Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

his truth and his righteousness and his rule over men. I think that’s always you can see it a couple of ways. I think though to me it’s kind of an enjoyable thing to watch that happen to see the mouths of those who would seek to act against God be opened by him at this time of the year to cause forth his praise to bring forth hypocritical praise mind you but still to sing forth the praises of the reign of Jesus Christ.

This is also a time of the year though that Grinches come out and I maybe one of the my wife told me she thought I was going to talk on the Grinches of Christmas this morning. Well, I’m going to talk about that a little bit. You know, the Grinch was the Dr. Seuss character that stole or attempted to steal Christmas, stopped Christmas from happening. And there are Grinches around abounding in the world today, of course.

And I thought of several of them this past week, particularly as I read the paper and other publications that I received that come out in the mails. I suppose most of you this last week have if you live in the Portland area, you have probably been inundated with several stories. You probably seen several references to the fact that we have a distinction here in Portland of being the first city in the nation that has a parish priest who was dying of AIDS.

Another sort of distinction along the Ben Linder variety. That priest by the way don’t think I’m being an AIDS basher here. That priest has said that he contracted AIDS through homosexual relationships or at least with one relationship that he’s involved himself. And it was interesting to me to have the Grinch of unconditional forgiveness rear its ugly head this last week in the papers. In one article the Archbishop, the Portland Archbishop said, “AIDS is not a curse from God. It’s a disease for which unfortunately there’s no cure. Our prayers and concern are with Father Davis at this sad time. We must respond to those who contract AIDS with a compassion patterned on God’s unconditional love.”

Now, if you’ve heard the last few sermons over the last month about forgiveness and repentance, you’ll know that in the sense of God’s forgiving love, it’s not unconditional. It’s unconditional in the sense of having no conditions that would merit it. But it’s not unconditional and that God clearly teaches us that his mercy extends only to those that he’s elected and he’s brought to the grace of repentance.

And so for this man who has no declaration of public repentance for his homosexual deeds and for the church then to say that God’s love is unconditional and God loves this father unconditionally is a sad perversion and as a Grinch that brings down our joy at Christmas time when we join in the God who is a God of justice and righteousness.

I also wonder about the type of compassion being called for here another man uh spokesman for the church said that the church is nothing if it cannot be compassionate and forgiving. Anything else would be between Peter and God. Compassion and forgiving. What kind of compassion is it that leaves a man who may well still be in sin that’s going to wreak God’s justice and judgment upon him after his death to be compassionate and to help him get through the physical crisis he has in his life, which is a real one, and yet then not to address his sin, which unrepented of will leave that man burning in hell forever. That’s not real compassion for people, is it?

Well, that’s one story we’ve had in the news this week. Another story was, of course, the Gorbachev visit. The front of the Oregonian, I guess it was, I don’t know, Monday or Tuesday, was a picture of the lighting of the Christmas tree. It was interesting that President Reagan moved up the lighting of the Christmas tree from its normal date so it would coincide with the visit of Gorbachev and be kind of a symbol for their talks together.

And he quoted from the scriptures. He didn’t quote anything about Jesus Christ. It was interesting. He quoted about peace on earth and how they lit the star and had it shining throughout the peace conference talking about peace be upon this house and that’s another Grinch. It takes the meaning of Christmas and subverts it incredibly to cause it to be a celebration of the sort of peace that him and Gorbachev tried to accomplish at Washington this last week.

Scriptural peace as we said last week is God’s order in the world and that’s not what they were moving toward in Washington DC this week. That’s another Grinch of Christmas. But closer to home people in our own camp. Several of you got many of you probably got you know have subscribed to the Council of Chalcedon newsletter that is reconstructionist and is very helpful to us in many cases. But unfortunately I think they also joined the ranks of the Grinches when they over the last couple of weeks put out an issue and it had an article in there by G.I. Williamson about Christmas observance.

Now let me say that I talked to G.I. Williamson on the phone this last week. He’s a very nice man. He’s a good man. And if you really read his article carefully, what G.I. Williamson attempts to address in that article are the observance of sacred days. Now, most of us would not read any special connotation in that except days set apart. Well, I think the point that Williamson really is driving at is that the Catholic Church has attempted to create more Sabbaths than what God has given to us.

God has given us the weekly Sabbath. And for the church to say that there is another day of the week, the day Christmas falls on for instance and that’s also in the same category as the Sabbath is to create a new day of worship apart from God’s provision.

