember any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the only reason I'm sharing it with you is because I want to point out how impressive this poem is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she just paid very, very good attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this sound like to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: What books are the Bible?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does the Manifika sound like to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it remind you of Psalms?
[SPEAKER_00]: What else?
[SPEAKER_00]: Proverbs, there's some ecclesiasties in there, there's some Genesis in there, there's some Isaiah in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she was inspired by all the passages that she heard read in the synagogue.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what helped to fill her mind and her heart and give her so much hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the middle of this uncertain time that she was in, in the middle of these challenges in this unknown future that lay ahead of her, she could draw on those old testament scriptures and have faith in hope in God.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then we are the beneficiaries of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get to see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her poem does not directly quote any old testament scripture, but it sure seems to draw from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Genesis 30, you've got Leah praising God because the daughters will call her blessed and Mary says the generations will call me blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isaiah 45 rejoices in God as Savior just as Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 34 exalts the Lord's greatness as Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 111 calls God holy like Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 126 says the Lord has done amazing great things like Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's done mighty things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the strongest connection is probably with Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're God answers, Hannah's prayer for a son and then Hannah gives this beautiful poem of her own where she praises God and she rejoices in the Lord in His salvation just like Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about God exulting the poor and bringing others down just like Mary does.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would bet that Hannah's song of praise was a tremendous comfort to Mary in all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the similarities of the situation probably brought her great joy that God is really in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was there with Hannah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to be there with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what it makes me think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if we were to take a little bit of time and write out our own poem of praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: What would it sound like?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Mary did.
[SPEAKER_00]: She took everything she knew from the Old Testament Scriptures, and everything she heard in the synagogue, and everything she knew about God, and what he had done throughout the world, and even in her life, and she put it into this poem so that she could have this beautiful thing that was crafted that revealed here as how God is at work and here is how I am praising him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what if we did the same thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if we took a little bit of time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, or sometime this week, most of you have a little time off, I hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just took some time to think through how has God been at work in my life, how has he been at work in the world, what are his attributes that I can praise him for?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I write my own poem of praise to God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't necessarily expect you to use synonymous parallelism and into that parallelism in chiasc structures.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can, if you want, you look up online, you'll get all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's an easier way.
[SPEAKER_00]: an easier way.
[SPEAKER_00]: This comes to us thanks to our preaching team meetings every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get together all the preaching team.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the nice way to say this, we review each other's messages.
[SPEAKER_00]: We really critique each other's messages.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what could you have done better?
[SPEAKER_00]: How would do this differently?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you might want to try this next time?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all try to learn and grow from each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also talk about what's next.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we were talking about this week, last Tuesday, Kyle said something that is absolutely worth sharing with all of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there is a beautiful and simple structure to this poem that we can follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to try this this week, here's what you should do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the structure that Kyle came up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, God sees,
[SPEAKER_00]: Second God shows and third God sustains.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's how it goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary says, my soul rejoices in God and my Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took notice of this lowly servant girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mighty one has done great things for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my question for you, if you want to give this a try is, how has God seen you?
[SPEAKER_00]: How has the God of the universe seen you this week, this year, in your lifetime?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredible just to think that he would care about us, but he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: He created us and everything in this world and everything in the universe and yet he cares about little old you and he's probably shown it in some surprising ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had so many conversations with so many of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: about how you have seen God's presence at work in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: How has God seen you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she says, He shows mercy from generation to generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: His mighty arm has done tremendous things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has scattered the proud.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has exalted the humble.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the question is, how has God shown you His mercy and His power?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you point to some things in your life that you look back on and say, wow, I see God at work?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a beautiful conversation with somebody for a couple of hours this week, a couple of people that were telling me all about the challenges they faced over this last year and how long the way they've just seen God's hand again and again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting them through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little blessings along the way to show him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He cares about them and he is there for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you point to some things in your life that would remind you of how he has shown up with his power, with his mercy and maybe beyond your life in your community or in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the last section, she says he cares for the hungry.
[SPEAKER_00]: He helps Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He continues to be merciful.
[SPEAKER_00]: He keeps his promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the question for us is, how has God sustained you?
[SPEAKER_00]: How has God sustained you through the difficult times, the anxiety, the stress, the discouragement, the depression, those valleys that he gets you through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's through God's Word, maybe it's through prayer, maybe it's through other people who trust in Jesus, maybe it's through your family, maybe it's through the right word of encouragement, just at the right time, and that person didn't even know how much you needed it in that moment, but God prompted them, and so God sustains you through the difficult times.
