Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Magnificat, Part 1 (Luke 1:46-50)

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The Magnificat, Part 1 (Luke 1:46-50) · Reformed Thinking

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How did an uneducated, unwed teenager from, you know, a
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dusty, ancient backwater write a song that is so structurally and
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theologically perfect that modern scholars just flat out
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refuse to believe she actually wrote it?
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It is a massive question. Well, welcome to Reformed
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Thinking. I am thrilled you were joining
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us today. Absolutely.
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So our mission for this deep dive is a comprehensive analysis
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of our Kent Hughes commentary on Luke Chapter 1, specifically
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versus 46 through 55. The Magnificat.
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Yeah, the first and greatest song of the incarnation.
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But to set the scene for you, we have to look at the physical
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meeting between two women, right Mary and Elizabeth.
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Oh, it is such a vivid scene. It really is.
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Imagine walking into a house where the very air is like
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humming with a kind of holy electricity.
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Yeah, that is a great way to put it.
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You have two women both holding these impossible secrets,
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meeting in a Judean Hill Country home.
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One is well past childbearing years and the other is an unwed
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teenager. And the physical reaction is
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immediate. Exactly the moment Mary arrives,
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the unborn John leaps for joy in the watery darkness of
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Elizabeth's womb. You know, physically responding
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to the presence of the unborn Christ, which.
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Prompts Elizabeth to just shout. Yeah, she immediately shouts
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this prophetic cry of blessing, and then Mary responds with this
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majestic, perfectly composed calm.
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It is a staggering contrast. OK, let's unpack this, because
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our goal today is to understand how a young woman's spontaneous
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song encapsulates these massive theological truths about God's
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might, His Holiness, and his mercy.
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Right. And how those truths apply to
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the listener today. Yes, precisely.
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We want to look at how those exact same truths apply directly
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to your own spiritual life today.
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Well, the contrast in that room is striking.
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You know, you have Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit
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reacting with a loud, almost turbulent shout.
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Only get. Tumult of blessing.
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Yeah, a total tumult. Then Mary steps into that
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chaotic joy and delivers a song that is so structurally precise,
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so theologically dense, that it has left scholars debating its
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origins for centuries. Which is wild to think about.
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It is. And that brings us to the
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historical criticism surrounding the Magnificat.
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There are critics who look at this text and, well, they howl
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that it is simply too polished. Too perfect for a young girl.
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Right. They argue that this song could
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not possibly have been sung by a young peasant girl.
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To them, it is too theological, it has too many Old Testament
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allusions, it's too carefully structured and too poetic.
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So they assume someone else wrote it.
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Yeah, because of that bias, they theorize that Luke must have
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borrowed from existing canticles.
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Like what kind of canticles? While some scholars suggest Luke
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took Maccubbie and hymns, those were militant songs sung by
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Jewish rebels who fought off Greek oppression a century and a
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half earlier. Oh wow.
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OK. Yeah, they think he just adapted
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those others suggest he lifted material from Qumran Hymnady.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls community, right?
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Right. Qumran was an ascetic Jewish
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community out in the desert, and they wrote extensive liturgical
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poetry. Still other critics guessed that
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these were early Christian songs, developed long after the
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birth of Christ by a suffering church.
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And Luke just, you know, retroactively pasted them into
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Mary's mouth. That is just wait.
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I have a massive problem with that critique.
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Let's hear it. It completely ignores the
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sociology and culture Mary grew up in.
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I mean, claiming a young Israelite wouldn't possess this
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vocabulary is like claiming a modern teenager couldn't
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possibly know the intricate, rapid fire lyrics of a massively
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popular stage musical. Oh, that is a fantastic analogy.
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Right. Imagine telling a theater kid
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they couldn't possibly rattle off a 5 minute rap from
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Hamilton. They listen to it on a loop.
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Yes, for Mary, the Scriptures were her soundtrack.
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The culture of 1st century Israel was entirely built on
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oral tradition and massive feats of memorization.
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They didn't have printed books at home.
