Luke 1: And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

Transcription

1 Luke 1: And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth 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 on those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. 1 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever."

2 2 Suppose you had to pick a woman to change the world. Who would you choose? Someone famous - a pop star, an actress, a celebrity, a TV presenter? Someone influential - A politician, a top lawyer, maybe a teacher or a doctor or an academic? Chances are you wouldn't do what God did in v27 of Luke 1. God is going to change the world, and he starts with Nazareth - a town so obscure that no-one had ever written about it - in Galilee - a provincial backwater that most people ignored, and he starts with Mary, a teenage girl who's engaged to the local carpenter. So how was all of this from Mary s point of view? She s an ordinary girl, from an ordinary family. We don t know what Mary was doing immediately before being visited by Gabriel. Maybe she was in the middle of morning chores, daydreaming about her future with Joseph. What kind of husband would he be? How would they decorate the house? When would their first child come along? Suddenly, the angel Gabriel is there, and as if that isn t strange enough, he makes an even stranger greeting. He calls her favored one and says, The Lord is with you. She s completely baffled. Gabriel explains more: she is going to conceive and give birth to a child the long awaited Messiah. Like every devout Jewish kid, Mary had grown up hearing all about the coming Son of David. It might have even crossed her mind that Joseph was from the line of David. But her the mother of the Messiah? And then it she realises: hang on a minute how can I have a child? I ve never been with a man! Then comes the real shocker and Mary must have thought: who did he say the father would be? The Holy Spirit??? Just imagine the swirl of emotions. On the one hand, Mary is stunned by the honour of bearing God s son bringing the long awaited and prayed for Messiah into the world. On the other hand, how is this going to work out? Joseph, I ve got something to tell you I m pregnant. No, I know we haven t No, I know it s not yours No, honestly I haven t It s all right really,,, you see, there was this angel, and he said What!!! A likely story!!! Can you see Joseph buying a story like that??? Would you just accept a story like that??? And Mary responds in the words we heard this morning: in the RSV it says:

3 And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." 3 The New International Version says, I am the Lord s servant, may it be to me as you have said. It s worth noting, that English words like handmaid and servant are nothing like as strong as the original Greek. There is a perfectly good word in NT Greek for servant: that word is DIAKONOS or the feminine, a woman servant, would be DIAKONI. That s not the word used here by Luke. In the original, the word used here by Mary is not DIAKONI servant but DOULI which means not servant but slave. We think of a servant as having rights if you took a job at Buckingham Palace as a footman or a cleaner, or a waiter, you would reasonably expect to be paid your wages, have the right to time off, and the right to certain working conditions, and so on. As a servant, you would have a personal life that was nothing to do with your work, and nothing to do with your employer. There s a saying, isn t there It s a job, not a life!. As a servant, you are entitled to work to live, not to live to work. Your employer agrees to pay you a specified amount, and in exchange you agree to fulfil specific services for him or her: and if you re a waiter, they can t tell you to go dig the garden you can say, Sorry, that s not in my job description. Compare that with the mindset and the experience of a slave. If you buy a slave, you own that person, just as you own a vacuum cleaner, or a car, or a pair of shoes you have bought. If you are someone s slave, it s not a job, it s a life. You belong completely to your master. No limits. Mary didn t say, I am the servant of the Lord that would be saying something like, Well, after thinking about it carefully I agree that I ll do that for God. Mary said, Behold, the Lord s slave. That s like saying, I am completely and totally and utterly HIS. So whatever He wants to do with me is fine. By the way, when Jesus says to His disciples, in Luke 17:10, So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty. The word he uses, translated here as Servants is actually the word DOULOI that is, slaves. And that s right, isn t it? If I take my watch to the pawnbrokers and they lent me money on it, they keep the watch. If I can t repay what I owe, then someone else can repay what s owed, and they redeem the watch and the watch isn t my property any more it s now the property of the one who has redeemed it. And we are redeemed by the blood of the lamb we are purchased by His precious blood. We are not servants, to pick and choose what we will agree to do we belong to him, and He has bought us.

4 And so Mary considered herself to be, as she heard from the angel what God intended for her. Then she spoke out wonderful prayer of praise we heard in the NT reading this morning, which we call the Magnificat which is actually the first word of that prayer in Latin. Magnificat: anima mea Dominum Magnifies my soul the Lord. 4 There is so much depth of meaning that it would take many hours to fully unpack it all and we have five minutes. So I just want to make three points about it. The first is this: here is a young woman whose whole future life has just been changed, from what she expected. She responds not only with obedience, but with real joy and with real surrender to God working in her life. So can we. The second is this: most of the prayer we call the Magnificat is not original to Mary most of it is from different parts of the Old Testament the Jewish Bible. So this young teenage girl had a real deep knowledge of the Bible, she had spent much time reading and studying and meditating on the Word of God. So can we. The third point is this. More than one Christian has said to me, over the years, Some Christians, they start to pray, or they start to praise, and it s like they flipped a switch! Straight away the joy shows on their faces! How come that doesn t happen for me? That first sentence of the Magnificat My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour is a wonderful recipe for joy the joy of the Lord. Let s take a look at how it works. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. So what s the difference between soul and spirit? Are they two words for the same thing? No they re not. How do I know that? Hebrews Chapter 4, and the first part of verse 12: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit. The word we translate as Magnifies means literally that we know that a megabuck means a million bucks or dollars, and in computing a megabyte is a million bytes. The Greek word is MEGALUNEI literally make Him MEGA!!! How much is a million? well, my Mum lives in Essex that s 150 mile drive, takes about 3 hours. A million of these rulers would stretch all the way there. A pile of a million pieces of paper like this one would be a pile three times as tall as this Church building.

5 5 The Greek word in the original text which we translate Soul is the word PSYCHE, from which we get words like psychological, and psychotherapist the word means mind. So Mary is saying, My mind makes God bigger makes God MEGA and my spirit rejoices, experiences joy in God my saviour. In other words, my spiritual experience of joy starts with an obedient mind. That s why we sometimes experience a lack of joy in our worship our God is too small! The Bible says our God is infinite bigger than the whole universe. We need to magnify our perception of God in our minds we need to make Him Mega! We need to magnify our God! And so we can. Let s close our eyes in prayer. Come now, Holy Spirit of God come and give us the grace to magnify the Lord in our minds. I don t know how you picture God If the picture you make in your mind s eye is Jesus, then see Him not as the carpenter of Nazareth that s who he was then please see Him as He is now enthroned in the heavens in power and glory as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If He s a bit distant, then imagine Him close to you now or mentally float up to join Him. Notice His GLORY or BEAUTY. Notice His LOVE for YOU. Notice His POWER. Our God is infinite MAGNIFY Him! Don t just double or triple His Glory and beauty make it a MILLION times more glorious and beautiful! Now magnify His love for you not just twice as much, or four times as much in your mind s eye, make your picturing of His love a MILLION times more! And MAGNIFY His POWER a million times, now! and this is only a fraction of the reality of our wonderful God. My mind magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.