Advent Part 2

well good morning we are in the second week of advance and then did a great job last week setting the stage for what advent is and how we are in between two different events. First advent which is the birth of christ that he came as God to this earth. We celebrate every year at christmas and the second advent which is the coming of christ again. And we look forward to christ’s return. And so part of the event is celebrating the birth of christ and how he came to pay for our sins and all of that. But also to look forward to his second return. And today we are in luke chapter one vs 46 through 56 or grab your bible turn with me to that passage because we’ll be reading through that passage today um it’s a it’s a song, a psalm of praise from mary and it’s called the Magnificat. It’s that’s a latin term. So it describes uh the glory to God, praise to God Magnification of God and that’s what mary does in this psalm um is that she praises God and lifts up and glorifies him. And so we’re going to be seeing different character qualities and attributes of God today as mary proclaims this psalm of greatness. And if you recall what happened was marrying Elizabeth were coming together and as they did Elizabeth makes some proclamations and some prophecy and uh the baby within Elizabeth john the baptist leaps within her womb as a response to hearing mary’s voice and and uh and then she makes these proclamations and mary turns and then uh proclaims this overwhelming joy this welling up and she proclaims the song and it’s a psalm of praise. She proclaims to us all today who God is And it’s similar to the kind of the song of praise that Hannah did. If you’re, if you’ve read the scriptures a lot in first Samuel chapter two, you can read that later today. Hannah makes a song of praise psalm of praise and it’s very similar. Hannah focuses in on how God has triumphed over his enemies. And mary here focuses more on humbly receiving the mercy and blessings of God. Okay, and so we’re going to read this psalm together. My name is Ben Lander Pastor here at so our church and and glad to be going over this psalm together. It really is a uplifting uh glorifying psalm to God. We’re gonna learn about God together. So let us read beginning in uh four verse 46 after I pray here Lord, we just come to you this morning. We ask you to speak to us from your word. We ask you to help us learn about you today. Um and to to trust you in jesus name. Amen. Okay verse 46. And mary said, my soul praises the greatness and glory of God, My spirit rejoices in God, my savior because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant, surely from now on all generations will call me Blessed Because the Mighty one has done great things for me and his name is holy. Yeah, his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. He has done mighty deeds with his arm and has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts. He has toppled the mighty from their Thrones and exalted the lowly he has satisfied the hungry with good things and is sent away the rich empty. He has helped his servant, Israel remembering his mercy to Abraham and his descendants forever. Just as he spoke to our ancestors. And so you see this uh this kind of overwhelming joy that that bubbles up and flows over. And as you read that song, you see four different sections. This this psalm of praise is broken up into four different sections and I want to highlight four different aspects for different character qualities of God and who God is, that mary has proclaimed to all of us through this song. Okay. And so the first one I want to look at is we go back to verse 47 and it says oh how my soul praises the Lord, how my spirit rejoices in God my savior. And the first thing that we see there is that God saves God is a God who saves this is the very first thing that mary proclaims as part of this psalm of praise is that he is a savior and not only that but he is my savior. She says that’s the first time that this is personalized in the new testament. As you look at Matthew you see references to how God will save people from their sins and things like that. But here mary personalizes this and she says this is God my savior. And so what she’s proclaiming and recognizing and realizing is that the savior, the messiah that has come into the world is going to be coming, who is inside of her is actually her savior. That God shows her that he selected there and that he is rescuing her and saving her from sin. God also took her out of her current situation, out of her plan for normal life, rescued her out of poverty, gave her incredible mission in life and rescued her from her sin. She didn’t know it yet, but her husband was going to die. She’s going to be widowed, but she was going to be taken care of and provided for. God shows her and he saved her. God saves and the reason that we celebrate advent is because we look back and we go thank you Lord jesus for coming to this earth for being our savior who came down on this earth to save us. You God became man to take care of our sin. And one day we also with advent look forward and and reach for and and look to his coming again when he will make every wrong writes when he will take that sin