Luke chapter 1 and verse 46. And Mary said, this is Mary,
the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Mary said, my soul
doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my
Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowly
state of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all
generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done
to me great things, and holy is his name, and his mercy is
on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath showed
strength with his arm, he hath scattered the proud in the imagination
of their hearts, he hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath
halpen his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as
he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. and
Mary abode with her, that's Elizabeth, about three months and returned
to her own house. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Just as Mary had been filled
with the Holy Ghost and uttered prophecies and blessings to Mary
on her arrival in her home, So Mary also responded to Elizabeth's
blessings with many beautiful and spiritual statements of her
own. And I thought as I was reading
this little passage, in a world where men largely don't dominated
society and religion and even the pages of our Bible. It is
lovely to see the Holy Spirit bless these two women who in
turn ministered to the church so early the things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ and gifted us with their own spiritual insights
and their own spiritual joys so many years ago and still blessing
us today as we read these passages together. The opening of Mary's
response to Elizabeth is a delightful testimony of her own experience
of grace we sometimes talk about personal testimonies, and that's
what Mary is giving us here. Not necessarily a statement of
how she came to know the Lord, which is often understood or
implicit in that phrase, but simply the revelation, the vocalisation,
if you like, of the spiritual changes that she was experiencing
and which she had discovered. So here we have a statement,
a testimony of her own experience of grace. And I think that this
is a fine pattern for every believer. She told her cousin, she told
Elizabeth, my soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
rejoiced in God my Saviour.' And I think had she said no more,
this was in itself a wonderful witness to her faith and a witness
to her understanding of what the Lord had done for her. Mary
knew and believed that the Messiah was promised. She knew and believed
that from the Old Testament scriptures. And she knew that he would be
a saviour to his people when he came. And in believing by
faith, she was numbered herself amongst the Lord's people. And
she rightly called the child that now lay in her womb, both
her God and her Saviour. And that is our testimony as
well, no more and no less. The Lord Jesus Christ is both
our God and our Saviour. And with Mary, we magnify His
name by acknowledging and worshipping Him. That's all we can do. We
can only, we talk about serving the Lord and I'm going to mention
that in a moment, but before we can ever serve the Lord, Our
response to his revelation is simply that we acknowledge and
worship what he has done. He who came from the excellent
glory to suffer and to die for our deliverance. Mary acknowledged
him as her God and her saviour and that is what we do as well. With Mary we rejoice we rejoice
in the salvation that he has freely bestowed. Mary, of course,
was a New Testament witness and yet she's looking forward with
her fellow Old Testament believers And she is faithfully anticipating
with these words, although they're often used in a past tense because
that's just the nature of prophetic utterance in Scripture. She is
looking forward with her Old Testament fellow believers and
anticipating what we now look back upon. And with them, We
all embrace by faith the revelation of God our Saviour in the person
of Jesus Christ. What is our hope? What is our
personal testimony? My God and my Saviour. That's it. If that is all you
can say about the Lord Jesus Christ, that is sufficient. My God, is my Saviour. One would be hard-pressed to
produce a more concise, succinct and profound statement of God's
grace and goodness. My God is my Saviour. And yet
it was not made by Moses or David or Isaiah or one of the great
prophets. It came from the heart of a young
girl from a poor family in a remote village in Judea. It came from
her heart and it was uttered in faith. As Mary heard Elizabeth's
praise, and witnessed in that moment the fulfilment of the
sign granted by the angel Gabriel to her. Her joy spilled over
in this precious profession of faith. And I think it's a wonderful
statement for us all to adopt as a personal testimony of our
very own. May we all be able to say with
Mary, my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced
in God my Saviour. There was no pride in the soul
of this young woman. She knew that her blessedness
was by God's grace. And it's true that she had a
heritage. She was of the house of David. But how far that house had fallen
in the years since the psalmist king. Mary was sufficiently aware
of her own station in life as to call herself a lowly handmaiden. a lowly handmaiden, but she was
nevertheless the Lord's lowly handmaiden, the Lord's lowly
handmaiden. And the point I'm making is that
whoever belongs to the Lord, though a servant of servants
or a mere doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, is twice blessed. We bear his name, and we serve
his purpose. This world has many privileges
to offer and many pleasures that it can give to men and women. And Satan very often dangles
the prospect of fame and fortune and prestige and importance before
us in big ways and small ways. But what can compare to being
even the lowly handmaid of the Lord. We serve at his pleasure. We
worship his name. We rejoice in his goodness and
his mercy. And Mary was indeed blessed,
but are we not all blessed with her in Christ? Is that not the
testimony of all God's people? Mary brought our humanity to
the union between God and man. She was a sinner. We are sinners. Mary was in her special way saved
and commissioned to serve. But each of us are saved and
commissioned to serve in our own capacity. We're all in that
sense handmaidens to our Lord. And she will be blessed by all
generations, but she will not have an elevated position in
heaven. We are blessed with her as the
