Luke 1:26-56 - God Notices You
Main Idea: You should give everything to God, who gave everything to you.
GIVE PRAISE TO GOD BECAUSE HE’S WORTHY (vs. 46-47)
GIVE THANKS TO GOD BECAUSE HE’S GENEROUS (vs. 48-50)
He’s given you His love. (vs. 48)
He’s given you His blessings. (vs. 48)
He’s worked on your behalf. (vs. 49)
He’s given you His mercy. (vs. 50)
GIVE RESPECT TO GOD BECAUSE HE’S HOLY (vs. 51-53)
He has openly judged secret pride.
He has deposed the powerful and lifted the humble.
He has satisfied those in need, and exiled those with hoarded abundance.
GIVE TRUST TO GOD BECAUSE HE’S FAITHFUL (vs. 54-55)
God was faithful to Israel.
God was faithful to Abraham.
God has fulfilled His promise to all generations.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
We are in a series through Luke 1 and 2 called A Savior is Born for You.
And as we are looking at the stories that the gospel writer Luke, who was a physician, a doctor in his own right, as well as a traveling companion of the apostle Paul, as he's writing to this individual theophilist, he's telling him, I want you to
know that what you heard about Jesus really did happen. And I talked to the eyewitnesses, I talked to the apostles, and here is what occurred both before and during the life of Christ.
And last week, we looked at Zachariah and Elizabeth's story and the fact that God hears us. And this couple, well along in age, they had prayed for decades that God would answer their prayer request.
And he heard them and he did it in his perfect time. Today, the message is from Luke 1, verses 26 through 56, with the title that God notices you. God notices you.
It makes a difference when you notice someone that is noticing you.
Maybe if you're at work and you spot your boss out of the corner of your eye, or you hear the clip-clop of the shoes, maybe for those of you that are in school at this time, maybe if your teacher leaves the classroom for a minute, and then all of a
sudden that door starts to open again, your behavior changes. There's something that is affected in your life because you notice someone noticing you.
Maybe for some of you that are single, maybe your behavior changes a little bit when you notice someone cute, maybe across the room or something.
Maybe if you're at the gym and you're going to one, two, 37, 39, and you might inflate those numbers a little bit.
Many of you, like ourselves with our toddlers, have interacted with toddlers doing and behaving however they want until they notice that you're in the room.
And it might be that they were playing nicely before, and then they see you and all of a sudden all they want is you or they're crying and you're like, listen, you were just fine before you noticed me. There's a difference made when we are noticed.
And in this passage, God noticed, well, one girl, Mary, but he also noticed a people and a world, a nation, that were in desperate need of his involvement and of his action. We're going to read through the first part of this passage.
We're going to be barreling towards verses 46 through verse number 56, where Mary, at the conclusion of this story, she proclaims in poetic form what has often been called the magnificat.
That's the first word in the poem in Latin or in the Latin Vulgate that Christians used for about a millennium or so. And it's blessed is the Lord. Magnificat is how Mary starts off her poem.
And we're going to look at her words and how we too should react when we have realized that God has noticed us. But let's begin in verse number 26 and see what led up to that point in Mary's life.
In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth. I want to mention here real quick, Galilee was not the nice part of Israel.
If you were like, hey, where do all the intelligent, where do the smart, where do all of the great business people live? It was not in Galilee.
And in addition to that, the town of Nazareth was an incredibly small town, initially kind of set up by the Romans even, and it would have been just a little podunk town in kind of, if you will, the worst state in Israel, other than obviously
Samaria, where the Jews did not go. So Gabriel is sent by God to this little podunk place, verse 27, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph of the house of David.
Want to mention here as well, because this is first century Israel and not 21st century America, engagement in that time period, you might also hear or see the word betrothal or betrothed. This was something that was a promise.
It was basically, we have now this contract that I will marry you as soon as I have finished building on this addition to my father's house. You know, I gotta have a place for you to live as my wife.
And so as soon as that is completed, our betrothal, our engagement period will be done and we will have a big wedding feast and you will come and live with me. So during this time period, you didn't really break off engagements.
It would be almost like they were married on paper, but had not yet had the ceremony, they did not live together until after the house was built.
And so here there's this person, Joseph of the House of David, that he came from the line of King David from many, many centuries before. And it says, the Virgin's name was Mary.
And the angel came to her, verse 28, and said, greetings favored woman, the Lord is with you.
Now I think for many of you, if someone came up to you, you know, if I came up to you today, you know, Dave, if you walked over to Sherry, and you were like, hello, favored one, the Lord is with you.
