June 30, 2000
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Mary&Elizabeth, Magnificat - Luke 1:39-55
Mary and Elizabeth: Confirming Angelic Prophecy
Luke 1:39-45
Luke begins his gospel record with the story of two conception miracles...two women who by all human standards could never have children. Elizabeth who was barren was somewhere in her sixties or seventies or eighties, had never been able to have children at all, was past child-bearing capability and yet with her husband Zacharias, who also was past that capability, conceived and carried in her womb the great prophet John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. The second narrative is about a girl, Mary, a virgin, 13 years of age or so who became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of God creating life in her womb without a man involved at all.
In both cases the angel Gabriel came to make the announcement. In the first case, the angel Gabriel came to Zacharias who was the father of John the Baptist, and Zacharias received the message from Gabriel that he and his wife, Elizabeth, together would conceive and have a son who would be the greatest prophet, the forerunner of Messiah. Gabriel then came later to a virgin, to Mary, and gave her the message that we saw in verses 26 to 33, that she without a man would be given a child who would be the Son of God.
Now up until now these two narratives, though contained in the first 38 verses of this chapter, have been separate. Elizabeth lived in the hill country of Judah, that would be around Jerusalem in the south of Israel. Mary lived in Nazareth, a small town in the Galilee, as its known, and that is in the north of Israel, separated by 75 or 80 miles or so. There are incredible similarities in the accounts that are unmistakable.
We have Mary and Elizabeth getting together. What's the point of the meeting? At the prompting of the angel Gabriel, she wanted to go and meet with Elizabeth as soon as she could. She had just been told something that was absolutely humanly impossible and frankly unimaginable, that she was going to be the mother of Messiah. She was going to be the mother of the Son of God. She was going to bear a holy offspring that would be conceived in her by God the Most High Himself. And all of this while being a virgin. She had been chosen by God to be the mother of Messiah. Messiah would be a holy offspring. All of this would happen without a man's involvement. It would all be done by God. This was just mind boggling, just more than any human could ever understand or comprehend. No woman who ever lived had heard such a word...beyond understanding, beyond comprehension. And besides, miracles didn't happen and God didn't speak and angels just didn't show up in visible fashion.
Well the angel knew that this was a startling, devastating bit of information. And so he gave her a sign, verse 36, "Behold, your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month for nothing will be impossible with God."
Mary believed the angel. She had faith. Her faith had a measure of strength, but it was still really beyond comprehension. It takes little imagination to understand that she would need to bolster that strength that miracles do happen, that..that conception miracles do happen and this one was going to happen in her body without her even knowing it miraculously. There wouldn't be any day or any point in time, any personal, physical experience. This would happen by the miracle of God. How would her mortal flesh withstand the emotional and spiritual strain of carrying the Son of God, the Messiah? This ordinary girl of flesh and blood, this ordinary girl who knew her own sinfulness and her own weaknesses, how could she endure the emotional strain of the incalculable honor of having the Son of God in her womb? And could she really be sure upon all examination that this in fact was reality? It might not begin to evidence itself in her body for a period of time, but she couldn't wait for that and so in a hurry she wants to go and see Elizabeth because she wants to be sure that in fact God can do, is doing, has done conception miracles and Elizabeth was the living proof of that.
There was one person who would be verification for her that God was able to do a conception miracle, and that one person was Elizabeth. So it tells us in verse 39 she arose and went with haste to the hill country of Judah and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth.
Now this is the first thing I want to say about this. All of this is about confirmation. And this first aspect of confirmation I like to call personal confirmation. The whole coming together of Mary and Elizabeth was to confirm to Mary the truth of the angel's words. It was really very hard to believe. It was not only hard for Mary to believe, but it was harder for anybody else to believe. Mary wanted her faith strengthened. It wasn't that she didn't have any faith, it was just that this was a stretch by all imagination. And so she wanted to be strong in her faith and Elizabeth could provide confirmation personally for her.
So it says in verse 39, she launches in to what really is the pursuit of personal confirmation. That is coming from a person, coming from Elizabeth. The time is clear, at the time that Gabriel visited her, that very time. The time of the visit Gabriel she made haste, she went in a big hurry, promptly on hearing that Elizabeth, her old relative, was pregnant and she knew a woman her age and a woman who had been barren all her life could not by any human means be pregnant. When she heard that she was pregnant in verse 36 she was already six months pregnant so that it would be evident that she was in fact pregnant. She wasted no time in making the trip.
As I said, verse 36 indicates Elizabeth was already six months pregnant. "Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then returned to her home." So she went there when she was six months pregnant. She left when she was nine months pregnant. Apparently just before the birth of John. Verse 57, "Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth and she brought forth a son." So she went when she was six months pregnant. She left just before the birth of John three months later. Therefore she couldn't have wasted any time. If she was going to go there, stay three months and get home before the child was born, she had to have gotten there in the sixth month which means she had to have gone immediately. She arose and went with haste.
There is no report here of Mary's conception. We must assume that it had already happened, the miracle had already taken place. Nothing more is said then what is said in verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God." It never tells us at what day or what hour or what moment. There's no fanfare. There's no nothing but that miracle must have happened. Mary then not being able to feel any of that at that particular point perhaps initially may begin to feel some evidences of it, but there's not enough time to really know that. She goes, I think, within days eager to respond to the angel's wonderful message. It's about 75-85 miles, maybe more, from Nazareth to the southern Judea hillside region. It would take her about three or four days to get there.
Frankly it's very unusual for a young girl to make such a journey, because young girls of her age were really in the care of their father and their mother. They were kept in the home where they could be secluded and protected. And that was pretty typical for her to just go tramping off down to the south of the country was a very unusual thing to do.
Some have suggested that she went to hide her pregnancy. Well that soon she wouldn't have anything to hide. Others said she went to avoid the wrath of Joseph. At that point there's no reason to assume Joseph knew anything because Mary, you remember, had left that with the Lord and it was an angel who later appeared to Joseph in a dream and explained to him what had happened. So she didn't go to hide her pregnancy which wouldn't have been visible then. She didn't go to run from Joseph who perhaps didn't even know about it at that particular time. She went because she wanted to see Elizabeth for personal confirmation that in fact God could do conception miracles and that would be evident in the case of Elizabeth if in fact what the angel said was true and she was with child.