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No, not at all. Israelites knew the songs of
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Hannah, the songs of Deborah, and the Psalms of David by
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heart. They sing them customarily on
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feast days. Right, These weren't dusty texts
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kept on a shelf for academics. Exactly, they were the living,
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breathing music of her daily life.
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So to assume she couldn't compose a song utilizing that
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vocabulary is a total misunderstanding of how
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saturated her mind was with the word of God.
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What's fascinating here is the timeline of her travel, which
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provides the practical mechanism for this composition.
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The trip to Elizabeth's house. Right.
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Mary took a three to four day trip through the Hill Country to
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see Elizabeth. The terrain was rugged and
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travel was entirely by foot. That is a lot of walking.
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It is during those long hours of walking, newly pregnant,
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carrying the weight of the Angel Gabriel's announcement, she had
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nothing but time to think. And what do you think she was
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thinking about? She likely brooded over the Old
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Testament story of Hannah. If we look at First Samuel
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chapter 1, Hannah also experienced A miraculous
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conception after years of agonizing barrenness.
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And she responded with a song. Yeah, she responded with a
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magnificent song of praise. The phrases and themes of
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Hannah's hymn were already locked in Mary's mind.
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So the raw material was already there.
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Exactly. And this is where we have to
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look at the theological synthesis of how Scripture
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actually comes to be. Right, the inspiration process.
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Yeah, if we look at Second Peter chapter 1, verses 20 and 21, we
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see that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's
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own interpretation. But men and women spoke from
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God. Right as they were carried along
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by the Holy Spirit. Inspiration is not a divine
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dictation where the the human author falls into a trance and
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wakes up with a scroll written in a language they don't
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understand. It's not automatic writing.
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No, not at all. The Holy Spirit took the
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Scripture already stored in Mary's mind the sacred
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phraseology she heard in the synagogue and sang at home, and
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orchestrated it into a hallowed, stunning divine human
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composition. That is beautiful.
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So she didn't need entirely new information downloaded into her
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brain. Right.
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No new revelation was needed to give her the words.
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The Spirit activated the Word already dwelling within her.
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That makes total sense. It doesn't erase her humanity or
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her personal history at. All no, it utilizes it.
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Right elevates it to a perfect standard.
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So let's look directly at the mechanics of how she begins this
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song. The opening lines.
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Yeah, the opening line is my soul magnifies the Lord, and my
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spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
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The Latin translation gives us the famous phrase Magnificat
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animamea dominum. Which is where we get the title,
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the Magnificat. Right.
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But I want to ask a logistical question here, just thinking
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about the physics of that statement.
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OK, Fire Ray. Logically, God is infinite, He
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is absolute. I am struggling with the phrase
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magnify the Lord. Because you can't make him
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bigger. Right.
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I can't make him bigger. So is she just talking about
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public relations? Public relations.
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Yeah, like making him look good to others.
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How does a peasant girl from Nazareth or, you know, you
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listening right now, actually magnify the Creator?
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Well, not quite public relations, no.
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To answer that, we have to look at the literal translation of
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the Greek phrase. What does the Greek?
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Say it translates to my soul makes great the Lord, or my soul
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enlarges the Lord. Enlarges the Lord.
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Yeah, OK. Yeah, we are obviously not
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altering God's actual size or adding to His divine attributes.
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God is immutable. He does not change.
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Right, he is already fully great.
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Exactly. Rather, we expand our own
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comprehension of him. Think of a telescope.
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Oh, I like that. A telescope does not make the
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stars bigger. The stars are already massive,
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burning spheres of gas millions of miles across.
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Right, they are huge. What the telescope does is make
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the stars bigger to the human eye.
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It enlarges our perception of an existing reality.
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That is a great visual. So we are the ones changing, not
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God. Spot on.
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We enlarge God in our lives when we take into our thinking some
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new aspect of His greatness. Like when we study the word.
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Yes, for example, when you read specific texts about creation,
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texts such as Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 through 18.
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Or John chapter 1 verses one through 3.
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Right, or Hebrews chapter 1 verses one through 3.