You might think that's a little odd, but that's, you know, it's a nice sentiment. But again, this is an angel of the Lord.
And so the reaction, as always, in verse number 29, but she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. When the supernatural happens and occurs in your life, it's often scary.
We like living on our comfort zones. And certainly this was far outside of Mary's. Verse number 30, Then the angel told her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
I want to mention here real quickly as well. Notice it says, it does not say you have earned your favor with God. It's found favor with God.
God's grace is unmerited by human righteousness with Mary as well as with us. Verse number 31, now listen, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will call his name Jesus or Jehovah. Yahweh saves.
Verse number 32, he will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.
Here there's this declaration that the promise that was made to David centuries before that someone from his lineage would sit on the throne of Israel forever and that there would be no end to his kingdom.
The same promise that was given several hundred years later in the time of Isaiah, that there would be a descendant of David who would be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace, of the increase of his
government and his kingdom, there will be no end. All of that was coming true. And so Gabriel tells Mary, this is going to happen through your son. Verse number 33, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.
This is a wonderful truth. The thing that Israel had been praying for, for centuries was now coming.
The promise that had initially been given to Adam and Eve back in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter three, where God told the serpent, God told Satan that there would be a descendant, an offspring, a seed of Eve that would come and crush the head
of the serpent, that evil would be destroyed through a human descendant. Now the promise is coming true. What's Mary's response to this? Mary asked the angel, verse 34, how can this be since I have not had sexual relations with a man?
This is obviously a fair question. This is not normally how babies are made. But verse 35, the angel replied to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you.
Therefore, the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.
Here, just as God created life instantaneously in the beginning in the garden, that he made the trees, he formed Adam, he formed Eve, now he would make a human child in the womb of Mary, not through physical procreation like we would have, but
through his miraculous work and the power of the Holy Spirit. And he was to be called the Son of God.
Here, in first century Israel, as you read through the rest of the Gospels, you will see that this is a specific claim to the divinity of Jesus Christ. This is not that he is some sort of lesser God or lesser being.
As the Jews tried to stone Jesus for making this claim later in his ministry, they said he called himself the Son of God, making himself equal with God. So that's the incredible truth that Gabriel is telling Mary.
Verse 36, he says, And consider your relative, Elizabeth. Even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless.
He says, I know that as young as you are, that there is mystery surrounding this event, but I want you to know that I am good on my promise.
And the way that I can illustrate this to you is, go see Elizabeth, your relative, and what was impossible for her that she was past childbearing age, now she has a child. And then verse 37, he says, for nothing will be impossible with God.
What a wonderful truth that is to hold on to. For many times, when we can wonder like, God, are you there? Do you hear me?
You don't realize how this strained relationship has broken me. You don't realize how this financial burden is just completely shattering my faith.
I'm thankful that into our brokenness, into our inability, into our impossibilities, God can show himself powerful. With God, nothing will be impossible. Verse number 38, here's what Mary says, see, I'm the Lord's servant, said Mary.
May it happen to me, as you have said, then the angel left her. Mary's response was not the same as Zachariah's last week, where he's like, oh, that can't happen. Like we're past all this.
I know I specifically asked for this to happen, but when you show up and say it's going to, I'm gonna say, no, it's not. Mary, she goes, how is this working? He tells her, and she says, whatever God wants to do with my life, I'm all there.
Can I tell you today, God is probably, God is definitely not going to ask you to physically carry the Messiah, but God will ask you to do things in your life that maybe might not be as uncomfortable as what Mary was going through, but might carry
quite a bit of discomfort. Will you choose to follow and love and obey him, to surrender to him, to say, God, I'm yours, whatever you want, that's what I'll do. Are you willing to do that in your life?
Verse 39, In those days, Mary set out and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah, where she entered Zacharias' house and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped inside her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and your child will be blessed.
How could this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Notice here, filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth comes to the immediate understanding that here this mother of her Lord, that Jesus is Lord.
There are some groups out there that will say, Ah, you know, the Bible doesn't actually say Jesus is God, or we think that he's just some other thing. Believe, along with these people from the New Testament, that Jesus is Lord and God.
This was a title reserved for Yahweh, for Jehovah himself. This wasn't something that you would mention slightly or easily. Verse number 44, for you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside of me.
My sister right now is about eight months pregnant with her baby, and there's a likelihood that the baby could come on Christmas. But she, you know, has the babies running around, and sometimes, you know, that just means nothing.
