Dennis Tuuri

# Advent and Joy Sermon

Blind guy with a match. Close to hopefully not flammable material. I see why this wasn’t done. Oh, I can just bring it close. Great. Okay. Today’s sermon text is actually what we just read responsively. I’ll read it in a slightly different version, and this is in your handouts as well. It’s the so-called Magnificat from Luke 1:46-55. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth 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 on those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. 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 seed forever.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your holy scriptures. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that resides in our midst both individually and corporately. Bless us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. May He indeed bring light to this text and the other texts we’ll be looking at today, that our joy may become more full in this wonderful season. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world. Well, he didn’t really say it. He wrote it. He wrote it in his book *The Idiot*. And actually it was in the mouth of the idiot who said it, that beauty will save. This has been commented on, you know, for the last century at length. And if we think of beauty the way we talked about it last week—that beauty ultimately is whom came to earth 2,000 years ago, the second person of the Trinity who took on human flesh—if we think of Jesus as the beauty of God and He is, of course, the beauty of the Trinity, then indeed beauty saves the world. And if we think of what the significance is of beauty eschatologically, in terms of evangelism for instance, I think that statement makes sense as well.

Before we get to the Magnificat and the other three songs found in Luke chapters 1 and 2, we’re going to kind of finish up what we started last week when we talked about the advent of beauty.

Now in this series—this Advent series of sermons—we’ve talked about the advent of volunteerism: that Jesus came willingly to serve the Father. And we said that we, by way of being united to Christ, should be those that voluntarily serve His kingdom as well, and specifically we made application to ministries in the local church. And then we said secondly that Jesus Christ is excellence. He has done all things well, the Scriptures tell us. And so the Advent is the advent of excellence. And by way of instructing us, that means we are to do our ministries and tasks, as well as our other callings, with excellence. Now, that’s an important truth to be heard today. That’s a truth that is vanishing, I think, at least from high cultural observations. This idea of excellence in small tasks is no longer necessarily what we see.

So we need to have that admonition and really have the delight in knowing that the Savior we serve is one who does all things well and empowers us to do things well as well. Third, we said that Jesus is the beauty of God. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a couple of minutes. And again, by way of instructing us, that means that we’re to be beautiful in the world as we go about our ministries in excellent ways. As we go about our callings, as we go about everything that we do, and we’ll see a threefold description of that in the Magnificat. As we do these things, we’re to do them, you know, with the spirit of desiring to do them. We’re to do them in ways that is excellent and brings a credit, so to speak, to the Savior that we serve and represent. And we should do them with a flair of beauty, so to speak, and orderliness—a beautiful set of actions that are adorned, turning to the world and to culture.

And we said that then the end result of this is what we’re going to talk about after we finish up beauty—the advent of joy. And we see this in the Magnificat and the other songs that are traditionally sung by the church over the last 2,000 years in the context of Jesus’s birth. So we’re moving through this cycle, and we wanted to talk—before we get to joy and the joy of song specifically—we want to say a little bit more about beauty that we didn’t get to last week.

First of all, we saw from the psalm we looked at last week that David desired one thing, and that was to dwell in the courts of the Lord to behold His beauty. Now, in order to accomplish that—in order to dwell on the beauty of God and to be transformed by the beauty of God—he had to go to where a particular place was that God established His particular name. They knew God was omnipresent and everywhere could be found and sought after, and we certainly don’t leave God when we leave the building, but still it seems that the sanctuary then, the temple, and now the gathering of the congregation, which is referred to as the temple, is the place where we’re to go and see the beauty of God, and that’s a necessary component of what we do to seek the beauty of God and to be transformed by it.

Secondly, he said that he would seek counsel in that temple. This is from the psalm that we talked about last week. So there are two things there. It’s attending to the worship of God in special convocative worship—the congregation gathered as the New Testament equivalent of the temple. And then secondly, it’s to inquire of God, to inquire of His word and of His people, of His ministers specifically, to get counsel for everything that we’re going to do. As we attend to those two means, it’s like preparing the altar. And there will be times when the Holy Spirit will light it up in a wonderful way and our hearts will be flooded with the sense of the presence of God and His beauty. But in order to achieve that, we attend to the means of worship of God and then, knowing His word and seeking counsel from God through His word. If we do this, we come to the one ultimately—the Lord Jesus Christ—who is the beauty of God.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became man so that He might reflect the beauty of God in a way that it had never been reflected before. The Scriptures make clear that He is the beautiful King. In Isaiah, when the people were looking at exile, God said that when you returned from exile, you behold, you will see the beautiful King, the King in His beauty. Now ultimately that was talking about the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is identified as the one who is beauty incarnate, we could say, who is the reflection of the Triune God, who in Hebrews is said to be the bright shining image of God, reflecting perfectly the Triune God in His incarnate state. So when Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, we saw the advent of beauty. And the Lord God puts it in this beautiful setting for us in the story that Luke’s Gospel lays out for us.