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When you meditate on the fact that by Him all things were
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created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, your
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theological understanding stretches.
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Your internal universe expands. Exactly the same thing happens
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when you meditate on the specific historical details of
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Christ's atonement. The actual events of the cross.
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Yeah, the sheer physical and spiritual weight of what
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happened there. The fuller your knowledge of His
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greatness becomes, the greater your ability to enlarge Him in
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your own soul. I want you to consider your own
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mental framing right now as you listen to this.
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When Christ enters a life, the natural result is that you begin
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to think grander thoughts. The scale of your reality
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completely shifts. It does.
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Mary had just experienced the impossible in a very physical
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way. She had to be thinking, if God
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can perform a miracle of this magnitude in my own womb, what
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can he do in the womb of the universe?
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That is a staggering thought. Right, That changes how you wake
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up in the morning. That alters how you view your
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daily struggles. It puts everything into a new
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perspective. Yeah, Christ is born in your
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life. His life courses through you and
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suddenly you are capable of thinking greater thoughts of God
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than were ever possible before. And as those thoughts grow.
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As those soaring thoughts hit your mind and come to your lips,
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you are actively enlarging the Lord in your sphere of
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existence. You are becoming the telescope.
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Becoming the telescope. I love that.
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And that enlargement is not purely an intellectual exercise.
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No, it's not just academic. Right.
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It involves the anatomy of true worship.
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In verses 46 and 47, Mary uses a classic Hebrew poetic device
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called parallelism. How does that?
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Work. It's a structural feature where
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you express the identical thought in two different ways to
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create a compounding effect. OK, to really drive the point
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home. Yeah, first, she says my soul
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magnifies the Lord, and second, she says my spirit rejoices in
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God, my Savior. Soul and spirit.
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Exactly. In Hebrew literature, the terms
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soul and spirit act as surrogates for the eye or the
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inner self. She is bringing her total being
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into this action. Every part of her.
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Right. We can connect this directly to
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John Chapter 4 versus 23 and 24. But Jesus talks to the woman at
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the well. Yes, Jesus states that the
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Father seeks those who worship in spirit and truth.
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Worshipping in spirit means engaging the entire human self.
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Not just going through the motions.
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No, God desires people whose complete inner person, their
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intellect, their emotions, their will, is actively, passionately
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engaged in adoration. We see vivid biblical examples
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of this total self engagement. It is never a passive arms
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folded kind of observation. No, it's highly active.
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Think about King David in Second Samuel chapter 6.
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He is bringing the Ark of the Covenant into the city of
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Jerusalem. Which was a massive event.
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Huge. The Ark represented the very
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footstool of God on earth, and David is dancing with absolute
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total absorption. She was entirely lost in the
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moment. Yeah, he pledges in Psalm 108.
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I will sing and make melody with all my being.
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There's no self consciousness there, only holy passion.
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Right. He didn't care who was watching.
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Exactly. Or think about Mary of Bethany.
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In Mark Chapter 14, she takes a priceless vial of pure Nard, a
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perfume worth an entire year's wages.
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An incredible financial sacrifice.
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And she shatters it over Jesus and wipes his feet with her
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hair. She gave over her entire human
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spirit to the passionate worship of the Lord Jesus Christ,
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completely ignoring the scowling religious leaders in the room.
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She was totally unbothered by their judgment.
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Right. Both David and Mary of Bethany
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show us what it looks like to make great the Lord with our
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entire spirit and soul. They held nothing back.
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But there is a fascinating shift when we move from individual
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worship, like Mary standing in Elizabeth's house, to corporate
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worship. The gathered church.
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Yeah, and I want to use an analogy from the sociology of
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crowds to illustrate. Them.
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OK, sociology, let's hear it. We know that a mob descends to a
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much lower level of cruelty than any single person would commit
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on their own. Right group mentality.
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People do terrible things in a riot.
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Exactly. Group dynamics pull the absolute
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worst out of people, bypassing individual moral filters, but
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the inverse is also true. That's an interesting point.