Sometimes it's when they hear a particular voice, you know, the voice of dad or the voice of grandma or the voice of a specific song, they might get to move in a little bit.
But here it was clear from the Holy Spirit influencing Elizabeth that she knew exactly why John the Baptist took this moment to leap for joy. Do you have joy when you enter into the presence of the Lord? Do you have joy when you read his word?
Do you have joy when you sing his praises? Do you enjoy when you are able to share what God is doing in your life with those around you? Verse number 45.
Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her. Elizabeth seems to be in a very good mood.
Again, as mentioned last week, I don't know if that has anything to do with the fact that her husband has now been mute for about six months, and so she's living a good life.
But Elizabeth has said all of these things, has rejoiced, has prophesied through the voice of the Holy Spirit. Mary has interacted with all of this incredible news, and she has a response to all of this that we're gonna look at in four points today.
But I do want to highlight very quickly, though to us now, all of this seems like good news. Remember that Mary was engaged to Joseph. And there would certainly have been fear to say, once he finds out that I'm pregnant, is he going to leave me?
Is he going to tell other people that like, hey, you know, from laws of Israel, we should stone her for her betrayal of this relationship, for her immorality. She would have to wonder in the small town of Nazareth, well, is the word going to get out?
What's going to be said about me? But here, God has provided for her a way by which the entire world would be saved through her son, Jesus Christ.
And so into this time of like fear and uncertainty and joy and mystery and wonder, Mary will say what happens in verses 46 through 56. Let's pray, and then we'll begin today.
I do want you to know the main theme for today with God noticing us is this. You should give everything to God who gave everything to you. You should give everything to God who gave everything to you.
Let's pray. Dear Jesus, we ask that you'd be glorified today in your church, but Lord, also that you would be glorified in us. God, may you help us to not just hear words, not just to hear your scriptures being spoken, but may we apply them.
Lord, may your Holy Spirit convict our hearts of areas that we need to continue in or stop in or begin to pursue. Lord, we ask that you would work. Lord, we commit to you that as you speak to us, we will listen.
Lord, thank you that you have noticed us. May it prompt in us a desire to give everything back to you. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
So today we're gonna see four specific items from Mary's poem that we need to give to God because of what he's given to us. And the first of these is that we need to give praise to God because he is worthy. We can see this in verses 46 and 47.
Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. There in verse 46, her soul that magnifies the Lord. This is the Greek word suke, where we'd get the word like psyche or psychology from.
That is how I think about God, how I think about the world, how I think about this situation that I'm in right now. It is going to lift up God. How I think about God will be for good, to honor him, to magnify him, to lift him up.
Then in verse 47, my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. The spirit is your inner person, the part of you that interacts with and relates to God.
That is, it wasn't just going to be Mary's outward actions, but her every breath, who she was, was going to lift up the Lord. Today for us, what portions of my life are praising God? Am I praising God through how I parent?
Are you praising or making God look good through how you treat your neighbors? Is your work ethic glorifying to God? Do your finances honor the Lord and his priorities?
Is how you talk to your spouse, reflecting good and glory to God? So we're to give praise to God because he's worthy of it. This was a Lord, a God and Savior who was worthy of all this attention, all the praise that she could bring.
But then she goes on to say like, here's why I'm praising him. Here's why I'm magnifying him. And that's our second point today that we ought to give thanks to God because he's generous.
Give thanks to God because he's generous. We can see this in verses 48 through 50.
She says, because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant, surely from now on all generations will call me blessed because the mighty one has done great things for me and his name is holy.
Mary here gives three reasons of why she would thank God. She says, I'm doing all this praising because of these three reasons. And they're reasons why we too should give thanks to God.
First, because he has given you his love. She says that he's looked with favor on the humble condition of a servant. God has looked with favor on you.
He's more than just seen you or noted your existence. He has looked intently at, he has cared, he has had good intent and favor toward you. Mary says that God looked at her humble condition.
She was just a young girl in a tiny backwater town called Nazareth in the trashy part of Israel. She wasn't in a royal position. She didn't come from a rich family.
She was simply a lowly, humble person. But God loved her and had given her an incredible mission.
In your life, God saw your lowly condition, your humiliation, that you were dead in your sins, far from God, alienated, and unaware of your true condition before God, with no intent of trying to make it back to him.
But he looked on you with love, cared for you, and sent Jesus to die in your place and then rise again so that you could have a relationship with him. God has given you his love.
But secondly, as Mary highlights for us, God has given us his blessings. There she says, surely from now on all generations will call me blessed.
