Seeing and Singing (Luke 1:46-49)

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Well, good morning church. You want to go ahead grab your Bibles. You can open up to Luke chapter one, starting in verse 46 this is where we will be for the next few weeks of the Advent season. Luke one, beginning in verse 46 as you’re turning there after the tragic death of Princess Diana and kind of the resulting discussion around what happened there, a number of nations and states enacted what are known as good samaritan laws, the idea being that we have a duty to help when it’s in our power to do so, like if you see a need, you should respond to it. You should be involved in the rescue process, if you can be. Now, it is interesting, by the way, that we have that those laws and the sense behind them, this duty to respond, because that is not a law of nature, by the way, right, like, if Darwin is right about where we come from, the only duty we have is the duty to save ourselves and our progeny, because we want to replicate our genes. So where does it come from? Then, this very innate sense that we should actually respond to need. It’s a law of love, of course, that is written on our hearts. And if there’s a law of love, presumably there is a law giver of love, a God of love, who stands behind it? And yet, there’s a question you might have asked, and you might be wondering it even right now, this God of love, does he see? And if he sees, why isn’t he acting? Shouldn’t he rescue why didn’t he step in in this moment or that moment? And the answer, of course, is that God sees and saves, not necessarily in our way or in our time, but always and ultimately. And that is exactly what Mary comes to understand, and what she prays through in this her prayer of response to the good news of the Savior coming into the world. Now, a little bit of context, since we’re kind of picking up in the middle of the story here with Mary’s prayer, first of all, some cultural context is where are we in Israel’s history? Right here, Israel is a province of Rome. At this point they’re a vassal state. I mean, yes, they have their own king, but he’s a puppet from Rome. And even then, he is not a Jewish king. He is a foreign king, King Herod, and he is a wicked man at that. So the wicked seem to be prospering, as they often do. Poverty and injustice are rampant. Where are God’s promises? Where is the promised King reigning on David’s throne? Where Is The Promised Prophet, like Moses, especially in these 400 years of silence between Malachi and this moment? Where is the promised priest to purify his people. For that matter, why isn’t Israel what it’s supposed to be? You read the prophets, you know that Israel is supposed to be a blessing to all nations, a light to the Gentiles, drawing them to the faith. And yet that’s not happening. God’s people, then are praying and pleading, some undoubtedly with faith and expectation. We know that there’s this messianic fervor brewing at this point, but others undoubtedly with doubt. Now Mary is one of the ones with faith and expectation, and so what’s the immediate context, then why does Mary Pray these words that we’re about to read? Mary is newly pregnant, and she travels to visit her older cousin, Elizabeth, quite a bit older. I don’t know, first cousin once removed, or if just one of those ones, I’m the fourth born of a fourth born, like some of my cousins, are a lot older than I am, if it’s something like that, much older. She goes to visit Elizabeth. When Elizabeth sees her John, John, the Baptist that is in her womb, leaps for joy, and that causes Elizabeth then to bless her cousin, Mary. And what we get here is Mary’s response this prayer that she offers. It’s a little bit interesting too, because we’ve had pretty rushed narrative up to this point, like months at a time, just condensed into a few prepositional phrases, and then people are leaping and all this kind of stuff, and then all of a sudden we just pause, we get this chance to sit and meditate with Mary on the meaning of Christmas. Of course, that meditation is really praise. We call this prayer the Magnificat, which is the Latin first word of this prayer, means magnifies. You can see it there. I’m sure my soul magnifies the Lord. We see what God is doing. We sing his praises. That is Mary’s response. We look at. A song of praise. Slowly, again, it’s going to take us four weeks to get through these few verses. That’ll be a welcome break after Daniel, yeah, like we still got PTSD from Daniel 11, so okay, this is gonna be so much nicer next week. We got one verse, still gonna be able to go 40 minutes, no problem, okay, but one verse little less reading at least. So we’re gonna learn a song of praise slowly, trying to squeeze every last drop from it, to really slow down and focus on that meaning and see precisely why we would sing praise to God. That will be our outline this morning as well. We sing because he’s what let me go ahead and read the prayer these verses that we’re gonna look at this morning, 46 to 49 I’ll go back through it some but here’s Mary’s song. And Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed for the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is his name. All right, looking at those first two verses, then why do we sing? First of all, let’s note that this is not an unusual response to have an extended prayer of praise. Elizabeth’s Blessing has jolted Mary awake. It’s likely that she’s been in something of a daze since Gabriel came and announced the coming of Jesus to her, you can certainly understand why. First of all, not