away from us for good. She says, all generations will call her blessed because of things that God has done for her, not because of the things that she’s done. Not because she earns or deserves any favor. God hasn’t saved her because of the things that she’s done. No, she’s just praising God because he saves and he has saved her. And that’s the way it is with God. We can’t earn his favor. We can’t make him do things for us. He has chosen us and he saved us, not because of who we are, but because of who he is. And she recognizes her humble stance before God that doesn’t over anything she owes got everything. And she’s amazed and astounded at this blessing of God. And so this is this overwhelming rising up joy and proclamation and prays that God is a God who saves and he saved me how deserve it. But he saved me. She recognizes every good thing. His grace and mercy comes from him. And there are acts of his grace and mercy towards his people towards anyone who would fear him. And God offers salvation not only to marry, but he offers salvation to you. And to me as well. The reason God came to this earth was to offer the salvation he lived and he died for the sins of you and me. And because we’re people because we sin because we do wrong things, we earn a penalty for that. And that penalty is death and we deserve to be separated from God forever in hell. That’s the just punishment for our sin. That’s what we deserve. And that’s what we earn. We do evil and we will be separated from God and hell, God is holy, He is holy Holy Holy. And he cannot allow impurity into his holy presence. And so we desperately need or we will be banished forever. We desperately need our sins to be taken care of, to be covered, to be made right and to be made righteous in God’s sight and image, that only comes through a perfect sacrifice. That only comes through what our savior did by coming to this earth, living a perfect life and then dying for us. He saves and we need a savior and to be saved. What you must simply do is to humble yourself before him, to give your life to him and to submit yourself to him. And we’ll talk about this in a little bit, mary has this humble posture. Yes. And so as she recognized and realized that God is a God who saves. What is her natural response is just to praise my soul, praises the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices why in God, my savior, he’s a God who saves. And I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful I am so thankful that God has saved me from my sin. I’m so thankful that he saved a wretch like me and I too am overwhelmed with joy and well up with praise as well, just like mary her that she just wells up and pro praises and proclaims God my savior. And so God is a God who saves. That’s the first aspect, the first character quality of God. Let’s look at the next one Which is found in the next verse, that’s God sees 1st 48 he took notice of his lowly servant girl and from now on all generations will call me breath blessed. He look, he took notice he sees God is a God who sees and not only did he take notice of mary, but he takes notice of us as well. Mary was a poor woman in a small town, in a poor family, in a tiny little country in the Middle East, right. She had a genealogy that went back as long as history was recorded, but they weren’t a family like the buffets in Omaha’s right. They weren’t a family like Elon musk’s kids will be where they didn’t have this wealthiest money, it wasn’t like that. She was getting ready to settle down. She was marrying a carpenter and they were getting ready to settle down to a life of subsistence of just trying to make it each week and just to try to make it through life too eat and to survive and to keep going. And yet God took notice here, she says, he took notice of this lowly servant. He saw her. He found her. He stopped his eye on her and she is astounded by it and she just is overwhelmed and praises God for it. And I think she probably had in mind psalm 1 44 which says, oh Lord, what are human beings that you should notice them? Mere mortals, that you should think of them. There’s this this, this theme in the psalms. It’s just like God, you’re so big and we are so nothing. And yet you stop and you notice us when the angel came to marry the first time and he let her know that he was going, she was going to be pregnant by the Holy spirit and give birth to the messiah. Her response was, I’m the Lord’s servant. And dan talked about this last week. He talked about the importance of that humble posture. That was her first response when unexpected circumstances happened. And that continues to be her response. This is several months later, she’s going to meet Elizabeth and Elizabeth says some incredible prophecies to hurt. And then again, her immediate response is my spirit rejoices because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servants. She’s astounded that the Lord would look upon her. She’s the lowly servant of the Lord. She’s one person in the midst of all of humanity. Right. And yet God took notice of her And we are just one people in the midst of this room here in Lincoln Nebraska in the middle of the country, the United States, in the middle of the world, in the middle