Mary’s Perspective

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. When I was around six or seven, I loved baseball. I really loved baseball. I collected baseball cards. I watched the games. The 86 Mets winning the World Series was great for me. The 91 Braves winning the World Series was a really great kind of journey for me. I was a big fan of baseball. However, I was a terrible player of baseball. I was gangly. I was uncoordinated. I had the slowest bad speed imaginable. I was terrible. I wanted to be so good, but I was so bad. It was breathtaking. In fact, every time my friends would gather up for a baseball game, either at recess or just playing in the neighborhood, inevitably I was picked last. I was the charity case. People kind of felt bad for me. And I was just really terrible at baseball. No one, no one wants to be picked last. We all, it just speaks to our fear, right? Whenever we are picked last, when we're afraid that we aren't good at anything at all. And so that, when we're picked

last that kind of confirms that. We don't want to be picked last, we want to be picked first. We want to be the favorite child. We want to be the employee of the month or the employee of the year. We want to be the highest performer, right? We want to be first. As we are going through our series, Christmas in First Person, this idea of being chosen or being picked comes up again and again and again so far as we have looked through Christmas through the eyes of these different people these different perspectives we look through the shepherds we've looked through Zechariah and we've looked through Joseph and today there we want to talk through one perspective that really unseats the rest of them turn with me to Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 27. Luke 1, 26 and 27 it says, in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man

whose name was Joseph of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. Mary's perspective on Christmas is unprecedented and it is wildly interesting. We can relate to the shepherds, we can relate to Zechariah a little bit, we can even relate to Joseph a little bit. We have no touch point for Mary. We don't know what it's like to be Mary. In fact, we sing the song, Mary Did You Know, just because we truly wonder if she knew. We truly, we truly wonder if if she had any idea that she would be giving birth to the Messiah. So we say, didn't Mary know that the child that you delivered would soon deliver you? How do you deal with that? How do you have perspective on that? To view Christmas through Mary's eyes, then, is almost impossible. Moreover, even if we kind of could do it, sort of what could we learn?

Well, even though we are not in her position, and it is highly unlikely that we ever will be, I wanna keep reading, I wanna keep reading in Luke, and I wanna look at a few things about Mary. I wanna notice some things here. Look at me with Luke chapter one, verse 28 through 30. This is the angel talking to Mary. It says, and he came to her and said, greetings O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and trying to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Look, although it is difficult to see Christmas from Mary's perspective, we can all grasp the idea of being chosen for a reason. Because out of all the women in history, Mary is the one who gets picked. Out of all the women that could have birthed the Messiah, Mary is the favored one, like it says in verse 28. Mary in verse 30, Mary found favor with God.

And so this means that God specifically chose Mary for a reason. God specifically chose Mary for a reason. Now right here we need to be careful because there is something about the situation where we want to find something special in Mary. We want to examine Mary's life and discover a way that she was worthy of giving birth to Jesus. However, trying to find something wonderful or exceptional about Mary is crazy. And here's why. Because no one, no one, not even Mary, is is worthy of birthing God into the world. There's no way anyone is worthy of doing that. And if we read the Christmas story, if we try to get into Mary's perspective and we try to find something in her life that makes her worthy, we are missing the point of Christmas. We are missing the point of having Mary's perspective in Luke one anyway, right? But it still says that Mary found favor with God. How did Mary find favor with

God? Well, I would say to you it's the same way that anyone finds favor with God. Listen to how 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 26 and 28 through 28 describe people finding favor with God. It says, for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. Sounds like Mary. But then in verse 27, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing, things that are. Although we cannot learn much from Mary in this Christmas season, what we can do is understand what it's like for God to move through a person. What it's like for God to choose someone and to work through them. And so it's not so much that we can understand things about

of Mary, however, we can look at Mary's life and understand a lot of things about God. And so what I want to do is bring you through a few things. And the first, the first is that God loves to make nothing into something. This is something we can learn from Mary's life that God loves to make nothing into something. And this is every Christian's life story. I'm a no one that Jesus is making it to someone. This is every Christian's life story and this is one of God's greatest delights. You can see this all over scripture, not just with Mary, not just in 1 Corinthians 1. You can see it all over. You can see him in the Old Testament taking Gideon who was a wimp and making him to a military leader. You can take, you can see him in the New Testament. Jesus takes these fishermen, these uneducated, low-class guys, and makes them into pillars of a worldwide movement. God loves to do this, and you can actually see this

