Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Luke 1:46-56, focusing on Mary's song of praise in response to God's calling. He emphasizes that true praise comes not from our circumstances but from our confidence in God's faithfulness. The sermon encourages believers to recognize God's grace, trust in His promises, and maintain a posture of worship, even in uncertainty, just as Mary did when faced with the challenges of her unexpected pregnancy.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. All right, well, thank you young people for singing and leading us today in worship.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Luke chapter 1. As you turn there, if you have a young person who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, you can be dismissed with them at this time. And a couple of things as we get started today. Thank you again, young people.
It was a great job on that song. I had not heard that song until they had been practicing it, and it has been a good song for me to worship the Lord with this Christmas season. And so it's a great thing.
And I was given this note, and I'm going to read it as I get everything set up on my mini pulpit up here.
It was in our blessing box, and we'd get notes every once in a while, but they had wrote it on just a simple napkin. And it just says, thank you for the cards and the food. Me and the family eat because you care.
Thanks a lot. And so this is just something that was written on there that was laid in there. And so thank you for giving to that.
Anytime you have the ability to give toward that or bring food up here, it's always available. But Luke chapter 1 is where we'll be at today, verses 46 through 56.
As I was praying about our Christmas series that I was going to do, and I don't always do a Christmas series. I just felt led to do one this year. The characters of Christmas sort of came out. Last week we talked about the shepherds,
just ordinary men doing their duty out in the field, and the Lord came and extraordinarily brought a blessing to them.
My mind, our small group just a couple of weeks ago, we've been looking through the advent of Christ, and we studied through Mary a little bit, but we took some time and we studied through Mary's prayer, Mary's song that she sang, and this is Luke 1, 46 through 56.
And this passage has not been able to get away from me this last couple of weeks, and so we're going to go through it this morning and look at some key truths that Mary saw and Mary praised the Lord for in her life.
And so if you're able to stand, we'll stand and read Psalms 146 through 56, just a couple of verses here. The Bible says, Lord, we thank you for this day.
Thank you for the reading of your word. Thank you again for the baptism and the young people as they led. What a blessing it is every time they get up here just to see the church of tomorrow and them serving and loving you.
Historical Context of Praise
And we thank you for that in your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated. If you don't know this by now, you should know.
I'm a history guy. My wife will often tell me, how can you read history and get anything out of it? It's just like it puts her to sleep. She likes different type of reading, and I love looking at war history and presidential history and different things.
And I came across this story in Covington, England in 1941 during the height of World War II.
And this little small town of Covington was devastated by one of the most destructive bombing raids of the war.
Thousands of buildings were destroyed, including one of the greatest landmarks of that city, St. Michael's Cathedral. This was a Gothic church, a Catholic church that had stood for hundreds of years up until this point. And it sat in the very middle of Covington.
It was the big draw when you would go. Everyone wanted to go and see this wonderful cathedral. If you've never seen any of the cathedrals that were built back in the 1800s, 1700s, man, the craftsmanship that was put into those buildings was something to go and look at.
And everyone would flock to it, everyone would go to it. And in the morning, as people were waking up and they were seeing what was left of the village, the only thing that remained of this St. Michael's Cathedral was an empty shell.
The walls had been broken in. The beams that held everything up were broken and destroyed and burnt.
All the stone was scattered. And there were people in that community that were standing there just bawling their eyes out. Their church they had been to, this cathedral, was now gone. The heart of their city, you could even say the heartbeat of their city, where generations had worshipped, was now completely gone.
They were standing there. The story goes on that the next Sunday they were standing in the rubble. The church had gathered. They said there were still smoke. There were still ashes. And the congregation gathered around this place that they had worshipped for many years. No roof. No pews. No instruments.
No stained glass in the building. Just a people gathering in this spot. One local pastor from the area said this. From the ruins, praise rose up.
As they lifted their voices, they sang this song. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. The wonderful doxology.
They stood there in the rubble, in the ashes, and this is what their words were. Praise God.
