Luke 1:39-56 | A Song of Awe | Alex Culpepper

As we begin the message this morning, I want to invite you to think back to a time when you felt really small in a good way. Sometimes you feel small in a bad way. I want to invite you to think back to a time when you felt small in a good way. Usually people have this kind of experience. If you've ever been to, like, the Grand Canyon or some aspect where you see some part of nature that's just so much bigger than you, you can have this sen.

Sense of smallness. There are thoughts and ideas where you can encounter this sense of smallness. I'm gonna share for you three examples for myself where I had this experience of smallness in a good way. So the first that I'll share with you is I was with maybe like a thousand other pastors and leaders at a conference, and everybody was like, clearly engaged in the worship. And whoever was leading worship at the time and the sense of the experience, they thought that it was appropriate.

They pulled all the music back from the experience. They looked at the way that people were engaging and said, hey, we're all just going to like, individually just call out praise to God for the things that he's done, for the things that we see him doing. We're just going to each in our own way right now, pray out loud prayers of praise to God. And the experience of that, like, there were like, ebbs and flows in the room where you would have waves of the volume increasing as you could, like, sense the. The energy in the room, like people as they were, the excitement in their prayers.

And then it would back off a little bit and then it would push again and then it would back off a little bit. And just this sense of like, yeah, like the Holy Spirit working amongst us to just direct our hearts towards God in a really clear way. That was a moment that I felt small. The second time, or another time that I felt small was the first time that I ever flew on a plane. And just like the experience of being above the clouds and looking out over the clouds and just the way that that looks, there is something about that that's really striking and just gives you a sense of God's majesty in that.

And then the third experience that I had is related to a quote that I heard. And the quote is by a guy named Niklas von Zinzendorf. And there's going to be a test on that later, so you'll have to remember it. But this quote that he had, I heard it and it struck me and I keep kind of coming back to it. But he was, you know, encouraging people who are called to be pastors and leaders.

And in his writing, he has this very clear, famous quote. And the quote is, your job is to preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. Right? That. That it's not your name that people are meant to remember.

It's your message that people are meant to remember. And so if you could just put your attention to that, that would be a really good thing. And so. So some people have words for these. They call them, like, transcendent experiences.

But what I really think they are, I think they are moments of perspective. God uses moments of perspective like what I talked about, the sense of smallness that we get. God uses them as powerful tools for shaping our souls. And my prayer for this morning is that God would give each of us, each person, this moment of perspective so that we could just get a different glimpse of who he is, so that he could do some more shaping on our souls. So we're in a series called When Christmas First.

First sang. This is a series. We're looking intentionally at the role that song played in the very first Christmas for God's people. Because Christmas music is not a new thing. Song has been a part of Christmas since the very first one.

And it's been integral to how people have recognized the significance of what happened when Jesus came. So in this series, we're looking at these very first poems and songs that were written to honor the reality that God had descended to earth as a human, that he might live for us and die for us so that we could find peace with God. So today's song that we're looking at is traditionally called the Magnificat. This is a song that magnifies God, that Mary sings. And the whole idea of magnifying God is another way to say that is a song that makes us feel small, that recognizes how great God is in our own smallness.

So a bit of context before we get into the passage. Mary has just been visited by the angel Gabriel. And so an angel shows up to you, which, again, if you're looking for an experience of smallness, this is a good place to start, right? And the angel is carrying a message from God. The message is, hey, Mary, you're going to become pregnant with the savior of the world.

And Mary's response to that was this moment of incredible faith. Her words were, whatever, like, I am the Lord's servant, and whatever the Lord says I will do. Let it be to me. As the Lord says, it's my pleasure to do his will. So a little bit of background on Mary and what's happened here.

So, so Mary's story is being contrasted with the story of another person who had an angelic experience. His name was Zachariah. And Zachariah, when the angel showed up to him, he was like, well, prove it to me that this is going to happen. And the angel wasn't very happy about his attitude. And so because of his doubt and because of his unbelief, the angel said, okay, well, now you're not going to be able to talk until your child is born.

Because Zachariah was promised that he would also have a son. And the reason he didn't believe it is because Zachariah was old and Elizabeth was old. And God, you know, has stories in the Bible of how he has enabled old people to have children. But Zachariah was not believing that this would happen. And they had been barren for many years.