in reverse. You can see the other side of this, that one of the greatest sins is presuming that you deserve to be used by God, or to be chosen by God. When you presume that you should be chosen based on your worth, that's a slap in God's face. It is God's choosing. God loves to do this. So he loves to make nothing into something. That's the first thing we can learn. What else can we learn from God choosing Mary? Let's keep reading. Let's skip ahead in Luke 1 to verses 46 through 48. This is the beginning of what is called the Magnificat. It is Mary's praise to God whenever she kind of comes to terms with the fact that she's going to have the Messiah, right? So she sings this prayer and in 46 through 48 it says, Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord and my soul, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant for behold from now

on all generations will call me blessed." And I really want to focus on that idea in verse 48 that God has looked upon the humble estate of his servant. Right? He looked at Mary. Mary is a humble woman and I don't mean that in that she was humble. I mean that in that she was lowly. That's what she means in verse 48. He looked upon the humble estate of my servant, of his servant. This is what we can see and we see this all over the place that God loves to go after the unqualified. God loves to go after the unqualified. Our culture puts a lot of stock in tangibles or hard skills, right? So when you're looking at leadership, for example, the way that our culture looks at leadership and chooses people to be leaders is vastly different than how the Lord does it. Our culture takes takes leadership and what ideals, what values does it hold up for leaders? Eloquence, decisiveness, people that are driven, people that are results oriented,

and these are fine qualities as far as they go, but they really don't have anything to do with how God chooses a leader. Consider the leadership qualifications of someone who's going to be an elder at a church or pastor like we call them at South Perleson. 1 Timothy 3 gives us an idea. It doesn't make any mention of eloquent preaching. It doesn't make any mention of being a dynamic visionary. Nothing like that. What does it do? It looks at the heart and it says, if you were going to be a leader, I want your heart to be sober, I want it to be self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, gentle, peaceable, generous, these are the things that God wants his leaders to have if they're going to lead his church. Look, Mary did not give birth to the Messiah because she is a super mother. Okay, it's not because she's perfect. She's not chosen because she's going to do the best job. She's chosen because God loves to go after the unqualified.

Mary's not saying, oh, I'm so humble because humble people don't actually say I'm so humble. Mary is saying that she is unqualified. She's saying, whenever she talks about the humble estate, her humble estate, she's saying, I'm not worthy of this. I don't have what it takes. I don't have the money. I don't have the prestige. I don't deserve this. In fact, Mary's only qualification, if we can talk about it that way, is that she believed. Look at verse 45. We just read 46 through 48, but look at the verse before that. In her conversation with Elizabeth, this is what Elizabeth says about Mary. It says, And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord Okay, this is Mary Sorry, this is Elizabeth referring to Mary. Blessed is she blessed is Mary because she believed That's it. That's her only qualification here. We talk about this all the time, right?

How do we know that we're saved? How do we know that we're a Christian? The mark of Christianity is a heart that is willing to obey. The Mark of a Christian is not a perfect track record. The Mark of a Christian is not some ecstatic, dramatic moment, right? The Mark of a Christian is a changed heart. Your desires are different. You want to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. You want to please the Lord. You don't live up to that idea of what you desire. This is the Mark of being a Christian. So what does it look like when God called a person? Well, he loves to make nothing into something. God loves to go after the unqualified. What else can we learn from God working through Mary? Let's keep reading Luke 1 and we're gonna go back to verse 48 but just read the end of it and we're gonna go 49 to 50. Let's start with for behold and verse 48 says, for behold from now on all generations will call me blessed.

and this is Mary praying here. For he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. I want you to focus in on Mary talking about generations here. We see it in verse 48 and we also see it in verse 50. Look, we have no indication anywhere else in scripture that Mary was this visionary leader, that Mary was this futurist who said, you know, this is what it's going to be like in the future whenever people praise the Lord. Yet in her prayer here, she has generations in view. Mary is not an influencer, neither before this moment or after this moment is she trying to influence generations of people. She doesn't have a Proverbs 31 ministry going on. That's not what she's about, right? But Mary, when she just gets a glimpse of what the Lord is doing through her, She cannot unsee all that the Lord is doing.