Praise God for the faithfulness of what you've done. Nothing around them looked like a blessing. Nothing around them looked like hope. And nothing around them looked like victory. But yet their instinct in their moment, in this moment of time, was we've got to praise the Lord.
Praising God Amidst Uncertainty
I know this isn't what we wanted. This isn't what we had on our calendar of what was going to happen in our church and our community. But all we can do is praise.
They didn't praise God for what they saw. They didn't walk out there and say, oh, look at this building that we used to love, that we used to be around. We're going to praise God for that. No. They praised God for who he is.
And what he was doing in their life. This moment in time became famous all across the world. Reporters later said that it was the song of the people who believed God was still faithful, even when everything around them had fallen apart.
Would that be said of us, that when everything around us has fallen apart, we're still praising the Lord, that God is still faithful, that he is still on the throne, and he is still the one leading us.
And this is exactly what Mary was doing in Luke chapter 1, verses 46 through 56. Her world was uncertain in this moment. The most scholars believe she was about 14 or 15 years old. She was a young lady, a young girl. Her future was unclear.
You can imagine someone who is engaged to be married now finds out she's pregnant.
The father isn't actually her father because they haven't known each other, and now her reputation is at risk. What are people going to say about me? What are people going to say about my family? And what is my husband,
the soon-to-be-my-husband, what is he going to do? Is he going to put me away for divorce? Is he going to call off this marriage? What is going to happen? Life was uncertain, and she didn't know what was going on, and nothing looked easy in her life.
Life was never, actually, the Bible says that everything was impossible, and in this moment, the only thing that wasn't impossible was God in this situation. And yet, in the middle of all this, she writes this song. She writes this praise of magnifying the Lord. There's AI out there.
If you don't know what AI is, I actually took this passage when we were studying a couple weeks ago, and I put it into an AI generator and made a song out of it. If you want to hear that song, let me know.
I can send it to you in a text message. But it's a wonderful rendition of these words as Mary was worshiping the Lord through this, and ultimately, she magnified the Lord.
And this is what I see. She magnified the Lord not because her circumstances were simple.
Oftentimes, it's easy to praise the Lord when things are good and when things are simple and life is easy, and we get together with our family, and all the food is out, and everything is good.
Faithfulness in Difficult Times
And those are the easy times to praise the Lord. But in this situation, she was praising the Lord because God was faithful.
God looked down, and God chose her to be the mother of the Messiah. Just like in this opening story of Covetry, Mary teaches us this truth. Real praise isn't rooted in our circumstances.
Real praise rises from our confidence in God and who He is. And as we begin to think of the faithfulness of God and the goodness of God in our life, even when it doesn't go the way we think it should go, rooted of real praise is rooted in who God is.
And so as we dissect this passage, the first couple of verses, 46 through 49,
Mary starts out this song to the Lord with a praise for what He has done in her. Now, think about this. You have been given this wonderful news that you're going to be the mother of the Messiah, the mother of Emmanuel.
And she begins to open up this song with, My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.
She can't help but praise the Lord for what God is doing in her life. We don't ever get to experience this. The closest we get to this is when we find the news.
As Marty was telling me this morning, as we were up here talking about a couple of things, he said,
you know, I can remember the day when my wife called me and I was up on a 20-foot ladder and he called me and she's crying and she's bawling her eyes out because they had found out that she was pregnant with Anna Lee.
This is the closest we can get to experiencing what Mary is when we find out that we're going to be parents and we're going to have children of our own.
And this is Mary, but the circumstances are crazy. But all she can do is just simply step back and say, God, thank you for what you're doing in my life. Thank you for what you have seen fit in my life.
And as we look through this, there's a couple of things we see in this first passage. The first is this, a soul that's anchored in worship. The first thing we see is her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices.
When we look at this, we see that Mary's praise is not surface level. There are times where when you scratch the surface of someone, initially praise comes out.
But as you begin to get deeper and deeper, they begin to turn and say, God, why are you doing this? What is going on in my life? And why is this happening?
But in the deepest part of Mary's life, when you got past the surface, when you got past the next layer and you got down to the deepest part of her life, the Bible says that her soul and her
Worship Through Life's Challenges
spirit magnify the Lord. This is everything about her. And she is just turning into a sense of praising the Lord through what is going on. I'm not very musically inclined.