a lot of angelic visitations in your life, so that one’s gonna stick with you. And then also, she’s an unmarried teenager, and so she probably knew at the time what was coming, that she was gonna be cast out, that people were gonna start rumors about her, of course, all that kind of stuff. And so she’s dealing with all the fall out of that. I mean, yeah, I’m sure she is just in a daze. But when Elizabeth blesses her, she wakes up, she sees God has done something magnificent in her life and in our lives for that matter. And the proper response is praise. As I said, this is not unusual. We have a number of women in Scripture who do this exactly. Something amazing happens. God does something amazing, and they pray their praise. We see it with Deborah and her song with Miriam, as the people of God are coming out of slavery in Egypt and especially, we see it with Hannah. Hannah who is a barren woman, unable to have children, and she prays and prays and prays and asks God to open her womb. God does not always open wombs, but he does for Hannah, just like he did here for Elizabeth, who is post menopausal, and yet somehow just conceived this child, John. But what does Hannah do next? She burst forth in praise, dedicates Samuel, the son for whom she had prayed. She leaves him at the temple to serve the Lord. Mary would have known this story. Mary would have known Hannah’s words. She would have memorized them. In fact, the Jewish people at this time were the most literate people in the world, for good reason, because there were people of the book. But book was different back then. Book did not mean you had one on your bookshelf. It meant maybe there was one scroll, but one scroll in the town, in the synagogue. And so if you’re going to be thinking about Scripture all day long, guess what you’re doing. You’re doing, memorizing it. So that was a lot of their education was just memorizing huge chunks of Scripture. By the way, that does something different to you, doesn’t it? It’s interesting. Socrates, you know, he never wrote any books, right? Everything we know about Socrates, they come from guys like Plato and Xenophon. It’s because Socrates was opposed to writing because he knew that if people got books, they would get lazy, they would stop memorizing things. What
do you think Socrates would think about smartphones? I mean, you think of how different it is now where it’s like, even just a few decades ago, we at least had to go, Okay, I think it’s in Philippians. We’d have to have some knowledge of Scripture. Now you can just go, Hey, Siri, where’s that verse that’s supposed to encourage me here. By the way, Siri has no idea. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this with AI. I’ve gotten really wrong verses before, so give up on AI. Memorize Scripture. Okay, is what we’re trying to say here. But so Mary would have known Hannah’s prayer. And you can imagine if she’s traveling to visit her cousin, she’s meditating on Hannah’s prayer during this three day journey, which is no surprise, then that’s what comes out of her mouth as we go through this, especially in the next coming weeks, we’re going to see that she is referencing Hannah’s prayer over and over and over again. These these themes, not much has changed. Of course, we still meditate on what we know and what we’ve memorized, especially song lyrics, of course, because song lyrics stick easier than other words, like you can’t meditate on what you don’t have in your brain, and there are some important applications that come out of that reality. The first one is. You probably guessed where I was going with this one. Memorize Scripture. Memorize scripture, and then let that scripture inform your praise, all right, so that your prayers, your worship, is scriptural like this is the one time when it’s really good to plagiarize just just to be quoting God’s word to himself. We did this just recently. In fact, my journey group, we were in Psalm 35 and we just took it a stanza at a time. We didn’t read the stanza, but we looked at the stanza, just went around the table, and each prayed what we saw of God’s character as worship to Him. It was this wonderful exercise, something that you could certainly do as well with any part of Scripture, not just the psalm. So memorize Scripture and then the second one, because again, a hand has a prayer. Is a song, Mary’s prayer here is a song, be really careful with your listening diet, like what you listen to. There’s a study done a few years back by a LifeWay Research was published as a book called nothing lesson. And one of the things that we’re looking at was the indicators, statistically significant indicators, of children who would remain in the faith. And a lot of them were like, of course, makes sense engagement with the Word of God. For example, was the top one? Yep, that’s gonna be the top one, because we’re born again through the living and enduring word of God. The one that caught me off guard, though, was their primary musical habit. Is Christian music. Is worship music One of the main indicators. But of course, it makes sense, because that’s just what gets in you, is what you listen to all day long, like if somebody were to shake you, what would come out Taylor Swift or Isaac Watts, because you got somebody’s lyrics in your brain. For sure, you’ll notice I said Isaac Watts there. If you don’t know him, you can Google him later. But I mentioned him because it’s not just listening to Christian music or, you know, like, what has the label Christian on if you ever put on Christian radio, which I don’t necessarily recommend, but