“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’ And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and 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; 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. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.’ And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.”

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’m sure it’ll come up in the future, but God is not a genie. People so often confuse the idea of appealing to God, of casting our worries and anxieties before Him, and knowing that He cares for us, provides perfectly, and truly answers prayers, with the notion that our heavenly Father is some kind of wish machine. We develop the notion that God is somehow at our beck and call, that He is, as I’ve heard John MacArthur put it, a universal butler. When we slip (or consciously walk) into thinking this way, there are passages that we’ll pull from to support our inaccurate viewpoint. Sections like 2 Chronicles 7:13–14, where God says to Solomon,

“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Matthew 7:7–11 where Jesus teaches,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

And Jesus’s words in Matthew 21:22,

“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

People will take these verses, as well as many others, miss the point of the passage, and use them to affirm the idea that prayers and wishes ultimately amount to the same thing. James 4:2–3 gives a blunt correction to this way of thinking, saying,

“You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

A right relationship with God is immeasurably, eternally beneficial to the believer, but if it’s something that we’ve entered into because of what’s in it for us, then we’re not in a “right” relationship from the start. If you think about the model for prayer that Jesus gives us in the Lord’s prayer, it’s far more about God than it is about us – glorifying Him, acknowledging His station, His provision, His mercy, and His deliverance. But this isn’t something to be prayed grudgingly or out of obligation, there is enormous joy in going before God, praying to Him and worshiping Him for all that He is, and therein knowing the love and purpose He has poured out on our lives. The delight is not in asking for and getting the things that we want, but knowing the inexpressible joy of receiving what God wants for us. What we see in Scripture, and what we see displayed beautifully in today’s passage is this right kind of joy – something that is not conditional on asking and receiving in any sense of material gain, but is an unbridled celebration of the work that He has done and the gifts He has given. It’s the true joy of the children of God when they see and cherish the work of His hand – it’s the joy of genuine and deeply rooted faith.

The Joy of Faith in the Lord

1. Joy in the Lord’s Work

  “In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

Sometimes I get a little too into the weeds with things, but I’m always leery of letting anything pass by in Scripture as “just part of the story,” without asking if there’s something more to what we’re being told. I’m not trying to do anything eisegetical and force my interpretation onto information that’s not really there, but I very much want to make sure that I’m seeing the full scope of the passage and not failing to appreciate and revere another facet that God has included in His Word. So when I read that Mary arose and traveled south with haste to see her cousin, my first thought was, why? I was trying to think of a practical purpose for the trip – she’s a young Jewish woman in a culture where adultery can mean death, she’s betrothed and newly pregnant. We know that Joseph is made aware of her pregnancy through the information given in Matthew 1:18–21,

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’”

This is certainly relevant information to have, but we don’t know exactly when this occurred in the timeline of events as it relates to Luke’s account. So I was trying to figure out if the trip to see Elizabeth had some culturally protective purpose, hiding Mary’s pregnancy from her community, or if it was a guard against temptation, removing her from Joseph’s immediate presence during this period of their betrothal/ marriage – and then it hit me that I was swinging exceptionally wide of the mark. Because while the text doesn’t say, “Mary went to see her cousin for this express purpose,” the most obvious reason for the trip from Nazareth to Judah has nothing to do with Mary’s pregnancy, or any practical, cultural elements, but rather that this was about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Mary has just learned from Gabriel that her cousin, the one who was called barren, who was ashamed and under reproach within her community for her childlessness, is pregnant. This is literally one of the last things that the angel told her, and the next action we see from her (after her beautiful surrender to the will of God) is her traveling with haste to see her cousin. Did Mary seek to share the news of what was happening with her own pregnancy? It seems fair to assume that this was a contributing factor to some degree, but it also seems that the driving force was her joy to go share in her cousin’s own good news, and the work that the Lord was doing in both their lives.