Terry is much, much greater at music than I will ever be. And others in here that are very musically inclined, Owen can pick up a guitar and it just seems like it just starts playing. I don't understand it, but I do.
I've seen someone one time that I was at our last church and they would come in and they would tune the piano every month. And it was the craziest thing as they hit that tuning fork, every instrument in the building that was on that note began to vibrate.
The tuning fork was bringing everything that was going on in that area, a vibration of what was going on. And this is what's going on in Mary's life.
Her heart is so in tune with God that as God strikes the chord in her life, all she can do is resemble back this worship that's going on in her life. Her whole being now responds in praise. Her soul is now responding in the praise of the Lord.
Is your praise just on Sunday? Just when we put on our Sunday best?
Just when we put on our best clothes and we get ready and we make sure our hair's right and the wind blows and our hair gets messed up? And we're like, oh Lord, how am I going to worship you today?
Because this isn't right or I forgot the right necklace or I forgot this. How am I going to worship the Lord?
Or is it this something that this praise rises from within every day of our life?
As you go to work, as you go to school, as you go throughout your life, is everything that you're doing bringing through this praise of the Lord because your soul is anchored in this.
Number two, God's grace toward the humble. All throughout our Sunday school class this morning, we talked to this word humble. And this is what Mary says. He has looked on my humble estate as his servant. Oh, this is the grace of God toward the humble.
And God is looking at us and he's saying he has blessed us in all of our life. And the key here is Mary doesn't look and say, look how great I am. Look how wonderful I am.
Look, God has chosen me to be the son of God, to be the mother of God. No, God, she looks and she says, the only thing I can boast of is the God's grace. There's nothing that I have done.
There's nothing that is within me that God has chosen me. I am blessed among all women in the world.
This is this idea of she is so humbly looking at the Lord and saying, God, I don't even deserve this, but I'm thankful for it, so I'm going to give you the praise.
Christmas Play and Community Engagement
Imagine a spotlight sweeping across a dark stage as you go through plays and plays are coming up. We're going to have our Christmas play tonight with our young people. Imagine the plays happening and suddenly it stops on a person that no one expected.
Maybe it was the shy kid in school that was afraid to say anything.
And all of a sudden, he's standing there beside the mic and the spotlight's on him. And he gives out this song or word and everyone's in shock and awe because this is the person that no one picked that they were going to say this. And all of a sudden, this is what's happening.
Mary is the person that God has chosen this young lady that no one would have picked.
No one would have looked and said, okay, this is the lady we're going to pick. As we looked at last week, the shepherds, no one would have picked the shepherds to get the news that Jesus was going to be born.
And yet God looks and takes notice on those that are oftentimes overlooked in our life.
Think about this. This is the thing that we do in our life. We overlook people.
We overlook situations or scenarios when God says, no, I've put this in your life for a reason. Learn to live in it. Learn to grow in it. Learn to love me through it. Do you ever feel invisible or insignificant?
I'm sure Mary felt that way. I'm sure Mary felt that she was just another girl in Jerusalem, in Nazareth, right? No good thing can come out of Nazareth. This is what the disciples said.
And she's one of those girls in Nazareth. And nothing good is going to come of my life. I'm just going to do what I've got to do. And I'm going to eventually get married and have some kids. And God's going to be there with me.
But God looked down and pulled out someone that was unnoticeable and brought them into this moment where their life was going to be made significant. How often is it that in our life we think, God can never use me. God can never use this broken, humbled person.
But God looks and says, that's exactly who I want.
I want people who are just willing to be humble and used for me. So not only do we see God's grace toward the humble, we see God's mighty work in her life. The Bible says that the mighty one has done great things for me.
She's carrying the Savior. I want you to really put yourself in this picture today. You find out that you're going to be the mother of the Messiah. You're going to be the father of the Messiah. You're going to have this wonderful grace bestowed upon you.
Mary's Recognition of God's Favor
And this is her response. He has shown favor upon me. He has done mighty things in my life.
