Luke 1:46–56
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All right, let's do a little public polling this morning. Raise your hand if you have read the book, not seen the movie, read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Okay, there's a bunch of you. Raise your hand, put your hands down. Raise your hand if you've seen the movie Unbroken. That's a lot more of you. Raise your hand if you have only seen the movie, but you have not read the book. Okay, you guys are missing out. Like, seriously, you need to go to Amazon today, buy the book.
The movie is trash compared to the book. Raise your hand if you have neither seen the movie nor read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Okay, that's like the majority of you. You all are also missing out. It's an extraordinary book. Back a few years ago when Mariah and I were driving a couple of times a year with the family up to Maine in the summer and at Christmas, we would throw on audiobooks. One of the things about audiobooks that's interesting is that unlike a paper copy of the book, you sort of lose track in the middle of exactly how long it is until the book ends.
And so you don't really have a good sense of are we at the beginning of the story, are we at the end of the story, in the middle of it, where exactly are we? Well, we put on this book, Unbroken, by Hillenbrand. And for those of you who haven't seen it or anything like that, I'm in a bit of a spot here. on the one hand I want to be kind to you and not spoil it for you because I just told you to read it on the other hand it's literally been out for years and what's wrong with you what to do what to do I'm gonna spoil it I'm sorry if you want to stick your fingers in your ears for a second that's fine I'm gonna spoil it for you so we got to the this sort of part of the book where the hero of it, Louis Zamperini, is a World War II soldier and runner. At any rate, his ship sinks and he winds up in the Pacific Ocean with all kinds of things that are happening.
There are sharks and he's with his men and they're trying to figure out how to drink water and there are pelicans attacking, or maybe not pelicans, birds of some kind attacking their heads and all the rest of it. And it's just this gripping story of survival at sea. And as this went on and on and on. I just kind of got to thinking, well, okay, this seems to be a survival story about life at sea when you don't have a whole lot of hope of rescue or escape. So when a ship showed up to rescue Zamperini and the mates of his that were left, I thought, well, that's the end of the book. And then the book just kept going and going and going. It gets picked up by a Japanese warship who takes them to, you know, one prison camp at which he's tortured in various ways. And then when that one's over you think he's you think the story's done then and then no he gets transferred to another even worse Japanese prisoner of war camp where he's treated even worse by this horrible guard named the bird and the idea of the book with Louis Zamperini being the unbroken is that he
endures everything these Japanese guards can inflict on him they beat him and they put him in pressure situations. They deny him sleep. They deny him food. It's just an awful situation. But every single thing they do to him, he endures. And he refuses to break. He refuses to give them whatever information he might have had. As a soldier, he is the unbroken. Well, about three-quarters of the way through the book, I realized, Louis Zamperini is finally released from his Japanese prisoner of war camp, and he comes home, And from there, his life absolutely falls apart.
He falls into alcohol use. It destroys his relationships with his family. It destroys his marriage. And about halfway into that part of the story, you start to realize, oh, even though Louis Zamperini was the unbroken when it came to physical and mental and psychological torture, he was the broken when it came to his own sin. The one thing that Louis Zamperini could not handle for himself was his own sin. Now that, I think, is where I can stop the spoilers.
And you can go read to see what happens next. But that's what I want you to see this morning. No matter how strong you are, no matter how well you think you've got life put together, the one thing that will break you, that has broken you, and that you cannot handle for yourself is your own sin. And what you need for that is God's magnificent, incredible, unmerited, unspeakable grace. Turn in your Bible, if you've got one, to Luke chapter 1. That's where we're going to be this morning. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, you can find Luke 1 on page 856.
If you are new to the Bible, let me just kind of tell you how it works. It's made up of 66 different books that were written over the course of about 1,500 years and ultimately compiled first by the Jews, the Old Testament, then by Christians, the New Testament. And each one of them is understood by believers throughout the world to be the written Word of God. What it says is true, what it says is without any mixture of error. It's all infallible in its words and in its purposes. God uses this to change lives and even to bring life where there is none. We're looking at one of those 66 books this morning, The Gospel According to Luke, and we're going to be in chapter 1 of that book.
