Transcript

Let’s go to Luke again and let’s continue with the theme “Rejoice it’s Christmas.” We’ve come to the next section in Luke as we just unpack the narrative here that shows us how much great great joy was surrounding the coming of Christ. Mary has hurriedly run, came to her relative Elizabeth’s house, and there she and Elizabeth have this reunion around the glory that both of them have miraculously conceived, Elizabeth of her own husband, though she had had a barren womb, and Mary, of course, of the agency of the Holy Spirit and she is bearing the Savior, and there is great rejoicing and great joy over Christ who Mary carries now in her womb, even John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb rejoicing over the presence of Christ. Then we come to Luke 1:46 through 56 and I’ve entitled this “Mary’s Magnificent Joy: A Primer of Praise.” Mary’s magnificent joy: a primer of praise, in other words, as Mary expresses this magnificent statement of her great joy in what God is doing, it gives us something of a foundational or an elementary understanding of how we are to praise God.

Let’s look at it, Luke 1:46 through 56.

46 And Mary said: “My soul exalts the Lord,

In Latin the word “exalts” there would be “magnificat.”

47 And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. 48 For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed. 49 For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name. 50 And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him. 51 He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things; And sent away the rich empty-handed. 54 He has given help to Israel His servant, In remembrance of His mercy, 55 As He spoke to our fathers, To Abraham and his [seed or] descendants forever.” 56 And Mary stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home.

This is called often “The Magnificat.” I don’t know where that came from, likely the Catholic Church because that’s the Latin word for the word “exalts” or “to make much of, magnificat,” and so they just call it Mary’s Magnificat. It’s not necessarily the word the Bible says to use but one thing it does do, this text, that shows us the magnificent joy that filled Mary’s heart around of the coming of Christ.

But here are some introductory thoughts, three things. First of all, there are three golden strands woven together that gives us this tapestry of praise that Mary has recorded as coming from her lips, or the word of God records as coming from the lips of Mary, I should say. So there are three golden strands here. The first golden strand is Mary is exalting and praising the Lord about her own personal salvation. Woven in with that is there is a praise and an exalting of God over Israel’s national salvation. And woven with those two strands is a third strand which is a strand that speaks of universal salvation. God came and he came as Savior and Lord, he will save Mary. He came as Savior and Lord to save Israel nationally. And he came as Savior and Lord to save all who would call upon his name. And it’s really impossible to dissect those apart. If you do, you mess up the tapestry of praise. So those three strands are woven together in this poetry of praise.

Secondly, let us today marvel over this wondrous moment in redemptive history. Folks, one thing that is essential in Christianity and that is this: if this is not historically true, we have no basis for our faith. Mary is not a fictitious person. This is not an allegory to teach us something about God, this actually happened. She is the virgin. She is actually with child by agency of the Holy Spirit of God. So let’s marvel over and wonder over what she must have felt, especially as a Jewish lady when every Jewish young woman hoped that they would give birth to the promised Messiah. So remember there are three golden strands: Mary’s individual salvation, Israel’s national salvation, and universal salvation is spoken of in this, and let’s marvel over this wondrous moment in redemptive history.

Then thirdly, let’s see it as a primer of praise. In other words, a teaching to us of what is proper praise. You do understand we don’t get to praise God by the way we feel is best. We may feel deeply emotional about a certain thing or a way we want to praise God but that’s not where we should start. We start with how God wants to be praised. I remember when I first started in ministry, some of you who have been in ministry will remember this phrase I’m sure, they started talking about worship wars, the worship wars in Baptist churches and other evangelical churches, that folks were wanting to warm things up and pet things up and go more contemporary and the old guard said, “No, we don’t want to do any of that. We want just the old stuff and the old way we’ve done it.” And I thought how amusing this is when really the truth of the whole matter shouldn’t be us focusing on our style but focusing on the one we are worshiping. That should be the focus. The style can vary some if your heart is in love with and treasuring the one you a purposing to praise.

This thing of praising the Lord and worshiping the Lord is not about you, it’s not about your preference. I have a real problem, by the way, with churches who have a contemporary worship service and a traditional worship service. You mean to tell me the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so weak and impotent it can’t change your heart enough to where you can praise the Lord with your brothers and sisters even though you have different styles or preferences? Why don’t you just proclaim to the world, “We are divided because our God and the power of our God and the power of our Gospel can’t make us cooperative with one another.” I mean, it’s announcing a split church and we’ve seen in Ephesians abundantly if not redundantly, the truth that one thing a church is is united because we all have a Gospel humility and a changed heart and we can accept things and go along with things that might not fit our particular style.