Now reformed teaching for those of you who don’t know this have a thing we call the regulative principle of worship. Now what that simply means is that the first two commandments of the ten commandments have implications for our worship. It means that although most of our life is governed by the principle that if God’s law doesn’t forbid it, we can have freedom to engage in it, that in regards to worship itself—now the corporate worship, the special worship God has enjoined upon all of us—that only those things that God specifically instructs us to do in the scriptures are permissible. God will brook no worship that is our own invention, no will worship, no worship that we decide how we want to worship God and that of course is why we believe that as a church we believe that’s why we self-consciously try to move our church in more of a position of ordering our Sunday observance along biblical lines. And we’ve tried to think that through a lot.

Well, so the point is that if you try to make a new holy day, Christmas or Good Friday or anything like that, then it’s a denial of the regulative principle of worship. And that’s really what G.I. Williamson was getting at. But you could read his article and get from it that he believed that any observance of Christmas, singing of Christmas songs, Christmas messages on the Sunday closest to Christmas, all that was illicit according to the regulative principle of worship.

And he does, I think, slip over into that position in the writing of his article. He says that we have to be patient with the weaker brothers who might observe Christmas in some way, and so he does seem to regard it as a sin for us even in our families to have Christmas songs that we sing or whatnot. I called Mr. Williamson this week and Reverend Williamson and I asked him if he believed it was okay to celebrate Reformation Day, even though that’s not enjoined upon in scripture, of course.

He said yes. He thinks the Reformation Day sermon is fine. And I asked what the difference was, and he said that the Reformation Day, we know the historical date we’re celebrating. And since we don’t know with certainty the fixed day of our Lord’s birth, we couldn’t celebrate one day out of the year as the Lord’s birth, it seems to me, I don’t see how that is taught, the regulative principle of worship in the scriptures. The only days we know the occurrence of or days we can then set aside as new holy days to God. I don’t understand that.

But in any event, I had a nice talk with him and I think that the intent of article was to combat Catholicism and not really the way it was presented in the Council of Chalcedon. Now the bad thing about the article really that it was bad enough I think printing an article like that without explaining because many of the people that subscribe to Council of Chalcedon are not reformed. They’ve never heard of the regulative principle of worship and to not precede some of the teaching in that article by Williamson with that sort of thing I think is really kind of misleads people.

Then they really misled them when they put an editorial comment in here from the editor’s desk. Now, before I read this, I want you to know that I called the assistant pastor of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, of which this is their official church magazine, and I asked Wayne Rogers, the assistant pastor there, if they preached Reformation Day service. He said they did. I asked him if he thought it was okay to preach on the nativity close to Christmas, the Sunday closest to Christmas. He said, “Oh, yeah.” He said he used to be a pastor of a church and did that all the time. They do that occasionally at Chalcedon Presbyterian Church. He said, “The regulative principle of worship gives us freedom to do at not to create new holy days, but certainly to take the days closest to those days that we traditionally celebrate as the birth of our Lord and to focus on that birth in our sermons.”

Well, he told me that, okay? And here’s what the editor of this publication writes in his newsletter. He says, “You might want to know because of Williamson’s article, what we do here at Chalcedon Presbyterian Church. He says, “The fact is that special days such as Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter are ignored as far as the worship of the church is concerned. On the Sunday closest to Christmas, the pastors continue preaching on whatever expository series they are in the midst of at the time.

The only special day regarding which God has given commandment is the Lord’s day. So he says here they don’t do that. And Reverend Rogers said they do that occasionally. Maybe they’re not doing it anymore since they printed Williamson’s article. He says, “If anyone wonders, this is an interesting. If anyone wonders how this accords with our offer of books and tapes as suggested Christmas gifts in the November issue, right away. Well, no, wait a minute. We’re not supposed to be observing Christmas. They had advertised for Christmas gifts. The answer is simply we celebrate Christmas simply as a traditional custom of our country which we enjoy, but to which we attach no special religious significance. We have Christmas trees in our homes. We exchange gifts. We usually eat a turkey dinner on December 25th, but we don’t view this as Jesus’s birthday as having any relation to Jesus at all other than in the sense that all of our life of course is supposed to be lived under the rule of Christ.

In view of the gift giving that occurs at this time of the year, we feel justified in suggesting that as long as you’re giving a gift, why not give a good Christian book as a gift?”

Well, you know, I hate to even I didn’t really want to bring this up this morning even, but I know that a lot of you get that publication and a lot of you have profited from the articles in it. But I think it’s just disastrous the Council of Chalcedon moved to a position where they seem to be implying a new form of legalism where they condemn activity in private homes that Scripture does not condemn.