Maybe if you've got a more formal translation, she says, for behold, from this generation, all generations will call me blessed. That word, behold, is the Greek word, edu.
It's to look at, just as God had looked at Mary, now Mary was inviting everyone else to look at what God had done. So God cared about Mary, acted on her behalf, and now she says, everyone else, look at what God has done.
When we're blessed by the Lord, we ought to thank him, and we ought to tell others about what he's done.
I'm grateful that when I was growing up from 9th to 12th grade for myself, and then for about 12 or so years, my family attended Castle View Baptist Church in Casseroke, Colorado. And that church was three years old when we started attending there.
And every single week, we set up all of the chairs and the TVs and the sound system and all of the nurseries and the classrooms and everything in an elementary school building. And we would put all of it out. We'd have our services that day.
And then we would pack it all back up and put it away so that they could have school the following morning. And they did that for 12, 13 years. And just this year, actually, they were able to finally move into a building of their own.
And I'm so thankful every time I walk into this building that I don't have to set up every single chair.
And I'm very thankful that I don't have to have, you know, Owen and Gary and Chris and Jimmy and 3,000 other people be like, all right, well, here's this monitor and here's that guitar and here's this piano that we got to lug in.
I'm so grateful for the fact that God has given us a building to be able to have. And you may from time to time in your life forget God's blessings. And I want you to remember them.
Remember how good He's been to you. And then tell other people about it. You're like, hey, I used to not have this vehicle.
I used to not have this restored relationship with a parent. I used to not have this thing that I was praying for. Now I've got it and I'm going to tell people Jesus works.
But I noticed with the blessings that God's given us, we've primarily been blessed by Jesus with salvation, with the fact that we are reconciled to God. Our sins are forgiven. We can know we're on our way to heaven because of the work of Christ.
He's also blessed us with heaven, that when we die, we're not just, you know, chilling in the dirt, but that we are within the presence of God Almighty and with all the saints that have gone before us. We've also been blessed with the church family.
There are people, I've had had meals in times with missionaries from the Middle East, where if they can have like six or seven people that are in a church gathering, like it is mind-blowingly amazing and they're praising the Lord for it, because to
gather together is a dangerous crime in many of those countries against the ruling religions and powers. And here we are today, and there's a couple dozen of us in this room worshiping the Lord together.
Are you thankful to God that you can worship with other people? I know some of you might be like, Oh, I don't know, six or seven in a room. That sounds like it might be good.
No, stop that. God has given you a church family. Love them.
Be thankful for them. God has given us spiritual gifts that when he saved you, he didn't just say like, okay, now you're in a new family, like go for it.
No, no, he has equipped you with your personality, with your abilities with by his Holy Spirit, with ways in which you can love and serve and minister to others that no one else in the body can do in the same way.
JC, God's got something for you to do at Tabernacle that he doesn't have for anyone else to do. Seth, God's got something for you that he doesn't have for anyone else.
Judy, I know this might be hard to believe, but God's got something specific for you to do. Believe it. God has given us his Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to minister to us.
Jesus has given us the blessing of the fact that he stands before us now, before the Father as our advocate and as our intercessor, countering the claims of Satan. And he's given us the blessing of being eternally loved and present with him.
So let's thank him for his blessings. Not only can we thank him for his love and his blessings, but we can also thank him because he's worked on our behalf. God has done great things in human history.
This is what Mary highlights. The mighty one has done great things for me. God's done great things in his word, but he's also doing great things for you.
Are you thanking him for his amazing acts in your life? Are you thanking him for daily bread? Are you thanking him for the breath in your lungs?
Are you thanking him for shelter? Are you thanking him for family? Are you thanking him for a ride?
We can so easily turn to ingratitude and complaints, but are we thanking God for everything that he's given to us? Not only has he given us his love and his blessings, not only has he worked on our behalf, but he's also given us his mercy.
There in verse number 50, his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. I think it's interesting here that he says his mercy is on those that fear him. We would not tend to think about it that way.
We'd say, God shows mercy on those who love him. He shows mercy to those who walk with the Lord. But he says he has mercy on those that have fear of him.
God has compassion. That's that word, Elias. Mercy on those that fear him, those that recognize who God is.
They recognize the fact that he is the king of all. He is the just one. And they realize in light of that perfect God that they are sinners.
And when we see God's greatness and when we fear justice and punishment, God comforts us with his compassion. The less you think that you deserve God's mercy, the more he pours it out on you. Are you thanking God in these ways?