of the Milky Way in the middle of the universe. And we are nothing. We are nothing. We can’t even get our minds around and comprehend the vastness of the universe. And yet the God who created all he stops and he sees and he notices and he knows you and he knows me and he saw mary you’re one person in the midst of all humanity. Yet God notices and takes notice of you. Think about this. Think about this. The most significant events in all of human history was coming to pass when God created Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve sinned and brought sin and death into the world. God made a proclamation of promise of a coming savior. And that was thousands years before this. And all of the events that happened culminated toward this coming messiah. This this savor that was coming. God promised it. And it was about to happen. And so the most important, 30 years of human history was about to happen. It’s the crux and culmination of the plan of God that he put in place. And what does he do? What does God do? He looks down on this earth and he finds too Middle Eastern jewish women and he chooses them and he incorporates he sees them and he brings them into his plan. One woman is old and Baron, the other is young and a virgin God takes notice of them. He sees them and he chooses to use them as a part of his plan and he brings glory through his name to them. And both of these women were overwhelmed and astounded because God chose them. And it’s because they fully recognize you know what we’re nothing God is everything. How would God possibly look at me? But they were humble. I I really think that’s why God chose to use them. That’s why God’s likeness because they were humble. God uses the humble, she says here that again that she is his servants. He has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servants. Her posture as a servant is so important here. And that will lead us later to some of the application this message but it’s so important. God chose her as a humble servant into user. And I’ve got an illustration here. Um I like to go walking in the woods. Um you know your prayer walks in the woods, things like that. And so a few years back I was walking in a chunk of woods near Ashland Nebraska. I came across this tree in the forest, it has fallen down and it was rotting and falling to pieces. Uh and as I was just kind of walking pretty, I thought you know that that that kind of looks cool. I think I could do something with that. And as you can see, I mean it’s it was all rotting falling apart, but I grabbed a chunk and I brought it home and then I carved into this chunk of wood a hebrew phrase which when you read it backwards because they left left, right, right to left, you know um it’s a holy to the Lord set apart to the Lord is the phrase. And uh and and so just as I was going through this woods, I found and I selected, I chose this chunk of wood, I I grabbed it and I made something beautiful out of it. God looks through the mass of humanity. He sees you and he chooses you. You may not be much to look at, you may be worn out, discarded, rotting, right? But God chose you. He picked you up. He sees you. There’s a reason you’re here today in this room. There’s a reason God is working in your life. He wants you, he wants to save you. He wants to, he sees you and he wants to use you and he gives meaning to your life by choosing you and rescuing you. He wants to use you for his glory as you are his humble servant. Just like mary said, I’m your humble servant. I’ll do whatever he wants. God chooses to do great things through ordinary people who serve him so choose today to serve christ choose today to follow him, choose today say Lord whatever you want me to do I will do for you wherever you want me to go. I will go whatever you want me to say, I will say whatever you want me to do, I will do. Serving God is the best life, it is the best life. There’s no other question. Everything else is unsatisfactory. When you humble yourself and choose to follow him and to be his servants, he’ll use you and he gives your life meaning and purpose. A life following jesus as a life filled with meaning and purpose and is the best life. Let’s go back to the passage was 49. Mhm The Mighty one is holy and he has done great things for me. His name is holy. His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. He has done a mighty deed with his arm and has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts. He’s toppled the mighty from their Thrones and exalted the lowly Mhm. He has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty handed he has helped to serve in Israel and remember to be merciful. The next character quality next aspect of God that we’re looking at here this morning is that God sustains so God saves Mary’s proclaiming God saves he sees and he sustains you see here she’s talking about him bringing down rulers and exalting and lifting up the humble, providing food for those who are hungry, sending away the rich empty handed Merce providing mercy and showing mercy from generation to generation on those who fear him, She’s proclaiming God’s mighty hand and the tremendous things that he’s done for her and for Israel, God doesn’t operate the same