Now, as to Williamson’s contention about weaker brothers, you have to realize that the scriptures have some weaker brothers in them. Apparently, Paul, you remember when we were preaching through the Sabbath and about how Paul at one time of his missionary journeys in the book of Acts, hurried back to get to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. Well, he observed it in some sense, didn’t he? Now, he didn’t observe it as unto righteousness or as works that would merit salvation, but he went back to be there for Pentecost.

For Christmas Sunday, or for a holiday of course well Williamson can say that well after all that was a holiday instituted in the old covenant and so it’s okay if he had some sort of observance for it but yet our Lord himself in the book of John is observed to be in some fashion observing the celebration of the feast of dedication. That was an interestmental feast that was established and Jesus at the feast of dedication went to the temple and was on Solomon’s porch to take advantage of that particular day when people would convocate and think about the feast of dedication. And I’m sure he made illustrations on the basis of dedication in his teaching that day.

So here we have our Lord himself in the position of perhaps being a weaker brother for observing in some fashion a non-biblical holy day of the feast of dedication. But we even have stronger evidence than this in Esther chapter 9. We read in chapter 9 of Esther verses 18 and 19. “But the Jews that were in Susa assembled together on the 13th day thereof, and in the 14th thereof, and on the 15th day the same, they rested, and made it a day of fasting and gladness. Therefore the Jews of the villages that dwelt in the unwalled towns made the 14th day of the month Adar, a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day and ascending portion one to another.”

They created a new day of remembrance of the deliverance that had been accomplished at the time of Esther. The scriptures don’t give us that comment with negative implications to it. It gives us that comment by saying it’s good and proper to remember the days that God has produced deliverance for the nation. And so, it’s certainly proper to create a day of gladness and fasting. Not a sacred day, not another high holy day, but it’s certainly proper to use the days that God has given us in the scriptures to assemble the his word to make those days of gladness and feasting. That’s what God wants us to do with him.

And so if we have an occasion now to celebrate the coming of our Lord, then we certainly should make it a day of gladness and feasting, recognizing, of course, we don’t know the historical day. But that certainly doesn’t make it improper to talk to the nativity during this time of year. It’s very proper.

Williamson says that one of the problems with this is that you can get the nativity all the incarnation all out of whack. You can put way too much emphasis on it from what the scriptures give it. But of course, as we saw last week was Zechariah’s benedictus. The coming of our Lord, the nativity of our Lord is the great focal point of all history. And so I don’t see how we can give it too much emphasis when Zechariah says it’s the horn of salvation. It’s the culmination of all the ages and all the Old Testament coming to realization now on the coming of Jesus Christ.

And this morning we’re going to consider more implications of that. So let’s leave the Grinches alone now. The Grinches of false forgiveness, the Grinches of false peace, and the Grinches of at least improper ethics. Let’s leave those Grinches alone now for a while and turn to the day of a feast and gladness that we’re celebrating the nativity of our Lord. Recognizing, of course, as I said, we don’t know the historical date.

So, for those of you who read the Council of Chalcedon and wondered if I would continue with this morning’s message, I am. And I don’t feel a bit bad about it. Okay. So, we turn to our text Luke 1:48.

Starting in verse 48, this passage of scripture is called the Magnificat. And I have entitled our talk this morning, the great reversal because I think that’s what’s being taught here. And we’re going to go through elements of that reversal.

And the first thing I want us to notice is a prolleptic reversal. Now, I told the little kids this would be able to understand this. And then he used a word like prolleptic, right? I’m not even sure it’s the word I really want. But what I should point out here is that what we have here is in the case of Mary and in the case of Hannah, a prefiguring of that reversal. A summing up of it in little form prior to its actual being worked out in history. And so it’s prolleptic in that sense. It’s kind of a encapsulation of what’s to occur with the coming event of the reversal itself.

In other words, like I said last week, Zechariah is a picture to us of the proper of the man falling into sin, unbelief before the angel of God being struck, unable to speak words, then deliverance by God at the with the opening of his mouth, the birth of the son of the circumcision on the eighth day, the prefigure of Jesus Christ who is now in the world. Zechariah gave us a picture then of the salvation accomplished that he then sang about and Mary gives us a picture as well of the reversal that she will sing about in her Magnificat here in verses 48 and 49.

These are really personal verses. “He hath regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” He has regarded he has looked upon me Mary is saying he has looked upon me at the idea of helping me looked with an intent help is what that regarded means. The Lord’s face shone upon Mary as it were. He looked upon her and that means that his deliverance had come upon her.