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Think about a crowd of music lovers gathered at a Symphony
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hall. They will experience a
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heightened appreciation of the music far beyond what one person
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listening alone in their living room will experience.
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Because they are all focused on the same beautiful thing.
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Yes, the collective focus amplifies the beauty, the
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acoustics, the shared silence, the unified attention.
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It all elevates the experience it.
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Builds on itself. Right, in the same way corporate
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worship elevates holy passion. The great 16th century reformer
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Martin Luther captured that exact dynamic perfectly.
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What? Did he say about it?
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He confided once about his own spiritual struggles, saying that
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at home in his own house, there was no warmth or vigor in him.
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He felt spiritually dry. Yeah, he felt cold to the things
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of God, but he noted that in the church, when the multitude is
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gathered together, a fire is kindled in his heart and it
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breaks its way through. A fire is kindled.
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That is a perfect description. It really is.
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Congregational worship makes possible an intensity of
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magnification that does not happen as readily when we are
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isolated. We need each other to reach that
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peak. Right.
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Mary sets the standard here for all who experienced the new
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birth, but she also points us toward the necessity of
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gathering together to fan that flame.
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We cannot sustain that level of magnification in a vacuum.
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Now Mary gives a specific personal reason for this
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outpouring of worship. We see the prerequisite for
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grace in verse 48. What is her reason?
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She says he is looked on the humblest state of his servant
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and she does not mean humility as a polite personality trait.
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Like false modesty. Right, like someone accepting an
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award and saying oh I really didn't deserve this.
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The Greek word used here is tapinosis, which carries a
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massive, crushing weight. If we connect this to the bigger
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picture, the use of that word taponosis is highly revealing.
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How so? It is the exact word used in the
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Septuagint, and the Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation
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of the Hebrew Old Testament. OK, got it.
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It's used there to describe Hannah's severe affliction in
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First Samuel, chapter one, verse 11.
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When she was weeping at the Tabernacle.
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Yes. However, we need to clarify a
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massive theological distinction here.
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For Hannah, the affliction was her personal, agonizing
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childlessness in a culture that viewed barrenness as a curse.
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It was deeply personal grief. Right.
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But for Mary, this humble estate was not personal childlessness.
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She was an unmarried teenager. Childlessness was the
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expectation for her at that stage of life.
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So what was her affliction then? Mary was bearing the burden of
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the nation of Israel's Baroness. The entire nation was waiting,
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desperate and afflicted, for a messianic deliverer promised
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centuries earlier in Isaiah Chapter 9, verse 6.
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They were an occupied people. Exactly.
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The Roman Empire had an iron grip on their land.
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The religious leaders were corrupt.
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The prophetic voice had been silent for 400 years.
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Just centuries of dark silence. Yeah, Mary's use of Humble
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estate was an acknowledgement that neither she nor her people
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could do to a single thing to bring about their own
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deliverance. She recognized their total
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inability to save themselves. That is incredibly
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countercultural, both in her day and especially in ours.
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Oh absolutely. I mean our modern society prizes
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self-reliance. We are taught to hustle, to
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manifest our own destiny, to pull ourselves up by our
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bootstraps. We worship autonomy.
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We really do. Admitting absolute helplessness
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is seen as weakness. You know of a failure of
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character. Society tells us to fix our own
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problems, right? Yet Mary grounds her entire song
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of praise in the explicit acknowledgement of her absolute
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helplessness. She knew God was the only one
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who could help. It's a total surrender.
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It is this brings to mind the stark contrast between how we
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celebrate the arrival of Jesus in our culture versus the
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biblical reality of his arrival. The commercialization.
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Yeah, if you look at a commercialized holiday season,
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you see mechanized department store windows, massive televised
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specials and celebrities riding on floats in the Rose Parade.
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It's all about spectacle. Right.
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We associate the season with excess wealth and status, but
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Christ does not appear in those. Places he completely ignores
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that system. He does.
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He bypasses the wealthy, the elite and the self-sufficient.
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He comes to a nobody from a non place.