Are you thanking him for these things? Are you thanking him in daily prayer? Are you thanking him by testifying about him to others?
Are you thanking him by following him in your everyday life? Too often we can allow the little annoyances of life to stack up and we can name them one by one. But can we recount the many, many ways our God has blessed us?
Thirdly today from Mary's poem, not only can we see that we ought to give praise to God because he's worthy and give thanks to God because he's generous, but we ought to give respect to God because he is holy. This is found in verses 51 through 53.
He has done a mighty deed with his arm. He has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts. He has toppled the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.
He has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. In verses 51 through 53 here, Mary lists three examples of God's holiness. Like these are the practical outworkings of God is holy, so here's what he does.
There have actually been countries such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina that at times throughout human history have banned these verses from being read in public because of how they speak against this world's powers and authorities.
And the first of these that we can see in verse 51 is that he has openly judged secret pride. God is holy, and if he is to be holy and righteous in what he does, then that means that sin and wrong and evil has to be dealt with.
And Mary, in this song, she realizes God's holiness and exalts him. And here's this first example. He's scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts.
The Greek word for the proud here is hyperfano. It is those that want to excessively make themselves seen or shown out or to be bright. And it says God has scattered them.
Many of us would be familiar with the many instances in the Bible where God scatters his people because of sins that they have. Adam and Eve were scattered out of the Garden of Eden because of the pride of their hearts.
Those that were building the Tower of Babel were scattered because of their pride. The children of Israel, even when they were within the land of Israel, God scattered them because of their sin and their pride.
We could think even today of the fact that the Jewish people have not all come back to the land of Israel because of the prophecies that Jesus made even while he was here on earth.
But I find it interesting that it says here that this pride is in their hearts. For these people, it wasn't even necessarily that maybe all of their actions or all of their words exhibited great pride. No, God sees even our hearts.
And because of this, God shows righteousness in openly judging and scattering secret pride, the pride of the thoughts of our hearts.
It can be easy sometimes to think like, hey, if I'm not boasting or something about my job or my wealth or whatever, if I'm not posting, you know, a thousand selfies saying how beautiful I am, then I'm safe from pride.
But we can see in this verse that God sees even the pride in the thoughts of our hearts. Think of what James tells us. God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble.
Pride isn't just something that like the worst of people do, it's something every person does. Pride is that root of all sorts of evil within our lives. Today, do you need to go to God and say, God, I don't wanna be scattered.
Like, I wanna receive blessing. I wanna enjoy your presence. I don't want to be resisted by you.
Will you show me pride in my heart? Will you drive it far from me? But not only has God openly judged secret pride, he has deposed the powerful and lifted the humble.
There he's toppled the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. There in verse number 52.
Mary here rejoices in the fact that even the people that thought they were so great and had great position and power were not the ones that God's special blessing of the Messiah had come to. He didn't bring Jesus to Herod's wife.
He didn't bring Jesus to Caesar's wife. He brought it to this random little girl in a small town.
Mary describes herself as lowly, and that's the exact same word that Jesus would later use to describe himself, where he says, come, learn from me, take my yoke on you, because I am humble and lowly in heart.
Mary, in these verses, is describing the fact that God's pulled down, toppled the mighty from their thrones, and instead, he exalts those that have God's heart, a heart of humility.
A humility so great on Jesus' part that he didn't even reject coming to earth or reject taking our frail human flesh and dying on the cross in our place.
It was that humility that Jesus had, and it's the same humility God calls for us to have, that we would be like him. Then, he has satisfied those in need and exiled those with hoarded abundance.
There in verse 53, he has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
Here in Greek, the verb participles, they say this, those that are currently hungry, God has fed, and those that currently are being rich, God has sent away empty.
Your current need, or the wicked's current abundance of wealth, is not indicative of God's final action in the matter. God says the people that are actively in need, that he has filled them, he has satisfied them.
Here, this past tense of the word, he has done this, God has already made the way of provision for those that are currently in need.
That's a wonderful comfort, because we do have times when we are hungry, when we are in need, when we need wisdom, when we need to know what our next steps need to be. But I'm thankful in those times that God has already prepared the way for us.
Much like he says in Philippians 4, my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. We can rest even in times of want, of lack, of need, and we can trust that God will fulfill his promises.
And it says that those that are rich, those that both are rich and are being rich, that they have things, they have abundance, they have what really could go to those that are hungry. And he says that God has sent those people away empty.