They hadn't had any children up to that point. And so Zachariah questions it, and the angel says, okay, well, let's see if we can actually work some miracles here. And so Zechariah was not able to talk. But then his story is being contrasted with Mary's story because Mary's response is a response of faith, which is very interesting because Zachariah is a priest. Zachariah is supposed to have great faith.

And who God is, he is supposed to have incredible confidence in what God can do. But actually, Zachariah is kind of reflective of the spiritual temperature of Israel right? Now, that God used to work long ago, but that's not something that he does really anymore. But when the angel shows up to Mary, Mary actually proves to us to be the example of what genuine faith looks like. And so Mary has already had this pretty transcendent experience.

But then kind of God turns up the volume on perspective, making experiences for Mary and what we see next. So in verse 39 of Luke, chapter one, it says this. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth, right? So remember, the angel showed up to Zachariah, said, hey, you're gonna have a kid.

And that is insane, because they were barren, right? And all that. It's true. And Zachariah didn't believe. And Zachariah can't speak, right, because the angel took his speech away.

But then. But then the angel that appeared to Mary said to Mary, hey, just so you know, your relative Elizabeth is pregnant with another child. And Mary would know. That's A miracle, right? Because of her age.

And not only because of her age, but also because they've been barren their whole life. And so the angel told this to Mary, and Mary is now responding to the information that the angel has given her. So as soon as she has this incredible experience where she says, you're going to be pregnant with the Savior of the world, she's like, okay, next step, I'm going to go to the person that the angel told me about, and I'm going to go see my relative and see Elizabeth and how she is doing. And so when she goes to see Elizabeth, this whole experience that she has is just full of, like, the supernatural power and presence of God in an incredible way. And so verse 41 says, When Elizabeth heard the greeting, Mary has literally just found out that she's going to be pregnant with the Savior of the world.

So she gets up and goes, and she's like, she's racing to see her relative. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. So a couple of notes. First of all, the angel only appeared to Zachariah, not to Elizabeth. And that angel didn't say anything about Mary.

Elizabeth did not know about Mary and the role that she would play. Zechariah did not know about Mary and the role that she would play. And so Elizabeth only knows that she's miraculously present, that she, Elizabeth, is miraculously pregnant, and that her son has a role to play in announcing the Messiah. That's all the information that she has right now, which means that there's a bunch of stuff that's been told to Mary that neither Zachariah nor Elizabeth know about. The second thing to note or be aware of is that Mary is not going to be showing in her pregnancy at this point.

She has, like, literally just become pregnant. And so here, what the author is telling us, what the author lets us know, is that Mary's voice kind of triggers this thing that brings multiple pieces of the divine timeline together in one room at the same time, where the conceived Jesus is in Mary's womb and John the Baptist has been in Elizabeth's womb, womb for six months. And Elizabeth and Mary are somehow caught up in the middle of what God is doing in all of this. And when it says the Holy Spirit filled her, what this is telling us is that she is having a transcendent experience, something that is beyond her in this miraculous experience that she has. And so she says, she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among all Women.

And blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb, who, by the way, is supposed to announce the birth of, or announce the arrival of the King of the Savior, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. Everything that Elizabeth says here has been miraculously revealed to her by the Holy Spirit.

It is information that she did not have before Mary walked through the door. So there are four things, in fact, that were revealed to Elizabeth. Number one, it was miraculously revealed to Elizabeth that Mary is pregnant. She didn't know that beforehand. She could.

That was not visible on Mary when she arrived. And not only is she pregnant, but she's pregnant with the Messiah, right? She says, my Lord, the mother of my Lord. And that's also important. Right?

So the Messiah, she somehow now pieces together that the Messiah is that word. Lord is a pretty significant word, right? It's a word referring not, you know, even potentially, not just to the role of the Messiah as king, but the role of the Messiah as, like, God in the flesh. Right. And then the fourth thing that's revealed to her is that Mary has somehow had a supernatural message from God, a miraculous message from God, and is now obeying that message.

All of these things were things that Elizabeth did not have information about before Mary showed up. And so Mary had this incredible, powerful angelic visitation. And maybe she's told Joseph about it, but that would be the only person. And so when she walks through Elizabeth's door and speaks, Elizabeth just erupts with all of these things that the Holy Spirit has just revealed to her. She.