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A nobody from a non place. That is incredibly accurate.
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He bypassed the imperial palate was of Rome.
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He bypassed the wealthy temple elites in Jerusalem and he went
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straight to a dusty peasant town called Nazareth.
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And that trajectory defines his entire earthly ministry.
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We see this theological thread continue when Jesus gives his
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inaugural message in Nazareth. Recorded in Luke chapter 4.
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Right. He unrolls the scroll of Isaiah
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61 and declares that he was anointed to proclaim good news
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to the poor, liberty to the captives, and sight to the
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blind. He targets the oppressed.
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Always. Later, he opens the Sermon on
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the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 with the exact same focus.
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The Beatitudes. Yes, Blessed are the poor in
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spirit, blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek.
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It's a consistent theme. The eternal truth running
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through all of Scripture, captured perfectly in Psalm 34
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verse 18, is that the Lord is near to the broken hearted and
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saves the crushed in spirit. You can't be full of yourself
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and full of the Spirit at the same time.
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Precisely. The great theologian St.
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Augustine understood this implicitly.
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He wrote that for those who would learn God's ways, humility
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is the first thing, humility is the 2nd, and humility is the
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third. Humility is everything.
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Right. Without a conscious
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acknowledgement of spiritual need, there is no capacity to
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receive grace. A full cup cannot be filled.
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Here's where it gets really interesting, though.
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Right after making this devastating admission of her own
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lowliness and absolute lack of status, she makes a staggering
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pit A. Huge transition.
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Yeah, in the second-half of verse 48, she says From now on,
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all generations will call me blessed.
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Talk about a shift. Think about the sheer shock of
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that revelation hitting the mind of a young teenager.
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She goes from calling herself a helpless servant from a
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marginalized town to declaring that she will be the most
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venerated woman in human history.
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And she was entirely correct. She was Her name is the most
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popular in the Western world. The title of Blessed has been
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attached to her name more than any other figure in history.
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You see it everywhere. Right there are cathedrals,
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hospitals and cities named after her all across the globe.
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It is a breathtaking paradox. The absolute lowest is elevated
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to the absolute highest. God loves to flip our
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expectations. He does, but we do need to
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clarify the theological boundary here.
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Yes, let's talk about that. Mary is to be honored.
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She is highly favored among women as a mother.
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Her son's physical traits, perhaps his smile, the way he
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walked, his mannerisms might have resembled hers.
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Because he took his humanity from her.
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Exactly. But she is not to be worshipped.
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She herself points all the glory back to God as her Savior.
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She says God my Savior right in the beginning.
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Right. Her blessedness is a result of
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God's action upon her, not her inherent divinity.
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She remains a human being saved by grace.
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Mary's blessing is not an isolated incident either.
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I want you to think about this. If Jesus resides within you, you
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too will be called blessed far beyond the timeline of Earth's
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history. It is an incredible promise.
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It is. You share in that exact same
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elevation. The lowly Sinner who embraces
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Christ is lifted to a status that angels marvel at.
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That is a staggering reality. Matthew chapter 25 verse 34
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speaks of the king telling those on his right to inherit the
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Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
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An eternal inheritance, yeah. And Revelation chapter 20 verse
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6 says Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first
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resurrection. So we share in that title of
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blessed. We do.
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Furthermore, first John chapter 3 verse 2 gives us a promise
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that believers will actually bear a resemblance to Jesus.
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Like a family resemblance. Right.
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Not a genetic one. Of course we will not have his
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physical features, but we will inherit his spiritual DNA.
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That is beautiful. We will inherit his character,
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his purity, and his heart. CS Lewis wrote brilliantly about
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this concept in his sermon The Weight of Glory.
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Oh, I love that sort. Of fantastic He described
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heavenly glory as fame with God. Fame with God, not fame with the
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world. Precisely, he noted that
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historical figures as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and John Milton
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embrace this idea that true glory is not human applause, but
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the approval and appreciation of God Himself.
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God looking at you and saying well done.