So if you flip back from page 856 to the very beginning, you'll see a big number 1 there. That's Luke chapter 1. So all of this is chapter 1. You can see chapter 2 on 857. Then down inside there, they're pretty easy to see because some of them are set off, at least in my Bible. You can see those little what we call verse numbers, 46, 47, 48. Those are just kind of reference guides. They weren't put in the original. They came around about 1,000 years later so that Christians could do exactly what we're doing here, study the Bible together. So when I say something like, we're going to be in Luke chapter one all morning long. So when I say something like there in verse 50, it says this, you can look down inside chapter one, down into Mary's song, find verse 50 there, and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. What we're looking at this morning is verses 46 to 56 of Luke chapter one. It's this extraordinary song that was written and sung by Mary, the mother of Jesus, after she was told of his birth by the angel. Traditionally, this song is called the Magnificat because that's the first
word in the Latin translation of it. So if you look there at 46, Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord. Well, in the Latin, it starts out with Magnificat magnifies my soul, right? The Lord. So it's called the Magnificat. The song is really just a testimony of God's goodness to Mary. But more than that, it's a testimony to Mary's amazement, just absolutely mind-blown amazement that God has done this great thing, not just for her, but for the nation of Israel. It also shows us, I think, exactly the kind of spirit that ought to mark us when we think about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. So let's read it, and then we're going to start talking about it. Here's what Mary wrote and sang after she was told of the birth of Jesus. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his
servant. For behold, from now on generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He's brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He's filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He's helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.
And Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and returned to her home. So this song comes after the recounting of Mary's visit to her relative Elizabeth's house. Both of them had been told by an angel early on in the book that they were going to have sons. Elizabeth was going to have the forerunner of the Messiah, the last of the great Old Testament prophets. His name was going to be John the Baptist. And then Mary received a similar message from the same angel actually saying, and you are going to be the one to bear the Messiah, the long-awaited king of Israel. So he mentions Elizabeth, the angel does. And so Mary thinks, okay, I'm going to go visit this other woman, this relative of mine who's had a similar message from the angel, because she'll be able to understand what's going on with me. So she expressed some amazement, if you remember, back when the angel told her this was going to happen. She said, look, how's this going to happen?
I'm not married. I haven't had sexual relations with a man, and so how is it going to happen? And the angel said to her, look, well, God can do anything. There may be things that are impossible for men but there's nothing that's impossible for God. Your relative Elizabeth in fact who is barren is going to have a son of her own. So Mary arrives and the baby in Elizabeth's womb, John the Baptist, this last of the Old Testament prophets, somehow recognizes the Messiah in the womb of Mary and he jumps in the womb of Elizabeth and Elizabeth blesses Mary for what's about to happen. And then this song of Mary is recorded. Now, we don't know if she thought it up and just sang it right there while she was with Elizabeth, right after the baby left in her womb.
It's possible, I suppose. The structure of it seems a little strong for that, though. And Luke makes a point, at least a couple of times, of telling us that Mary was a thoughtful woman. and she treasured up these things in her heart, and she pondered them, he says. And so I think it's entirely likely, in fact, that she went away and she thought about these things, maybe through the nine months of her pregnancy, maybe through the years of Jesus' childhood, and even as she stood at the foot of his cross weeping or went to the tomb. We don't know exactly when she did, but at some point she wrote these things down.
Either way, I think this song gives us a wonderful glimpse into Mary's mind and her heart. She's obviously steeped in the Old Testament scriptures like any first century Jewish boy or girl would have been in school. I mean, you can see that because the song uses Old Testament categories and language. And most especially, it reflects the song of Hannah that we read a little bit earlier on in the service. The song in 1 Samuel when the Lord opens up Hannah's womb and she's going to have a baby.
The song, if you look at it, just let your eyes roll down over it as I describe it here. It's made up of three main parts. You've got verses 46 to 49 where Mary exalts in what God has done for her in particular. It's all about me, right? This is what the Lord has done for me. He's done this very special thing for me. Then you've got 50 to 53 where she broadens her own experience and talks about how God deals with human beings in general, including us. And that's where the song sort of breaks out and becomes relevant for us because she's describing God's character and ways with everybody.
And then in verses 54 and 55, she exalts in God's salvation of his people, Israel, and most importantly, tells why he's acting in the way that he's acting. Why is God saving his people, Israel? Why is he helping them? And she nails down exactly why that is. It's just an extraordinary and theologically tight song. And we're going to study it this morning. The main idea of it, I think, is this. The main thing that Mary is exulting in and talking about in this psalm is that God gives grace to those who realize that they need it.
