A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on April 28, 2024.
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 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 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 has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” (Luke 1:46–55).[1]
After the angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary, telling her of God’s favor that she would conceive, bear a son, and name him Jesus, she traveled to visit her elderly relatives, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who Mary learned was also with child. Upon Mary’s arrival, Elizabeth’s son, John, six months in her womb jumped for joy, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, blessing the mother of her Lord. And in that moment, following Elizabeth’s exhortation and her son’s jubilation, Mary breaks out in song, a Spirit-filled, Scripture-saturated song of praise. Traditionally called the Magnificat, a title derived from the first word of the Latin translation, magnificat or “magnifies,” it is one of four “hymns” or “psalms” in the Gospel of Luke, and brilliant in form and placement. As one scholar describes it, the Magnificat “is like an opera; the action almost stops so that the situation may be savored more deeply.”[2]
It is indeed a poetic masterpiece to be savored, but the Magnificat also reveals Mary’s remarkable grasp of Scripture. In it, we hear echoes of David’s psalms and Hannah’s song (1 Sam. 2:1-8), as well as allusions to Genesis, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Samuel, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. As she sings from her “soul” and “spirit,” she reveals there she has stored up God’s Word (Ps. 119:11). One scholar observes, “The style and language are those which would be natural to the speaker, as drawn from the storehouse of faith and piety, the sacred writings of her people, familiar to all by constant recitation, and dear to pious souls by use in their own devotions. … So here the words as well as the thoughts are those of a high-souled Hebrew maiden of devout and meditative habit, whose mind has taken the tone of the Scriptures in which she has been nurtured.”[3] Oh, that the same might be said of you and me, who are indwelled by the same Holy Spirit as Mary, that we would know and so pray the Word of God. If we would pray like the virgin Mary, we would saturate our hearts with the Word of God.
But it’s not only Mary’s biblical literacy that we would emulate but also her desire to make much of her Lord. Elizabeth’s son, John, would later say of our Lord Jesus and himself, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Mary’s humility is likewise inspiring, reminding us that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas. 4:6). J.C. Ryle says, “All are not rich. All are not learned. All are not highly gifted. All are not preachers. But all children of God may be clothed with humility.”[4] Clothed with humility, Mary directs her song heavenward, praising him alone who is praiseworthy.
The Lord Is Praiseworthy
In her blessing, Elizabeth asks, “why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (43), but Mary redirects her question from herself to her Lord, singing,
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (46-47).
It is an exclamation of praise encompassing her entire being, soul and spirit, echoing the 103rd psalm, in which we sing,
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name! (Ps. 103:1).
All that is within Mary praises the Lord her God.
To express her soul’s delight, she “magnifies” or “exalts” the Lord. The first words out of her mouth make much of her Lord. She couples this with joy, rejoicing in God her “Savior.” It is not promotion of herself, her heritage, or hard work. No, she is praising God rightly, for who he is and what he has done, revealing his mercy in bestowing grace upon the unworthy. Matthew Henry notes, “Even the mother of our Lord had need of an interest in him as her Savior, and would have been undone without it.”[5] Mary’s song then is a gospel-centered, God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Spirit-filled offering of praise from a sinner saved by grace.
But unlike you and me, Mary has been chosen by God to bear his eternal Son in the flesh. God “has looked on the humble estate” of Mary, who is no one from nowhere, and has chosen her to be his “servant” (48). The Greek word translated here as “servant” may also be translated “slave,” it may be understood as a term of service but also submission. To be a slave of man is demeaning and demoralizing, but to be a slave of God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, to serve him who “is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,”[6] the “one only, the living and true God,”[7] is not divine oppression but an honor and privilege.
For all of this, Mary is remembered, as she prophesied, “from now on all generations will call me blessed” (48), not as a dispenser but a recipient of grace, not as our mediator but as the chosen one to carry the incarnate Son of God in her womb, our one and only Mediator. For this reason, in all our historic church creeds and confessions, from the Apostles’ Creed to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we confess that Jesus Christ “was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.”[8] Her blessing was in her bearing, as the Theotokos, meaning “God-bearer,” a term dating back at least to the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, connoting not her divinity but the deity of Christ. She is remembered for all generations not for her own but for Christ’s sake. For, the child who was conceived within her womb, the child she carried to term, the child born in Bethlehem was and is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.”[9]
The Lord Is Mighty
Mary continues her song as she began: praising God for who he is and what he has done:
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name (49).
If God is mighty enough to send his Son to this world to be born of a virgin, he is mighty enough to save a sinner like Mary, and you and me. He is might to save. He does not save us in response to who we are or what we have done. Unlike us, God is holy, set apart from his creation in his transcendent majesty and infinite moral purity. In contrast, we are sinners by nature, with nothing to offer God but our wretched state and accompanying sin, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Mary praises the Lord our God who saves sinners.