[SPEAKER_00]: My encouragement to you this week is to spend a little bit of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can write it down, you can do it in your head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reflecting how God has seen you, how He has showed His power and His mercy to you, and how He sustains you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come up with your own poem of praise, like Mary did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Based on everything you know about what he's done for you and what he's done in Scripture and all of those wonderful things you see in there, you can use whatever kind of allusions to the Old Testament passages that you want, or to what he does in the New Testament, and then talk about what he's done for you today, but spend some time reflecting on the great things he has done for you and there is no greater thing that he has done for you than to send Jesus into this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be the savior of our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing we can't forget.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christmas is a wonderful time of year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love all the traditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the decorations.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a few years ago, our house was just absolutely dull on Christmas because we did not take the time to put up lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it took all three of our kids begging and begging and begging to finally get me out there, put up lights all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we have one of those... She need flashing lights and all the things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun, and the gifts are fun, and all the other traditions are fun, and getting up and doing fun things to families fun, but in the middle of all that, we can't forget, the whole reason for this, the reason we get to celebrate this week, it's not all of the extra things and the decorations and the gifts, it's because of one gift, it's because of the gift of Jesus Christ, coming into the world through Mary's song, is not about a baby coming into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary's song is about God, our Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you notice that?
[SPEAKER_00]: We sing lots of songs like Oh Holy Night and Silent Night, that are beautiful songs a little town of Bethlehem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful songs all about that night, that moment, when Jesus came into the world as a little baby, and they're awesome and they're wonderful, but that's not why he's here.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not why we celebrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't celebrate Christmas because of Christmas.
[SPEAKER_00]: We celebrate Christmas because of Easter.
[SPEAKER_00]: We celebrate Christmas because of good Friday.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus died, a painful death on a cross, a very public death so that he could show everyone I am here to take the penalty for you, to pay the punishment for your sin, to take that penalty you deserve away from you so that you can have forgiveness in God and be restored to him in a part of his family.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Christmas is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Mary's Magnificat is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you don't take anything else away from this message today, I hope you'll take this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus came into this world as a baby, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: To live as one of us, he lived a perfect life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He never sinned.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was raised by Mary and Joseph and eventually he started a ministry and he gathered people and he taught them and eventually he went to a cross and he died and took the sin of the world on him in that moment so that he could pay for it as a sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all done bad things, said bad things, thought bad things, things that go against what God wants for us as our Creator, those sins are not just sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're treason against the one who made us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have no right or ability to be with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing we can do to earn our way out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't do enough good to outweigh the bad we've done.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still have to pay for the bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unless someone comes along, who's never done any bad and offers to pay for it, we're stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing we can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why Christmas happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so He could be here and live a perfect life and die on that cross for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then rise back to life, that's what we celebrate on Easter, so that He can represent us before God the Father and say, I have paid for their sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you have to say yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth said, blessed are you because you believed that God would do what He said.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to believe that Jesus died for you to pay for your sins, and then he sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes you a new person.
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes you a child of God, and he lets you have a home and eternity with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a beautiful thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives us so much hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that trust in Jesus suddenly makes your life perfect, but having Jesus in your life makes it a whole lot better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I get an amen on that for anybody that agrees with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason we celebrate Christmas is not because of a little baby came into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because that baby grew up and paid for our sins, and that's a beautiful thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we can magnify the Lord and we can rejoice in our salvation and we can remember what God has done for us and we can write a poem like Mary, because of this incredible thing that God did for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's not the real focus of your Christmas, then you're missing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're missing out on the best of what God has for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna ask you if you would bow your head right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Close your eyes for a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is between you and God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's between you and Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, some of us here just needed the message
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us here just needed to hear that you want a child like faithful yes from us, where we say I am willing to be used by God and whatever way you want me to be used and for those people right now, Lord, I just pray that they would lift up their lives to you as a living sacrifice and say God, I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, you want to use me to advance your kingdom and what you're doing, it's more important than the priorities I have in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God, for some people who are here or watch online right now,
[SPEAKER_00]: The message they need to hear is that Christmas is not about the gifts or the tree, it's not even about the nativity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually about you coming into this world to live a perfect life to die in our place to be our sacrifice so that we could spend eternity with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God, I pray for those people right now that they would realize.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they're sinful and need of a Savior, that they would confess their sins to you, Lord, that they would put their trust in you, believe in you as Mary did, believe that you died, to pay for their sins, believe that you alone can forgive them and give them new life with you, Lord, that they would see the difference that makes in their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: pray for this, what I pray that you would be with us this week as we go into all of the Christmas season things and the fun things and for some of us the not so fun things, some sad memories, some wonderful memories, some fun conversations, some difficult conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through it all, Lord, I pray that we could praise you like Mary did, to magnify your name God, to have our own poems of praise where we remember all the good things you have done for us and celebrate and praise you and not just do it privately, but do it in ways where others can see our faith in you and in Jesus' name we pray.