Mary speaks of her own blessedness in this regard. Then for God looking to her with the view to deliver her in her low state of the handmaiden. He comes and all generations shall call me blessed. That verse itself should be a key to us. You know I was last week I was I normally try to teach the kids what I teach her on Sunday in little portions throughout the week at home and I was trying to teaching him what I was talking about last week in terms of the horn of salvation and I told him one of my girls has read the book Highland which some of you have read too I think in that book he uses initials SS Street Sweet for instance and so if you picked up that book I told him and you turned to the back of the book the second half of the book and you found him referring to an SS you wouldn’t know what he was talking about you got to go back to the first of the book figure out how he defines the term first where he gives his definitions for all these initials, street sweet in that case, then you know what the book was talking about later on.

Well, the same thing’s true of the Bible. If we just open our Bibles up to Luke, the first chapter here, and read about the horn of salvation, we’re not going to understand it unless we know what came before it. God defines the horn of salvation back here. And remember, we talked about God’s definition of the horn of salvation in Deuteronomy with the blessings proclaimed upon Joseph’s sons. And so, we had to understand that the horn of salvation from that respect.

And the blessedness of Mary is sort of that same way. There are other blessed women in the scripture. The scriptures talk about Jael—in Judges 5:24 it said “blessed above women shall Jael be the wife of Heber the Canaanite. Blessed shall she be above women of the tent.” She asked water. She gave him milk. She brought forth butter in a lordly dish. Additionally in the apocryphal book of Judith she is also called blessed. That was probably written in the second century. It’s another song of a woman who kills a the head of a evil force come upon them and I think she actually cuts off his head and she’s called blessed.

These indications from Ruth for instance and from Jael of course would take a part in the bloodline of our Lord Jael with the deliverance of the people through the crushing of the head of the enemy there. These women’s blessedness then is prefiguring the blessedness to come of the one who would bring forth the Messiah who would definitively and finally and totally crush Satan’s head which was a promise of course promised to Eve herself that her offspring would crush the head of the serpent. And so these things are all prefigured. The blessedness of Mary is prefigured and then her blessedness comes to pass.

Now that’s important because the blessedness then automatically we right now We read here that Mary calls herself blessed. We should anticipate a great reversal to occur here. We should anticipate a time of victory and of defeat of God’s enemies the way that Jael defeated God’s enemies by crushing his skull. And so that’s important to see that blessedness prefigures a great reversal that involves victory over enemies and that victory will be spoken of throughout all generations.

Jael was to be said to be blessed among women of the tent. The implication perpetually. And so Mary says here that she’s going to be called blessed by all generations. So the victory that’s to come here, the great reversal that’s going to be accomplished will have implications for all generations. It’s not like this light will go out after 100 years and after that nobody will call Mary blessed anymore.

What started will continue and all generations will call Mary blessed. And so in her own deliverance here in terms of the birth of the son that she was to have even though her womb was like the ultimate closed womb, right? She was a virgin. Ultimate closed womb, ultimate barrenness if you will. Well, yet she would bear forth a child. And so, she’s had a reversal in her fortunes here. And she sings about that and wants us to understand there’s implications of that in terms of victory and in terms of succession of that victory throughout the ages.

This is said to be accomplished by the might of God. “For he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name.” Mighty there is the word that’s the root word for dynamis or dynamite. You’ve heard me talk about that before. Some people talk about the power of Jesus Christ at his second coming. But the Scriptures say that if we’re going to identify anything with the power of God in Romans, it says the preaching of the gospel is the dynamis of God.

And here, God is said to be dynamis. He’s a mighty God here who brings forth strength. And this great reversal that Mary is experiencing is a result of God’s mighty strength. I was thinking that illustration of dynamite is probably a little outdated now. I was listening to the Larry King show late Friday night, I believe, and I hadn’t heard this before, but apparently the nation of Israel is now with this disarmament going on and everything they’re going to deploy in the near future I guess a set of 200 nuclear missiles of their own to protect themselves rather rely on us and you know nuclear missiles usually have names like we call them Pershings or the Soviets call theirs SS-20s you know real unimaginative names the Israelites are calling their missiles apparently the Jericho 2 which is kind of a nice picture You know, talk about fire and brimstone. Jehovah will bring it.

Well, I bring that up because really the dynamite, as I said, is kind of an outmoded idea. It was, of course, a revolutionary idea and the impact and the demonstration of power contained in it. But these Israeli missiles, Jericho 2 is one way to think about the might of God being talked about here. This is the might of God at work causing this great reversal. And Mary goes on then to say that holy is his name. That’s important too to see is that’s again linked to the old Testament, holy is his name is a common liturgical phrase found in the Old Testament in the Psalms and in other places. Psalm 111:9 for instance has that designation in variations. It’s found in many psalms throughout the book of the Psalms. It’s a common liturgical statement from the Old Testament.