Well, those are the introductory remarks. Now I. I’ve only got two main points. Here’s the first one, first of all, in Mary’s magnificent joy, she gives this primer of praise and it is a privileged praise only for those who know him as God and Savior. No one else can praise the Lord properly. No one else can praise the Lord like Mary praised the Lord unless they know him as God and Savior. This is only for the saved. This is only for the born-again.

As she says there in verse 46, “My soul exalts the Lord,” and what she means is, “I’ve been changed from my innermost being. The soul meaning the deepest innermost part of me. From the very inner core of my being, I exalt, I make much of,” literally, “I shout forth this magnificent joy I have found in God and in my Savior.” This is like the psalmist said in Psalm 103:1, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.” Mary is saying here, “You’ve got to understand praising the Lord is just not one of the things I do, praise for him, treasuring him and adoring him consumes all of me. My mind is enamored with who he is as he reveals himself in holy Scripture. My heart is treasuring, my emotions are stirred with love and adoration and treasuring of him, and my tongue, my body wants to be active in praising him. With all my soul,” she says, “I praise the Lord.” Only a saved person can do that. I’ve seen some unsaved persons put on some pretty good imitations. I mean, there are people who don’t know Christ who hoop and holler and run around and shout and do everything else. By the way, I kind of like a little shouting every now and then but it can be phony, amen? And sometimes the greatest move of the Spirit is when everybody is just quiet before God. Sometimes there needs to be a shout, sometimes there needs to be quiet but it needs to be genuine whatever it is. Mary says, “I am praising the Lord with all my soul. Every fiber of my being is resonating with passionate holy praise for my God.”

We can’t help but note that there are strong similarities between what Mary is doing here and what was recorded in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 2 of Hannah’s praise. Now, Hannah was married to a man, Elkanah, but Hannah could not have a child. She had a barren womb but she was a humble devoted servant of the Lord and she prayed to the Lord earnestly for a male child, promising the Lord, “Lord, if you’ll give me this male child, I will especially dedicate him to you.” And of course we know that God did give her that child, that child was Samuel. And I believe Mary, being this devoted godly and humble believer, must have been led by the Spirit of God to have understood Hannah’s song of praise recorded in the Old Testament and this prepared her for this momentous event in her own life when the angel of God, Gabriel, revealed God’s plan and the Spirit of God kindled a fresh remembrance of this ancient hymn of Hannah, and Mary ushers forth the ancient hymn with a newer and deeper meaning and purpose than Hannah could have ever understood. All through the Old Testament there are statements of truth that have their full and final meaning when the New Testament unfolds.

So here she is like Hannah as Hannah praised God for the gift of this boy, Samuel, and so Mary is praising God for the gift of bearing the Savior in her womb, something that Hannah could have never grasped. Then she uses that word in verse 46, “My soul exalts,” or glorifies, “the Lord.” It means “to declare great or to enlarge.” And again, this is where you get the word “magnificat” from because the Latin translators would have translated that into the Latin word “magnificat.” It just has the idea of exalting him and making much of him.

Now, no creature can add to God’s greatness but creatures are never so wise and blessed than when they acknowledge God’s greatness. You see, the thing that happens today is preachers try to be clever and make God cool, make God relevant to you. What a terrible mistake. That is blasphemy. We’ve got to let God be what he is and trust the Spirit to make you like him and love him and treasure him as he is. I don’t want God to be cool, I want him to be true. As a matter of fact, I don’t want a God that looks anything like me or you or this world, I want him to be the transcendent holy being that he is and then the Spirit of God calls us to treasure him for that. And that’s what Mary is doing, she is saying, “Because of what has happened, this angel has spoken to me. I have conceived of the Holy Spirit. This is the promised Savior, the Messiah God has promised our people. I understand the ramifications of this, that he’s not just a Savior for me, he’s coming to save all of Israel nationally and he will save anyone who will believe on his name.” And she is taking all this in and she’s just saying, “The wisdom, the beauty, the glory, the power of this is overwhelming to me.” She’s filled with a magnificent joy.