way that the world does. The world is all about gaining wealth and power and privilege, there’s oppression, the world put structures in place to make sure that those who you know if you’ve got it good, they want to keep that right, they don’t want to lose out on that and when you have evil and you have sin, it’s just a bad combination. A lot of times the wealthy will put in things in place to try to maintain that and keep their grip on power. Think about dictators around the world right? Think about all of the horrendous things that is done by dictators to just maintain their grip on power, including killing people. A pressing lots of people harming people. Think about the large companies around the country, right? They want more and more and more, more money, more power and they take that cash they buy and they acquire other companies so they can get bigger and bigger and bigger right and a lot of times they will do whatever is needed to get that and they’ll take advantage of people. So there’s all kinds of oppression and yet mary here is proclaiming about who God is God’s more powerful than God is bigger than all of that he rescues and he provides, he sustains those who are humble, he’s the provider and mary praises him and lifts him up because he has lifted her up and he’s lifted Israel up from oppression. The messiah the Savior was looked for from Israel for many, many years and this country, this people were underneath a roman rule which was tyrannical Rome had conquered Israel and they were pressing them and they had looked for God to provide and they were looking for the messiah. Now God was doing that exact thing. Now though God didn’t release them at that time from the roman rule, they thought he was going to, although he didn’t do that, he provided so much more in salvation from sin and death. And one day again, advent, we’re looking for it one day, jesus will come again and he will right every wrong. One day we eagerly look forward to that through advent that he will bring justice perfect justice. And we are a multiethnic, multigenerational church. We have people in this church that experience all kinds of different things, different hardships. We’ve got different racial backgrounds, We’ve got different socioeconomic backgrounds, we have people who come from poverty and people who come from means. We’ve got broken homes, we’ve got people from different countries around the world here in this place, we’ve got all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds in this church who experienced all kinds of different difficulties and some of you or many of you can relate to some of the racial, social and other kinds of oppression that the people of Israel are experiencing and that mary was experiencing under this roman rule And it’s important as she looked to Jehovah jar, as she looked to the sustainer God who sustains God, the one who uplifts. We too should look to Jehovah, Gira our sustainer, our savior, our provider. No government can save us from the evil of people’s hearts. No philosophy can change the wickedness that is bound up in the heart of man. God is the one who is the sustainer, he’s the one who is the provider, he’s our savior, the one who rescues us from sin and who can lift up from oppression. He one day will bring perfect justice to any injustice that you’ve experienced in your life. Those things that drive you crazy, those things that you just, you, it just uh there’s nothing you can do about it and it makes you angry. God will bring justice one day come, Lord jesus, We look forward to the, to the return of the perfect king to the return of the savior. The provider, Jehovah, Jr the one who will sustain his mighty arm has done tremendous things. She says he has scattered the proud in the hottie ones. He’s brought down princes from their Thrones. He’s exalted the humble, He’s filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands. Think about think about who’s proclaiming the song? Think about mary here, the one proclaiming this, She’s an impoverished Middle Eastern young woman who lived under a tyrannical european nation. She trusted God, her savior, trusted God who sustains the Lord who provides we should trust him as well. Trust and is sustained you in whatever situation, whatever difficulties you’re going through the place that you need him to provide, the place that you need him to sustain. You trust God for him to sustain you, you will lift you up one day he will right the wrongs experienced one day he is just and he sustains. So God saves God sees God sustains. And the last thing that mary proclaims here is that God stands by his word. God stands by his word. He keeps his promises. Read verse 54, He’s helped us serve in Israel remembering his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants forever. Just as he spoke to our ancestors. Read that again, he has helped his servant, Israel remembering His mercy to Abraham and his descendants forever. Just as he spoke to our ancestors, what she’s doing here is she’s bringing up and remembering the promises of God God spoke to abraham and you can read about it in Genesis chapter 12 and he made a promise to Abraham that God would bring the savior through his descendants that