And we see here, I’ll just bring it out now and try not to belabor it, but all these things that Mary says are linked back to the Old Testament in Old Testament prophecies, the book of the Psalms. And so her response to God is a liturgical response of saying, Holy is his name. Holy in the has to be understood then in the Old Testament sense. The Hebrew word was qadosh and it meant separated, totally separated, set apart. And God is holy in the sense that we can never really be that holy. God’s name is holy. He is totally set apart to his own purposes.

Jim Jordan when talking on this when he talked about the song of Hannah, which we’ll get to in a minute, said that one way to think about this holiness of God is that he cannot be manipulated. He can’t be forced to do things that he doesn’t want to do. And that may sound a little bit forced, but if you think about the implications of what we’re talking about here, the great reversal that’s being affected, Mary’s saying that God has done this thing not as a result of manipulating him. Man cannot thwart God’s purposes. He’s holy. He’s set apart. He’s not capable of being manipulated.

And he’ll bring to pass his great reversal. So Mary says, “Holy is his name.” His name, of course, embodies all that God stands for. That was the understanding of the name throughout the centuries was that it embodied all that a person stood for. And so when she talks about God’s holy name, she’s saying that God himself is holy.

Now, I mentioned Hannah’s prayer, and it’s very important to recognize that there is a correlation here that between Hannah’s prayer and 1 Samuel 2, and we’ll get to that in just a minute, but I just wanted to point out that it’s obvious from this passage of scripture that Mary knew her Old Testament, and she knew Hannah’s prayer. And there’s a definite correlation between this song and the Magnificat of Mary and Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 and with other Old Testament quotes as well. That’s important. I think she may well have been meditating upon this in the time of her the announcement of to her that she would indeed bear a son who would be the savior of his people.

But I think also it’s important to realize here that women should know their Bibles. You know, Mary didn’t just leave that up to the man. She didn’t wait for her husband to come along and read the Bible for her. She studied the scriptures. She was familiar with the scriptures. She knew them. When her time comes to give forth praise to God after Elizabeth calls her blessed, this the scriptures becomes a natural part of her speech here. It bubbles up out of her.

I think the word for the Hebrew word for prophet many people think came from the idea of a knobby of a bubbling up of someone. And so Mary here her heart and her soul is so infused with the word of God that in a praise to God the scriptures bubble up. And it’s normal for people to whose lives are centered around the scriptures who don’t have as one commentator said memorization phobia like we seem to in our day and age who had spent much time memorizing the scriptures and knew her Bible. It’s natural then for our speech to be affected by the scriptures themselves and that’s good and proper and it should be an object lesson to us and particularly to the women in the congregation because it means you should be reading your Bible a lot and you should be real familiar with it the way she was.

So we have in Mary this reversal from virginness to blessedness and having fruit now in her womb. This reversal is a kind of picture of what God will accomplish and it’s a picture that throws us back in the style of the poem here to Hannah herself.

In 1 Samuel 2, verses 1-10 we find the prayer of Hannah upon the giving of God to her the answer to her prayer in giving her the son Samuel. Now Hannah prays and I won’t go through the whole thing but later on it might be good for you to take 1 Samuel 2 the first 10 verses compare them to Luke 1, the Magnificat of Mary, and you’ll see lots of correlations there.

And so in Hannah herself was another prolleptic reversal as it were. Hannah talked about the fact that her heart rejoiced in the Lord the way that Mary said her soul rejoices in the Lord. Hannah said her horn is exalted in the Lord. She mentions the horn several times here and that reminds of Zechariah’s benedictus as well that we talked about last week. She said in verse two, Hannah did of 1 Samuel 2, “There’s none holy but the Lord.” Okay, she talks about God’s holiness as well. Well, she talks about the rock of God, the rock of her salvation. The way that Mary talked about God’s holiness and then said that God was a God of salvation and that God has been her savior. That’s what Mary says in verse 47.

In verse three of Hannah’s prayer, she talks about don’t talk anymore exceedingly proud. God’s going to abase the proud, she says. And so Mary, later the Magnificat talks about the scattering of the proud.

In verse four, Hannah says the bonds of the mighty men are broken. The power of the men is broken. And so Verse 52, Mary says that the mighty have been thrown down from their seats.

In verse 5 of the Hannah’s prayer, she talks about the full hired themselves out for bread. And so in verse 53, Mary talks about the great reversal in terms of the hungry people have been filled and the rich go away empty.