God gives grace to those who realize that they need it. We've got four points this morning to help us think through this song. I'm going to give them to you as we go. Here's the first thing that I want you to notice from this song. Mary knew that her God was incomparably powerful. Mary knew that her God was incomparably powerful. I think you can see this several times in her song. In verse 47, she calls him God my Savior. Now, there are a lot of ways that the Old Testament refers to God as a Savior.
You can be saved from death. You can be saved from an enemy. You can be saved from hunger or from homelessness. But the main reason or the main thing that God saves from is the ravages of sin. The punishment that is due to human beings for sin. And I don't think Mary is talking in any less exalted language than that. She's not just saying God is my savior from social reproach or from sadness or from whatever it is. No, God is my savior in the sense that he has saved me from sin. That's exactly what the angel told her that Jesus was going to do.
You'll call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sin. And I think by the time she wrote this song, Mary knew what that meant. He saves his people from their sin. She says a sort of similar thing, recognizing God's incomparable power in verse 49. You see that? Behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me. He who is mighty has done great things for me.
Actually, that little phrase, he who is mighty, is just the mighty one. It's more like a title than it is a description. It's just the mighty one. As if the might of everyone else in the universe pales in comparison to him so far as to be non-existent. God is the only one, she's saying, who is worthy of the title, the mighty one. The next phrase there also, she recognizes his holiness. He who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.
What does the word holy mean? And we generally have a sense that holy, especially if you've been in church for very long, the holiness means set apart, right? It means set apart. So the instruments in the temple were holy. If you had a spoon that was to be used in the temple worship, it was holy because it wasn't a regular spoon. You couldn't just, you know, eat your fruity pebbles with that spoon. It was set apart for a particular job. So when the angels in heaven cry out to God, you are holy, holy, holy, what do they mean? They mean that God is utterly set apart and utterly different from anything else in creation.
Sometimes we have the sense that it means a kind of moral set-apartness, and that's true. Holiness has to do with God's righteousness, but it's bigger than that. It's not just that God is righteous and good. It's that he's set apart in righteousness, in goodness, in self-existence, in power, and in majesty. All of it. He's utterly different from us. And Mary recognizes that. Holy, set apart is his name. You see what she's saying there, right? The idea here is that this is a God of infinite resources.
Who does whatever he wants. And like the prophet says, no one can stay his hand when once he has decided to move it. Friend, do you realize that if you're a Christian, that is the God to whom you pray? You don't pray to just some provincial deity. You don't pray to just some grandpa up in the sky with a long flowing white beard who likes to give little peppermints to his children. You pray to the God and creator of the universe.
Friends, your God is not just doing the best with what he's got. He's not just a master chess player who takes the problems as they come and is just infinitely wise in figuring out how to solve them. He sits sovereign and serene above the whole of the cosmos. And not one Adam moves apart from his command. With a word, he creates the stars. With a word, he creates light and sun and the moon and everything in the universe.
At a word, all the myriad upon myriad of angels strike to attention to obey his command. One of my favorite, I think, names or designations for God in the Old Testament that captures all of this is the phrase the Lord of hosts. You've probably heard that before. used all the time in the prophets, the Psalms, the Lord of hosts does this, the Lord of hosts does that. You ever thought about what that means? Well, what's a host? It's a great number, right? A host of people, a host of angels. It's a great number. So when the Bible calls God the Lord of hosts, what it means is that he is the commander of a vast and innumerable army of angels, all of whom are waiting on his command, and they carry it out infallibly. I remember a few years ago, my family and I had the chance to go to the Marine Corps barracks in Washington, D.C., when we lived there for a few years, and they do a parade on the lawn of the Marine Corps barracks, and one of the
most incredible things about that, I mean, they do all kinds of marching and all the rest of it, but one of the most impressive things about it, and the thing that kind of makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck and you're you you come to attention real fast is that right at the beginning everything looks like chaos out there the soldiers are sort of moving around in various ways and it it just you just think what in the world is going to happen and then the commander who's standing up on a you know small little little dais at the front of the thing and it's this vast army hundreds and hundreds of soldiers all all dressed out in military fatigues right and they're all kind of milling about in chaos and the commander standing on the dais shouts a command or whatever it was and then in an instant all of them snap the barrels of their guns on the pavement and snap to attention and it's perfect so impressive imagine imagine when with a word the lord of hosts calls the angel armies to attention because he's about to act.