She went to the hill country, that's right around the facility of Jerusalem. If you've ever been to Jerusalem you can understand why it's called the hill country. To a city, probably better a village or a small town of Judah, we don't know which one. There is a traditional site that came from the sixth century that may not be accurate that puts it about five miles from Jerusalem. But this was the place where the priest, Zacharias, and his wife, Elizabeth, lived and where he carried on his normal priestly function through the year, except for the two weeks that he was serving in the temple.
So she went there. It says in verse 40 she went into the house of Zacharias and she greeted Elizabeth. Now I've got to stop on the word "greet." It was not something brief. It was not some kind of simple formula. What was involved in a greeting was a lengthy dialogue. It was sort of a ceremonial social occasion, the significance of which lay in the content of the conversation. I'll give you an illustration of it. There might be a number of them that you could use, but back in 18 of Exodus it says in verse 7, "Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and he bowed down and kissed him and they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent." Now that is a classic ancient near eastern greeting. There's an embrace, a physical expression of affection and then in the tent they go to talk about how life is with both of them. That's exactly what we can assume occurred upon Mary's arrival when it says "she greeted Elizabeth." She went in and a typical traditional greeting began to take place which would be hours of conversation. And my, they had a lot to talk about...an awful lot to talk about.
Surely Elizabeth must have disclosed to Mary how she became pregnant. How Zacharias had been serving at the temple then the angel Gabriel had appeared to him while he was in the altar of incense and he came out with this incredible message that they were going to have a child and the child would be great in the sight of the Lord and he would drink neither wine nor liquor and he would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. And he would be the forerunner of the Messiah and he would turn many to righteousness. And all of that that was prophesied in verses 13 to 17 of chapter 1 and how that it was not long after that Zacharias had come home and they had come together that she was pregnant. She stayed secluded for five months until it began to show that so that people would know when she claimed to be pregnant she wasn't a fool. Then she told the wonderful story about the sequence of the conversation with Gabriel and went through the whole account as it had been recorded by Luke. Upon which Mary would have told her story which paralleled as we saw in so many ways how that Gabriel had come to her in her home in Nazareth and had told her that she was going to be the mother of the Son of God and that this was going to occur without a man and God was going to plant that child in her womb. He was going to create that child apart from normal human conception. And they would have discussed those stories. The parallels would have been very wonderful for them to recite. And that was important to God so that there would be so many parallels it would be crystal clear that every thing Mary heard sounded just like what Zacharias and Elizabeth heard. And since that which was promised to Elizabeth had come to pass, that which was promised to Mary would also come to pass. The patterns were identical.
So they greeted themselves in that sense. And that becomes the personal confirmation. Elizabeth just sitting there dialoguing, going over the account and paralleling it with Mary's account and being six months pregnant provides personal confirmation. Yes God can do conception miracles, here is personal confirmation of it right here in this person sitting opposite me. Just seeing Elizabeth and understanding her condition as an old woman past child-bearing capacity, married to an old man in the same predicament would be the reality of the fact that God had done a miracle. And when you throw Gabriel into the mix and the conversation is almost identical, it's a great confirmation.
Now there's something else here too that you need to understand. I think Mary went for the confirmation but I also think she went to see Elizabeth because she knew only Elizabeth would believe her. I mean, let's try to put it in a normal context. Your 13-year-old daughter comes in and say, "I'm pregnant." And you say, "What?" And she says, "An angel came to me and told me that I have been impregnated by God and I'm going to be the mother of the Savior of the world." "Really?" Sounds like something a teenager would come up with, doesn't it? What in the world kind of wild story...at least try to find something rational. I mean, there would be only...there would be only the slightest glimmer of hope that anybody would believe that. Even Joseph who knew Mary well made the natural assumption when he found out she was with child, he assumed that she had violated her betrothal vows to him and committed sin. And he says, "I'm either going to have to stone her or divorce her." And he loved her and he knew her and he knew the family and he must have known something about her character and it must have seemed out of character for her to have done some sin like that, but there wasn't any other explanation. Frankly there was only one woman on the earth who would buy Mary's story. Who was it? Elizabeth. Only one place she could go and tell this tale.
The text doesn't say anything about what she may or may not have said to her family or to Joseph or anybody else. It just says she was out of there to Elizabeth, the only person who would have any rational reason to believe that what she was saying was in fact true. Telling Elizabeth first made sense.
Then Elizabeth could be support for her when she told everybody else. Because Elizabeth was living, personal confirmation that God was doing conception miracles. You tell anybody else and they're going to think Mary's made up this preposterous story about Gabriel and being the mother of the Son of God, nobody would believe that. But Elizabeth would believe it. And the parallels were really startling.
So, Mary and Elizabeth come together to provide for Mary personal confirmation. It must have been a great moment for her when she was confirmed by the personal encounter with Elizabeth, that in fact God can do conception miracles. And that what Gabriel said to Elizabeth came true, therefore what Gabriel said to Mary could be trusted. Tremendous confirmation.
Secondly, in addition to personal confirmation was physical confirmation...physical confirmation. Something happened physically that confirmed that Mary was going to be the mother of a holy offspring. Something physical happened to confirm that Mary was bearing in her body the Son of God. What was it? Verse 41, "And it came about that when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, in the midst of this conversation when this is going on and Elizabeth is hearing that Mary is going to be the mother of the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Son of God, the baby leaped in her womb."
When Mary was telling the story to Elizabeth about the fact that the Spirit of God was going to plant the Messiah in her womb, the baby leaped. The same term is used in Psalm, I think it's Psalm 114:4 translated in the Septuagint form and it's the word "skipped." After all, that little fetus is a prophet...now stay with me...not only is that a prophet but that's not just a prophet that's the greatest prophet that ever lived. Not only that, that little prophet is John the Baptist and his responsibility is to be the forerunner of...whom?...Messiah. Folks, this is his first announcement. It's a silent prophecy.