She says, oh, oh, you've. You've heard a message from God. And you're. You're so filled with faith. You're responding to that message.

You're. You're obeying God. I can see that you have taken steps of obedience, unlike my husband, who kind of didn' believe the angel. But you're taking steps of obedience, and that's why you're here. That's why you've walked through the door and you bear.

You bear my Lord in your womb. You have this amazing privilege to carry the Savior. Like, even the baby, you need to know. Even the baby in my womb knows what's happening right now. And so this is, on its face, a plainly supernatural, prophetic experience in which Elizabeth is telling Mary Details that Mary thought nobody else knew.

And so this, like, these things can only be supernaturally revealed. And it's accomplishing two things for Mary in this moment. Number one, it's confirming to Mary that she's not crazy, right? Because when she walks into the room and somebody else starts saying these things, she's like, oh, this is, this is actually happening. And then the second thing that it does is it's showing that God is powerfully working right now at this moment in history.

And out of this, this perspective, shaping experience, this transcendent experience, Mary produces some words of poetry. Mary produces a song.

This is what it says. It says, mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

She's basically saying, you know, I am so small right now in the best possible way.

If you have ever had the privilege of receiving a prophetic word from someone, you may know something about what this is like. Because someone, you know, maybe somebody is praying for you or they tell you something that they believe the Lord might want to convey to you. And you hear them say the words that they say and you go, where did you get those words from? How did that come about? You hear that and it's like, God's got your number when they say these things, it's like so specifically addressed to exactly what you needed to hear.

And that's the experience that Mary's having. That's the experience that these words erupt out of. And so the first thing I want to draw to our attention here, a divine moment, moments of perspective put us in awe of God. Like he would, he would speak to her about what he's doing over here. And he like, and he can reveal himself to people in that way.

Now you add to that this supernatural revelation from Elizabeth. You add to that that all of this with Mary is directly connected to a millennia old promise about a sa who would come and save the world, who is supposed to bring an end to the brokenness of the world. And so Mary is incredibly floored by this experience. And she just goes like, she's exclaiming, God is so big to me right now. That's the first lines of her song.

My soul magnifies the Lord. Literally my whole being, myself, everything I am right now is just like awe of how big God is in this moment.

So verse 48. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

You ever wonder what, like, if Mary could come in and, like, have a conversation with us right now, what she would say about this whole experience. If we could interview her and if we could talk to her and ask her about what this was like, do you know what she would tell us? She would say, you know what? You call me blessed. And that's true.

But my blessing is not about me. It is about the one who is mighty and has done great things for me. Holy is his name, right? If people are calling me blessed, it's only just a further reflection of how great he is. And so even though Mary is having kind of this incredible moment of perspective that not everybody understands, like, she handles this moment with incredible humility, right?

Because what she's doing is she's saying, future generations are going to realize that I am the mother of the Lord, but I need to clarify for myself and for everyone else too that, well, this is only because of how great God is. This is only because of how amazing he is. And so don't walk away from this. Like, she's essentially saying, I hope that those future generations will not walk away saying, oh, Mary's pretty great. Like, they should walk away saying how great God is and give him first place in your life.

And so the second thing to notice here is that divine moments of perspective will humble us profoundly when we have encounters with God. When God reshapes our thinking or shows us something about his truth by His Spirit, it will profoundly humble us. And so you want to know something interesting? The psalm that she is speaking out here, it's not an original like, she. She doesn't just, like, come up with this.

Like, she. She actually is pulling on another song from centuries and centuries earlier, right? What she's doing is she. She. There's a.

There's this theme and pattern of another song earlier in Scripture that she probably pretty likely had memorized, right? And so she's as. She's bringing in her some of her own words to that old song. And to. To speak about her experience, there was this woman named.

And if you want to read about Hannah, you can go to First Samuel, chapter two. And Hannah was a woman who was barren, and she prayed for a son. She asked God for a son and promised to God, God, if you give me a son, I'm going to give my son to your service, to spend his days in your service. And that one who was given to Hannah, that son would become the prophet Samuel. And so when God answered Hannah's prayer.