Then she says there that the Lord I exalt there, verse 46, the Lord, “My soul exalts,” makes much of, “the Lord.” The phrase in the Greek that we often use “Iesous Christos Kurios, Jesus Christ is Lord.” Probably pushing three decades ago in church life, there became a Lordship salvation debate. This Lordship salvation debate came out of what we often refer to as easy-believism, and we have addressed that 1,001 times. Let me address it 1,002 times, and that is where we got into a rut in evangelicalism of giving people little simple hoop jumps to do and if they would just do that little hoop jump, pray that prayer, mark that card, raise that hand, whatever it was, then too often pastors or evangelists, perhaps well intending, they’d just say, “Well, you’re saved then. If you did that, you’re saved.” Where is that in the Bible? There is no teaching of that doctrine in the Bible. There is no example of that method in the Bible. So our church rolls were packed with people, packed with people, millions of people. That’s not a preaching phrase, literally millions of people on church rolls who had done those hoop jumps, gotten on the church roll and never even came to church, didn’t look anything like a Christian. So some men, Dr. John MacArthur was one of the primary men, wrote some books and said, “We’ve got to get back to Lordship salvation.” In other words, if true salvation has occurred, if somebody is truly born again, there is an acknowledgment and a desire to know, love and serve Jesus as their Lord, and if that’s not there, then salvation has not occurred. Now salvation is full and free and salvation occurs in a moment but there is an acknowledgment of, “I want to begin following him as Lord.” And that’s what Mary says here. She didn’t just say, “I exalt my Savior, I exalt my Lord,” it’s the word “Kurios.” It means “my boss and my master.” She understood from the very get-go the Savior is Lord too. You don’t get one or the other. You don’t receive Jesus as your Savior and later receive him as your Lord, you receive him as Lord and Savior. Now you don’t know how to follow him as Lord. You mess up a lot. By the way, I’ve be at this for 37 years and I thought I’d be spiritual by now. I thought I’d have this thing down by now but I still find myself repenting a lot. I still find myself having to humble myself a lot and I’m thankful that Christianity means you get to repent, amen? Repentance is a gift from God for his children. I get to repent and get back on track again. Thank God for that or we’d all be gone in about 60 seconds. There was a movie “Gone in 60 Seconds,” wasn’t it? Am I getting that right, some of you movie buffs? Well, we’d be gone and lost forever in 60 seconds if it depended on our goodness and our consistency. Mary comes to express this magnificent joy she has in this primer of praise and she says, “I exalt in the Lord.”

Verse 47, she says, “And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” “Pneuma” is the word here. It means “wind or breath.” It’s just to emphasize another aspect of her total being and caught up in this praise to God. In verse 47, she uses “rejoiced,” very glad, full of joy. Mary is just saying, “This is a magnificent joy that I have.”

Then she says in verse 47, “God my Savior.” He is my Lord, he is God who is Lord, and he is my Savior. So I think one thing that is important here is she does not primarily exalt in her salvation. Let me say that again and I want you to ask yourself that question: she does not primarily exalt in her salvation, she primarily exalts in her Savior. Now think about that. Think about that. When you are truly saved as you mature in Christ, you think less and less about, “Am I saved?” you think more and more about, “Isn’t he wonderful? Isn’t he glorious? Isn’t he wise? Isn’t he powerful? Isn’t he beautiful?” The wisdom of God that comes forth from the pages of Scripture that describes God’s great love for us unworthy sinners and the means and the provisions whereby God saves us unworthy sinners, and the way he keeps us as his own, and the way he is faithful to his covenant promises to us, and the way he helps us to continue on in sanctification, how he keeps drawing us back from the world and our own flesh and from sin and lust, and calling us to repentance, how he keeps getting us back on track, and how he is one day going to take us all the way home to glory. She said, “I have lost worrying about my salvation, now my heart is just consumed with this Savior.”

Church, are you there? Does he just thrill you and sometimes startle you with his wisdom and his power and the way he does things? Are you enamored with him? That’s what Mary is saying. “I’m full of magnificent joy because by the Spirit of God, the enablement of God as a believer in this Christ, I’m seeing things I never saw before.” As a pastor, that’s my deepest and greatest joy, that you the people under my preaching, treasure him. Treasure him. That you just are learning about him and learning about God’s wisdom through him, and learning about the power of God through him, and the beauty and the glory of how he saves his children, and you are just overwhelmed with him.

