Sermon Title: The Symphony of Christmas: The Sound of Joy
Date: December 13th, 2020
Text: Luke 1:47-55
Introduction:
You really can’t hear that song without smiling without it bringing a sense of joy to your life. It puts you in a place where you know it’s Christmas right? Interestingly enough when Vince Guaraldi scored this Christmas classic titled Linus and Lucy, it wasn’t for Christmas at all. In fact Linus and Lucy was originally written for a Jazz Impressions album Guaraldi was creating and it in fact ended up on the B-side of a single called Good Grief. Parents your homework is to go home and explain to your kids what the b-side is.
It wasn’t until a few years later that Linus and Lucy was used as the theme song for the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and from there it became a Christmas classic.
If you hear this song, you are immediately in the presence of Christmas and when you hear it it brings joy.
As we continue in the Symphony of Christmas and we continue through these movements, these agreements of sound as we tell the story of Christmas, the third movement of the symphony is often the Scherzo, a fun lighthearted dance romp moving us closer to the finale, and our dancers this morning helped us to picture the physical representation of joy attached to Linus and Lucy, to Christmas, but also gave us a framework for understanding the Sound of Joy.
Transition:
Turn in your Bible with me to Luke 1 starting at verse 47. As we’ve moved from the crisis and God’s response with the sound of grace, as we’ve moved closer to the coming of the King with the triumphal sound of prophecy we find ourselves in Luke’s gospel at the doorstep of the biblical reality of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us and as we look at Luke’s gospel briefly this morning we find ourselves with a young woman named Mary, a woman who receives the life altering news of God’s call on her life to carry the Christ child. And her response reveals what our response should be, the sound of joy.
Passage: Luke 1:47-55
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.”
Teaching:
As we consider the circumstances of this young mother, consider for a moment the whole range of what has been given to her. She is a simple woman, living a simple life and is planning to marry a simple man and out of the blue comes what we would consider a massive disruption to life.
The joyful disruption is given previously in Mary’s encounter with the angel in Luke 1:30-31 (ESV) 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
You would think that for such a young woman with little life experience that this type of news would incite something other than what we see in our passage for this morning.
But there is a reason that Mary’s response is what it is according to what we’ve seen so far.
Move 1: The Sound of Joy Begins with the Holiness of God
The anchor to this passage is found at the very beginning in verse 47:
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. Luke 1:47
Mary’s spirit rejoices, there is joy, there is an exceeding joy at the news of the Christ child coming in the flesh, coming by means of this young Israelite woman, but note very closely where she is rejoicing, the position of her rejoicing, that is really important here.
According to the text the position of her rejoicing is in God her Savior. Her rejoicing is in God, it is not in the news she has received, it is not in her role or her call to be the earthly mother of the Christ child, it is in God her Savior.
There is something very particular about Mary’s relationship with God that rings forth in this passage that you can’t miss is her unrelenting pursuit of the presence of God.
Mary’s introduction to her response to the news of being called by God to carry the Christ child rings with the sound of joy sung by King David in:
Psalm 16:11 (ESV) 11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
The reason we began our service with the anthem of the Peanuts Gang is because when you are in the presence of that song, it is hard to contain your joy, it is a song that when you sit in its presence it makes you smile, it makes you think of this time, it makes you feel the season of Christmas.
When you are in its presence you know how to feel, well friends the same should be in our relationship to a holy and sovereign God. Joy is positional not emotional. Happiness, sadness, those are emotional responses to circumstances, but joy that is positional, it is where you chose to place yourself in the midst of life’s circumstances.
When we enter the presence of a holy God when we truly sit in his presence, when we place ourselves in position with him, this is the place where we hear the sound of joy; there should be so much joy in our hearts that it is bursting forth from us no matter the circumstances.
Consider for a moment the circumstances Mary finds herself in; will they be easy circumstances? Will they come with a shared joy outside of her cousin Elizabeth who has received a similar blessing? No, it’s going to come with hardship and ridicule and as we’ll see later a not so ideal place and time for the birth to take place. But it wasn’t about the circumstances, it was about being so in God, so desirous of his presence that when it was felt, it was pure joy, even in hardship.
The Apostle Peter would articulate this well to a suffering group of Christ followers in:
1 Peter 1:8-9 (ESV) 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
This is where Mary finds herself with inexpressible joy, a joy friends that we can and should feel in the presence of God. we get the clear sense of this in Mary’s life because as we read the rest of this passage, what we see is her response is filled with nothing she does and everything God does; the tenor of her life is it’s all about her Savior.
Consider the passage as a whole and look at it again if you need to; The only thing Mary does in this passage is rejoice, that is her active part in this passage; everything else God does. She tells us who God is and what he has done, not what she has done. She knows God, she has seen him, but she also knows what he has done in Israel’s history, she is so locked in on the presence of God she recognizes, so in tune with the sound of joy even at a youthful age that when this angel brings this promise, in verse 55, she knows that this is a fulfillment of promises made to her forefather Abraham, a promise that seemed to be lost in the darkness we saw last week as the people waited in darkness, but this young woman recognizes that and her response is to find joy in this one who makes the promise and fulfills the promise.