Hannah sang a song. And what Mary's song is is it's just a further development. It's another couple of verses added on to Hannah's song, which speaks yet again of Mary's humble perspective. Because she doesn't write something new here, she just pulls onto something old that people are familiar with. She.

She sings a song because she sees herself as a part of the trajectory of miracles and working that God has just been doing throughout history. She sees herself as participating in the same thing that Hannah was participating in. So verse 51, he has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. And then 52 and 53, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. Most of us in this room are not Hebrew speaking people. And so I would not expect us to know anything really about how the Hebrews write songs. But in everything that they write, Hebrew people are usually emphasizing what is in the middle, what is like sandwiched right in the center. And so when you look at a phrase and a poem that seems to repeat, there's an invitation in that repetition to kind of look a little deeper at what's, what's happening.

And here on the outside of the verse of this song, you have this mentioning of the mighty being brought from their thrones and the rich being sent away empty. But then in the middle, right next to each other, you have the humble, hungry being emphasized. So whatever Mary is saying here, she's like emphasizing the humble, the hungry, those who are poor, those who are of lowly estate. Like the thing that Mary is highlighting is the poor, the hungry and the humble. And this is not just the materially poor, but those who are poor in spirit, right?

This is not God coming for the righteous and the well established. This is not God coming for those who don't need a doctor. This is God coming for the sick and the suffering and those who know they need God's help.

So listen, this is saying, Mary in this song is calling out and saying, hey, listen, if you are satisfied and if you are self sufficient, if you are comfortable, insecure and in your own skill and your own standing, then the arrival of Jesus is your opportunity right now to recognize your own need. And so the third thing to take note of here is that divine moments of perspective make us needy before God, right? This is an encouragement to the humble and the pitiable and the poor and the blind. And the naked and the needy and the hungry who realize that no matter what they may attain or, or acquire in this world, like it will not be enough. Nothing you can get here is going to be enough.

And if you are, if you can recognize that in the coming of the Savior, then it has is Jesus who has come to emphasize and lift up those who see their need, right? In his kingdom, the formerly self sufficient right, those who are rich and those who are very proud of themselves, they're going to be brought low, right? And those who are needy and find that they are lacking, you know, he's going to lift them up and they'll have the sense in his kingdom that they are quite rich. In his kingdom there is an invitation to come to him with nothing and receive from him everything that you really need.

So verse 54, he has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever. This last verse of the song that Mary writes is now just pulling on history, looking at the way that God has worked through the history of his people, Israel. And she is, she's just exclaiming God's faithfulness. God made a promise. And God showed Himself through history to be active in keeping that promise.

And again he showed up. And even though his people would drift away from him, he still showed Himself to be active in keeping his promise because he is a God who keeps his promises time and time again. He spoke to our father Abraham thousands of years ago, and guess what? He's keeping his promise right now. And so divine moments of perspective finally invite us to remember his ways.

Like, I love this about Mary, that she, she doesn't somehow see the experience that she's had as something new or something disconnected from who God is. She sees it as intricately connected to what God has already been doing. This is just one more piece of the puzzle that God has been working throughout history. And so she remembers who God is and who she has always known him to be in remembering Abraham and her fathers. And so what, what do we do with all of this?

Just heed the call to recognize your smallness. I love Mary's song because humility is paramount in this song. It's all about humility, right? And it's not a humility that says look at yourself and make yourself smaller. It's a humility that says look at God and recognize his bigness.

And that breaks down the walls of the wrong ideas that we hold onto, that breaks the walls of our misunderstandings about him, that breaks down the Walls of pride that we hold onto. It's in recognizing the bigness of God that we will learn how small we are. And so this call to humility is not a call to look more at yourself and fix your perspective of yourself. It's a call to fix your eyes on God and who he is. You know, Mary stayed in that place for three months.

She stayed there. And do you know who silently sat and watched and listened as Mary hung out in his house for three months? Zachariah. He just had to not express his opinions or perspectives about any of it. He just had to take it in what God was doing.

And in that process, God killed all of his false ideas. He had to just simply be in awe of what God was doing. God made Zechariah into a blank slate and then rewrote Zachariah's understanding of what he actually does in the world. And he started with this posture of pride and unbelief. He had his own ideas about who God is.