Well, in this phrase, “God my Savior,” she reminds us that this is a privilege only for believers. He is the cause of the joy but only for believers. For all others, for all others, he is the cause for dread but for believers, he’s a cause of joy. You know, when we think about Jesus’ birth, we don’t look at it and say, “Oh my goodness, what does this mean? God has come in human flesh, are we going to be able to handle it with him? Are we going to be acceptable to him?” No, for a child of God who believes on the truth of God and believes on Christ as your Lord and Savior, when he comes and you think of him coming as a baby, “Hallelujah, he’s come for me. In grace and love and mercy, he has come for me. An unworthy one, yes. One who ought to be judged, absolutely. But he has come for me.”

Mary acknowledges what all believers acknowledge. She has called him her Lord. She has called him her God and she has called him her Savior. So Mary is asserting what all true believers assert. She is acknowledging and settled on this conviction about herself, that is that she is helpless, that she is a guilty sinner, and that she claims Jesus Christ as her Savior. And once again, this is far far from what the Catholic Church teaches in their theology that somehow Mary is this holy exalted being, she is different from all others, that she had an immaculate conception. Mary doesn’t say she had an immaculate conception. Mary didn’t say she had an immaculate life. Mary says, “I need a Savior.” I’m going to tell you, the Mary who birthed Jesus, God Incarnate, needed a Savior just like we need a Savior. And bless their hearts, the Catholic Church theologians have spent 2,000 years twisting doctrine into any shape they needed to to fit the culture they were presently trying to get converts out of.

So she declares it here in utter and clear finality, “I rejoice in God my Savior.” True praise comes only from a converted heart. It’s the privilege only of the converted ones because in conversion when you are converted, you get a clear eye where you begin to properly grasp God’s nature and God’s work. You begin to properly see that Jesus is Lord and Savior. Who else glories in having Jesus as the Lord and Savior except those who are truly converted? No one else does that. A glad heart. She truly rejoices in God’s nature and in God’s work and she has a ready tongue. She is ready to declare his glories and his praise.

Second, point 2. Not only is this a privileged praise, it’s only for those genuinely converted, secondly, it’s a particular praise. In other words, while I am convinced God welcomes all sincere praise, God does expect us to keep growing to learn who he is and what he is like so that we will praise him according to knowledge, not just according to our sentiment or emotions. That’s why you need to be under sound preaching. That’s why you need to be a student of the word, so you will continue learning who God is like so you can praise him according to what he is like. I’ve given you the little silly illustration before, if I praise my wife and I said, “Honey, you’re beautiful. I love your blonde hair.” She’d say, “Well, wait, timeout.” I’d say, “Well, I really felt that.” It doesn’t matter, it’s not true to who she is. Well, God is the same way. He doesn’t want you coming to him with these deep feelings about how you feel about him if they contradict what he has said about himself. When the Bible says don’t take his name in vain, that’s what it means.

Don’t make me out to be something I haven’t told you I am. That’s taking God’s name in vain. His name means his character, his attributes.

So it’s a particular praise. We praise him according to his attributes and his actions as he has revealed them in his holy word. She makes this very clear. She talks about, for example, his faithfulness in verse 48. Now here is Mary, now think about this, Mary is most likely a teenager and most likely a young teenager. She might be 13 or 14. Jewish girls got engaged at that age in this day, and this girl knows her Bible. She has a maturity about what she’s talking about. We would expect a 13 or 14 year old to have maybe some funny, childless, emotional ideas about God, and we need to keep teaching them, but not Mary. She’s already anchored in truth. That’s a good phrase. I like that phrase. She’s just anchored in truth, on the truth that God said about himself. Look, learn to love God as he has revealed himself, not according to what some crafty preacher has made him out to be.

Verse 48, “For He has had regard for the humble state,” notice her showing her fallenness again, “of His bondslave.” The word “bondslave” means “a female servant.” I’m just the lowest female servant, she says. “For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.” She said, “He has had regard for me.” She is saying, “He has been faithful to me.” Mary had faith in her God as her Lord and Savior. Though she considered herself one of the most humble and lowly, she said, “God has been faithful to me. He’s had his heart on me. He’s been true to me.” And God has a pattern of being faithful to the lowly, by the way. Think about Leah and Hannah and Joseph and David. Faithfulness. You may travel through humble seasons and you may travel through discouraging valleys, some of you are in the valley of despair right now. Charles Spurgeon, the esteemed preacher in London of 150 or so years ago used to say, “Beneath the castle of despair there is a dungeon and that’s where I live sometimes.” Even great men of God have had seasons of great depression and discouragements but two things are always true: God is faithful. You are never alone. That’s number one, you’re never alone, and in the future there is hope. No matter what you’re going through, you are never alone and in the future there is hope.