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Exactly, just as it was fitting for Mary to praise God for her
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future fame among generations, we are meant to magnify Him for
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our eternal blessedness. She then grounds this
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celebration in three distinct attributes of God.
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In verses 49 and 50, she specifically names His might,
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His Holiness, and His mercy. The core aspects of his
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character. Yeah, she is constructing a
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theology of God's character right there in Elizabeth's
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living room. Let's break those down, starting
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with his might. OK, when she speaks of his
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might, she says he who is mighty has done great things for me.
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A clear declaration of strength. Right prophetically she is
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echoing the title El Gibber which translates to Mighty Hero
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God from Isaiah Chapter 9 verse 6.
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Mighty hero God. She had just experienced the
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strength of the Most High, overshadowing her in conception.
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Her confession anticipates the later gospel principle found in
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Luke chapter 18, verse 27, which says what is impossible with man
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is possible with God. God operates in the realm of the
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impossible. He does what we cannot do.
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Yes, He makes dry wombs conceive.
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He removes hearts of stone and replaces them with living,
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beating hearts. Spiritual Resurrection.
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Exactly this is the same might Paul speaks of in Romans chapter
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1, verses 16 and 17, where he declares he is not ashamed of
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the gospel because it is the saving strength of God to
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everyone who believes. And then she moves to His
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Holiness, she says, and holy is his name.
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She knew this intimately because the Angel Gabriel had explicitly
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instructed her that the child to be born would.
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More than any other attribute. It's what sets him apart.
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Right. This is why the angels in heaven
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perpetually cry out the Trazian, the threefold repetition of
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purity, holy, holy, whole. Total unblemished perfection.
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Yes, Mary's physical experience of conception gave her a fresh,
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bracing revelation of this divine being.
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And the same thing happens to a believer upon regeneration.
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When they are saved. Right when a personally is given
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a completely new spiritual life, when they are born from above,
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it ignites their comprehension of God's utter purity.
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The blinders come off. The Spirit informs our minds of
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His holy splendor, and the only appropriate response is for our
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hearts to bow in adoration. You can't just stand there
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indifferently. No, you can't.
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But this raises an important question.
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OK, what is it? If God is absolutely holy and
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pure, and human beings are absolutely helpless and broken,
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how does a holy God interact with a helpless people without
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destroying them in his righteous fire?
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Oh wow, that is the ultimate tension of the Bible.
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But the answer is the third perfection.
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Mary sings about his mercy. His mercy.
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Verse 50 says, And His mercy is for those who fear Him from
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generation to generation. That is the bridge.
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That is how the Holy approaches the broken.
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It is the only way we survive contact with him.
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Right, I want to read a stunning quote from the 17th century poet
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John Donne that captures the massive scale of this mercy
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praised you, he wrote. God's mercy have no relation to
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time, no limitation in time, whom God loves.
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He loves to the end, and not only to their end, to their
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death, but to his end. And his end is that he might
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love them still. That is just.
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That is a thought that stops you in your tracks.
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His mercy brings His might and His Holiness to bear on His own
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people securely, forever. That mercy spans from generation
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to generation. It is the defining
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characteristic of how God deals with His covenant people.
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It is relentless. So what does this all mean for
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the rest of the song? In verses 51 through 55, Mary
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shifts her focus. She moves from her personal
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reasons for praising God to looking at the global historical
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landscape. She zooms out.
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Yeah, she totally zooms out. I want to use an analogy from
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the text to visualize this shift.
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Think about riding a ship on the open ocean.
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OK, a ship on the ocean. You start down in a dark through
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between massive waves. You can only see the water
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immediately surrounding your boat, the dark walls of the
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ocean closing in on. You a very restricted view.
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Right, that is the personal, isolated view.
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But then the swell of the water carries your ship upward.
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You ride up to the bright Crest of a huge wave and suddenly your
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vantage point changes completely.
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You can see everything. You can see the rimming horizon,
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you can see intermittent islands, you can see distant
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landfall miles away. Mary's soul was carried upward
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by her personal reflections, and from that Crest she suddenly
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sees the macrocosm of God's dealings with the whole world.