Friends, that's the God that you serve, the God that with a whisper calls a billion angels to attention with a thunderous crack on the pavement of the universe. Now that's true. What does that mean for you? It means that you can rest in him. Completely confident that what he's put into your life right now, whether you like it or not, is not accidental. That thing that's in your life that you love, that's not an accident.
That thing that's in your life, obligation, responsibility, whatever it is, suffering, whatever it is, it's not an accident. It's his purpose. It's his plan. And just like for everything else in the cosmos, he has a reason for it. Same thing is true if you have a sense that God hasn't answered a prayer that you've been praying maybe for years. You ever think about that? If God has not yet given you what you're praying for, why do you think that is?
Is it because he can't give you what you're praying for? No. It's because he has at least for now decided not to give it to you and there's a purpose for that you know as Christians our trust in God is most strong and most bright sometimes when we hear God say in response to our prayers no or wait a while and then we bow our heads to accept his decision Not in bitterness, but in deep trust that he is all-powerful and all-wise and that he is working all things together for good.
See, all of that, all of that is why Mary says that she magnifies the Lord. That doesn't mean, of course, that she's making him bigger in any sort of essential sense. She's not adding to God's glory. We're not adding to God's glory when we sing and magnify the Lord. It doesn't mean to make him bigger, essentially. It does, however, mean to make him bigger in your own mind and in your own thoughts. Well, how do you do that? How do you magnify the Lord? I mean, some of the things you know, right?
You need to read your Bible. You need to spend time meditating on the Bible, not just reading it. You need to do all the things that Christians tell you to do in terms of spiritual disciplines. But you know one of the best ways to magnify the Lord in your own heart and in your own mind and thoughts? It's to do what you're doing right now, to gather with God's people. And I don't know how many times you've done this in the last 12 months. I mean, for some of you, it's like 52 times, right? Because there are 52 Sundays in a year. For some of you, this might be the first time you've been to a church in six months. And that's great. We're glad you're here.
But if you want God to be big in your thoughts, you'll do this more often. There is just something about being here and seeing the greatness of God together and acknowledging that together that magnifies him and makes him bigger in our own thoughts and minds and hearts. Martin Luther said about this. He said, at home in my own house, there is no warmth or vigor in me. But in the church, when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through.
You want to magnify the Lord in your own heart? You want the fire to be kindled and break through into your life? Gather together with God's people and recognize him as incomparably powerful together. Here's number two. God shows grace to people who are astonished by his goodness. That's the next thing that Mary's song teaches us. God shows grace to people who are astonished by his goodness. And Mary certainly was, and it comes through in her song here.
My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. He's looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. Why? Because he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. This section of the song, it's just full of language that captures this astonishment that Mary has. That God is doing this good thing in her. God has looked on her humble estate. Nothing about her that would draw the eye of the Almighty to say, Oh, that one is the one that should be the mother of the Messiah.
There's nothing like that. He comes to her in her humble estate and chooses to do great things for her. I think it's critical here for us to see exactly how Mary sees her status before God. You can see she says it several different times. She is of humble estate, not royal estate, not great estate, humble estate. She's a small-town country girl in Nazareth. That's who she is. She's not living in the palace.
She's not from the family of priests, nothing like that. She's a country girl in Nazareth of humble estate. You can see that she also says there in verse 48 that she is God's servant. It's actually the word for slave. It's the same kind of thing that a Roman lord or manor king or whatever would call a maidservant. I am, she says, the servant of the Lord. And opposed to that, God is Lord, Savior, the mighty one and holy.
So what she's saying is that she's amazed that this great God, who is of incomparable power, would stoop to do good things for her. She's astonished by that goodness. Just note here, too, just by the way, that Mary says she will be called blessed. In other words, other people will recognize that she has been blessed by this great God. It does not say, and she does not claim, that people will invoke her blessing, much less venerate her.
Without fail in the Bible, Mary is the recipient of grace, not the giver of it. And the fact that she's a recipient astonishes her. And it should. Because what she realizes here, and this becomes clear, especially in verses 54 and 55, what she realizes is that God has not just done a personal kind thing for her. That happens in various places through the Bible. God will do a personally kind thing to someone. That's not what's going on here. That's not what's going on here.
