JOHN032 - Mary and the Masterful Magnificat

John 1:6-8

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

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Hey, my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and we are working our way through Luke 1. Some of you are gonna be like, wait, hang on a minute. And you're gonna pull out your device and you're gonna hit the unlock code 2287. There you go. Now it's unlocked. Uh yeah, that's right. I know your code, Sarah. Isn't that weird? Now you got it unlocked, and you're looking at it, you're going, wait, this whole podcast series is on John. Why do we keep talking about Luke? Well, the answer is that John set us he, it's his fault. John the Evangelist sent us on uh Rabbit Trail because he kept talking about this John the Baptist guy. We need to know more about him. And John the Evangelist seems to assume that we know some things about John the Baptist. So we're going and digging into Luke 1, where we learn things about John the Baptist. And it has been interesting so far, learning about the miraculous manifestation and prediction of his birth, the well-intentioned fumbling of that on the part of John the Baptist's dad, Zechariah, nine months of silence for Zechariah. But then Mary gets a visit from an angel as well. She's going to have a baby. Turns out it's Jesus. That's an even bigger deal than John the Baptist. Sure enough, Mary and Elizabeth are going to compare notes on that. We're both having miraculous babies. Demonstrate the forward progress of the work of God. The God is moving again. It's the most exciting thing ever. And then Mary says amazing stuff about that, that is theologically rich. And probably Zechariah heard about that as well. It's like, ah, I have theological things I want to say. I am thinking about the blessing of God right now too. But dang it, I can't talk because I'm dumbstruck. Well, we're about to the part where he's not going to be dumbstruck anymore. And I, for one, cannot wait to hear what comes of it. So with that said, I'm going to have my friend Jeffrey Foote play a little bit of music, and we're going to go do more Luke chapter one. This is the consolation of Israel. This is the hope that the entire story of history and time has been pointing toward. This is the vindication of what all of these people have been faithfully preserving and investing in. And it finally happened. And you, a professional talker, can't talk about it. Still, he gestures enough that there are people like, okay, well, he had a vision, something happened. And then it says when his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this, his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. The Lord has done this for me, she said. In these days, he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people. And there's this echo, it's another motif that I'm not going to chase down today, but all through the Old Testament, there are these moments of these faithful women who endure very heavy things, and it it kind of seems like nobody sees them. Nobody cares. I mean Sarah, Hagar, Hannah, Ruth, and Naomi. It it happens a ton. And there's this motif, this model of the patient, long-suffering, humble, overlooked woman who God sees. And in each of these scenarios, the you know, the ladies I mentioned and more, there are these subtle, beautiful little moments, these little small statements that we get from so many of these women that are in this vein of God sees, God sees me, God reversed my fortunes. And so yeah, of course she's excited about who John the Baptist will be and all of that, but also she sees this rightly for what it is a gift of God to her, a faithful restoration of the fortunes of a faithful woman. Well, in the next part of Luke chapter one, we get you know the part of the Christmas story where Gabriel then goes and shows up to Mary. That's the very next thing that happens. She says, I'm the Lord's servant, may it be to me as you have said. And as soon as she gets done saying that, she gets ready and hurries to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. So remember, the idea was that the spirit would be upon this kid. Now that's a big moment, because remember back here in verse 15, when Gabriel's talking to Zechariah, he said, He will be a joy and a delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He's never to drink wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. When does that happen? Well, it kind of looks like it happens right here in this verse when these two unborn babies meet Jesus and John the Baptist. Again, when Elizabeth heard Mary's greetings, Mary's pregnant young lady, made her way all the way to Elizabeth's place, the baby, John the Baptist, leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, Elizabeth exclaimed, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished. Aren't these two great? Isn't this beautiful? Obviously, we obsess at Christmas time like crazy about the Jesus story, and we hear it again and again and again and again. And obviously, we obsess a lot at Christmas time and year-round about Mary and how she responded to this is beautiful. But how about Elizabeth? She internalizes that this is a blessing to her, but also listen to the theology that Elizabeth just spouted. She knows the story, she knows the Bible, and in some