And she purely sees it as God's mercy on her life. See, oftentimes when things like this happen,
we begin to question God. We begin to say, God, how could you have done this? Why did you choose me? Why did you allow my family to go through this situation? What is it that you're doing? And Mary looks and she says,
God, you've shown mercy on me. I don't deserve this. I didn't deserve what you gave me before. I didn't deserve the food that you gave me last week. I didn't deserve the family that you gave me. But yet you showed me mercy.
And how often do we overlook the mercies of God? You know, oftentimes people will talk about how they found God and how they begin to walk in this relationship with Jesus.
And I love that idea of walking in that relationship with Jesus. But oftentimes Mary reminds us that the story is not how she found God, but how God found her.
And we must get to the point where we understand that God is reaching down with his forgiving arms of mercy and grace upon our lives and saying, if you just believe in the son of God, if you just
believe in what my son has done for you, then you can begin this relationship with God. You can begin this walk with him as we go through our life.
When you look back on your life, can you name the great things that God's done for you? I know we do this at Thanksgiving time. I know we do this as we begin to think back. And oftentimes at Christmas, we go from Thanksgiving to where we're thankful for what God's done.
And then we go to Christmas and it's like, okay, give me things. Right? I'm guilty of that. Give me things. I deserve these things.
But oftentimes, and we do this as a family, we open up and we read the passage of Luke here. And we're doing some Advent stuff as we're leading up to Christmas. And I continue to tell my kids, why are we doing this? What is the reason that we're doing this?
Because we're getting to this point where Jesus once came into this world and we're looking forward to what he's going to do again when he comes back and takes his children home. And we want to worship the Lord at Christmas time, but also worship him in this future coming for his children.
Can we begin to look back and see what God has done and the great things that he has done?
Worshiping God's Character
The fourth thing we see that Mary does here is she worships the character of God. I think this is important because she says this, holy is his name.
The praise that she has is grounded in the very nature of who God is. And we have to ask ourselves, are we looking at the nature of who God is and the nature of what God has done? There's a book that I've got. It's called by R.C.
Sproul, the attributes of God, the nature of God. And as you begin to read through this, you truly see who God is and what God has done in our life. And as you begin to praise the Lord, you begin to see it grounded and rooted in the very nature of who he is. Oftentimes, as we're kids,
right? And oftentimes we can be kids as adults. We worship the Lord or we worship what he's done because of the blessings.
Because of the great things that he has done for us. I want to challenge us not only to worship the Lord, truly thank the Lord for his blessings. I'm not saying don't thank the Lord for the good things he's given us. But also, on top of that,
worship the Lord for who he is. He's omniscient as we've been looking about. He's all powerful. He knows us. He desires to have an intimate relationship with us. He wants to go deeper in our life with us.
Begin to worship the Lord this Christmas season as Mary did by simply looking and saying, yes, you were blessed me.
And other people are going to say that I'm blessed and highly favored. But I want to go a step further and not only praise you for that, but I want to praise you for your name and how holy your name is.
So she looks at this first portion of who she is and what God has done for her. And now she transitions it to sort of us. Verses 50 to 53, she transitions to for what God is doing for his people.
She magnifies the Lord by what he begins to do for the people that were surrounding her. And what the Lord is doing for those that are around her. And this is also for us.
We can look and we can say, Lord, you've shown favor on me. And now you can begin to see the blessings of the people around us. You can begin to get your eyes up and your eyes out and begin to see what God is doing around you. The first is this.
His mercy extends across generations. His mercy extends across all generations.
God's faithfulness isn't a moment, but it's a pattern that God shows and God works through and in our life.
Christian Life as a Relay Race
Imagine a relay race where one person's got a baton on. And I use this often because this is the Christian life. One person's got a baton and they hand that baton to the next person. And that person runs their race.
And when their race is done, they hand that baton to the next person. And this is the beautiful picture of our Christian faith. We're running our faith. And hopefully we're discipling people around us to say, hey,
when I'm not here anymore, I want you to take this baton. I want you to run your race.