You say, "What are you talking about?" Well, back in verse 15 of chapter 1 it says about John the Baptist, verse 15, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb. Now why would you do that? There wouldn't be any purpose in filling him, it might be a great purpose in filling his mother. But why would you fill him? Why would God's Holy Spirit fill that little fetus unless God's Holy Spirit wanted to achieve something supernatural through him, right? When we think about the filling of the Holy Spirit we think about obeying the Word and following the will of the Holy Spirit and getting led by the Holy Spirit. And that's good. The New Testament unfolds that, we understand that. But there's an aspect of the filling of the Holy Spirit that's connected to prophecy, and we'll see more about that later. It's connected to prophecy. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke the Word of God. That's a pretty typical Old Testament scenario. That little fetus in the womb was filled with the Holy Spirit even while in the womb because it was going to do something important to the purposes of God in a supernatural way. Movements of a fetus are normal and common, but this is not one of those...this is not coincidental, we know that because of verse 44, Elizabeth gets a message from God. "Behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb...to reposition itself." Is that what it said? It doesn't say that. The baby was not motivated by anything other than joy. Elizabeth interprets the child's movements.
Now I want to tell you, John the Baptist was really a true prophet. If he couldn't speak, he just jumped. And that's all he could do. He could only leap. He could only jump with divinely inspired delight. His mother had to speak under the inspiration of God to interpret that. So in a physical way John the Baptist while still in the womb gave his approval to the birth of the Messiah...isn't that great? That was not just the normal course of things, that was a word from God through the physical realm.
Now, John the Baptist at the time was also the smallest prophet who ever lived. Somewhere between nine and ten inches high. He was the lightest prophet who ever lived. He was one and a half pounds around. And he was the strangest looking prophet because he had transparent skin...although all of his physical parts had formed, that little life, that little life of a prophet, the greatest prophet who ever lived, was used by God through the power of the Holy Spirit to indicate delight at the fact that the Messiah had been conceived in Mary. God literally gave physical confirmation to Mary through the movement of that child interpreted by Elizabeth.
Mary needs to know. Now she has personal confirmation that God does conception miracles and that what Gabriel says is true, that through the testimony of Elizabeth. Now she has physical confirmation that God can work in the womb because she sees a reaction in the womb that is interpreted to her as the movement of God's Holy Spirit upon that fetus to produce the delight that produces the movement.
Now don't ask me for anymore than that, folks. That took me a whole day just to figure that much out. There's one other point of confirmation, personal, physical and then prophetic.
Here is confirmation that comes in a prophetic way. A revelation from God through words. Up to this point it was through a person, Elizabeth, through physical, the movement of the child, now comes a direct word from the Lord. Look at the end of verse 41. "And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." Now we're getting used to seeing this "being filled with the Holy Spirit." It happened to John when he was in the womb and now here is evidence of it when he moved with delight. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. And it says, "Immediately...verse 42...she cried out with a loud voice and said." We know that God fills certain people to produce the revelation that He desires to be given. The idea of being filled with the Spirit in the case of Elizabeth, in the case of Zacharias, in the case of Simeon (Luke 2) is to indicate that what they spoke was divine revelation. It's a familiar Old Testament indication.
So, back to chapter 1 and verse 42. Elizabeth, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God comes right in and takes control, "She cried out with a loud voice..." Now probably she didn't usually talk like this. Certainly wouldn't do any good in the case of her husband since he was stone deaf because he had been made deaf, you remember, by God for not believing Gabriel's message. God struck him with deafness so it wouldn't have mattered how loud she shouted, she wasn't trying to reach his ears. She was shouting for two reasons, I think...with enthusiasm over this incredible truth that was being placed in her mind and poured through her, and also, I think, to emphasize the authority of it. She literally shouted, in the Greek...she shouted this glorious prophetic confirmation. The word "loud," by the way, some time look up loud in your concordance and sort of trace it around and you'll see how many times it's associated with divine revelation. It kind of conveys the idea that what God wants to say He wants to make sure we hear. And so it said "loudly." And so she opens up her mouth and out comes this revelation. It's really a hymn of praise. It's the first of five of them. Elizabeth gives one and then in verse 46 Mary gives one. Then in verse 67 Zacharias gives one. Then over in chapter 2 the angels give one. And then finally Simeon gives the fifth. There are five hymns of praise all around the conception of the Messiah in the womb of Mary, marvelous hymns of praise. And we'll look at them all as we look through this section of Luke.
But look at her hymn starting in verse 42. "She cried out with a loud voice and said, 'Blessed among women are you and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.'" It's a hymn of blessing, it's a hymn of praise. It pronounces blessing on Mary. It pronounces blessing on the child of Mary. It pronounces blessing on Elizabeth. And then it pronounces blessing in the end on everybody who believes God's Word. It just...it just blesses in every direction.
First of all, "Blessed are you among women." That's a simple Hebrew construction that means you're the most blessed of all women. You're the most blessed of all women. In the Hebrew culture, in the Jewish world a woman gained her greatest stature on the basis of her children. A woman's greatest was tied to the greatness of the children she bore. Over in the eleventh chapter of Luke this comes up again. Jesus is speaking, verse 27, "It came about while He said these things one of the women in the crowd raised her voice." Some woman in the crowd yelled at Him and said, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed." That was a typical Jewish way to honor a mother because you saw the greatness of her child. And so Elizabeth is saying...You are the most blessed because you have the greatest child.
There's a humility there, isn't there, because Elizabeth had just been told that her son would be great too, but not that great. Her son would be the forerunner of the Messiah but Mary's son would be the Messiah. Elizabeth acknowledges the superiority of her young relative's privilege. She acknowledges that Mary is even a greater beneficiary of God's goodness and she is going to have a greater calling and a greater privilege and a greater child. That went against the grain of normal traditional perspectives, sort of the reversal of the normal social convention. The older is less than the younger, and the older gives greater honor to the younger. And Mary's privilege is greater than Elizabeth's as Jesus is greater than John. But Mary is the truly blessed. And Elizabeth knows it. And Elizabeth is a righteous woman who is equally thrilled at the prospect not only of bearing the forerunner of Messiah, but of the Messiah coming whom she, Elizabeth, acknowledges in verse 43 as "my Lord." One thing to bear a prophet, it's something else to bear the Lord.