you put on Christian radio, you know, I remember hearing a song once on Christian radio. It was all about this woman learning to forgive herself. That is not a Christian message, which is about the only person you know that you don’t need to forgive is yourself, because you love yourself all the time. You have sinned against a holy God, and you have certainly sinned against your neighbor. They need to forgive you. You do not need to forgive yourself. And yet, that’s what’s going into your brain. If that’s what you’re listening to, right? Maybe I do need to forgive myself. No, listen to music that is biblically rich, theologically accurate. It’s one of the reasons why we are so careful here with the songs that we sing together as a congregation, because we want to have songs that can inform your prayers. You know that when you’re going through a trial, you’ve got a song like Christ is mine forevermore in your back pocket. You can just be praying through those lyrics which will help you out. They helped my wife out in a really difficult time, for example, great application for parents too. By the way, we got parent commission today feels like a good day for it, right? Like you set the tone for your household. When it comes to memorization and music, you set the tone for your household. And by the way, you can mix the two. Of course, recommend things like seeds, family worship, which has a lot of Scripture set to music. Randall good game just has a new album out. It’s actually for church. Even about that great opportunities for us. But what praise does Mary offer and why? As we dig into the prayer itself. Now you notice we’ve got parallel. First lines, my soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, in peril, right? Soul, spirit, same subject, you know, verb, glorify, rejoice. And then we got an object, Lord, God, my Savior. And of course, those two are parallel as well. Although they’re not exact synonyms, are they not exact synonyms? Especially the second and third pairs, there’s this subtle building and deepening that’s happening. So my soul glorifies again, literally magnifies, makes big. So we can all see it. We talked about this before. When we talk about magnifying God’s glory, we’re not talking about a microscope. We’re talking about a telescope. A microscope makes something really small seem bigger than it is, but a telescope helps you see something that is just massive for the size that it actually is, or at least close to it. That’s what we’re doing. God is infinitely great and glorious, and we just gotta, like, blow him up in our minds so that we can actually see His goodness and glory. Notice she magnifies the Lord, specifically, Lord, as in the god she’s magnifying is king, ruler, Master, creator. We belong to Him. He is holy other. Because we are creatures. We are contingent beings. He is Creator and self existent. In other words, we are talking about his transcendence. Here. God is above and beyond us. The proper response to God’s transcendence is worship, to magnify the Lord, to help everyone see his bigness. But then in the second half, we get this subtle shift, because now Mary is rejoicing, just like John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb, and she’s rejoicing in God, her savior, this transcendent God, the big God, the the God that maybe, if we weren’t careful, we would think of as kind of a far away God, right? Because he’s in heaven and I’m on Earth, and he’s wholly different than I am, that big, maybe far God draws near to us to Mary. The word for this is imminence. By the way, we use transcendence. Sometimes we don’t use imminence very often. It’s a great time of year to talk about imminence, because we get that word from Emmanuel, which means God with us. Imminence is God’s with us Ness, which is not a word, but I just made it up. Okay, so his imminence, like this God, who is big enough to deliver us, is, if I could put it this way, small enough to come near, to help us to care, to act, and the proper response to that knowledge is delight, delight. And she’s rejoicing in God, her savior. She she knows that God is Savior that he has, in fact, drawn near because with the conception of Jesus, Mary knows that God is coming to rescue his people, at last, although it is a limited understanding at this point, like Hannah, who’s thinking of her specific circumstances, like Deborah and Miriam, who are thinking of national circumstances, foreign oppressors, things like that. Most likely, Mary is thinking here of national deliverance and not spiritual salvation. She is hoping that God is coming to rescue her and her people from Caesar, not from sin. Now in the midst of horrific circumstances, it’s hard not to pray and even praise this way. If you and your family were starving and oppressed in a war torn country, your prayers would probably be circumstantial as well so often. But we do know better. Of course, Mary eventually knew better. We know the salvation God is bringing is infinitely better than what Mary was envisioning here, which is a good reminder for us, though, because so often we want to be delivered from our circumstances. Also, we often wonder where God is and why he’s not acting. Did Mary? I mean, even at the end of her life, of course, she is still poor, still oppressed, Caesar is still on the throne. There’s the reminder, right? God might not deliver you from certain trials,