I'm going to run with you while I'm here. I'm going to run beside you while I'm here.
But one day I'm not going to be here and you're going to be the one to take the baton. Look for those around you that can help take that baton with you and help run this race with you.
And now go further and further. Look at God's mercy. His baton was passed from Abraham all the way to David. And from David all the way to Mary. And now from Mary all the way to us. Thousands of years later, from generation to generation, he is passing this mercy down to us.
Are we going to be the generation that drops the mercy? That drops the baton? That doesn't disciple the next generation to say, hey, I'm trusting you.
I'm trusting this group that was up here today. I'm going to pass the baton to you because you're going to be the ones that take it out from here. Are we felling that future generation?
Or are we looking back and we're saying, look, there's a clear handoff from my faith in my household. I'm going to give it to you so that you can keep going. And this is what Mary is saying when she says that his mercy extends across all generations.
It's continuing to extend over other generations. And I believe that as you look through this, you see this next one, which is a beautiful picture for us. Because God reverses heavenly earthly expectations.
The second thing that she sees here as she looks around or those around us. Is that the expectations of the earth are sort of flipped on its head. The Bible says that he scatters the proud.
He brings down the rulers and he lifts up the humble. He brings those that were humble and he brings them up. And those that were proud, he's going to put them down. And those that were living for their own life, he's going to begin to put them down. We're in parade season.
Have y'all been to a Christmas parade yet? Maybe you're going tonight. Hopefully not tonight. Hopefully you'll be here for the Christmas play. I know some of you are going to be there.
Parades and God's Priorities
But there's parades that are going on. And if you go to a parade, you may see Thanksgiving Day parade happen. The very front of the parade is the most important people. Right? It's the governor. It's the president. It's the mayor of the city. It's all the most important people up front.
And God looks down from heaven and he says, I love that. I want to honor those people. But when we get to heaven,
he says, I'm going to flip all that on its head. Those that were the lowest on earth, I'm going to make them first. Those that were the littlest on earth, I'm going to make them the most blessed. Those that were last are now going to become first.
And he lifts us up and he honors those who were unnoticed here on earth. And he says, thank you for your faithfulness. Even though you never got the honor and the accolades here on earth, I'm going to praise you when you get to heaven.
I'm going to lift you up when you get to heaven. And it's a beautiful picture of God blessing us even when we go unnoticed. It's a picture of Mary, right? She didn't go noticed up until this point. And now, 2,000 years later, we're still talking about her. Because she was blessed beyond favor.
Where have you been tempted to trust your position? To trust your status that you've been put in? As we talked this morning in Sunday school, oftentimes we have been blessed with gifts, talents, and abilities. And it is very easy to trust in those things rather than trust in God.
And we have to ask ourselves, how often are we trusting in the Lord rather than trusting in our own pride? Trusting in our own abilities.
And then we see here at the very end of this passage, the very end of this portion here, is that God satisfies his people.
What a great reminder for us. He says that he fills the hungry with good things.
He brings the bread of life as Jesus says that I am the bread of life. And he says, I'm going to fill you up so that you will never be hungry. You'll never be thirsty ever again.
I'm going to bestow blessings upon you. And you're going to have the goodness of the Lord in your life. As Mary is looking at this and she says, you've taken down the pride and you've fed the hungry. You have given the blessings to your people.
You see, I've got a four-year-old son. He was just screaming out. I don't know what happened. I don't know if he just wanted whatever. This happens in life. You've got four-year-olds before.
My son, he loves snacks for some reason. He comes to me and he says, I pick him up from daycare or pick him up from something.
Desires for More After Fulfillment
We'll be, you know, two minutes down the road. Dad, can I have a snack? You just ate dinner like two minutes ago.
You just ate food. Why do you need a snack? I just want a snack. I want something, right? I want something else.
And it was reminding me this week as I was thinking about that. If all you do is eat junk food all week long, all day long, you're going to continue to be hungry.
Dinner time comes, you're going to be hungry even though you've ate all day long. I can tell you there's been one time where I had the opportunity to go to Ruth Chris Steakhouse. Ruth Chris Steakhouse, they have amazing Wagyu beef steaks.