Blessed are you, Mary, above all other woman, you have been chosen to carry the Savior of the world and in verse 42, also, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb," blessed is that child. You are blessed, He is even more blessed. The Messiah, the Savior of the world, the most blessed child ever born, the One who will receive all of heaven's blessing unmixed, unmitigated, the One who will be holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, the One who will be perfect, the One who will be sinless, the One who will inherit all that the Father possesses, the One who will be given a redeemed humanity to praise and glorify and serve Him forever, the One who will be the object of eternal praise in glory, this is the most blessed. You are blessed and your child is blessed.
This indicates another confirmation. This is the Spirit of God filling Elizabeth who gets sort of catapulted out of her normal tone of voice and is shouting at the top of her voice this prophetic word from God and this prophetic word from God affirms not only the blessedness of Mary but that she is carrying the blessed Messiah. And further, the child of her womb is defined in verse 43 as "my Lord." This is prophetic confirmation.
Verse 43 is sort of Elizabeth blessing herself. It's sort of awe, she says how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Oh...she's blessed, the child's blessed and I'm blessed. Amazement, humility, awe, she's unworthy and she knows it. That statement, "the mother of my Lord," great statement...great statement. That's prophetic confirmation that in the womb of Mary is the Lord...is Elizabeth's Lord. It isn't some family thing, this is Elizabeth's Lord. And Lord is used to refer to God 25 times in Luke 1 and Luke 2. There can be no other conclusion than that the child is also God. God is called Lord 25 times, it's an exalted divine title. And when we say Jesus is Lord, we're saying Jesus is also God.
Well, in verse 44, we've already looked at it. This was Elizabeth's explanation and it came from the Lord. "Behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy." God revealed to her that that was not just a normal common motion of the child, but that God the Holy Spirit had moved on that little prophet and made him leap with delight as a physical affirmation that God worked in the womb of Elizabeth and would work in the womb of Mary.
Elizabeth closes after having blessed Mary and blessed Jesus and pronounced a blessing on herself for being the one to whom the mother of the Lord had come, verse 45 is sort of like...it's really sort of like a general beatitude, it just sort of widens everything up. "And blessed is she...anybody...who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord." Blessed is she, sure that's Mary, of course, blessed is Mary because she believed. But, you know, it doesn't say "blessed are you, Mary," it just says "blessed is she" and it puts it in the third person. Anybody who believes God fulfills His promises is going to be blessed, right? And so the beatitude starts with Mary, moves to the child, embraces Elizabeth and goes beyond.
You know, Mary is a...a wonderful example for us. She's not the mother of God, she's not the queen of heaven. But she is a model believer and she was blessed not just because of her privilege, not just because she was chosen to bear the Messiah. She was blessed not just because of what God did to her but because of how she responded, she was blessed because she believed. Contrast her with Zacharias...Zacharias heard the message from the angel and did not believe and wasn't blessed, he was...what?...cursed, struck deaf and dumb. And I think, you know, Elizabeth knows that and she may have even been looking at Zacharias when she said this...Blessed is she who believed. I don't know whether he could read lips in this brief six-month period but she may have said, "Blessed is she who believed..." I mean, if you want to be blessed, you believe.
You don't make Mary the queen of heaven, you don't make her a co-redemptrix with Christ, you don't make her the one responsible for access to Jesus as if she's a mediator. You don't make her the only one who can convince Jesus to answer the penitent's sinner's prayer. You don't make her the mother of God. What you do is you see Mary as someone who is a model of faith. She believed there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord. And because she believed that, she pursued that, she went to see Elizabeth and she got all that confirmation.
Mary sets an example for us though, she shows us how believers should respond...when God speaks, you listen, you believe, you obey, then you burst forth, starting in verse 46, in worship. She's a model believer. She heard, she believed, she obeyed, she worshiped. What else can we say? And blessed is anybody, whoever she be, or he be, who does that. She is a wonderful example. She heard the truth from God, she believed it, she obeyed it and she worshiped in response. She was confirmed and she must have gone on her way three months later rejoicing.
Mary's Praise
Luke 1:46-55
In spite of the fears, in spite of the questions, Mary willingly submitted to God's plan. In verse 38 she said to the angel Gabriel, "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word." That shows her faith. She submits completely. Some women would have boasted. Some women would have rebelled. But Mary's response was right. She modestly, quietly embraced God's will for her and left the concerns with God. And then she went immediately, verse 39 says, to visit Elizabeth and there she received confirmation.
She received a three-fold confirmation. First of all, personal confirmation when she saw the birth miracle, or the conception miracle that had occurred in Elizabeth because she could see that Elizabeth was six months pregnant. There was personal confirmation that conception miracles did happen and that God was doing that and Elizabeth was personal proof of that.
And then there was physical confirmation that came when the babe in the womb of Elizabeth, John the Baptist, leaped for joy when he heard the message about Messiah's conception. God literally using the physical animation of that fetus to confirm that in fact that this was a true word from God.
Then there was prophetic confirmation. Personal confirmation came from Elizabeth. The physical confirmation came from the unborn John the Baptist. The prophetic confirmation came from God Himself who filled Elizabeth with His Holy Spirit and she spoke the Word of God as we remember in verses 42 to 45.
All of that just removed any final small trace of doubt from Mary's mind, all of that erased any lingering fears or questions. This was the final confirmation that what the angel had told her was in fact the truth and that she was carrying in her womb the beginnings of the life of the Messiah, the Savior of the world. All her doubts then having been erased, all her questions to some degree having been answered, her faith having been settled rock solid, she then in verse 46 bursts out in praise...praise pours out of her mouth.
This is what she says, "And Mary said, "My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior, for He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is His name. And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him. He has done mighty deeds with His arm. He has scattered those who were proud and the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has exalted those who are humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty handed. He has given help to Israel, His servant, in remembrance of His mercy as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever." That is called Mary's Magnificat from the Latin word that translates the word "exalts" in verse 46. We'll just call it Mary's praise.
Mary is a model believer. She heard a word from the Lord. She believed it. She submitted to it. And she praised God for it. Mary is a model believer who hears the Word of God, believes it with her whole heart, acts upon it no matter what the consequence might be, leaving her concerns with God and bursts forth in praise.