but he will save you to the uttermost. He will deliver you in and through those trials. We can trust his way and trust His timing, but don’t just trust delight and sing. That’s more than trust right delight and sing. Look at who he is, transcendent and imminent, Lord and Savior, and praise Him. Right? We sing because he is majestic. We sing because he’s majestic, right? He is all this that we’ve talked about, and so much more even, and when we realize that we can’t help but glorify and rejoice. And we do that with our whole being. The one part of the parallelism we didn’t look at was soul and spirit, but you put those two together, and it’s like Mary saying with all of me, right, every part of who I am, this is the I that is singing here with her whole being. It’s like with David dancing before the ark of the Lord. It’s why we sing. Even we don’t come together to just mutter theological truths to each other. We sing, why with drums and guitar and all the way because we have to. It’s a bodily response. We lift our arms. We shout for joy to the Lord. We clap our hands. How could we not what I love, though, is that Mary is doing this in her time of private worship. You might call it a quiet time devotional. It’s fine. Those are good things. I don’t tend to call it a quiet time because it’s not always quiet what we do in that time, but our time of private worship. This is our goal, of course, that we would see who God is and sing. I like the way Charles Spurgeon talks about this. He says, I like sometimes to leave off praying and singing and to sit still and just gaze upward till my inmost soul has seen my Lord. Then I say he is in a. Lovely. Yea. He is all together, lovely. What is Spurgeon saying there? In other words, he’s saying, take the time to see and truly sing. And then we bring that I into the we into the gathering. We move from private worship to corporate worship, which magnifies the experience. You’ve heard of the mob mentality, right? Just the idea that people who are in a crowd will behave differently than they would by themselves. Usually, it’s a bad thing, but not always. Of course, you maybe have experiences. Even you ever watched a comedy by yourself, pay attention. You don’t laugh, not out loud, you watch that same movie with someone else, and you’re gonna snicker, right? We’re just we’re different when we’re around each other. Here’s the way Martin Luther put it. At home, in my own house, there’s 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 so we sing alone and together, because he is majestic, not the only reason we sing, though. Let’s keep going. Here’s verse 48 again, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed so Mary gives her reasons for glorifying and rejoicing in her lord and savior. The first thing she points out here in this verse is that he has seen her. It’s translated as he has been mindful, but it reads literally, he saw me. He saw what has he seen? This is a great question. I mean, look at what she says, even, of course, he has seen not her good works, not her faith, not her saintliness, no, he has seen her need. That is what God has seen. Her humble estate. She is, as Kent Hughes put it, a nobody from no place she cannot deliver herself like Hannah. Couldn’t make herself conceive like Deborah and Miriam. No way we’re going to defeat these foreign oppressors without help. She needs God to rescue her in the same way that we need God to rescue us, because this is how all of us must come to God. Through Jesus Christ, we come in humility. I mean the generations arise and call her blessed. Of course, Jesus blessed us as well. How does he describe our blessed estate? We looked at this earlier this year in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn. And we talked about this, then that means mourning sin, those who grieve because of the sin in their lives, those the ones who are blessed, the ones who come to God and say nothing in my hand I bring only to the cross, I cling. This is why she also calls herself God’s servant. Here words not actually servant. There’s a word for servant that’s not the one that’s used here. It’s slave, but slave grates on our ears. We don’t tend to use that word as much, but it’s a slave. How does a slave come to a master? A slave comes before a master with no expectations. You don’t get to come and complain about working conditions or something like that. That’s not how it happens, and we recognize that’s how we stand before the Lord. God owes us nothing because of our sin. So we come in humility, as St Augustine put it, for those who would learn God’s ways, humility is the first thing. Humility is the second thing, humility is the third, but it is very good news that Mary describes herself in this way, because we also have nothing in us to commend ourselves to God. We contribute nothing to our salvation except the sin from which we need to be saved. Ours is a humble estate as well. We are the lowly, but that’s the message of Christmas, of course. Like that’s okay. The message of Christmas is that Jesus comes to the lowly as the lowly makes himself like one of us. This confuses the wise men, the Magi, doesn’t it? Where do they go to look for this newborn King? Jerusalem, the capital, the palace, and meet with King Herod. They don’t go to this backwater town, the back room where King is lying in a manger, anything like that. He comes to those who see their need and seek help, who cry out to Him for deliverance, and this is why Jesus said it’s the poor and the foolish and the weak and the sinful who are entering the kingdom of God before the rich and wise and strong and self righteous, because that latter group doesn’t recognize their humble estate and their need. So we sing then because he. Is mindful we sing because