ways, she responded to this better than her husband. I don't know, maybe that's to be expected. I'm being too hard on Zachariah. I don't want to crush this guy. I'm like him. I need to take it easy on him. I wouldn't have done better. And then Mary, I'm just gonna read it to you. It's so beautiful. It's gotta happen. Then Mary, she spontaneously, or it looks spontaneous in the text. Maybe she wrote it on the walk-up to go and meet with Elizabeth. She gives this beautiful prayer. The nickname for this is the Magnificat, but uh it's well, it is magnificent. So here we go. And Mary said, This is her response to Elizabeth. Imagine being Elizabeth and hearing this. My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he's 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. His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation. He's performed mighty deeds with his arm. He's scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He's brought down rulers from their thrones, but he's lifted up the humble. He's filled the hungry with good things, but he's sent the rich away empty. He's helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers. Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home. That prayer, just like stuff Elizabeth was saying, it looks backwards into promises of the Old Testament about who Jesus would be, but it also looks forward into stuff that Jesus would go on to teach in particular the Sermon on the Mount. There's a whole bunch of language in there that kind of sounds like the Beatitudes, the inverted values of the kingdom of Jesus. I'm glad we took the time to read it. It's important. It's one of the most lovely, theologically significant passages in the whole Bible. Well, when it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy and they shared her joy. Nice job, neighbors and relatives, by the way. You want to be a good friend? Here's the mark of it. You want to find a good friend, here's the mark of it. People who are happy for you when you are happy and sad for you when you are sad. They don't think about what they get or how it affects their story or what it means for them. They simply are able to share in your joy and share in your pain. That's awesome that Elizabeth had friends like that. By God's grace, may all of you have friends and be friends like that as well. On the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, No, he's to be called John, which means this isn't in the text, but it means the Lord is gracious. They said to her, There's no one among your relatives who has that name. And then they made signs to his father to find out what he would like to name the child. Now that's interesting, that they're having to make signs to him, giving me the impression that maybe he also couldn't hear. Maybe he hadn't been able to hear for a long time. Maybe this is new. I mean, he was able to hear Gabriel. So it kind of looks like maybe there was a double-struckedness here, dumbstruck and deafstruck. I don't know. I've never known quite what to do with that passage. Maybe you remember something or have read something that I haven't. I would love to know. So Zechariah says he asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone's astonishment he wrote, His name is John. Luke 1, 64. Immediately his mouth was opened, and his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak, praising God. The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea, people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, What then is this child going to be? For the Lord's hand was with him. His father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. And here we're going to get like the fourth big speech in Luke chapter one surrounding the birth of Jesus and the birth of John the Baptist, and a seeming awakening of the work of God after hundreds of years of silence and John the Baptist's role in it. And now finally, nine months, nine agonizing months of sitting there quietly after having this amazing experience in the temple and realizing that God is on the move and that his son is his miraculous son is going to play this huge role in it. Now, finally, Zechariah gets to talk. It is that time again, where we look at the clock and we have to make a decision. Do we just do a super mega long ultra bonus episode and have Jeff do that little song at the beginning that he does to try to cover it up and make you feel less bad about how long our episode is? Or are we just going to make one more awkward cut and spread it out into another day? And today I have chosen the latter. We're going to pick up where we left off again tomorrow as we're getting to the tail end of all of this. I want to listen closely to what Zechariah is saying about the birth of his son and what God is doing. And I want to try to put a bow on this big birth narrative of these two very important babies who represent a reawakening of God's plan. Um, maybe I should say a publicly visible reawakening of God's plan, which never really went dormant in the realm of God, but seemed dormant in the realm of man. There's a lot to process through here at the end, and I'm just gonna say that we're gonna do all of that tomorrow in our final day on this material. All right, so with that, we are hitting pause. Astamaniana, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.