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*Read Luke 1:46-49.
Intro* – A little boy was sitting on a park bench reading his Bible.
Occasionally he would shout, "Awesome!”
A local college professor happened by and asked what the excitement was.
The boy said he was reading the Bible about Israel fleeing Egypt – the parting of the Red Sea.
The professor told the boy the Bible was just a collection of fairy tales and fables -- that the Red Sea was only 1 foot deep at that point.
With that, he started to walk away.
But he had not gotten very far when he heard the little boy say, "Wow!
My God is awesome!"
The professor turned back and said, "I thought I told you the water was only 1 foot deep."
The little boy said, "Well, if it was only 1 foot deep, God is even greater than I thought.
It says here that God caused the Red Sea to come back together and it destroyed the whole Egyptian army."
That boy knew how to enlarge God which is the subject of the amazing song composed by Mary in Lu 1:46-55.
Church history has titled it "The Magnificat” taken from Mary's first phrase, "“My soul magnifies the Lord”.
Magnificat is Latin translation of "magnifies."
The Greek word is μεγαλυνω -- which literally means to make great, or to enlarge.
Remember the first time you ever looked through a microscope at a drop of pond water and found a whole world of life swimming around inside of it.
Similarly, Mary is saying under a microscope of the Word and faith and experience, God is greatly enlarged in her eyes.
Of course, Mary could not make God bigger, any more than the microscope made the drop of water bigger.
But the Word reveals what really is! Mary knew her Bible.
And in the Word of God, she found the magnifier that made God big in her eyes.
And, dear friends, there is no greater need in our own lives than to see God as He truly is – enlarged.
Live – and in living color.
One of the more influential books of the 20th century was J. B. Philips’ Your God is Too Small, first published in 1961.
The book was written to counteract false perceptions of God – cosmic cop, parental hangover, grand old man, Perennial Grievance, God-in-a-box – all far too limiting.
D. A. Carson, in A Call to Spiritual Reformation -- questions, what is the greatest need of the church?
Then he goes through a list: 1) sexual purity, 2) social involvement, 3) financial integrity, 4) evangelism and church planting, 5) disciplined biblical thinking, and he says yes to all those.
But -- “But there is in a sense in which these urgent needs are merely symptomatic of a far more serious lack.
The one thing we most urgently need in western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God.
We need to know God better.”
Mary's "Magnificat" enlarges God in 2 ways -- personally and prophetically.
We will look at the first this week and the second next, seeking to know God for who He truly is.
Our question today: how do we enlarge God personally?
*I.
Recognize Our Neediness*
Mary recognized her own neediness.
Lu 1:46:“And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.”
Mary knew that she was a nobody from nowhere and it enlarged God in the depths of her being.
In her neediness, Mary was like all of us.
We are all equally lacking before God.
You don’t have to be a little 14-year-old girl from the dregs of society in Nazareth of Galilee to be lost.
The richest, most powerful, most sainted person who ever lived is unclean before a holy God.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
We were made for God, and we are lost without Him.
But most of us are pretty big in our own eyes.
You know, the sun and moon look about the same size in our sky, moon is only 235,000 miles from earth while the sun is 93,000,000 miles away.
The sun could actually hold 64,000,000 moons.
It’s slightly larger!
Yet, every now and then we get a solar eclipse where the moon gets between the earth and the sun.
Thus, the sun is either partially or totally hidden from view.
That’s exactly why we don’t see God for who He really is.
I put God in divine eclipse by my self-sufficiency.
It is a dangerous condition because it keeps us from God.
Isaiah was born to a privileged position at court.
Educated, upright, and respected.
But then he saw God in Isaiah 6:1, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
2 Above him stood the seraphim.
Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
V. 5, And I said: “Woe is me!
For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
The eclipse was over for Isaiah.
God got in front of him and this righteous man saw himself as a foul-mouthed ingrate, lost without the cleansing touch of God that comes in v. 7. So, have you seen your lostness without Christ?
Or are you still in eclipse?
Have you seen yourself in the words of the old song as a “sinner, condemned unclean”?
You can’t magnify God until you diminish self.
Augustine understood this implicitly and wrote: “For those who would learn God’s ways, humility is the first thing, humility is the second, and humility is the third.”
Most of my friends from the business world suffered from divine eclipse.
They were successful, comfortable, and saw no need for a Savior.
Had no time for God – not until disaster struck.
But adversity is God prodding us, “You need me.
You can’t make it on your own.”
It is aimed at minimizing self and enlarging God.
Jacob was sitting there in Canaan, surrounded by his sons – all but Joseph whom he imagined had been killed 20 years earlier by a wild animal.
He would never have been reunited with his son had the adversity not come.
The famine was severe.
It was heart-rending.
They had never seen anything like it.
Eventually the boys were forced to Egypt where supplies had been saved up.
But a second trip would require Jacob to send the beloved son, Benjamin.
Jacob held out – til the cupboard was bare.
Joseph is a type of Christ.
The message is that no one turns to Christ until their cupboard is bare!
God becomes big only when we become small.
Is God magnified in your life, or is it still you?
When the crowds were leaving John the Baptist to flock to Jesus, his disciples were worried.
When they asked John about it he replied simply, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
I must see God to accurately see me.
I must humbly admit my inadequacy.
Can’t save myself; can’t get rid of my own sin; can’t live a Christian life without Him.
I enlarge God when I see my need of Him.
*II.
Receive His Blessing*
The second half of Lu 1:48: “For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed”.
Mary enlarged God by receiving His blessing.
What blessing is that?
Her appointment as the mother of the Messiah?
That’s the blessing, right?
Yes, but if you look closely you will see that something else comes first.
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