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Text: Luke 1:28-56
God’s opinion (vss 28-30)
- …highly favored…favor with God…
- It’s apparent from the scripture that favor with God is not like winning the lottery. There are no elements of luck or randomness or chance. The LORD doesn’t favor people by accident and neither do you. When He finds people willing to pay the price for truth and righteousness, and people who love the LORD, He finds a vessel ready to receive heavenly blessings.
- You’re not given many facts about Mary’s life before this divine assignment that will make her the most famous woman in history. You’re just given God’s opinion about her life up to this point. She’s highly favored by God. Mary’s life has been so faithful that the LORD is willing to entrust her with bearing the child who is the only begotten Son of God.
Mary’s faith (vss 38, 45)
- This is how Mary pleased the LORD.
- First, her anticipation of the Messiah. She is aware and looking for the coming Messiah.
- Second, she honored the LORD with her purity. By that I mean she honored the LORD with her body. And she honored the LORD with her desires.
- Our own desires have a way of preventing the LORD’s blessing. Instead of chasing my lusts, let me go after God’s desires. Let me yield my own ambitions to Him and let Him promote me.
- Third, she honored the LORD through her obedience to God’s law. She faithfully carries the light given to the nation of Israel. It’s not your job to be great, Mary, it’s your job to be a good steward of the things God’s given you. And she was.
- The angel explains to Mary how this pregnancy is going to take place. Mary believes God. Notice in verse 38 Mary says, be it unto me according to thy word. Elisabeth even testifies to Mary’s faith in verse 45, And blessed is she that believed.
- This is probably the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ in Mary. Notice immediately that Mary goes to see Elisabeth and evidently Mary is already pregnant.
Results of Mary’s faith (vss 47-53)
- The LORD is magnified in her life
- Magnifying means something gets bigger in your view, it occupies more space in your life. Mary says, my soul doth magnify the LORD…
- Mary says something similar to what John the Baptist said, He must increase, but I must decrease.
- Magnifying means you find details that you didn’t see before.
- Some of you are finding that the LORD occupies less and less space in your life.
- …rejoiced in God my Savior…
- Mary has a savior. That’s important to know so you understand Mary is not a savior or a mediator. Mary needs a savior.
- Better yet, she rejoices in her savior! The joy of the LORD is my strength. The things that make God happy refresh my spirit and revive my life. I want to love what God loves!
- God regards her lowly estate b/c blessed are the poor in spirit (vss 48-50)
- If you think her statements about the poor and lowly are financial statements, they aren’t. Mary is not giving you a family profit/loss statement, she is describing her spirit as needy.
- James 4:6 …God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
- God rewards the humble and excludes the proud (vss 51-53)
- The LORD is choosing humility and the poor in spirit. Those hungering and thirsting after righteousness go away filled, but those who say they are rich and have need of nothing get nothing.
- If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive…