redeemed Church of Jesus Christ, and all generations will bless
Mary for what she has experienced, and yet we all, as the great
congregation of the Lord's people, saved by grace, are with her,
heirs of every blessing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And another thing we can see
here is that Mary knew her Old Testament prophets. She knew
her scriptures. She was familiar with the language
and the statements and the prophecies and projections that had been
made down through the years. And she echoes Isaiah when she
calls her Lord, the mighty God, who is holy. And she testifies
that he hath done to me great things. Again, it's a lovely
statement. He hath done to me great things. And I hope it's a statement that
we all in some small way can lift right out of the pages of
scripture, that we can lift right from the very lips of Mary and
bear some testimony to these things in our own life. He hath
done to me great things and certainly he had But she spoke too of what
he would yet do for her. She spoke as a prophet concerning
his work of redemption and deliverance for herself and for others. She said his mercy is on them
that fear him. from generation to generation. Once again, his mercy is on them
that fear him from generation to generation. She was including
herself and all of us in this statement of the mercy of God
in Christ. The reference to the fear of
God, our fear of God is not a fear that is born of guilt and punishment,
not any longer, that's gone. It is love, a reverence born
of love and gratitude that we have towards the Lord. And here
Mary displayed an understanding of covenant grace and of particular
grace, covenant mercy and particular grace. Upon whom is the mercy
of the Lord revealed? Upon those who fear him from
generation to generation. Upon those who are brought in
to this reverence, born of love and gratitude towards our great
and glorious Saviour. These are God's elect. These
are Christ's seed. The children of promise. The
redeemed of the Lord. And Mary continues to lift up
her Lord and Saviour, rejoicing in his strength and describing
his victorious accomplishments, scattering the proud, unseating
the mighty, spoiling the rich, disrupting and displacing all
the glory and prized qualities of natural man. At the same time,
he owns and blesses the needy, the poor, the hungry. And surely
Mary is using these descriptions as spiritual terms. It's the
poor in spirit, the hungry for righteousness, those who need
cleansing for sin and peace with God, who find their satisfaction
in Christ. And these are they for whose
sake the Lord came into the world and for whom he died. The Lord's
remembrance of mercy is a feature of covenant grace. He remembers
mercy. Promises were made to Abraham
and his seed. And the seed of Abraham is not,
I repeat, not the nation that occupies the land of Israel now. Abraham's seed is a spiritual
people, not Israel after the flesh. Even if the people of
that country today could be proved to be Abraham's physical descendants,
they would still have no claim on Mary's prophecy. The Lord
will not forget his promises to his elect spiritual people,
who are quickened by God the Holy Spirit and converted by
the gospel. He will. most assuredly supply
all our needs according to his riches in glory. And Holpen just
means helped. It carries the sense of one who
has fallen, being lifted up and made to stand. And Mary's God
and saviour is mighty to help his fallen, helpless people. And his promise is as everlasting
and unending as the help of which Mary here speaks. Our Lord Jesus
Christ has redeemed the Church of God which is the Israel of
God. His chosen, His elect people
and our redemption by Christ confirms and fulfils the covenant
made with Abraham, that in his seed should all the families
of the earth be blessed. The elect from amongst the Jews,
such as Mary and Elizabeth, together with all the Old Testament believers
and New Testament believers, be they Jew or Gentile, are blessed
in him. for we are all one in Christ
Jesus. Mary stayed with her cousin for
about three months, and this time Elizabeth's pregnancy came
to its full term, and Mary returned to her own home in Nazareth just
before John, the one who would become John the Baptist, was
born. And Mary herself would now have
been carrying the child Jesus for about three months. It would
have been at this point, upon Mary's return to her home in
Nazareth, that Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, realised that
she was with child. and no doubt suspecting that
he had been deceived, no doubt suspecting that some evil had
been afoot, and yet not willing to shame Mary, Joseph had a mind
to put her away privately. However, Matthew tells us that
he was informed by an angel of God in a dream about the whole
matter. He hadn't seen this girl for
three months. She comes back into his life,
into his company, and she's obviously pregnant. He knows he's not the
father. And here an angel ministers to
him in a dream about this whole matter and the true circumstances
of the child that she carries. And he was advised to proceed
with his original plan and to take Mary to be his wife, which
he did very shortly afterwards. I think it's interesting to reflect
on the personal elements of the incarnation of the Saviour as
they are revealed to us here in these early chapters of the
Gospels. The feelings and the faith of
those involved, such as Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and
Zacharias, because there were just people like we're people.
And when we talk about faith, we're also including feelings
in these experiences. And it's interesting to note,
I think, the role of the angels in this great enterprise as well. They were God's messengers to
convey God's purpose and to allay fears and concerns amongst God's
people, which is pretty much what they always said when they
came into the presence of these puny human beings that they had
to deal with on God's behalf. Fear not, they would say, fear
not. They allayed the fears and concerns
of God's people. And in it, we can see both the
personal care and the goodness of God towards individuals, as
well as the sovereign outworking of his purposes for the whole
number of his elect. And I think it's good for us
to, in some small way, stand back, if we can, and admire the
hand of God at work, the arm of the Lord revealed. And like
Mary, to be able to declare, my soul doth magnify the Lord,
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Amen. Amen.