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She sees the big picture. Yes, she recognizes that the
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exact same principles God used in the microcosm of her own life
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are the principles He uses to govern human history.
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And as she looks out over that horizon of human history, she
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does something fascinating with the grammar of her song.
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The Greek grammar, right? Right in the original Greek
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text, she uses a series of 6 aorist tenses.
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Aorist tenses. Yeah, she speaks of future
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unfulfilled events using the past tense.
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She says he has shown strength. He has scattered the proud, He
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has brought down the mighty, He has exalted those of humble
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estate. He has filled the hungry.
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He has sent the rich away empty. But those things hadn't
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happened. Yet exactly these massive
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geopolitical and spiritual events have not fully happened
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yet. The proud Roman emperors were
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still very much on their throne. There it was, still in power.
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Right, the rich were still oppressing the poor.
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But she speaks of their downfall as if it is already completed
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history. Hold on, Aoris.
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Tense Greek grammar wasn't my strong suit.
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What does that mean practically? Why would she use the past tense
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for something that hasn't happened yet?
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Right. Let me break that down.
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In English, we think of time strictly as past, present and
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future. A straight timeline, yeah.
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But ancient Greek grammar, specifically the aorist tense,
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can be used to describe an action as a simple whole event,
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regardless of when it happens. Oh, interesting.
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When used prophetically, it is known as the prophetic past
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tense. It is a linguistic tool used by
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prophets to indicate absolute certainty.
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So it's about confidence, not just chronology.
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Spot on. The future work of God is so
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completely guaranteed by His sovereign will that it can be
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spoken of as an accomplished fact.
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Because if God says it, it's as good as done.
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Right. There is no doubt, no
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contingency, no chance of failure.
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We see a parallel to this in Isaiah chapter 14.
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What happens there? The prophet spoke of the
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captivity of the mighty empire of Babylon as an already
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finished event long before before it actually occurred.
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Before Babylon, even. Fell decades before.
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Mary looks back at what God has done in the past, and she
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projects that into the future as a guaranteed reality.
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The die is cast. The proud are already scattered
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in the mind of God. The humble are already exalted.
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The victory is already won. That brings a massive sense of
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security to the believer. To summarize the massive scale
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of the Magnificat, we are looking at a brilliant spirit
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inspired composition of scripture.
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It truly is brilliant. It takes a listener from an
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initial acknowledgement of total, crushing helplessness all
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the way to an absolute, unshakable certainty of God's
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future victory. It covers so much theological
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ground. It is an unbroken line from I am
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nothing to God has accomplished everything.
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Yeah, I want to give you a call to action based on this text.
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What should? We do with this.
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Examine your own worship this week.
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Are you bringing your entire inner self, both your soul and
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your spirit, to the act of enlarging your understanding of
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God? Are you a telescope?
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Exactly. Are you relying on your own
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self-sufficiency, or are you embracing your humble estate so
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that His mercy can reach you? I want to leave you with one
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final haunting contrast that is buried in the footnotes of the
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source material we analyzed today.
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What is it? If you look just a few verses
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earlier in Luke chapter 1, you find the high priest Zechariah.
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He is standing in the holiest place in the Temple in
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Jerusalem, at the very height of religious prestige.
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The ultimate insider. Right.
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An Angel appears to him with a promise of a son, and Zechariah
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responds with incredulous doubt. He demands proof.
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He literally says how shall I know this?
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He does. Yet here in the obscure, dusty
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Hill Country, an uncredentialed peasant girl receives a far more
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impossible promise, a virgin conception.
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And she responds with Makaria, the highest superlist of blessed
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faith. A total surrender.
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I ask you to ponder this as you go about your week.
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Why did the religious elite standing in the center of
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religious authority demand proof while the humble servant
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possessing nothing offered the greatest song of praise in human
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history? The X-ray of the human heart
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reveals that true sight belongs to the humble.
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Thank you for joining us on Reformed Thinking.
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Keep enlarging the Lord.