“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”

The interesting thing about the Trinity is that because God is One, and yet because there are three distinct Persons in the Father, Son, and Spirit, we see instances where One glorifies the Other with a distinct and unique perspective. We see this mysterious and wonderful dynamic illustrated in passages like John 10:27–30, where Jesus says,

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

From God, speaking from heaven in Matthew 17:5,

“He (Peter) was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’”

And from the exchange between Father and Son in John 12:27–28,

“‘Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’”

Passages like these (and many others) underscore the prophecy of Daniel from Daniel 7:13–14, which says,

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

The Holy Spirit, commonly called the “third Person” of the Trinity, is often overlooked by comparison to God the Father and Christ the Son – if Christ is the Image of the invisible God, then the Holy Spirit would be the invisible Spirit of the invisible God, not as easily discernible as the flesh and blood Man Jesus, who lived and worked on the earth, fully human and fully divine. But just as God is invisible, but may yet be seen, so too this is true for the Spirit. Jesus teaches as part of the Beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:8,

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

We can understand this, at least in part, but considering Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John 3:8,

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

You can’t actually see wind, you can see the dust that it carries, the trees and grass that it moves, you can feel it on your skin – you’re able to discern the presence and movement of it, but you can’t actually see it. This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit is any less present or active than the Father or the Son, it only speaks to His visibility. A key element of the Spirit is that He testifies to the glorious work of God. Jesus tells the disciples in John 16:7–8,

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…”

And John would later write in 1 John 5:6–8,

“This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”

When the Spirit moves, when it lights our eyes and changes our hearts it reveals things – like wind through branches, it describes qualities and details of the world around us that we could not see or reason without it, and in all these things, it glorifies God, sharing His joyous work in our midst. At the sound of Mary’s greeting, as soon as her cousin’s voice meets Elizabeth’s ears, there is an immediate response. But it’s not by her own insight or discernment that she reacts or that the unborn John the Baptist leaps within her womb at the sound of the voice of the mother of his Lord, it is by the movement and enlightening of the Spirit. In this we have to understand that the will and work of God is a joyous thing, His Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. Now, I don’t mean to take that and paint God as a one dimensional figure, who is nothing but sunshine and butterflies, who smiles benevolently upon the world, loving His children and wagging a chiding finger at sin. The Spirit of the Lord is absolutely the Spirit of Joy – in Him is also peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He is the embodiment of Love, Truth, Light, and Life – in Him is also righteous wrath, judgment, justice, and holy hatred of sin, and all these things are wonderful too, even if they may not be as pleasant to experience. So any time God is working, be it in the conception and birth of the Savior of the world, or judgment and punishment of the unrighteous, there is joy, because the goodness of God is on display through all His work. We can see the response of joy – not a carefully thought out or considered happiness or contentment, but an organic response through the testimony and revelation of the Holy Spirit in Elizabeth’s exclamation. Her immediate response to Mary’s greeting, through the revelation of the Spirit, is that Mary is blessed among young women, and that the child she carries is blessed. Mary is most certainly blessed among young women, but not because of anything that she herself has done. There is a degree of implied obedience and purity concerning Mary in that she is favored before God, that she was chosen to bear Christ, and that her obedience and surrender before the Lord was so complete, but her blessedness is entirely due to the work of God. The Spirit that rushes upon Elizabeth, the joy that fills her and the baby she carries is not exactly a response to Mary, but to the work that the Lord is doing in and through her, and in witnessing this work, in being filled with the knowledge of what God is doing in her midst, there is overwhelming joy.

2. Joy in the Lord’s Blessings

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’”

The work of the Lord, the movement of the Spirit is always a good thing – as we’ve discussed though, whether or not it’s perceived that way can be subjective. Everything that God does may not be received as a blessing to everyone, though there is still goodness in it. What Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says to Mary shows us the layers and gravity of the blessing that has been given to her and the compounding joy within. She is blessed among young women, favored before God. She is blessed by the baby Jesus she carries, imparted by the Spirit. But this final statement serves as a sort of capstone to the blessing that Mary has been given, and the way in which her faith was a key element that God used to bless her. After God promises Abram that he will have a son to be his heir, Genesis 15:5–6 tells us,

“And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Abram, who would become Abraham, was not a perfect man – he served God exceedingly well by human standards, yet even the best that a man can do is still infinitely below the might and righteousness of the Lord. And yet we see here in this moment that Abraham believed, he placed his earnest faith in what God had promised him, and this was counted to him as righteousness. After the resurrection, when Thomas initially disbelieves and famously asserts that unless he can place his fingers into the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands and put his hand into the spear wound in Jesus’ side, he would never believe that his Lord had risen from the dead. Not long after that Jesus appears to the disciples again, Thomas among them, and He invites Thomas to touch His wounds, to obtain the evidence he feels he needs – to not disbelieve, but believe. It is after Thomas confesses Jesus as his Lord and God that Jesus replies in John 20:29,

“… Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Thomas was most certainly blessed, having been used as a driving force in the early church, he lived and died as an Apostle of Jesus Christ. But we can also understand a correlation on the blessing that God gives us through faith. How much do we trust Him? How grudgingly do we surrender to Him? God’s glory is in no way diminished when we fail to believe, He remains holy, righteous, and almighty, regardless of whether or not we confess this truth. We, however, are grievously harmed when we harden our hearts and withhold the faith that God is so rightly due. There are those who will look at this and wonder how much faith was really required from Mary, who was sent an angelic messenger to tell her of her coming pregnancy. Before we look on and think, “Well yeah, if God sent an angel to tell me something I’d probably believe it too,” let’s consider some (though certainly not all) of the figures throughout Scripture who were told and yet did not believe, starting from the very beginning with Adam and Eve. They were told explicitly not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and yet they believed the words of the serpent over what God had told them and brought sin into the world. Cain, rather than believing God’s encouragement that if he did well he would be accepted, placed his faith in the darkness of his own heart and committed the first murder against his own brother. All the water in Egypt turning to blood could have been enough to prompt Pharaoh to relent and believe the words of God that had been given to Moses, and yet his heart remained hardened. The Israelites entering the promised land needed nothing more than to trust in the promises of God and look to all the wonders he had done among them leading up to, during, and after the exodus, and yet they yielded to their fears, and suffered for their transgressions. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day needed only look to the many prophecies that God had given them, and to the work that Jesus was doing among them to realize that their Savior was in their midst. Instead they coveted their own power and sought to put their Messiah to death. Mary, the young virgin who is so obedient before God shows us the polar opposite spirit to the harlot of Babylon, the wretched and broken world, who in its filth and wickedness looks upon herself and says in Revelation 18:7,

“I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.”

Mary’s faith in the Lord is a beautiful, admirable thing, and as we can see from what Elizabeth, guided by the Spirit, has to say, this faith that what God had spoken would come to pass is another, crowning marker of how blessed this young woman is.

“And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and 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; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”

The section beginning Mary’s song is usually titled, ‘Mary’s Song of Praise,” “Mary’s Hymn of Praise,” or something pertaining to “The Magnificat.” While this is absolutely a song or hymn of praise, the title “Magnificat” gives us a little more context for the implications of what’s really happening here – though given that it’s in Latin, it only tells us so much. “Magnificat,” translates almost directly to the word, “magnifies,” which in the Latin translation, is the first word of Mary’s song. But what exactly does it mean for someone’s soul to “magnify” God? Well, just consider for a moment what happens when you put something under magnification – a magnifying glass, a microscope, a telescope, binoculars, a rifle scope – all of these things bring something that is distant into greater focus, they allow you to see a thing better. They also largely eliminate peripheral vision – if you’re looking at something under magnification, that’s all you see, it’s what fills your vision, it’s the only thing you’re aimed at. All of your focus and all your understanding is applied and fixated on the singular point of magnification. There can be no greater aspiration in the lives of Christians than that our souls would magnify the Lord, that His Light and influence in our lives would be ever increasing, that we would shine as new creations in the dark world around us, living testimonies to His great work. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18,

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Mary’s actions so far, and the words of her magnifying song of praise reflect a person who is sincerely devoted to the will of God – perhaps not perfectly, as she must still contend with her own flesh, but certainly in a more exemplary way than what is displayed by the vast majority of humanity. As Christians we continually preach a denial of self and a glorification of God. This can be hard to reconcile sometimes because, while we turn our focus to the Lord, life is still a first-person experience, and so we remain part of the equation in some capacity. Mary’s song, of which we’re only looking at the first part of here, strikes the perfect balance between acknowledging the glorious work that God has done for her personally, and how this all points back, not to her, but to His great and holy name. Her soul magnifies God, her spirit rejoices in her Savior, because He has looked upon her. The Lord, set immeasurably high, the pinnacle of heaven, an eternal distance above the earth, and He has looked upon this young woman, He has blessed her, worked in her life and favored her. Mary states that all generations will call her blessed, which is very true, but again, she clearly states that this is only because the Lord has done great things – wonderful, amazing, unbelievable things in her life, and she has been blessed for His glory to shine through her. She ends this, saying of the Mighty One who has blessed her so, “and holy is His name.” This takes my mind to Psalm 23, where the beginning addresses the lack of want in being part of the flock of God. Food and water, the material needs of life are seen and met. The restoration of your soul, this deep, unattainable spiritual need is also addressed. The paths that we are led in are ones of righteousness – and then you arrive at the great assurance of it all. These things are done, not on the merit, power, wisdom, or strength of the sheep, but for the sake of the Shepherd’s holy name. We are blessed, and these blessings play out in a multitude of ways, both large and all encompassing, to small and highly personal, but all to the glory of God. Through the work of God in her life, through the fruition of His blessings, we see in the opening words of her song as the joy in Mary’s life is not just present, but magnified.