The praise of Mary, frankly, is a classic example of pure worship. There may not be a better one in the New Testament. In fact, this is often called the Hymn of the Incarnation. It is a hymn of praise to God who is incarnate in Christ...and in Mary's case in her very womb.
Mary, this young teen-aged girl had her heart and mind literally saturated with the Old Testament Word of God. The psalm contains repeated echoes of Hannah's prayers, you remember, from 1 Samuel 1 and 2. Hannah was the one who had prayed to God for a child and God also worked wondrously in her life to provide her with a child named Samuel. The psalm that Mary pours out here contains numerous references to the law, to the Psalms and to the writings of the prophets. It indicates that this young teen-aged girl knew her Old Testament. It's a great testimony to her own life and her devotion. It's a great testimony to her parents and how she had been raised to love the Word of God and to know it very well. And it's not as if before offering this praise she has to go and find a concordance so she can bring together the assorted verses. They just flow from within her.
For example, she starts out in verse 46 by saying. "My soul doeth magnify the Lord," which is an echo of Psalm 34:2, "My soul shall make her boast in the Lord." In verse 47 she says, "And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior," which echoes Isaiah 45:21, "There is no God else beside Me, a just God and a Savior." And in verse 48 she says, "He has regarded the lowest state of His handmaid," which echoes 1 Samuel 1:11, "If Thou wilt indeed look on the infliction of Thine handmaid and remember me and not forget Thy handmaid," the words of Hannah. It also is reminiscent of Psalm 136:23, "Who remembered us in our low estate, for His mercy endures forever." Again in verse 48 she says, "Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed," which echoes the words of Leah in Genesis 30 verse 13, "Happy am I for the daughters will call me blessed." In verse 49 she says, "He that is mighty has done to me great things," which echoes Psalm 126:3, "The Lord has done great things for us whereof we are glad." And then in verse 49 she says, "Holy is His name," directly quoting Psalm 111:9, "Holy and reverend is His name." And so it goes that she is very well versed in the Old Testament as she unfolds her familiarity with Scripture and applies it to her own situation.
She also understands the history of Israel. She understands how God has exercised His mighty arm in verse 51 and how in the past He has scattered the proud. He has brought down rulers. He exalts the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, sent the rich empty handed. She understands how through the history of Israel God has helped Israel, verse 54, and done so in remembrance of His mercy promised, in verse 55, by the Abrahamic covenant. She is not just familiar with Scripture, she knows covenant theology. She understands the theology of the Abrahamic covenant. She understands that it was an eternal pledge made to Abraham by which generations would be blessed. She is knowledgeable of Scripture and she is familiar with theology. She had read, she had heard, she had memorized, she had meditated on the sacred Scripture and when her heart burst out in praise it wasn't trivial and it wasn't sort of self-invented. Scripture just poured out of her mouth. It was the language of Scripture showing her alacrity, her facility and her familiarity with the text. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, as Matthew 12:34 and when she spoke it reflected that her heart was filled with God's Word.
Mary, this young teen-aged girl knew the God of Scripture, the God of Israel in a deeply personal way. She knew His Word. She understood it. She had studied it. She had laid hold of its promises and its covenants. And those promises filled her thoughts and filled her heart. And when she says in verse 48, "All generations will call me blessed," she is speaking of herself as the recipient, not the dispenser of blessing. She doesn't say all generations will look to me to bless them. They'll consider me blessed because of what I received. She is never the dispenser of blessing. She's never the dispenser of divine grace. It is the Lord to whom her soul magnifies in verse 46. It is God my Savior whom her spirit exalts in verse 47. She sings of the great things that God has done, verse 49, for me. Great things God has done on her behalf. She rejoices in the great mercy God has shown her.
Now this is the key to understanding Mary's praise. It is an expression of great faith. It is an expression of her love for God, her worship of God, her understanding of Scripture, the promises of God, the pledges of God. A young woman in incredible circumstances with immense challenges and difficulties who was nevertheless pouring out worship to the God she knew and the God she believed.
I want to show you three things that we learn about worship from Mary. Number one is the attitude of worship. Mary is a perfect illustration of the attitude of worship. And I'm going to give you four sub-points to this that unfold at least to me the attitude of worship.
Number one, worship is internal. You will notice in verse 46 that Mary said, "My soul exalts the Lord." In verse 47, "My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." Down deeper than her mouth, down deeper than her lips was her soul and her spirit. Those terms really are interchangeable in the Scripture, they have to do with the inner person. She summons up, she uses them both though to sort of emphasize how whole this is in her inner person. Her whole inner being, mind, emotion, will, she sums it all up, all of her mental faculties, all of her emotional feelings, all of those elements of her being on the inside are called together like the instruments in a great orchestra that come together in a crescendo of praise...everything deep inside of her. Worship begins with an attitude. It is the inner heart of adoring praise that is the essence of real worship. External worship, shallow superficial observance is intolerable to God. Isaiah 29:13 says, "This people draw near Me with their mouth and with their lips they do honor Me, but every move of their heart far from Me." That is a dishonor to God. Jesus said God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. It has to rise from deep inside.
The true worshiper is the one whose heart is devoted to adoring God with total sincerity, the one who deep down has profound gratitude to God. And that's where it has to come from, not on the surface. It cannot be shallow. It cannot be in any sense superficial. That is frankly intolerable to God. It has to come from deep inside the soul and spirit. As it were, untouched by circumstances, it rises because of what we know to be true about our God and His great work. It is internal. Let's build on that a little bit.
Secondly, it's intense. In verse 46 she says, "My soul exalts the Lord," and some translations would say, "Makes great," some would say, "Magnifies." The word is megalunae(?), mega...in other words, it means to enlarge, to magnify, to cause something to swell, or to cause something to grow, to extend something. It's...mega is used with being loud, it's used for the word "great" or "large" and it also implies the intensity here.
Mary is not just from deep within praising God in some minimal fashion, but with a swelling, magnifying, enlarging attitude from the heart. And then the word "rejoices" in verse 47, "My spirit has rejoiced, or rejoices," agalliao, it means to be overjoyed.