God would bless the whole world through the sentence. And God was fulfilling that promise in jesus christ and mary’s proclaiming and praising God because he was fulfilling a promise. He was remembering his mercy. He had told them that he was going to grant mercy and now he remembered that and he was doing it. He remembered his promise to Abraham and he was fulfilling that God is a promise keeper and he always stands by his word. You can count on it. You can depend upon it, you can rest your life, your soul, your strength, your mind, your everything upon God and his promises. You can absolutely trust it. You can stand on it, the rest of your life, your faith, your soul, everything. You can trust God. God made that promise to Abraham that he would send a savior. And he was fulfilling it. And mary proclaims and praises God, you’re fulfilling your promises. You are a promise keeper gone. You can absolutely depend, stand upon that and stand upon God fulfilling his promises. He has all throughout history. He continues to do so. You read the promises in his word right here and you will see them fulfill time and time again and there’s more that he will fulfill. He will continue to fulfill them till the end. So how how do you depend upon God’s promises. Just a quick aside here first thing is you got to you got to know him first. You have to know his promises. So as you’re reading his word, look for those promises. Look for the promises of God right here. One of the things that I do, it’s a simple thing, but I highlight in a different color, the promises of God, it’s that way as I’m going through and I’m reading through, I can those jump out to me. Hey, that’s a promise of God. That’s something you can absolutely depend upon and stand upon. First you got to know them. Secondly, you trust him. Trust those promises by putting action to them. You aren’t simply a hear of the word but you’re a do er right. So yes, you can know them. Ok? Yeah, that’s nice God thanks. No. Put your put your faith behind and put some action behind it. Let me give you just a brief quick example, God promises that he will provide and sustain those who are generous as you are generous as you give to God, he will bless. And so how do you put action behind that? Well, you have to take a step of faith by actually giving to the Lord. Right? So it’s nice to know the promise but you have to you have to stand on it. You have to take action on it by taking a step of faith. And then the third thing is rest in those promises, you can know them, you can act on them but you can still be filled with all kinds of anxiety and worry right and so rest in him. Trust that as he will fulfill those promises he will do it. He’s demonstrated that over and over again throughout time and he will come one day and he will make them all good. He’ll fill all of them and and we will spend forever in eternity. Those who have submitted their lives to him spend for every eternity enjoying and getting to know in seeing how God has filled with promises and and and demonstrate his glory and his greatness and he will continue to do so through the new heavens and the new earth and it’s going to be incredible. So this is a song, my song of praise that has four different sections. God saves God sees God sustains and God stands by his word. And so to conclude this time to bring application, there’s an application for each of these sections, mary was filled with joy. She gave an incredible solemn of joy which praise God for who he was and what he’s done. First application Yeah. God saves make God your savior. Have you humbled yourself before God? Have you made God your savior? It’s not do so today right now humble yourself before him, yield your life fully and say Lord, I desperately need you to save me from my sin for myself. It’s a humble posture well and I’ll save you if you already have given your life to christ humble yourself again and just with gratitude and thanks just like mary here as a part of advent and when we take community just say thank you Lord and let that same joy fill you up and just the gratitude say thank you, thank you for saving me for my sin. Secondly God sees be a humble servant of God. God wants to use those who are humble servants, just as God took notice of his servant mary, he wants to use those who humbly serve him for his glory. It’s about him, not about you, so seek to humbly serve him and everything that you do. Third God sustains trust God as your provider for everything. He will provide for you. He will sustain you to trust him, depend upon him for whatever you’re going through right now. Any difficulty that you’re going through, you can trust him. And lastly God stands on his words, stand on God’s promises, depend upon them. Put your whole life standing on them, he will fulfill them. So no those promises, put your faith in action and rest in him through prayer. Let’s bring Lord jesus just as mary was filled and overwhelmed with who you were and that you look upon her and save her and see her and sustain her in the nation of Israel and fulfill your promises, Lord, we to lift up our voices in our hearts and praise and proclaim you you are God and we worship you. We give ourselves to we humble ourselves before.