God has made Mary the focal point of his entire work of redemption. She knew the story of the Old Testament. She knew how Adam and Eve sinned against God and were kicked out of the garden and that a great king was promised. She knew the story of King David and the covenant that God made with him to give a ruler to his line that would sit on the throne of David for all eternity. She knew all of that stuff. And now one day that great, glorious, marvelous story that's been told for hundreds and hundreds of years has found its focal point on her it's incredible this baby she was carrying in her womb was going to become the fulfillment of god's promises to her whole nation the fulfillment of the promises to david to abraham to moses even to adam and eve all that the whole story come to fulfillment right there in her womb and it left her wide-eyed with astonishment but I wonder if you respond to God's
grace to you in the same way with a kind of wide-eyed astonishment or have you gotten to the point in your Christian life where you're more likely to act like you had it coming that you deserved it that it's it's yours by right somehow look I've been around enough to know that we right here 21st early 21st century Americans we are an intractively cynical generation I mean a lot of ways we go through our lives expecting the worst to happen but then when something good happens to us even if we weren't expecting it we shrug it off as if we knew it was coming all along and it's no big deal or even worse we act like we deserved it. God does something good for us. We get a new job. Something unexpected happens in a relationship. Something happens that exalts us a little bit, and we don't take that as the goodness and grace of God. We act like we deserve it. We look around at our friends and our family, and we go,
that's right. This is my moment. Everybody bask in my glory. Friends, we need to capture some of Mary's astonishment at God's goodness, the mind-blowing truth that he has acted to save us from hell. How often do you think about hell? My guess is, if you're like me, it's not that often, right?
You think about it maybe a little bit when it comes up in your Bible reading, but you don't dwell on it. It's not a fun thing to dwell on. But brothers and sisters, I wonder if we need to dwell a little bit more on hell just to remember exactly what God has saved us from. There's an old song that I listened to a lot back in high school by Stephen Curtis Chapman. It was called Remember Your Chains. That was exactly its point. Remember your chains. Remember the prison that once held you.
And remember that it's the grace of God who has broken those chains forever. What am I saying here? Am I saying that you need to work really hard to gin up some astonishment in your life? Like, oh, maybe if I just, you know, squeeze my jaw a little bit tighter, I'll get astonished. Well, no, of course not. You can't do that. What I'm saying is that it's hard to be astonished at something if you ignore it. Did you hear that? It is hard to be astonished at something if you ignore it.
The story of God's work of salvation, the story of God's determination to save sinners like you is just objectively astonishing. You just have to spend some time letting your mind and heart get around it so that it can bloom and wonder at God's love and mercy and grace. That's the kind of heart that God's grace comes to. It's a heart that is astonished that God would show goodness. And you know why that is? You know why astonishment is one of those things that God looks favorably upon?
It's because astonishment is a fundamentally humble frame of mind, isn't it? It's a fundamentally humble frame of mind. When you're astonished at the gospel of Jesus, you're saying that God has outdone your expectations. He has done far abundantly more than everything you could have ever asked or imagined. It says that you weren't thinking that you deserved it. It's not old hat to you. No astonishment says, God, I know that I am receiving this goodness in spite of myself.
I do not deserve it. And yet you have given it. My friends, don't have a heart. Don't have a heart that ignores what God has done. Because that kind of heart would betray itself as a heart that sees no value in what God has done. And I'll be astonished at it. Like Mary, let your soul magnify the Lord and your spirit rejoice in God your Savior. Here's a third thing. God shows grace to people who know that they need him.
God shows grace to people who know that they need him. So in verse 50, Mary takes her own experience of being shown God's grace and sort of expands it to the ends of the earth. So starting in 50, it's not just about her anymore. It's about everybody. It's about you and me. And 50 forms a kind of topic sentence for the next three verses. She's going to describe the kinds of person that God deals with in the world. So look at 50 because it's the sort of topic sentence. His mercy, she says, is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
And then in the next few verses, you get five descriptions of different kinds of people and how God responds to them. So in 51, you've got the fact that he scatters the proud. In 52, he brings down the mighty and exalts the humble. So that's three of them, right? Scatters the proud, brings down the mighty, exalts the humble. Then in 53, he fills the hungry and sends away the rich. So five different categories of people that he deals with. But I don't think we're talking about five different kinds of people here. I think we're talking about two kinds of people.
So on the one hand, you've got those people who are humble and hungry. And on the other hand, you've got those who are proud and mighty and rich. So to pull it all up and put it in terms of verse 50, the topic sentence, we're talking ultimately about those who fear the Lord and those who don't. In other words, who recognize who he is and who they are and those who don't. Now, don't get confused about this.