I think of the admonition that Paul gives to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6, where he says that those that will be rich, those that have this desire, a constant lust for money, that they fall into temptation and a snare into many foolish and hurtful lusts
which drown men in perdition. Sometimes when we don't have money or when we don't have things or when the circumstances aren't going our way, we can tend to think, if I just had a little bit more, if I just had this job or if I just had this house or
just had this thing, then everything would be all right. But what we forget in those instances is that God doesn't say just the rich, those are the ones that God provides for. That might be in our human nature how we'd see it.
But what we see from the Old Testament and from this verse in the New is that with God, there is a real moving present way that he is there for those that are in need. Many times, if we have everything, we don't think we need God.
We don't search after him. But for the one that is calling out, like, Lord, give me today my daily bread. God is there and we're able to see him work in our lives as we call on him.
For you today, as Mary highlights these things of the mighty and the proud and the rich and the poor and the lowly and the humble, which of these describes us today? Which of these describes you?
Today, if it has been a lot of pride, turn back to the Lord and say, God, I repent. I was in the wrong. I need to change.
Are we proud or are we humble like our Savior? And then the last thing that we see from Mary's poem that we need to give to God is not only praise and thanks and respect or fear, but we also ought to give trust to God because he is faithful.
We can see this in verses 54 and 55. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy to Abraham and his descendants forever, just like he spoke to our ancestors. We can see here, Mary highlights, God was faithful to Israel.
Here she calls Israel God's servant. That word servant is the same word where we get like pediatrician. It's his little kid, like his little servant.
He cared for Israel. As Mary takes the long look back through Israel's history, through her own ancestry, she sees that she can trust her faithful God in her impossible circumstance.
But not only does she say like God helped Israel, she said God was faithful to Abraham, that he remembered his mercy, his promise to Abraham, to bring him into the land, to give the land of Israel to Abraham's descendants, and to bring the Messiah to
bless the entire world through the Jewish people. She says, if God was faithful to my nation, if God was faithful to Abraham, and he was faithful to keep his promise there to the ancestors, to all these generations, then I can believe him, that God
has fulfilled his promise to all generations. Even though Israel had been in danger time and time and time again, there were moments where they didn't know if they were gonna get out of slavery in Egypt.
They didn't know if they were going to defeat the Philistines. They didn't know if they'd be able to come back from Babylon or from Medo-Persia. God had accomplished all of these promises.
And so Mary, right now, scared about what her future would entail, said, God, if you could be faithful then, I believe that you'll be faithful now.
For you today in your life, there might be a time that you need to look back in your own life and say, God, I know you were faithful then. You provided then. God, I need you to provide now.
I need you to be faithful now. It might be that you look back at scripture as Mary did and say, God, if you were faithful to Mary, if you were faithful to Abraham, God, I believe you will be faithful to me. There's such comfort that comes from that.
It can even come from other people that we'd hear, you know, Bob or Carol might say, hey, here's how God's been faithful in our life. And we can take encouragement from that.
Way too often, we can be very focused on how the devil is working right now, and we can be focused on, oh man, what will this country do, or what will this individual do? And we can have a fear of that.
When God wants us not to focus on how this world is working, but on how he is working. When we look at the world, we can experience fear and trepidation and anxiety.
But when we look to the Lord, we find their comfort to know that he is the same yesterday, today and forever. He's the one that was faithful then, faithful now. He's the one that his mercy endures from generation to generation.
Today, God has noticed you. And I thank the Lord that there's not a person alive that God has not looked with favor on. That God hasn't given his son to save.
That God hasn't fully given his blessings of family, of life, of shelter. So because we've been noticed by our heavenly father, how is it going to affect our week? How is it going to affect you over the next couple of hours?
For Mary, she said, everything in us should praise God because he's noticed us. She said everything in us should thank God for his wonderful works and for his actions.
She said everything in us should trust, should fear God, have respect for him, realizing who he is, his holiness and our responsibility of humility. And then everything in us should trust God because he's been faithful through all the ages past.
He has been faithful in your life. You're breathing today because God has continued to love and care for and supply your need. So praise him, thank him, fear him and trust him.
Has the fact that God notices you impacted you? We'd all be shocked this morning if any of the former presidents of the US walked into the room and said, hey, Bill Ledford, good to see you again.
We probably wouldn't expect that, but it would spark something in us. It would spark something in Bill if they went, hey, I know you. It would affect your action.
God is so much greater than any human person and has the fact that he has noticed you and died for you and blessed you. Does that affect how you live your life? Today, you should give everything to God who gave everything to you.