They've got sweet potato casserole that I believe that God himself dipped his finger into it because it was that good. It was the great, great things.
When I eat a meal like that, Thanksgiving, Christmas time, special events, I'm fed all day long.
I don't have to have another meal because it was nourishing to my soul. It satisfied everything in my life.
This is what the Bible says here. He is satisfying his people. He fills us up so that we no longer are empty. Only Christ can feel this way. When you feel spiritually depleted, when you feel spiritually at the end of your life,
Christ is the one that is the fuel that goes in our gas tank that fills us up so that we never thirst again, so that he is the only one that can satisfy it. We can try to put in our own things. We can try to put in entertainment, our successes,
the things that God has blessed us with, our own families, and yet that is never going to fill us up.
Only God's mercy, only God's grace fills us up and fills our soul up to be satisfied with him personally and with him gloriously.
When have you been feeding or what have you been feeding your soul lately? As you look at your life, as you look at maybe this past week or this past month of the last 14 days, what has been the thing that's been feeding your soul? And is it filling you up?
Or are you still looking and saying, I need more, God? Maybe it's because you don't have the full feeding of the Holy Spirit and his word in our life. The last thing we look at is his faithfulness to his covenant.
As the young people read this morning for the Advent, as they were talking about the covenant of the Lord in his life, the Bible says here, as Mary is praising, she says he has helped his servant Israel.
God's Remembrance of His People
Israel. We see that God remembers his people. You remember here, this was 400 years. 400 years the Israel nation had not heard from the Lord.
There was not been a prophet that was brought to Israel for 400 years. They were in what you could consider a wilderness of the Lord. They had not heard. They had not had a prophet. They had not heard a king speak from the Lord. And they were in a spiritual drought.
And yet, through all of that, God never forgot his people. God never forgot what he said he would do for them. And God never forgot his people.
And oftentimes, we have to remember that God doesn't forget us. God doesn't forget the things that he has given us. Me and my grandfather were really close. I was born on his birthday. And every year, we would do birthdays together. And I can remember just the fun times that we had.
My grandfather passed away when I was a freshman in college. But I can remember right before I went off to college, we went bowling together. And he was always a funny old man. But he went bowling.
And he stepped onto the wax of the bowling alley. And I mean, he just busted it. And I'm like shocked what's going on here.
And he gets up and he's laughing. Like, he knows that he messed up. He knows that he did it wrong. But he's laughing and I'm laughing.
And all the family's there. It was a great time. But I can remember my grandfather told me this. He said, he looked at me and said, grandson, I may forget where I put my keys. But I'll never forget who I am and who you are to me.
And I'll never forget that because this is God looking at us and saying, you may think that I've forgotten who you are.
You may think that you have been out in the desert and out somewhere. And I'm as far away from you as possible. But he looks down and he says, I've not forgotten you. And I've not forgotten who you are and who you are to me. God never misplaces his people.
No one has ever slipped through God's fingers. God is never going to forget us. God is never going to forsake us.
And the Bible says that he is going to be there for us no matter what through his Holy Spirit. Where do you need to trust God that he is going to remember you as his people? The second thing we see here is God always keeps his promises.
And this is a wonderful thing for us to remember that not only does he always remember his people, but he always keeps his promises. The Bible says here, as he spoke to our fathers,
he promised Abraham that you were going to be a nation among nations. He promised all throughout Abraham's sons and Isaac and Jacob and the children of Israel.
And Moses, as he led the children of Israel, he continued to give them these promises. And then he comes to us as the church and he says, I've got these promises for you. You're going to get the Holy Spirit one day.
You're going to have the Holy Spirit live inside of you one day that's going to lead and direct. And you're going to be able to reach people for the gospel all across the world.
You're going to take the power of the Holy Spirit, the dynamite power of the Holy Spirit, and you're going to impact communities and you're going to take the gospel to places that you never saw fit. And you're going to go out and you're going to tell people these things.
And he says, listen, I'm not going to forget those promises. I'm going to keep those promises. One of those promises was the birth of Jesus.