Mary said, “He has been faithful to me.” She says, “all generations will count me blessed,” in verse 48. Occasionally God marks out among all the equally unworthy sinners one sinner for a special purpose. God has always done it this way. He picked out Abraham, not because Abraham had some inherent specialness about him. He didn’t, God just said, “I’m going to use Abraham.” He picked out Joseph. He picked out David. He picked out Moses. He picked out Joshua. But none were picked out for anything more glorious than Mary.

The common inclination of earthly wisdom is to crave someplace of special merit or worth and to place some special merit or worth on the vessel itself, again, Catholic theology does this with the saints and with Mary, giving them some kind of special exaltation but that’s not what’s happening here. The special favor that Mary found was wholly unmerited. It was an act of sovereign grace but it was so astounding in mercy, kindness, and godly wonder, that all the generations, Mary said, will acknowledge its wonder and its glories. God may have called you out to lead a small group. He may have led you to be a deacon. He may have led you to the office of elder. I don’t know what it may be but none of us have ever been called upon to be the mother of God Incarnate. But the one we must see and the one we must adore is not Mary. We don’t fall into vile superstition and worship her. We adore the God she exalted as being faithful to her.

So she praises him according to his true biblical attribute of faithfulness. Not only his faithfulness, she praises him according to his might. Verse 49, she says, “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name.” Who is mightier than God? Oh, the marvels of God’s providential working to bring all this to this juncture. The sovereign Lord and Savior of the world through the agency of this humble maiden, Mary, this shows the power of God. Isn’t it amazing how God shows his power through the most humble things because he can. He’s so powerful he can do it that way. As the Spirit of God illumines the thoughts of Mary, Mary marveled over the prophecies that were being fulfilled and the role she is playing in them. Oh, the invincible might of God. He plans and carries out his plans and none in the heavens or on the earth can stay his hand. Mary already believed in the power of God but now the great power of God is being magnified in and through her life. The one who is Lord and Creator, the one who has become man, the one who is the instructor, pattern and redeemer of mankind, is the baby in her virgin womb and Mary says, “When I think that God brought himself to be human through me, that shows me the mighty power of God.” She has good theology on the attributes of God.

A third one here: holiness. She sees him as holy. Oh, that our churches today would just preach and teach and glory in the holiness of God. Look at verse 49 again, “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name.” And I’ve said to you many times I want you to think about the word “holy” or “holiness.” The holiness of God means two basic things. 1. In every way that God has made us like himself, he is yet infinitely superior to us. We know something about loving, but God’s love is infinitely superior to us. And any other good attribute that mankind, that God has shared with mankind, he is yet infinitely superior to us. He’s so much better and greater at it we can’t even find the end of it. Then there are also those incommunicable attributes, those attributes of God that are radically unlike anything we can fathom. God is spirit. God is eternal. He has attributes about himself that cause him to be far beyond and outside of anything we can understand. Always turn off the radio, turn off the TV or put down the book if the man preaching or teaching or writing begins to describe to you a God that you can grasp. He is holy. He transcends us in every way. So the more we learn about him, the more we are humbled and the more we say, “Oh, what a God! What a God you are!”

Mary knew him that way. She’s got good theology, good doctrine in her praise. Are you hearing me, church? That’s why brother Tom and I stay together on this thing and he’s more committed than I am, and you can’t be more committed than I am, to make sure we sing songs that say the truth about God and help ourselves to learn to get excited about that. So Mary has given us in this magnificent joy that she has, she has given us a good primer on what praise should be all about.

She picks out another attribute here: his mercy. Look at verse 50, “And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.” We see loyalty and faithfulness again but now mercy, the fact that he has a gracious and faithful love. Here Mary reflects on God’s mercy that extends to all his children in all generations. God’s mercy is extended to all. It’s the mercy of God that all men are not immediately consumed. Do you understand that? Every moment, every man on earth takes a breath, is not immediately cast into eternal judgment is a mercy of God. But even more than that, his mercy extends in a special and wonderful and particular way to those who are his elect in saving them.

She uses the phrase in verse 50, “His mercy is toward those who fear Him.” That’s talking about his special redemptive mercy. It’s for those who have come…now the Bible says, “fear him,” it doesn’t mean necessarily just this, “Oh, I’m frightened to death of him.” It means a deep reverence and awe, a deep respect for this God who has revealed himself in Scripture.