The Bible often uses spiritual metaphor by using physical or even social words. So don't get confused. Mary is not making the point that anybody who is mighty with, say, political power or physical strength is somebody who doesn't fear the Lord. She's not saying that anybody who has physical money is necessarily an enemy of God. And she's not making the point, on the other hand, that anybody who's hungry, In the sense that they just haven't eaten, that they forgot to eat breakfast this morning, which is some of you and you're hungry.
It doesn't mean that you're necessarily in God's good graces because you're hungry. That's not her point. Verse 50 makes the point. And it is, do you fear God or do you not? Do you recognize your need for him or do you have other things that give you a sense of security and well-being? In other words, are you the humble and hungry for God or are you the proud and mighty and rich in your own self? Do you need him or do you not? Look, there are all kinds of things that can lead us to think that we do not need God.
Power is one. Money is another. All throughout the Bible and all throughout human experience, those two things tend to lead people away from God. Jesus said it, it's harder for a camel, it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. It's because riches and power and wealth and possessions and money tend to turn our eyes away from our dependence on God and put them on dependence on things. There are other things too that can lead us away from God.
Our own sense of dignity. I'm not going to bow my knee to anybody. I'm not going to stand in there with those people and sing those songs. It's undignified. Our dignity can lead us away from God. Our friendships can lead us away from God. Friends, especially if you're young, if you're 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17 years old, you need to know that your friendships can lead you away from God. Because they will convince you that those friendships are all you need, and they're not.
Ironically, even suffering can lead us away from God. We have the sense in our minds that suffering always leads us to God. It's not the case. And I've lived long enough to have met many, many people who have been through some stuff. And that stuff has not brought them to God. That stuff that they have suffered has convinced them that they can handle anything this life throws at them. I don't need God. I can handle it myself. Look at what I've been through. Look at the suffering I've endured. I don't need Him. I don't need God.
But you do need Him. You do need him because, yeah, you may be able to handle anything this world throws at you, but the one thing you cannot handle is your sin. And you cannot handle the hell that it will bring. You know that's what it means to have faith? At least the beginning of it. It's to recognize that you can't lean on yourself. You can't lean on your own dignity. You can't lean on your own friendships.
You can't lean on your own power or your own money. You've got to lean on somebody else. That's exactly what faith is. It's dependence. It's relying on somebody else. It's looking at Jesus and saying, Jesus, I can't rely on myself. I'm never going to be able to handle my sin on my own, but I can rely on you to handle it for me. You're the one who lived the life I should have lived. You're the one who died in the place of sinners just like me. You're the one who took the penalty and the punishment that I know I deserve from my sin. And then you're the one who conquered death and rose again.
So I'm trusting in you. I know that I need you. And do you know, do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you need God? Then listen to me. Even if you're not a Christian, if you're sitting there this morning and you're thinking, yes, I know. I know that I need God. I can't rely on myself. I need him. Well, guess what, friend? That's the soil that faith grows from. That's the soil that faith grows from. And now it's just a short little step to say, what you do, rely on.
I rely on Jesus. I am a Christian now. And don't go out of this place. Don't go out of this place continuing to rely on yourself. Come to Christ and find salvation in him. Here's the fourth thing. God shows grace to people who trust him to keep his promises. God shows grace to people who trust him to keep his promises.
So in the last section of the song there, 54 and 55, Mary sings about the grounds by which grace is granted. The grounds by which or on which grace is granted. So in other words, the reason for it. God shows grace, but why does God show grace? Look at 54. She ends her song like this. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers. His mercy, that's how this works, in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers.
His mercy to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Okay, so he's helped his servant Israel. That's what he's done. Why has he done it? He's done it in remembrance of the mercy he promised to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Now let that sink in a little bit. Why does God show grace to his people Israel?
Because he said he would. He shows them grace because he said he would. It's not that they're righteous. It's not that they did everything right. It's not that they really got to it with some elbow grease and rebuilt that wall in the book of Nehemiah or the temple in Ezra. And by God, we deserve it now. No, he gave them grace simply because he said he would. Why did he say he would?
Why did he promise that? Well, Mary, here in the song, doesn't go any further back than just he did it in remembrance of his mercy, the mercy he promised to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Mary doesn't take it any further back, but the Old Testament does. There's an incredible passage in Deuteronomy where God tells his people why he loves them, why he chose them as his people out of all the different nations of the earth. He didn't choose Egypt. He didn't choose Assyria or Babylon. He chose this tiny little nation of Israel to make his own people.