One of those promises was the fulfillment of the prophecy of a Messiah coming in this world to redeem us of our sins.
I tell people often, I heard this illustration one time, if you were to take all the prophecies of the Old Testament of Jesus and you were to put them together, it would match up like with the Pacific Ocean. Imagine the Pacific Ocean on a globe.
And one person said it like this, if you take a diamond ring and you drop a diamond ring into the ocean and you get on a helicopter and you take one bucket and you take that bucket across the
Pacific Ocean and you dip that one bucket into the Pacific Ocean and pull it up,
the chances of that diamond ring being in that bucket are the same chances of God's prophecy fulfilled in one person throughout eternity.
That's the likelihood of all the promises and the prophecies of the Lord coming together in one. It was a very slim chance that that would ever happen. And yet God in his providence fulfilled that all in Jesus because he kept his promises.
One jeweler said it like this, the finest diamonds of all time are those that are not rushed.
Those that take their time in the heat and in that refining of the pressure of the fire as they begin to go from coal to a diamond. And it reminds us that God in his timing perfectly cuts,
perfectly places us right on time exactly where he wants us and all throughout time. And we can look at God and we can say, God, I don't understand what you're doing.
I don't understand why you're doing this, but I can trust that you're keeping your promises and that your timing is greater than my timing. You see, we like to rush things.
When things don't go the way we want them to go, we like to sort of step ahead of God and say, God, I know you're in control, but I can probably do this a little better than you.
So I'm going to step around you and I'm going to go ahead and take care of it. When that happens, we always fall on our face.
I think of the very first big promise that God gave with Abraham and his children.
Abraham, I'm going to bless you with the nation. You're going to have children and the world's going to look at you and you're going to look at your nation and they're going to worship you and your nation because of my blessing upon you.
And Sarah laughs and she goes, I don't know if this is going to happen. Abraham, you're like 100 years old. Come on. Is God really going to do that to you? And as they begin going through time, Sarah goes, Abraham,
I don't think God's going to do this. Let's take matters into our own hand. Why don't you go and you lay with one of my servants and have another child with her and that's going to be where God's going to bring your blessing. I'm too old. God can't use me.
And so this happens and Hagar has a child and God looks down and he said, that's not the way I wanted it. That's not the way I planned it.
But yet I've got to continue to go through this and then Sarah has a kid and you fast forward four or five thousand years later to where we're at now.
And those two children, those two generations are still at war with each other today.
All because one person decided to step around God and try to figure out things outside of that. And how often are we the same way where we don't want to trust God's timing. We don't want to trust what God has and we don't like waiting anymore.
Or, right, you go to the DMV and you're like the third person in line and you're like, nope, I'll come back the next day. Because we don't want to wait.
We want to go and walk in and we want to be the first person in line. And if we're not the first, we'll just figure out another time.
God oftentimes has us in these waiting periods of life to show us who he is, to show us his faithfulness. And we as a stubborn generation don't like that.
I'm talking to myself included. If I'm not talking to anybody in here, I'm talking to myself today of how we don't like to wait. But God always keeps his promises. And lastly, we'll look at this morning, God's plan spans centuries. God's plan spans centuries and times.
Mary isn't standing in a small moment of time. She's standing in a story of thousands of years before her and thousands of years after her.
You see, when you step into one of these cathedrals that I talked about from Covington, England, when you step into a cathedral that was made, the Washington Cathedral or the cathedral in New York that I've had the opportunity to step into, you understand that this cathedral was not built in a day.
Someone thousands of years before arrived and began building that cathedral and began putting all the architect together. And it took hundreds of years to build.
And long after that, it's still lasting today. And you can see that and you can realize that God in his same plan has a roadmap for you. He has a redemptive plan for your life. And his plan spans farther and greater than we can ever imagine.
I often say this, and I've heard it said before, that it was someone else who sacrificed for us to sit in this room today.
Someone else sacrificed years ago to buy pews, to put air conditioning and heating and lights in this building so that we can worship today. Are we going to allow that to fail today on us?