he’s mindful. He’s seen and responded. He is the original Good Samaritan. Didn’t leave us on the side of the road, didn’t leave us in our humble estate, but came to us. Mary continues her praise, though right from now on, all generations will call me blessed, which is a little bit interesting. It feels like it doesn’t necessarily follow. Now there is a missing conjunction in the NIV, probably because there are, like too many of them in a row, right? We get four. He has been mindful, because from now on, all generations will call me blessed four. The Mighty One has done great things for me. So it’s a lot of reasons in a row, but, but it makes sense, right? Because she’s saying he’s been mindful of the humble state of his servant. Because, like, who am I? Who am I that future generations should call me blessed. So she is continuing her thought exactly, God has seen her in her humble estate. But what does God do with the humble? Says it over and over and over again in Scripture, God exalts the humble, but opposes the proud, which we’ll get to verses 51 to 53 by the way, later in this series. So from now on, because God has exalted the humble, so from now on, we’ve entered this new era in salvation history, everyone will know her name, which certainly everyone does rightly. She is truly blessed. God has lavished his blessing on her. You want to think about what this looks like. I mean, did Jesus have her eyes, her nose, her hair color like that’s how remarkable. This is absolutely amazing. But what’s even more amazing is that if we are in Christ, the same is true of us. People will call us blessed, and God will bless us. Jesus says as much. Matthew 25 verse 34 says, right after the parable the sheep and the goats, and it says, Then the King will say to those on his right, Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. And then John tells us, first, John, three, two. We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him. Now we might not have his eyes or his nose or his hair color because he has passed on not his physical but his spiritual DNA, but we have it, we will look like Jesus. We can praise him for that. What
does that look like? John actually goes on the very next verse and says, All who have this hope purify themselves. So one way we praise God is by putting sin to death and practicing holiness. Because it’s not just our mouths, but our whole lives that should sing of His glory. We sing because he’s majestic. We sing because he’s mindful. And then one more reason. Let’s keep reading. Verse 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is his name. So this is the second reason Mary gives for glorifying and rejoicing in her Lord and Savior, and it’s because he has done great things for her and for all of us. Psalm 126, verse three, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy salvation. History is just a history of God’s great, mighty deeds on behalf of his people, but we have a personal history too. Have you kept a record of God’s faithfulness to you, like even now, when I mentioned that, what comes to mind for you, how God has proven himself to you over and over and over again, if you are in Christ, that list should be really, really long. Here’s some really big ones, right? Like He has revealed Himself to you. He opened your blind eyes. He took your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh. He regenerated you. He’s renewing you. He will restore you. And he has carried you through the trials that you have faced. He has provided for you again and again and again. You think like this, and you should start to sound like the Psalms, right? Here’s Psalm 71 verses 15 to 19. My mouth will tell of your righteous deeds, of your saving acts, all day long, though I know not how, how to relate them all. I will come and proclaim Your mighty acts, Sovereign Lord, I will proclaim Your righteous deeds, yours alone. Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds, even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation. I love that, by the way, he’s like You can forsake me. Just let me finish my story. First, your mighty acts to all. Are to come your righteousness. God reaches to the heavens. You who have done great things, who is like you? God, may that be your song. But why mighty one? We talk about this sometimes right when we pray to God, we want to choose our address carefully, Mary certainly is. She’s being inspired by the Holy Spirit here. Why Mighty One of all the things she could have said of God? What makes sense? Because look at the promise up a little ways. Caden read it for us just a moment ago. Luke 135 The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God, that’s impossible. That’s impossible. Well, with man, with God, all things are possible. And that’s the point, right? And in fact, Angel even goes on to say that in verse 36 Even Elizabeth, your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. That was impossible, too, and it just happened, for no word from God will ever fail. Verse 37 that’s what makes him the mighty one. He does the impossible holy is his name. And again, why? Holy here? Holy meaning set apart here. We’re not talking about God’s moral perfection, although that is true, but his unique sovereign authority, again, the God who is holy, other is king. So we praise His Holiness. We praise His power. Why? Well, first reason is because none of us would have thought of this. None of us thought God was going to save us like this. I know that’s true, by the way, because you look at every other religion on the planet, and they’re all devised