In verse 7 of Hannah’s prayer, he talks about the poor he makes the poor rich. He brings low and he lifts up. And so God brings low the mighty and from the seats and puts them down.

Verse 8 is extremely important in Hannah’s prayer. It really is part of the foundation for what’s to be talked about in the great reversal. It says, “The pillars of the earth are the lords and he has set the world upon them.” God owns what he’s in the process of reversing. Now, okay, he owns the world and he now is reversing fortunes in that world.

“He’ll keep the feet of his saints.” Hannah says in verse 9, verse 10, “The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces. He shall give strength unto his king and exalt his horn. of his anointed.”

And so there’s lots of correlations here with Hannah and with Mary. Additionally, there’s another correlation outside the prayer itself in 1 Samuel chapter 1:11. Hannah when she vows to vow to God about what she’ll do with the son if God is so kind as to hear her prayer and to answer it, she says, “If thou will indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid and remember me and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto me a manchild, then I’ll do these things,” she said.

And so what is Mary say Mary said she’s been this great reversal is the fact that God looked upon his handmaid again. Same language that Hannah used in 1 Samuel 1 and her vow itself to God. Hannah of course was a picture of Mary and Hannah’s son Samuel was a picture of Jesus Christ.

Now that’s obvious in a lot of things but the fact that Samuel was a foreshadowing of Messiah to come was evident for instance in the fact that he was a priest but not apparently from the Levitic line. And yet God in the words of Douglas Kelly did a new thing in the nation and made Samuel now in charge of the priestly services. And so we see that God would do a new thing in the nation with the coming of Jesus Christ. He would reverse fortunes. He would bring about the priest after the order of Melchizedek and not after Levitical order. Samuel pointed to the one that would make all things new by his appearing Jesus Christ.

It’s interesting that in 1 Samuel 2:26 we read that the child Samuel grew up and was in favor both with the Lord and also with men. Some familiar should and that’s the verse we use a lot of times their children. on their birthdays. I suppose some people wouldn’t want to celebrate any birthdays either, but on our birthdays, we frequently will quote from Luke 2:52 that our Lord himself grew in wisdom as in stature and favor with God and men. And that’s what the scriptures say about Samuel back in 1 Samuel 2:26. He grew up, was in favor both of the Lord and also with men. And so Samuel is a picture of Christ.

And so both in Mary’s case, the opening of her womb and the giving of a son to the one who was a virgin, the ultimate closed womb, and then to Hannah who herself was barren and now receives a son. And Hannah of course was put down by Peninnah, the other wife of Elkanah, her husband. For that she was in a lowest state before God. God lifts her up, causes a reversal. And so both in Mary and in Hannah, we have a prolleptic, a prefiguring of reversal to come.

Okay. Second point, the basis of the reversal. I have to go through this rather quickly. The basis of the reversal is talked about in verse 50 of the of the verses before us in Luke 1. “His mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.” Again, verse 54, “Heath helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy.” The first thing we have to recognize about the great reversal to come is it’s the act of a merciful God.

Now, mercy differs from grace somewhat. Grace takes away the penalty, shows unmerited favor to his people. Mercy more sees people in a downcast state and then moves to help them. There’s a compassionate element to mercy. Mercy means to have steadfast love towards someone. And so, it’s God’s steadfast love and his mercy that’s talked about here as the basis for God’s reversal of fortunes.

Lenski in commenting on this portion of the verse says that what is celebrated in this song the mercy shown by God quote it does not appear now and then but goes on and on in succession of the generations of men which were made wretched by sin. The idea is that the conception of the Messiah lies in this mercy line. All God’s mercy during past generations led up to this crowning mercy and all God’s mercy throughout coming generations flows from this supreme mercy. And so we see here a movement then toward an understanding of the broader ramifications of this great reversal. And Lenski is correct. The mercy of the ages found its fulfillment in the crowning mercy of Jesus Christ. And everything every act of God’s mercy from then proceeds from the coming in the merciful act of sending the covenant mediator Jesus Christ.

The mercy of God is the basis for the reversal as well. Though the covenant of God is the basis part of the basis for the reversal as well in verses 54 and 55. We just read part of that helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy. Verse 55, “as he spake to our fathers to Abraham and to his seed forever.”

Covenant language here. Now some people would say that this only refers to physical Israel, but that’s really missing the point. In Romans 9:6, we read that not all are Israel, which are of Israel. To believe that the reversal is to exalt is Israel, Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes, and to see him as more important than the true Israel of God to come, the anointed one, Jesus Christ, the true one that Jacob’s life pointed toward is to confuse the issue dramatically. It’s to show a complete misunderstanding of the covenantal nature of the great reversal.