In Mary’s experience there are two things that must go together in her understanding of God and why she finds joy in him. Look again at verse 49:
For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Luke 1:49
Those two things have to go together. It isn’t just about the mighty things God has done for her, it is the holiness of the one who does them. In order to rightly rejoice in God our savior we have to see his holiness, who he is as God our Savior and that we get to be in his presence.
Friends I don’t know what your motives were to come today, but I hope it was to be in the presence of an awesome and holy and almighty Savior and in being in his presence that rejoicing would be your only response. That doesn’t change that there is heartache, that doesn’t change that there is a world that is against you and an enemy that seeks to kill and destroy, but in this moment, for this hour I hope you came to be in the presence of God and to lay all other things aside, to worship him in his holiness and that what you experience is the unmatched sound of joy in his presence.
But the risk for us when we separate them, the great things he has done, and the holiness of his presence, as we often do, we have problems that bring about pride and we are robbed of joy.
Move 2: Pride Silences the Sound of Joy
Consider for a moment if verse 47 were re-written in this fashion:
“My spirit rejoices in the great things God has done for me”
Doesn’t that sound very different, take on a different tone and feel than “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior”?
When those two things don’t go together, the holiness of God AND the great things he has done for us, we have sort of a halfway presence of God. We don’t necessarily want God at that point we don’t want his holiness, we don’t want his presence we simply want what we can gain from his presence and when that happens, pride becomes our reality, gain becomes our reality, what we think we deserve becomes our reality and we become so focused on the “great things” God ought to be doing for us or giving us that we very quickly start to lose our joy, our joy is robbed because we’ve only gone halfway with God.
But when we stand in the presence of God and we see the great things he has done for us AND his holiness which out shadows the other? His holiness. What we are seeing in this passage, what Mary teaches us here by way of example in her own life is humility brings joy while pride silences joy.
Look at the contrast between the two in verses 51-53:
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. Luke 1:51-53
He scatters the proud, but exalts the humble, he fills the hungry but sends the rich away empty.
Why is that? Because the proud don’t need God, at least that is what they think and this is a mindset for the Christian that is very dangerous, it’s very risky it has the potential to silence the sound of joy because when we become so reliant on what we want God to do for us, or at least what we think we want God to do for us we will become bitter when it doesn’t happen.
Mary, however, gives us a framework for understanding joy rightly placed in humility. Look again at the verses 47-48:
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. Luke 1:47-48
The coordinating conjunction for there is very important; for indicates that what is to be said is the reason for what was said prior. So looking at this she rejoices in God her Savior, she has joy in God and here is the reason for her joy because God has looked on her humble estate. Her humility put her in the presence of God to the point at which God was willing to look upon her and her response, in humility was joy.
Now before we misunderstand humility as this posture of low self-esteem that says I’m no good, I’m a rat, I’m nothing. Friends that’s not humility, that’s still pride. No true godly humility is simply to see yourself in your proper place in light of another and in the context of our relationship with God what that means is to look on his holiness, and our unholiness and to stand in awe of him.
And there is something particularly wonderful about seeing ourselves in the light of God’s holiness and when he looks upon you, it should enliven your affections toward him.
Conversely as James aptly writes which lines up with this passage and in fact six other places where scripture says the same thing, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. James 4:6
Pride puts us in the unenviable position of being opposed by God and pride.
Friends is pride robbing you of joy? Are you seeking the gift rather than the giver? Is his presence sufficient for you?
Move 3: God’s Mercy is the Invitation Back to His Joy
There is something fascinating here that God does with the proud; he makes them like the humble, he levels the playing field, if you were rich and God empties you, you are hungry, if you were mighty on a throne and he removes you from that throne you are now of humble estate.
When God puts the proud in the same state as the humble he levels the playing field in a way that says, now that you have nothing will you come to me, will you pursue your contentment in my will you find joy in my presence?
Look again at verse 50:
And his mercy is for those who fear him. Luke 1:50
You see God opposing the proud is not a bad thing for them, it is good if they can see the emptiness of the things they looked to for joy, see Christ and come and say, as Augustus Toplady sang in his timeless hymn Rock of Ages: Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.
And when we come from our pride in humility to God and say all I have, all I want the source of my joy is you, as we come in a fear and reverence of him, he has fresh mercy for us.
In the Symphony of Christmas, this is what Mary teaches us, as we prepare with anticipation for the coming of the Christ child. It is what she experienced at the news that she would be given the daunting task of being his mother on earth, but her response rings with the sound we need to hear in our lives.
Bottom Line: The Sound of Joy is Heard in the Presence of God
Closing:
As Protestant Christians we often overcorrect when it comes to Mary in response to the way she has been viewed in the Catholic tradition and if we do that we miss something very important about her. Make no mistake what she says about herself should be our view of her in verse 48 that we would call her blessed. Blessed because she figured something out; her humility and desire for God put her in his presence where there was indeed fullness of joy.
That is what I want for you friends, that is what I want for myself. I want us to be a people, as we anticipate the coming of the Christ child, to be a people that find more joy in the presence of the Lord than in anything else in the world.
Advent is a time when we sing the songs we sing, when we have the visible reminders, that this is a time of great joy. Find that joy friends, it is right here, right now available for you in his presence.
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