She said it’s generation after generation. It extends from the first believer, Adam in the garden of Eden, down to the last one who will ever believe on Christ. So Mary meditates upon God’s tender mercy toward herself and she is mindful that God has always bestowed mercy upon his servants and will to the end. She is meditating on the great mercy and goodness and grace of God. This is good theology. You sing to the Lord according to sound doctrine. You praise him according to the truth about who he said he is.

Then in verses 50 through 53, she talks about how he has rescued his people from their oppressors. This again, this speaks more prominently, I think, to national Israel. In verse 51, “He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things; And sent away the rich empty-handed.” She reflects back on Israel’s history and she remembers how God drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, how God called the pagan or caused the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar to become a madman and graze out in the field, eating grass like cattle. She remembers how God sent an angel and that angel killed 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers in one night. So she reflects on how God has had a pattern of blessing his people and being faithful to them. He would bring them to the end of themselves, he would bring them to a season of judgment and he would break them and humble them, then he would restore them, and I think what Mary is saying is, “God does that to Israel but God has done that to me. He has brought me to humility and brokenness so he could restore me and give me this special ministry that he has given me today.”

In verse 54, the phrase is, “He has given help to Israel His servant, In remembrance of His mercy.” The phrase “given help” literally means “to lay hold on.” It means as we are wandering around down here wallowing and stuck in the mire and the pit of sin and degradation and vileness and wickedness, God lays hold on us and says, “I’m going to take care of you. I have picked you out to make you one of my special ones. I have laid hold on you.” God’s servants stumble and God’s servants fall, God’s servants sin, God’s servants blunder, and yet God will not forsake them. We call it, our forefathers in Baptist life called it the perseverance of the saints. Every true Christian perseveres to the end. They may have to repent at times, they have to get up at times, they have to ask forgiveness at times and go again at times, but they don’t fall away from God in apostasy. But Mary says, “I know what that means.” The fact that we can’t fully and wholly turn away from God if we are truly converted means he has laid hold of us, on us. He has laid hold on us for good. The psalmist says in Psalm 40:2, “He brought me up out of the pit of,” despair or, “destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.” So Mary remembers God’s faithful mercies to Israel and she is thinking on how his faithful mercies are overflowing in her own life.

Now verse 55, “As He spoke to our fathers, To Abraham and his descendants forever.” So he spoke all the way back to Abraham and all those, now this is spiritually speaking, who are the spiritual descendants of Abraham for any time in the future. What did God promise Abraham? Genesis 22:18, “Abraham, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. Abraham, through your seed, through your descendants, I’m going to cause the blessings of salvation that are available to every people, every tongue, every tribe and every nation.” It’s an all peoples blessing and it’s an everlasting covenant. Genesis 17:7, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants,” actually you could translate that singular as “your seed.” “I will establish My covenant between Me and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants,” or your seed, “after you.” There is an interesting play on words in the Old Testament and in the New Testament verses that translate the Old Testament verse, that when he uses this word that is translated “descendants” of the Old Testament Hebrew text, it literally should be translated singular, “seed.” Now what was God getting at when he told Abraham, “Abraham, I promise you there is going to be an everlasting covenant of grace and forgiveness and mercy and blessing on the seed that comes after you”? Well, the New Testament helps us. Galatians 3:16. In Galatians 3:16, the Bible says, “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,”’ plural, “as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that,” one, “is Christ.” Here’s what he’s saying, “Abraham, of the descendants of your line is going to come one who is the Savior of the world and all of those who are in that seed, all of those who know him, all of those who believe on him,” when you believe on Christ, you’re in Christ, “all of those who are of him have the everlasting covenant, eternal life.”

Mary has rich deep understanding of Bible truth to bring this out through her magnificent joy giving us this primer of praise, teaching us how to praise the Lord. Brother Tom, I guess more than anything else we focus on, it’s the Gospel in our singing. The great eternal covenant of God for his elect through the provision of his Son, the seed, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the seed.

So Mary, I’m convinced, is coming to this glorious conclusion that she is indeed going to give birth to that promised seed. Singular. This seed will bless all the peoples of the earth. This seed will establish an everlasting covenant with any and all of every people, tongue, tribe and nation who will believe on him. That’s what she is praising God for. So first Mary tells us if you’re going to praise the Lord, it’s only for those who really know him. You’ve got to be born again. You’ve got to be truly saved. And you’ve got to praise him according to sound doctrine or truth about who he is and what he has done.

“Mary’s Magnificent Joy: A Primer of Praise.”