You see, Israel here, the word Israel being used refers back, of course, to Jacob, the one who wrestled with God and the father of the 12 tribes. But Jacob prefigured Jesus Christ to come, the true Israel of God. We’ll talk about that in a couple of weeks as we talked about the fact that God brings his servant out of Egypt. And so Jesus goes there as a young infant only to come out of Egypt. And we’ll talk about that. The point is that Jacob prefigured—he was the shadow the substance of which was Jesus Christ the covenant mediator. And so when God says that he remembers his Israel, he’s talking ultimately about Jesus Christ and his covenant people, those who have covenant relationship to God through Christ.

To assert otherwise is to refer to confuse them the shadow with the substance. The term Israel is here used to stress the covenant people who through union with the covenant mediator, the true Israel of God, Jesus Christ, are now Israel themselves. So God has a covenantal basis to this great reversal that he’s going to affect. But the other two basises for the reversal are conditions on men now. And we’ll talk about that now in terms of the first condition is one of fear of God.

Verse 50. that this mercy, the basis for God’s reversal is on them that fear him from generation to generation. Fear of God is a New Testament truth. In 2 Corinthians 7:1, Ephesians 5:21, we’re told to fear God and to fear Christ and that our actions should be conditioned by that fear of God. We don’t have here an unconditional love or mercy shown by God. We have a conditional love unto them that fear him, that approach God in childlike awe of his great greatness and goodness who approach him with faith and with a willing obedience.

And that obedience is the second basis for the reversal on the found of the part of the men that are the subjects of that reversal. Obedience. Verse 48 says that Mary says that he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. The word handmaiden there is like a female slave. You’ve heard the term doulos, the Greek term for slave in the New Testament. Well, this is doulē, the female form of that servant.

And so the ones that God brings reverses the fortunes of in terms of bringing that up are those that fear God and as a result of their reverence and offer God those that obey God. Fear and obedience are the two conditions on the turn of part of man for the great reversal.

What are the results of this reversal itself? And this is really the core of the passage starting at verse 51. “He has showed strength of his arm. He has scattered the proud imaginations of their hearts.” And that word imaginations of their hearts refers to their innermost thoughts. Okay. The proud here are seen as those whose inmost thoughts are arrogance and presumption. And so the great reversal first of all restores true knowledge before God.

The proud are spoken of throughout scriptures, those who don’t have true knowledge, who have an understanding of themselves that is totally out of sync with reality. And so God seeks to reverse here the very nature of knowledge itself. He scatters those who are proud in their own self-knowledge. The word scatters there mean to cause to fly in all directions to just utterly scatter them before him.

In Psalm 89:10 We read that “thou thyself did crush Egypt like one who is slain and thou did scatter thine enemies with thy mighty arm.” Psalm 2 which you read earlier talks about that scattering of the nations that refuse to acknowledge Jesus Christ. God the great reversal restores true knowledge before him as we read in verse 51. True dominion is found in verse 52.

“he had put down the mighty from their saints and exalted them of low degree.” He had put down the mighty. The mighty there is the word the root word for our word dynasty today. Dynastēs, it refers to rulers, nobles, governors, eminent rulers, potentates, kings, sovereigns. Those are other acceptable words for the word ruler there. It’s talking about political forces. It’s talking about people in high places who rule and exercise dominion but don’t do so correctly. Those that don’t have true dominion are put down. and others who understand the nature of dominion being found in the salvation of Jesus Christ are exalted.

And so there’s return here of true dominion before God. the rulers of the current dynasty are set down out of their thrones as it were by God and instead people that exercise biblical dominion are put forward. The seats that’s talked about in this verse, he has put down the mighty the rulers from their seats. Seats is the word thronos which means of course throne. Now in verse 32 of this passage we read that Jesus will have the throne of David, that Jesus will rule over Israel and the way of David, the way of righteousness and truth.

And so what’s talked about here is a restoration of true dominion under God. A political manifestation of the great reversal of salvation that God is affecting. There’s a knowledge implication. There’s a political or a dominion implication. And there’s also a stewardship implication found in verse 53. “Heath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich heath sent empty away.” Those people that use their riches improperly are cast down.

Those who understand the nature of true biblical stewardship before God, who consecrate all things that they have to him are exalted and they then get more things given unto them. It says they’re sent away full of good things. Doesn’t just refer to food here. It’s talking about their hand is full of good things and the hand of the rich goes forth empty. There’s a restoral of true stewardship under God.