You will notice that the music that we present here is not music that's intended to do something to your emotions, it's music that's intended to do something to your mind. It's music to make you think, not make you feel. We want you to think about the great truths so that you can worship God on the basis of the things that are true about Him, that's worshiping in truth as well as spirit.
And so, the worship that Mary offered was not something that took some kind of external inducement to generate. It was something that came from the heart on a contemplation of what God was doing in her life, and we'll see more about that in a moment. She worshiped then internally and she worshiped with intensity. She couldn't resist the magnification of the Lord and this overjoyed attitude.
Maryloved God down deep in her heart and who knew the truth about God and who knew her God well. And who in response to this great mercy of God, this great blessing of God to make her the mother of Messiah and to bring into the world the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God, the great, glorious promised King, just bursts out in praise and it isn't just that she's thankful for what God is doing for her, but what's going to happen in the whole history of redemption through the Messiah's arrival. She's filled with joy and her praise is internal and intense.
There's a third thing about true worship. It is also habitual. I'm just going to borrow this from verse 46 where you have a present tense verb "magnifies" or "exalts" and just stretching that a little bit, that's a present tense verb meaning continuous action. Here is someone who is in the flow of life praising God in an unbroken fashion. It flows on uninterrupted. Fluctuating circumstances do not impact true worship because no matter what happens circumstantially that doesn't change God, right? That doesn't change God, it doesn't change His Word, it doesn't change His purpose. It doesn't change His promises. It doesn't change our responsibility. That's why the Apostle Paul said, "In everything give thanks." You know, the circumstances of life may be going like this...but your attitude ought to be going like this...because nothing that is eternal changes. It flows on uninterrupted. Paul said he had learned whatever state he was in to be content. He learned in every situation to be thankful. His whole life was a magnification of the Lord. If I live, I live for the Lord. If I die, I die unto the Lord. Whether I live or die, I'm the Lord's. Nothing ever changed that, it was unwavering.
The fourth thing, it's humble. And I'll say this without fear of contradiction. Only humble people worship. Proud people can't worship God, they're too busy worshiping themselves. And I mean, right at the beginning of the Ten Commandments God said, "You shall have no other gods." And the dominant god, competing for the throne of divine rule, is you. True worship can only come from a humble heart...that's right...only from a humble heart. That's why James 4:6 says, "God resists the proud, God gives grace to the humble." Pride stands in the way of true worship. Only two things hinder true worship: one is ignorance, two is pride.
Your worship can be hindered if you don't know the God you're worshiping. And that's a sad thing. You know, there are so many people who would say they're Christians and perhaps many of them are, and they're sitting in church where they're taught very little, they know very little about God. Their knowledge of the Bible is very shallow, very limited, very superficial, almost infantile. They're spiritual babes. And they're cheated out of worshiping God in the greatest sense because they just don't know enough about God to be literally exhilarated by that reality.
And the other thing that stands in the way, once you cross the barrier of ignorance and you know God and you understand the Word of God, the other thing that interrupts worship, and severely interrupts it to the point where all of a sudden grinds it to a halt is pride. Pride is the worship of self, in a word. You want a definition of pride, here it is, worship of self. And worship of self competes with worship of God. Proud people can't be thankful because they never get what they think they deserve...no matter what they get. Proud people can't be thankful because they constantly remember all the wrongs done to them. Proud people can't be true worshipers of God because they want to strike back at everybody who offends them, so they've got a bitter edge. Proud people find it very difficult to be filled with praise because they constantly reflect on how they've been mistreated, even by God.
So anybody who is a true worshiper is a person who is selfless. If we can just cross the barrier of your ignorance and teach you who God is, and you can deal with the sin of pride, then you can really worship in spirit and in truth. In fact, the Bible says God hates the proud. And when you come to Jesus, according to the Beatitudes, He says, "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit," that means to realize they're bankrupt, they're nothing. "Blessed are those who mourn," weeping over their nothingness. "Blessed are those who are meek, or humble." "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness," they know they have nothing to offer. It's the meek and the humble who worship.
That's Mary. Look at verse 48, "He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave." And isn't it amazing, "Behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed." Boy, can you believe that? Isn't that amazing? God has looked at me and I'm a nobody, is what she's saying. And it's unbelievable to think of it, but by His mercy, me, an absolute nobody, a humble nobody bondslave, and generations upon generations after this are going to make note of how God blessed this nobody. That's what she's saying.
As I said at the beginning, some women, if God had chosen to tell them they would be the mother of Messiah...would have been proud about that. You never see that with Mary. She was just constantly overwhelmed that God would have even used her for this. She knew she was a sinner. She knew she was nothing. She knew it was mercy. Look at verse 49, what staggered Mary was the Mighty One had done great things for me. In other words, the power of God had moved into my life to produce this child. And here's the remarkable part, "And holy is His name." That's the shock. Can you get this, she says? I'm a nobody, I'm a nothing and yet in the future all generations are going to count me as having been blessed by God because of the mighty One coming into my life and giving me this child, and the amazing thing is He is holy and He has still condescended to work in my life.
You see, it was God's holiness against her sinfulness that blew her mind. That was the issue. It just staggered her. First of all, socially she was nothing. She says He's regarded the lowest state. Lowest state is simply humiliation as a state of being. She was nobody. She was a simple village girl in a no place town called Nazareth. She was nobody. She wasn't important in society, she wasn't important at all. And you know what? Even after this happened she never became important after this. She was never lifted up to any throne. The church never put her on a pedestal or a throne. She was never accorded any particular honors. You don't see that anywhere happening in the book of Acts. She just blended right in to the church with everybody else. She was a very simple girl.
Yes, she was of the royal line of David. That's true. But there were a lot of folks in the royal line of David who were just kind of hidden. Their little secret was that they were in the line of David, but it was a secret to everybody else and they were largely among the poor. She was a common woman. She was engaged to a very common young guy. He was an apprentice carpenter. What did a carpenter do? Well, you know what he did, he made yokes to put on beasts of burden. He made plows. He made staves, sticks. Made tables and chairs, maybe even did some masonry work. Just a common laborer.