3. Joy in the Lord’s Remembrance

“And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.’”

There’s a sort of cyclical effect to the joy that is found in the Lord. We’re blessed to see and know His work, and we rejoice. In the midst of His work we’re further privileged to see the particular blessings that He has laid upon us in His abundant love and mercy. This leads us to a remembrance of all that God is, all that He’s done, to consider the width and breadth of His mighty power, throughout the past and into the future. This leads us back into the work, back into the blessings, always grounded in this remembrance, as we glorify the Lord. After initially addressing the blessings He has poured upon her own life, Mary’s song shifts, and she reflects upon the Lord’s greatness, not just in the present or in her own life, but throughout time. While there are many, many passages that her words parallel to, the one that comes to mind for me, that seems to resonate with the spirit of her praise is Psalm 34:15–22,

“The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears               and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”

God is not concerned with what the world may think of as limitations – His provision is perfect, His justice absolute, His deliverance forever. Mary models for us the path that we are all called to, one of obedience to the words of Deuteronomy 8:17–18,

“Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”

She is truly blessed – blessed beyond wildest hope or imagining. But all her blessings call her to remember God, to glorify Him for His mighty work, and to praise Him as He is so rightly due. In all things her words reflect the great hope of every child of God that is the continual remembrance of our Father.

“And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.”

After the grandeur of the song of praise, this piece of information seems to ground us back in the realm of relayed contextual facts around the story. But it seems that even from this there may be something we can discern about Mary’s character, and again how it points to obedience before God. I said earlier that it seems that Mary’s trip to see Elizabeth was more about her cousin than it was about her, and while this may be seen as a bit of a stretch, I think the duration that she stayed actually helps support that. We know that Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy when Gabriel told Mary, both that she herself would conceive and that her cousin was expecting. This means that Mary’s time with Elizabeth was roughly for the duration of her third trimester, the time of the pregnancy that would have been the most physically taxing. While it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that during their months together they discussed both of the blessings that God had delivered into their lives, it also seems logical to think that Mary was present to help Elizabeth during these three months. Assuming this to be the case (which again, is an assumption, but one that I think is logical) this would display a complete lack of ego and tie in with everything else we’ve seen from Mary’s character – because there’s nothing that we’ve seen that’s about her, but rather it all comes back to God. Think about it – she’s pregnant through miraculous means, and Elizabeth is pregnant through miraculous means, but we can at least come up with some kind of biological explanation for conception in old age – there’s no such explanation for a virgin conceiving. Elizabeth is carrying John, the one who will be the forerunner to the Christ, but Mary is carrying Christ Himself. Both women have been blessed, both women are playing crucial roles in the plans of God, but between the two Mary’s pregnancy is the more miraculous, and her calling is of greater gravity. She doesn’t behave this way though – she spends her own first trimester out of her home, away from her own community, in the company of her cousin, presumably, at least in part, helping to take care of the older woman who is nearing the end of her own pregnancy. Again, we’re not explicitly told this, it’s a theory, an idea based on the information we actually are given, but it doesn’t seem at all out of character with what Mary has shown so far. If the first three months of her own pregnancy were spent, not sitting back and glorifying herself for the status her blessing afforded her, but in service to someone else, it serves to emphasize this young woman’s selflessness. It also affords us another opportunity to consider and appreciate the aim and focus of a heart that is devoted, not to self, but to the continual remembrance and honor of the Lord, in all things, at all times.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9AE2vQ0bw8