Are we going to be part of the larger story that God has to continue his gospel? Oftentimes we look at our chapter and we say, God, this is such a small chapter. How can you use me to do anything in this world?
Maybe my chapter is coming to an end and I'm coming to the end of my life and I don't have as many days ahead of me as I've got behind me. God continues to say, no, listen, I'm looking at your faithfulness.
I'm looking at the humbleness of your life and I'm going to continue to bless you as you begin to go forward and you begin to go through your life. God's plan for us spans centuries as well.
As Terry comes, I'm going to close with just some wrapping up some things, some final notes as we conclude here. Mary in this life, she was young. She was an unknown girl from Nazareth. And yet she's facing the same uncertainty,
rumors, questions that we can face today. God, why are you doing this to me? God, what is going on in my life here? She's facing questions.
She doesn't know what the future holds. She doesn't really know how all this is going to play out.
She knows that the angel came and told her all of what God was going to do through this son named Jesus.
She knows a little bit, but she doesn't truly know what exactly is going to happen and how her son at 33 years old is going to die on the cross. And she's going to be standing there with the disciples looking up at her son, dying for the sins of the world.
She doesn't truly know what's going to happen, but she knows who holds it.
She's trusting through this praise and through this song that God, I don't understand fully what's going to happen, but I know you're in control. And I'm going to put my faith in you. And that right there is enough to make her sing.
That right there is enough for her to write down this magnificent song to the Lord. It teaches us something simple that praise is not the language of people who have it all figured out.
I wish that I had every answer to life figured out. I've got three kids in Brody and Jade. They're starting to ask harder questions in life.
I wish that God would just bring all the knowledge into the world in my mind so that I could answer every one of their questions perfectly. But sometimes I have to say, you know, I don't really know the answer to that question. And praise is not for those who have everything figured out.
Praise is the language of people who trust the one who does.
There is a Savior out there who has everything figured out from beginning to the end. And that's where we can begin to live in.
That's where we can begin to trust the one who has it all figured out. So let me leave you with these three questions as we close. Number one, what has God done in you that deserves fresh praise today?
Maybe it was something that happened 30 years ago. Maybe it was something that happened three minutes ago that deserves a fresh praise to the Lord that says, God, thank you for the great things that you've done in me. Thank you for the great things that you have done in my life.
Number two, where do you need to trust God is still working in your life? Where do you need to say, God, I'm struggling.
I don't know what's going on, but I'll just trust that you're going to keep working in my life. You're going to still do the things in my life. I'm going to be humble.
I'm not going to be proud. And I'm going to remind myself that God is already working things out around me. Number three, and finally, do you believe that God will keep his promises?
Even when you cannot see how they're going to be kept, do you believe that God is still going to keep those promises? Mary stands in her story. It began long before she was ever born.
And she's standing there and she's saying, God, I'm just going to trust that what you're doing is for your plan and for your glory. I don't know why. I don't know what's going to happen here, but I'm just going to trust in you. Just like that opening congregation,
Coventry, they stood in the rubble and they praised the Lord for his faithfulness that they could still stand and worship him. Just like Mary, who is standing in the uncertainty of her future,
God is worthy of praise because everything in our life is not always easy, but everything we do is in his hands.
So this morning, church, as we close, I want you to ask yourself, what is it that you can say as your heart may be full of praise? Maybe it's not full of praise. Maybe you can ask yourself, I want a song of praise like Mary.
I want a faith that Mary had that I can begin to walk in her life. And I want my praise to become the posture of my heart to turn it to the Lord and say, God, give me the praise that Mary had.
Give me the praise that others have had in my life that have been around me, that they were able to praise the Lord when difficult times were happening. I want that type of praise in my life.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for your blessings this morning.
Thank you for the ability for us to come and worship you. Even on this cold morning, we get to worship you for who you are and what you've done. Help us this morning to have a heart of praise as Mary did.
Help us to have a heart of praise where we may not know the outcome, we may not know what's going on, but we know the one who's holding it. We know the one that's in control. We love you, Lord. In your name we pray. Amen.
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