But it wasn't just the social status that describes her. Although she does say she was a woman of low estate, and that does refer to her sort of humiliation as a state of being, it isn't limited to her social status, it has more to do with her spiritual character. She recognizes she is a sinner. She recognizes she is a sinner. She's unworthy. How can God, the Mighty One, who is perfectly holy link up with this woman? It's just...it's more than she can comprehend. She doesn't have an exalted view of herself, she has an exalted view of the Lord in a humble view of herself. It just staggers her that God would come to her, this humble nobody, this bondslave. It staggers her that all generations in the future are going to look back at her and note the unique and singular blessing that God bestowed upon her when the Mighty One did His great thing of planting the Messiah in her womb. And staggering thought of all thoughts, He's holy and He still is interacting with a sinner. Just beyond comprehension.
That's the kind of humility that makes for true worship. When you're overwhelmed with your sinfulness and you're knowledgeable about God's holiness, and you're blessed to know that a holy God would work in your life. That's humility. If Mary was to be exalted, if she was to be blessed, as verse 42 says, it was because God saw her unworthiness, her sinfulness, her lowliness and gave her singular mercy.
In Isaiah 57:15, "Thus says the high and lofty One," this is God speaking, the One who inhabits eternity whose name is holy, "I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit." God says I'm up in heaven, and guess who I'm with? I'm with the humble...I'm with the humble.
What then is the attitude of worship? It is internal, it is intense, it is habitual, it is humble. The right attitude for worship is a deep heartfelt inner spring of intense attitude and joy over the mercy of God that bursts forth habitually from a humble soul who is overwhelmed by his or her own sense of unworthiness. That's the attitude of worship.
Secondly, let's look at the object of worship. And Mary teaches us this as well by her example. The object of worship, very, very clear, verse 46, "My soul exalts the Lord." Notice how she defines the Lord in verse 47. "My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." She could have said a lot of things...God, my helper, God my strength, God my wisdom. She could have said a lot of things about God but all worship really focuses on God as Savior. Let me tell you, if I believed that God was creator, and I do, of course, but if it was limited to that, if I believed and my belief in God was limited to creator, I'd have a hard time worshiping Him. I could say, "Well, you know, it's...you know, You're an amazing mind, You're an amazing God because You made all this," but I'd have a hard time worshiping Him if He had never done anything to deliver me from my sins and eternal judgment, right? What would be the point? I would always be saying...Well, it's nice that You made all of this, is there anything You can do about my sin? Like the nations of the world who have their deities, I could fear a God and try to pacify Him or appease Him. Or like the prophets of Baal, I could try to wake him up from a sleep to come to my aid occasionally.
But if God didn't offer me salvation from my sin and deliverance from eternal hell, I would be hard pressed to worship Him. Frankly, I would be too disappointed. And that's why in the end, we worship God not because He's the creator, not because He's the sustainer of life, not because He has brought into the world so many things that make us rich, we worship God because in the end He saves us from sin and hell, right? And that's where Mary was. "My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit is rejoiced in God my Savior." She knew in the coming of Messiah was the reality of salvation coming to its fruition. She knew that was going to happen was the Messiah would be born, the Lamb of God, the One who would bear sins. God was going to redeem through this child, this child's name would be Jesus, He would save His people from their sins, as Matthew 1 said. And so she knew what was happening. Salvation was happening. And so she's worshiping God as the saving God whose salvation is now coming into history through her child.
And frankly, as I said, there wouldn't be any point in worshiping God if we were all going to die and go to hell. We would despise Him...we would feel cheated by Him. Worship is then primarily, substantially, foundationally because we acknowledge God as our Savior from sin. God is a Savior, we've said that many times. God is a Savior by nature. He's even a Savior temporally. Sinners don't die the minute they sin. Sinners smell the grass and the flowers and see the blue sky and eat a good meal and sit in a comfortable chair and love their wives and have blessed children and kiss a baby and take a vacation. And...I mean, they live and that's because God by nature is a Savior. First Timothy 4:10, "He's the Savior of all men," temporally and physically, He gives them a saving...a saving grace.
What do you mean by that? Well the moment you sin you should die...the wages of sin is death, the soul that sins it shall die. But you don't because God is a saving God and by nature He demonstrates that in a physical level. Sadly there are people who accept the fact that they live and they go on with life and they enjoy His common grace and they don't ever see Him as the Savior of their eternal souls. But He puts His saving nature on display by saving sinners temporally and physically in order to lead them to repentance, Romans 2 says, so He can save them spiritually and eternally.
Mary is saying "God is my Savior," not just from illness and sickness and trouble in life. God is my Savior from sin, is what she is saying. God is my Savior from sin. This child will be named Jesus, Matthew 1:21, because He would save His people from their sin. Mary is worshiping God as a sinner because she is so thrilled that God will save her from her sin. She knew that depended on grace.
So, the attitude of worship, we've seen, and the object of worship, we've seen. The object of worship is the God who is our Savior. No matter what else may come and go in life, no matter what troubles you have, in the light of the end, what's there to be worried about, right? Your salvation is eternal and secure.
The third element of worship that Mary illustrates is the reason or the motive for worship. She worships from the heart with intensity, habitually, humbly. She worships the God who is Savior. She worships Him for three reasons. Reason number one, what God is doing for her. Great illustration here.
Look at verse 48, "He has regard for the humble state of His bondslave, for behold from this time on all generations will count me blessed for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is His name." Worship starts right there, folks, it really does. It starts with what God is doing in your life. And that's where she starts her worship. It's what God is doing in my life that causes me to worship. The only person who truly worships is the one who has experienced the saving power of God, the mercy of God. She's a believer. This is a true believer here. Sure she was before the birth of Christ and before the cross, but she was a true believer. She had been saved from her sins by faith in the true God. She was a genuine penitent, even at a young age she had come to the knowledge of the law of God. She knew she didn't measure up to that law. She had gone to God with a penitent heart and asked for mercy and received it. God had saved her. She says, "God, my Savior." And now that great saving work would be finally accomplished when God who had saved her from her sins would put her sins on Messiah who would die in her place. She knew shew as a sinner. She saw her need. She knew God was her Savior and she worships God in that knowledge.