And in this one passage in Deuteronomy, he tells them why he did it. Now, listen to it. He says, you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you. You were the fewest of all peoples. Why did he do it? It is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your father.
Do you see the logic of that? The Israelites are asking Moses in Deuteronomy, why did the Lord pick us? Why does he love us? And Moses' answer is, it's not because you're great. It's not because you're powerful. It's not because you're good. The Lord loves you because he loves you. And why does he love you? He loves you because he loves you, because he loves you, because he loves you, all the way down to eternity. He loves you because he loves you. There are some people in the world who won't accept God's love, won't accept God's grace, won't accept God's mercy until they can find a reason for it in their own lives.
And so they look around and they work and they try to clean up this section of their life and they try to work that out. They try to mature and get better. And once they've got that thing duct taped together for just a half a second, they look up to heaven and they say, okay, God, you can love me now. Because now it makes sense. I've got this thing right here that I've cleaned up, that I've built, that I've matured into. It makes sense for you to love me. So I'll accept your love because now I can offer you this thing in return. I can pay for your grace.
But, friends, that's a fundamental and deep misunderstanding of what grace even is. The definition of grace is undeserved favor, unmerited good. And that's why God's grace always comes as a gift. And, friend, as long as you're trying to pay for that grace, you won't get it. It goes right back to what faith is. Faith is dependence. It's broke, and it's bankrupt.
It has nothing to give. All faith can do is say, God, I've got nothing. You fill my hands up with your goodness. I want you to see, too, how this happens. If you look at verse 54, 55, Mary seems to have a really strong sense of what exactly God was promising to do and what her son Jesus had to do with that. I mean, you can see it in 54 kind of going down into 55. She understands that the birth of her son is rooted in the promise God made to Abraham way back in Genesis 12 and 17, 22 and 25.
She knows that it's rooted in all of that. And she knows that that story of God's promise to Abraham has been growing and complexifying and getting more glorious for centuries now. And she knows that my son is the fulfillment of those promises. She's got that. But there's something else there, too. Look at that phrase in 54. God has helped his servant Israel. What does that mean? God has helped his servant Israel. Well, on the surface, what it means is exactly what it says. God has helped his servant Israel.
God has done good things for his servant, the nation of Israel. That's what it means on the surface. And that's fine as far as it goes. But it is an explosive little theological phrase too. Because it comes from the servant songs in the prophet Isaiah. So who's it talking about? Is it talking about the nation of Israel? Yeah, it is. It's talking about the nation of Israel. That's the surface meaning. But it's deeper because in Isaiah, once Israel, the nation, has been identified as God's servant, then there's this singular figure who shows up.
This one man. And God turns his eyes from his servant, the nation of Israel, to this one man. And he says, now you, you are my servant, Israel. He takes this one man and he makes this one man a representative of the entire nation so that that man can stand in the place of that sinful nation. He stands as a representative, a substitute, a king, a champion for that nation. And ultimately, that servant suffers and dies. So you know in Isaiah, where God talks about helping his servant Israel, It's that he helps not just the nation, but the individual.
And he helps him out of death. I think Mary is seeing all of that. She seems already to understand that her son Jesus is going to be the fulfillment of those servant songs in Isaiah. She knows that he has come to suffer in the place of the nation. She knows that he's come to die for their sins. She knows, just as the angel told her, that he's come to save his people from their sins.
Friend, do you know Jesus like that? Do you know Jesus as the suffering servant of God who stands in your place to take the wrath of God that you deserved? To bear the wrath of God, as Peter puts it, as he hung on the tree? do you know him like that you need to you need to know him as king you need to know him as lord and as creator and as the incomparably powerful god but you need to know him as savior let your soul today magnify the lord and your spirit rejoice in jesus your savior let's pray Our Lord God, we thank you and we praise you for this great gospel.
We thank you for the Virgin Mary who sang this song that magnified you in her heart and now in our hearts. Our Lord, you are great. You are greater than our minds could ever conceive. And yet, Lord, we gather in this place to sing and to pray and to read your scriptures and even to preach your scriptures so that you might be magnified, so that you might be made greater in our own minds and hearts. Our Lord, we pray that you would do this with the truths of the gospel this morning. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.