Then in this great reversal, we really have here of course a picture in a way of the prophet, priest and king of Jesus Christ. Prophet being the restoration of true knowledge, the king Jesus Christ being a restoration of true dominical order and the priest Jesus Christ being a restoration of the consecration of proper stewardship of all things. That’s the great reversal that God brings to pass.

In Jeremiah, we read that in chapter 9 of Jeremiah verse 23, those that boast in anything but the Lord are going to be put down. And so in these verses, those who exercise they’re priestly or dominical or king kingship callings or prophetical callings. Those who exercise knowledge, power, and riches apart from the reign of Jesus Christ are put down. in Jeremiah 9, it says, “Let not the rich man, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches. Let him that boast in this. But he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord that exercises loving kindness to all them that fear him.”

God says that to have other attitudes about our wisdom, our riches or our strength is to cause us to be a subject of the great reversal to be put down for that. That same theme is echoed in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26-30 that all things God has exalted the weaker elements and has made the stronger elements of none effect that no man might glory before God that we might glory only in Jesus Christ.

This is a general statement then these three manifestations of deliverance in all of its manifestations in all of the world. We have in these statements a movement then from the personal salvation of some to the cultural implications of the saving actions of the nativity. Mary herself is seen as a type of the salvation whose accomplishment is referred to in the past tense in these verses. The Hebrew prophetic past tense is being talked about here because the arrival of the God man in history that would affect the great reversal here spoken of.

So these verses talk about a tremendous overturning of all things. And if that’s true and if it’s a restoration of all things that are good and proper in God’s order, the immediate question we want to have is when does that occur? What is the time of this reversal?

And the time talked about in this portion of scripture is obviously the time of the incarnation of our Lord. Now that shouldn’t surprise us because in Luke 1, verses 33-35 when the very fact that Mary’s blessedness is going to come upon her announcement, to her. It’s put in this way. “And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over his house, over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

When Mary had the announcement of the coming Messiah’s birth and his incarnation and his nativity within her womb. When she had been given that announcement by the angel, he told her the implications was that now was the time when the great reversal spoken of throughout the prophetic books of the Old Testament would be accomplished once for all. The angel said, “It is with the birth of the Messiah, with the birth of the one that’s now in your womb, that God will cause to be in your womb that with that birth, the announcement of the great reversal is made.”

And so Mary in her song then of course sings in these things as I said in the past tense. She says, “These things have been accomplished now because the child is now manifest in Mary’s womb.” The virgin birth, the virgin conception rather, had been accomplished. And so Mary recognized it was with the first coming of our Lord that the time of the reversal would occur. Mary said that God had delivered people with his strong arm. That arm was the arm that was spoken of as delivering Israel from Egypt with a strong arm.

But that Deliverance was only a shadow of what God was now to accomplish with the true anointed one and with the substance of which that deliverance was but the shadow to come. Remember Hannah’s song that looked forward to this day also talked about the fact that the king the king the horn of the king would be exalted and Hannah now the prolleptic passage and Hannah there now finds its final fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Hannah had said out of heaven shall he ascend them. The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth. He shall give strength unto his king and exalt his horn of his anointed. And that’s what Hannah rejoiced in and that’s what Mary rejoices in here. The fact that it has been accomplished and that God has wrought the great reversal with the coming of Jesus Christ to the world that he created.

Total cultural, political, and social transformations are to be wrought by the one who was now come into the world of his own creation. A restoration had now appeared. Mary doesn’t speak here of heaven for heaven was already in God’s holy order and hence needed a reversal. This great reversal was to be accomplished in the earth. For it was here that sin’s grim contagion had brought forth darkness and death and an order whose very foundations were in opposition to true righteousness and justice.

There’s no separation in Mary’s mind here between the personal salvation that God would bring through the one in her womb and the cultural implications and manifestations of that salvation in the entire created order. Nothing could be clearer from these verses than that Mary rejoiced in a great reversal and a recreation of all that had fallen into decreation through the sin of the first Adam and that recreation would happen as a direct consequence of our Lord’s invasion into human history accomplished in the incarnation and nativity of our Lord.

The king had come and from generation to generation the clouds of darkness would be rolled back as the glorious message of salvation and dominion restored was proclaimed to the nations. The great message that Mary rejoices in then is that with his advent, the king had arrived and that the great reversal had begun in full force. It would continue throughout the history of man. The scriptures are plain that the time of the reversal was now. That’s what Mary was declaring, the time of the incarnation of our Lord.

The time of that reversal also though proceeds forth from there into the history of man. And we read a ramification of that in Acts 17:5.