She's given a taste of the magnitude of this blessing, and she's forever changed for it. And this is something that we can see that God loves to accomplish the unthinkable. God loves to accomplish the unthinkable. And we need to use caution right here and now. Okay, here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that Mary believed it enough and it came true.

Verses 48 through 50 are not name it and claim it. She's not saying, okay, this is going to happen because I want it to happen. I'm not saying that Mary had enough faith and that made God able to to do what God was going to do. What I am saying is that our response to God's big plan should be big faith. Our response to God's big plan, God's plan is big, man. I mean, Mary's talking about generations here. God does that all the time. His plans include me in you, but we're part of this larger narrative that's going on, this larger history where God is bringing, he's reconciling things to himself, and we are a part of that plan. Our response to God's big plan should be big faith. And let me get really practical here, be a real practical. When you pray,

praying with big faith means you are asking to see God's heart. You're asking to know and be more familiar with God, what God wants to do in other people's lives. And I don't mean knowing the future. I mean knowing God's heart. I mean understanding that he has plans. He wants to bless, he wants to love, he wants to mature people, he wants to make people into his likeness. He wants to be our joy and our fulfillment. And when we pray, and when we pray according to that, Man, we can ask boldly in his name. And I want to give you an example here. I want to take health and wealth creatures or prosperity creatures, you know. And there's a few of them out there. Joel Osteen is one of them. There's a few more out there. Many health and wealth creatures will claim, hey, just believe it and you will receive it.

Just say, Lord, I'm believing you for a new car and you will receive a new car. The Word of Faith movement, right? If you speak the Word of Faith, it will happen. Okay, so that we can speak things into existence just like God spoke things into existence whenever He created the world, okay? I don't support any of that. Although, when we look at just believe and you will receive, Jesus actually said things similar to that. He says, when you pray, you know, if you have enough faith, you can tell this mountain to go over there. You know, if you have enough faith that you can do it. But here, what I want to point out right here is there is a really big flaw in their preaching. There's a few flaws in health and wealth preachers. And they can quote Jesus all day. However, however, when you look at their preaching, when you look at what they are telling people to pray for too

often, what they are telling people to pray for, what they are saying, okay, go to God for this. Too often it is economic ease, economic ease or economic concerns. They say, hey, you're going to believe God for that new car. You're going to believe God for that better house. You're going to believe God for that better job and you're going to believe God for that miracle. You're going to believe God for that healing. Okay. When you are praying for that, I'll get to that in a second. So too often it is economic ease, also too often it is very self-centered. Health and wealth preachers tell you to pray for yourself. They pray for your economic needs, or pray for... Yeah, so that you can have more money, so that you could be blessed, and also pray for your own needs. From what I read in Scripture, I can imagine God responding to that prayer, saying, Oh, okay, you want a lot of money?

How are you going to use it? Are you going to use it for blessing other people, for hospitality? Are you going to direct it to just give it all away and be a blessing? I'm not sure. I'm not sure if that's what health and wealth preachers are going for. But I just want to run the scenario by you. What if? Just imagine it. so great. What if health and wealth preachers began saying, they were off of economic ease, they were off of self-centered prayer, but what if they began saying, hey, you need to believe God to see your friends come to Jesus. You need to believe God to help you love people more than yourself. You need to believe God to help you become a disciple-making disciple. If a health and picture started saying that I would be jumping up and saying yes and amen believe God believe God believe believe believe yes because these are the things that God has called us to pray for not economic ease not self-centeredness God

does not want to coddle us God wants us to be on mission with him and when we pray when we boldly ask for those things. Man, ask for the moon, ask for everything. You are praying for exactly what God wants you to pray for. And if the Haldimao Preachers started doing that, first of all, that'd be amazing. They would actually, you know, lose a lot of money probably doing it that way. However, it would be exactly in line with who God is. And it would shame the small faith that many of us often bring to God in prayer. A lot of times whenever we're praying, we're praying for maybe not economic ease, but maybe we're praying for physical ease. Maybe we're praying for just protection. But we're not praying for our friends to come to Jesus. We're not praying to see more disciple-making disciples. We're not praying for our church to advance in proclaiming the gospel.