But the Lord’s salvation is not universal but according to his sovereign grace through faith, “for those who fear him from generation to generation” (50). The word “fear” that Mary uses here is essentially faith evidenced by obedience, like Abraham’s obedience in offering of his son, Isaac. Abraham’s fear of God was a justifying faith, like our own, in which we trust in the perfect provision of Christ, living out that faith in obedience to him. And this faith, as Paul explains to the Ephesians, “is not [our] own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). And this Mary teaches us in her song, not boasting in what she has done but the mercy and grace of God alone.
This is in a sense counterintuitive and certainly contrary to the way of the world. But God often does the unexpected among the least rather than the expected through the greatest. Consider, for example, Israel’s exodus from Egypt. In his proud heart, Pharaoh denied God’s authority and disregarded his Word, saying to Moses, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice” (Ex. 5:2a). At the time, Pharaoh was likely the most powerful ruler in the world, and Egypt was one of the great wonders of the ancient world, but Pharaoh and his kingdom were plundered and destroyed by the strong arm of the Lord. Or, consider the example of David, whom God took from tending his father’s sheep and made him the king of Israel, and the head of a dynasty of kings to come, and ultimately the King of kings. And consider our Lord Jesus himself, who was born of a young woman of no regard, grew up in a village of low regard, and of a family of little regard. When Philip sought to introduce Nathaniel to Jesus, Nathaniel replied, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). And when Jesus returned home during the peak of his earthly ministry, his neighbors asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3). He was so unforgettable that he was remembered only for his work and siblings.
That’s how the world sees things, but God says, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways … For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). We look at the way of the world, in which we see powerful people rule and presume that the kingdom of God reigns that same.
But when we look to Scripture, we find instead,
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate (52).
We look at the way of the world, in which we see the rich prosper and presume that the needs of the children of God’s kingdom are met the same. But when we look to Scripture, we find instead,
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty (53).
The world looks to man’s might, power, or wealth, but Scripture teaches us to look to God’s mercy, who exalts the humble, feeds the hungry, and redeems us as his own.
The Lord Is Faithful
Mary concludes her song fittingly, as she carries the long awaited One to come and fulfill God’s promise to Abraham, singing,
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever (54-55).
God promised Abraham that he would multiply and bless his offspring, and through his offspring the world would be blessed (Gen. 12:1-3). And Israel certainly multiplied, but when would the blessing come? Two thousand years passed. Had God forgotten, or was he unfolding his plan? Was it merely a myth, or was it myth becoming fact, as C.S. Lewis put it?[10] Would the time ever come, or would it never come? As Mary sings, it had, for “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4:4).
Just as God’s ways are not our ways, so God’s timing is not our timing. As the apostle Peter explains, “do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:8-9). Mary teaches us that contrary to our impatience and doubt, we should trust the Lord, who is working out his sovereign purpose in all things. As C.H. Spurgeon reminds us, “Everything that has moved or shall move in heaven, and earth, and hell, has been, is, and shall be according to the counsel and foreknowledge of God, fulfilling a holy, just, wise and unalterable purpose.”[11] And so God, who works all things together for good, “for those who are called according to his purpose,” sent his only-begotten Son to bless the world as he promised, that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). For, he who came in the fullness of time, came “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:5). And as those blessed by the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, we are his spiritual descendants (Rom. 4:16), grafted into true Israel (Rom. 11:17), the adopted children of God (Eph. 1:5), even joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17).
As this is true for all who believe, in Christ we are led by God’s Spirit to sing a Magnificat of our own. With all that we are, let us magnify him whose mighty acts of mercy, such as Christ’s propitiation and resurrection, have saved us through faith in him. Let us rejoice that our mighty God is also faithful to keep his promises. While our faithfulness vacillates, his never does; he is always faithful. So, let us sing our song, following the example of Mary’s, which is, as Martin Luther says, a song about “the great works and deeds of God, for the strengthening of our faith, for the comforting of all those of low degree, and for the terrifying of all the mighty ones of earth. We are to let the hymn serve this threefold purpose; for she sang it not for herself alone but for us all, to sing it after her.”[12]
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] R. Tannehill quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 45.
[3] Thomas Dehany Bernard quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 46.
[4] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 28.
[5] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1960), 1413
[6] The Shorter Catechism” Q. 4, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 357-358.
[8] “The Apostles’ Creed,” Trinity Hymnal, Revised Edition (Suwanee: Great Commission Publications, Inc., 1990), 845.
[9] The Nicene Creed, Ibid., 846.
[10] C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 66-67.
[11] C.H. Spurgeon, “A Feast for Faith,” September 16, 1866, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/a-feast-for-faith/#flipbook/
[12] Martin Luther quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 53.
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