That's where worship starts, it starts personally. Like all of us who are saved from our sins, we start praising God for what He's done for us. Certainly the blood of David flowed in her veins, but for many generations that royal race had lived in seclusion among the poor, cherishing the secret of its high descent but living in social status. And she saw not so much the low social status as her low spiritual state. She was astonished, this little phrase, verse 48, "He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave." He literally has looked on me. God looked down on me, unworthy, a nobody with no rights and only sin and saved me. Her praise then starts very personally because of what God has done for her. This is what overwhelms her.
Verse 49, "All generations in the future are going to count me blessed because the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is His name." Some translations say "the Mighty One has done great things to me," namely it saved her and called her to this high calling. You know, beloved, real worship starts with what God has done in your life. And if you're not worshiping God, maybe you need to go back and be thankful again for what God has done. You need to rehearse again the greatness of His salvation. Have you forgotten how gracious God is? How great His work in your life is? Have you forgotten that the Mighty One has done great things for you and holy is His name? Have you forgotten that a holy God has stooped down to save a wretched sinner like we are? If you can't be thankful about that, maybe you don't understand that or you are indeed self-centered. The joyous, deep-down soul felt praise and adoration that literally overwhelms the heart and pours out in praise to God rises when you remember your great salvation.
So, first of all, the reason for her worship was what God was doing for her. Secondly, the reason for her worship extended to what God would do for others. She is not only thrilled about His work in her life, but look at verse 50, "And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him." There she quotes Psalm 103 and verse 17. And she's again showing her familiarity with the Old Testament. And she says and it's not just me, but this mercy of God, this salvation of God is going to come to generation after generation after generation to people who fear, or reverence God. Wherever there are sincere worshipers, wherever there are those who truly love God, who truly come to God for mercy and grace...there is going to be that same salvation. This praise starts with her, as it always does, and then it goes beyond her and she's praising God for what He's going to do in the future to bring the same salvation to all who fear Him. Just another way to say all the saved, all who believe, all whose hearts are filled with deep and reverent regard for the person and will of God and commitment to His glory. She's worshiping God not only because of her own personal experience of salvation, but that which will come in the future.
Thirdly, and this, I think, is so beautiful. She worships God because of what He's done for others in the past. Starting with herself, moves forward and then goes backward. Verse 51, "He has done mighty deeds." There are seven aorist tenses. He has...twice in verse 51...He has, verse 52...and has, verse 53...he has, verse 54...he has...and so it goes. And she's looking back to the past and she's worshiping God for what He is doing in her life, what He will do in the lives of generations to come of people who fear Him, and she worships God for what is already history. She looks back in redemptive history.
Now this is a typical Jewish approach to worship. You find this all through the Psalms. Very typical...they worship God basically for two categories. They worship God because of who He was, reciting His attributes, and what He had done, reciting His deeds. She went back over history. Believe me, if we had time we'd go through and show illustrations in the Old Testament of these things. But she says...I can go back and I can see times when He's done mighty deeds with His arm. The history of Israel evidences that. He has scattered those who were proud and the thoughts of their heart. How many go back to Egypt and see what He did to Pharaoh, for example. How many would go back to the book of Daniel and see what He did to Nebuchadnezzar who was so proud and lifted up in his heart. God had to turn him into like a wild beast. God has done that in behalf of His people. Verse 52, "He has brought down rulers from their thrones." We could go back to the study of the taking of the land of Canaan and how God used the children of Israel to go in and how they took over that land and it became the possession of God. There were many leaders and rulers who were dethroned. And in their place, verse 52, "He exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty handed." How many times the hand of divine judgment came down on the wealthy and the prosperous and the self-fulfilled. How many times, verse 54, He has given help to Israel, His servant. All through history.
And so, she's going back...she may have had some specific occasions in mind. She may have just been doing somewhat of a general sweep over the history of Israel. She said in the history of Israel in God's redemptive history, He overturned the normal social order. The proud with all their thoughts, the imaginations of their hearts, the mighty with their great positions of power and thrones, the rich with all their possessions, they've all be overturned and overthrown. God has exercised His mighty arm in overthrowing the proud and the mighty and the rich. And on the other hand, He has filled the hungry with food, with good things and that's taken, as you know, out of Psalm 107. And He has exalted those who are humble, back in verse 52, and He's given help to Israel His servant, verse 54.
God overturns the natural order. You see, all the most powerful, all the wealthiest, all the proudest intellectuals cannot withstand the purposes of God. God has torn them all down and given mercy to the humble, the lowly, the hungry, the outcasts, a wandering slave people called Israel. And all of this, this is so good, verse 54, "He does in remembrance of His...what's the word?...mercy...mercy." He does it in remembrance of His mercy. He is merciful to sinners. And as long as you're going to be proud, self-sufficient, and you're going to trust in your riches, and in your throne, your achievement, your exaltation, God is going to tear you down. But where you heart is hungry and you recognize your low estate and your servile circumstances, God will lift you up.
Mary saw a history of mercy in the past. She was experiencing mercy in the present. And she saw mercy for generations to come. She's looking at redemptive history. She is worshiping the God who is a Savior, who is saving her, will save generations and has saved generations in the past. This is quite an incredible hymn that Mary presents. She sees all of redemptive history, in verse 55, as a fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. She was a theologian. "It's all because of what He said to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever."
You go back to Genesis 12, and that section that follows in the book of Genesis and you will read that God promised to Abraham that He would bless through Abraham's seed the world. He was promising salvation in that great covenant. And Mary is saying...God who promised way back in Genesis 12 salvation to and through Abraham is bringing that salvation to pass by His mercy in my life, He'll do it in generations to come, He has done it in generations past. God is a saving God and that great saving purpose of God will reach its culmination when Jesus goes to the cross to die and bear the sins of all the people in all three categories...present, future and past. So this hymn of praise is a sweeping example of how it is that we should praise God. We see the attitude, we see the object and we see the reasons for her praise. This incarnation, this child is God showing mercy to me, to generations yet ahead, and generations in the past, for Jesus was the Savior of all who believed in every generation as God laid the iniquities of us all on Him.
Mary is one of us, folks. She's not to be worshiped. She is one of us. She is a worshiper and she gives us an example of how we ought to worship. She's a model believer. She heard God's Word, she believed it. She acted on it and in response she poured out grateful praise. That's how to live your life as a believer.
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