We should have big faith in God's big plan. God's plans for our church to make disciples. If all we are praying for is our own physical comfort or ease, like I'm not saying that you can never pray for a broken bone to be healed. That's fine. However, if that's all you're praying for, then your prayer life is too small. When Mary gets a glimpse, I mean a sliver of God's big plan, it is life-changing for her. She cannot believe it. It is just breathtaking and re-orients her whole life. And this brings us to our last point. Okay, so what have we said so far? God loves to make nothing into something. God loves to go after the unqualified. God loves to accomplish the unthinkable. And lastly, God loves to surprise us. God loves to surprise us. I want you to just consider Mary here. She was not expecting that. She was very, very surprised. Consider the disciples. Consider the prophets.

Consider King David. Consider Moses. Which one of these pillars of our faith, which one of them knew the whole plan? None. Nobody knew the whole plan. Mary, when you look at Mary and even the people that, you know, the disciples, I'm sorry, excuse me, Joseph, Zechariah, the shepherds, the wise men, King Herod, nobody knew the whole plan. Nobody knew the whole plan. Mary had no idea what was coming, only that she needed to obey what was right in front of her. job when when we get a little glimpse a little sliver into God's huge cosmic plan our job is to obey what is in front of us and I want to break that down into two questions for you right what is in front of you right now what is in front of you right now for you okay God's big plan is for you to grow into Jesus is likeness for you to make disciples like Jesus made disciples for you to love people sacrificially like Jesus loved people for you to spend your life

advancing the kingdom of God that is God's big plan for you as far as we can see from Scripture what is your next step in that plan how is that plan playing out in your life is the word asking you to give up something for him Is the Lord asking you to repent, to deal with a sin struggle you have going on? Is the Lord burdening you to begin to pray for other people, specific people in your life? What's your next step? What is right in front of you? I want to encourage you to do it. Even now, even now, pause this, stop and pray. So that's the first question, what is in front of you right now? The second question is what is in front of us right now? Now church family, I'm talking to you specifically. God's big plan for our church is to make disciple-making disciples and to worship him. What is your next step? What's our next step in that plan? Into making disciple-making disciples.

Like I announced earlier, life groups begin January 17th. If you are in a place where you know some things about the Lord, but you're not really putting that into practice. You need some help. You're not really helping, encouraging anybody else in their work. Then jump into a life group with people that you know. And if you don't know anybody yet, take this season. We start life groups every January and July. And take this season right now to get to know some people to jump into a life group with them. Starting the week of January 17th. Life groups, if you wanna know more about them, again, you can go to southburleson.church slash life dash groups. Okay? You go to that link and you can read up all about it.

Something else that we encourage people to do, if you're kind of new, if you don't really know what's going on with our church or anything like that, we have something called Gospel Course. The Gospel Course starts, our next one starts February 7th. They are four weeks long, so there was gonna be one for February, one for March, and so on. So we take January off for gospel course, and so we're gonna start February 7th. Maybe you need to take that. Maybe you need to figure out what your place is in God's big plan or even what your place is within our church. We wanna be about making disciples.

Like as we consider Mary's story, as we consider Christmas, I know that I said they were very different, But in many ways, any Christian's story is exactly like Mary's story. Because in the life of any Christian, they were called and chosen, but they were not qualified. They were not worthy of it at all. Yet they were chosen to carry out this huge task, this noble task, in a huge plan that none of us can can see the scope of none of us know what the whole plan is but we do know our part and just like Mary we can look at God's plan we can trust God we can believe God not for economic ease not for selfish prayers we can believe God to see his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven we We can believe God to make disciples. Christmas is a celebration of God choosing undeserving people to receive immeasurable riches. So the question is, what are you going to do?

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you. Your grace is overwhelming, you give us so much. Help us to take that next step. Help us to know what our next step is individually and as a church. And help us to walk confidently in that. And it is in your holy name that we pray. Amen.