He wasn't much interested in what God had to say, even though he had sent an angel to him. He was pretty much opposed to the idea that miracles take place in the world.

And so, you know what we do? We come to Scripture and we come to God with our own ideas of things that we think God can't do or God shouldn't do or that, oh, that doesn't really compute with my understanding. Understanding of, like, what I want to do or what I think is right. And some of us have these ideas, right, about what is right and about what is good and about who God is. And.

And when Scripture flies in the face of those ideas, you go, yeah, but I'm still going to hold on to it, right? So. So just to give some examples, you know, I know that there are some folks who have, like, this openness to the idea of, like, yeah, we have our God and they have their God. And maybe we can all just believe in God generally and that will be enough for God, right? Maybe it's.

Maybe if they don't have faith in Jesus, they'll. Everything will still be okay. Maybe God will still honor them for being a good person. Or maybe God will honor me. You know what?

Like, I could use my money for my own purposes, not God's purposes. That's okay, God. I know God talks about money a lot, but I'm gonna keep this for myself. Or maybe, you know, I'll just give God the little bit of my time that he deserves, right? And I'll hold on to the parts that I Want to hold on with.

Or maybe I'll disagree. Like, I know God told me not to do that thing, but God wrote all his words thousands of years ago. He's a little outdated, right?

And divine moments of perspective break through all of that junk.

Like, as long as that junk is there and you're trying to stop God from touching it, right? You're saying, no, this is the way that it is. This is the way that I see things. As long as you're protecting God from that territory, I just, like, I don't know that you've seen God for who he really is. And I'm not going to tell you to like, start fix those things and correct your perspective.

I just, like, I want to invite you to consider whether God looks different than you think he looks. Because let me tell you, once your soul magnifies the Lord, it just knocks all that junk over, right? So there are some of us, in fact, I would say that all of us in some way, shape or form need to be invited to get smaller and see God rightly for who he is. And the second. So what is simply this?

If you're here in person or online and you don't know who Jesus is, I would just tell you that believing the Gospel is the ultimate moment of perspective. The baby conceived in Mary was Jesus. And Jesus would be born and he would grow up and he would start a movement of the kingdom of God coming to earth. And people would be healed and demons would be cast out, the dead would be raised, the rich would be confronted, the poor would be served and lifted up. And because the reality that all of us are spiritually bankrupt, like in actuality before a holy God, we have a spiritual deficit because we're stuck trying to satisfy ourselves with this world in betrayal against God.

And because of that, Jesus himself would also die a death in our place as a great act that might make us have a place of relationship with God that can meet us in our place of neediness before Him. And he died that death for you heard someone say before, like, if you were the only person in the whole world, he still would have died that death for you, because he so longs for you to find him in your place of need and give you exactly what you need because he loves you. And he proved that he was indeed God in the flesh, able to do all of these things by rising from the dead. And so if you've never trusted Jesus Christ, my prayer is that just today would be your moment of prayer perspective to give your life to Him. So I'M going to pray, and then after I pray, we're just going to.

We're going to respond with a song together, speaking about the offering that we bring to God because of his bigness. And then we'll. We'll transition to a fun later part of our service. And so would you pray with me, please?

God, would you draw to faith any who don't believe in you? And would you give us profound moments in this season of recognizing your bigness, God, of seeing you for who you are, of giving you the place that you deserve? And would you just undo kind of all of our false perspectives that we could have a true perspective? And we truly do need you to do this by your power, we need you to supernaturally intervene into the junk and show how big and good and kind you are.

God, I thank you for the story of Mary. I thank you that Mary was so faithful to you, God, to obey and take simple steps of obedience, to give us a picture of what profound faith looks like and to even instruct us in this song as to what it looks like to respond to your bigness and your holiness. And so, God, as we now respond in worship together, would you come and meet us? Would you draw near and set our hearts in the right place? I ask in Jesus, mighty name, Name.

Amen. Amen. Would you stand with us? And if you need prayer for anything, there's a place over on my right and on my left where people will be ready to pray with you. If you want to spend some time responding in prayer, you can do that.

If you just want to sing along and allow your heart to lift up the bigness of God, you can do that as well. But let's spend some time responding together in worship.