by humans, and they all end up being exactly the same. You need to try harder. You need to make yourself acceptable before the Lord. Karma makes sense to us. Grace does not. We would not have come up with this on our own, that God Himself would come in the flesh and rescue us from ourselves through His substitutionary death. No one would have dreamed of that. But even if we could have thought of it, we couldn’t have done it. We couldn’t have done it. Only God can do it, and so all the glory is His. So we sing because He is mighty. We sing because he’s mighty, he is able to bring about his sovereign purposes, to deliver his people in the most unexpected ways. Let me summarize where we’ve been so far. God’s people, that’s you and me, by the way, are humbled and helpless, unable to deliver themselves, physically or spiritually. Injustice and oppression so often seem to rule the day. It’s as though the fabric of the world has been ripped. We need help. Does God see? Does God care? Will God act? Well, there’s no question. God sees verse 48 he has seen the humble state of his servant, and God does verse 49 the Mighty One has done great things for us. That is why he sends his son, because he saw and he responded. In fact, he God sees more and does better than we expect, because he comes not just bringing physical deliverance, but spiritual salvation. That’s why his name is Jesus. As the angel says, right, you’re to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Yeshua, yeah, ya be sure. Saves. God saves. The LORD Saves. This baby didn’t come to throw off the Roman yoke, but to throw off sins yoke to defeat death and reconcile us to God. And he did so at cost to himself, at the cost of Jesus’s very life, so we can’t possibly question His love, because that’s what love is, to lay down your life for your friends. This baby was born to die in our place, to deliver us from ourselves. What do you do with that? Well, that’s the big idea. Our takeaway from today, when we see what God has seen and done, when we see that, when we see the glory of the gospel we sing, how could we not? Do you believe God sees and responds? Do you believe that God sees and responds again. How could you not? Because the proof is in the Incarnation, in this baby, born to Mary, in His perfect life and substitutionary death, his triumphant resurrection, His glorious ascension, his ongoing intercession and His soon return. Has that. Knowledge led you to glorify and rejoice. And here’s a diagnostic question for you, where you’re like I don’t know. Am I glorifying and rejoicing? What do your prayers look like? Is it only ever petitions, or is every petition wrapped in praise and thanksgiving? Every time God shows up, he always sees. He always responds. Even in our trials, we know that we’ve see, that he’s seen and we sing. We can take it one step farther, though, as we close because we saw in first John already, we know that we will be like Jesus, we will be like God, which means we should be learning to do this ourselves. So open your eyes. Look at the needs around you. See and respond. Now it is different than how God responded, of course, because our response is in his power and for His glory, but still, we can see and respond. Christmas is such a great time to practice this instead of strengthening ourselves in self, love and greed, which is the mold culture would squeeze us into in this time, that’s why we do things like missionary Christmas, an Operation Christmas, child and Angel Tree and the outreach, your Christmas story. Like, I felt bad with all these announcements, right? Like, man, that’s a lot on you go, No, this is a great time for that to go, right? He saw and he responded. So we can see and we can respond. It is good that December is the time of year when giving is the highest, because as the time of year when we remember the greatest gift of all. But it’s not just our financial needs that God saw or that we see. What about the emotional, the physical, and especially the spiritual needs? What people need from you in December is the gift of your presence, not your presence. That’s really hard to say. It looks good in writing, though, I promise you. And sit with the lonely, listen to the ignored, touch the leprous, write the isolated. Pray with the hurting, serve the struggling, and above all, the most loving thing you can do, proclaim the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ that God saw us in our need and responded. Proclaim that to those who need to hear it. When we see what God has seen and done, we sing and when we see what God sees, we seek to help. Let’s pray.
Lord, our souls magnify you, and our spirits rejoice in you, God, our Savior, because you saw us in our need and you acted there was nothing in us to merit your salvation, the whole reason we’re in the mess from which we needed to be delivered is because we’d rebelled against you, our good and gracious King, and yet still you saw you had mercy, you had compassion, you had grace, you had love, and you acted. You sent Your Son to save us this Christmas season, Lord, may we be reminded of that truth, and may our hearts overflow with praise to You. May we sing Lord together in our times of private worship. May we sing as we’re shopping because Carols are playing in stores. May we sing to our neighbors that they might hear this good news. And may we also act like you Lord, as you make us like Christ, conform us to his image, so that we see and respond to the needs of others around us too. May you be magnified in us as we serve others. We pray for Your name’s sake Amen.