And as Luke’s Gospel lays out this story, he also lays out a series of songs that we’re going to talk about that is the proper response to the kind of beauty that Jesus Christ is and is reflected in His very being. We as Christians are to be beautiful then, as name-bearers of Christ. As Christians, we’re to be beautiful as well. God declares that we are beautiful. You know, if you don’t have the assurance of God’s forgiveness of our sins and the assurance that God declares you to be beautiful—without spot and wrinkle now and positionally in Christ, and increasingly being sanctified to be without spot and wrinkle at the culmination of God’s sanctifying work in us—if you don’t have that assurance of Jesus speaking words of love to you as members of His bride and speaking words of love that are centrally given in the Song of Songs as the declaration that we are fair, that we are beautiful, if you don’t know that beauty is yours, apart from your works but from the grace of Christ, it’s going to be very hard to reflect beauty in your life as well.

But having that assurance, we’re supposed to then engage in what we do in those garments of glory and beauty that are described in the Old Testament. We are clothed in the beautiful garments provided for us by God. And what we read in Isaiah 62 is this: “Awake, awake. Put on your strength, O Zion.” So now Zion here is really a name for the Church—the Church in the Old Testament, those that were being brought back from exile and inhabiting the land. So this is talking to the body of believers. “Awake, awake. Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city.” Now ultimately we can see Christ in that as well. But it’s an admonition to us to put on beauty as we go about doing the work that we’re called to do.

Those beautiful garments are described in Exodus 28:2. “You shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, for glory and for beauty, as empowerment.” Robes are empowering symbols of what God does for us—and the empowering that we receive through the blessing of Christ, manifested through the work of the Holy Spirit. That garment, that robing up that God gives us in Christ, is specifically said to be for glory and for beauty, that we might be auroras—these shining lights in the world—that we might in all of our actions manifest the glory and beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we do it in a creaturely way. We do it, you know, as this weaker light here, but we shine as lights. By the way, it’s interesting, you know, these kids named after the appearing of light. I would imagine that verse from Philippians: “Do all things without grumbling and disputing, that you may be blameless and harmless sons of God without rebuke, shining forth as lights in the midst of a darkened world.” I’m sure those children are learning that verse over and over again. We shine, we have beauty, when we don’t grumble and speak back, right, kids, to your parents. And when we have thankful attitudes for the situations that God has placed us in instead of being grumblers. There is a lot to grumble about today, dearly beloved, is there not? There is. Don’t fall into it. Be those who understand the significance of what we’ll talk about in a few minutes—the Magnificat. Be assured of the grace of God that you now are lights in the world. And when you’re assured of those things, you’ll have a confidence and a beauty of holiness that will shine forth into the world. And it will transform the world. That’s the wonderful news of the Gospel.

We are Zion, the temple, the city of God, from where beauty shines forth. A beauty shines forth—the Psalms tell us—from Zion, right? And we’re to be that Zion. We’re to understand that’s who we are. We’re the people from which beauty shines forth into the world. And we are the city of God, the city of God as opposed to the city of man. And in Isaiah, we’re told specifically that city is supposed to be beautiful. We’re to build beautiful cities. It’s in fact God is the builder. And He says this is what He will do. He says, “Behold, I will lay your stones with colored gems.” Beauty is the way He establishes His city. “And I’ll lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles, your high places of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord.”

Now we have here a description of what the Church is to accomplish as the city of God. What we’re to build. We’re to build cities and cities are to be this: they’re to be places of safety—walls. They’re to be places of justice—gates—and they’re to be places of spiritual seeking, spiritual realities and attainments—pinnacles, high places. That’s what a city is. A city is a collection of people who mutually produce defense for themselves through the wall, justice of God ministered through the gates, both the church and state, and then pinnacles and high places devoted to the seeking of the knowledge of God who is on high. That’s what the city’s to be. When a city gets post-Christian, all those things get perverted. We think of cities as unsafe places, don’t we? But it’s exactly the opposite of what the Bible says they’ll be. And we think of cities as really not having much justice because people have moved away from Jesus. Well, actually the Church moved away from the city, and they left the city twisted and perverted with twistings and perversions of justice, and places no longer of safety because the pinnacles in our cities are no longer devoted to a knowledge and a worship of the Lord God in heaven. The high places are now given over to humanism, the common good—fill in whatever definition you like—and our cities have changed.

Now God wants us to focus on particular things: justice, safety, spirituality in the context of these verses. And He wants us to do it in a culture, a setting of what? Beauty. All these things are described as being beautiful, adorned with precious stones—beautiful, whatever fire gems—some of these names refer to. There’s contrast described in the foundations with black settings for brilliant stones. It’s beautiful. And so as we go about transforming the places we live—our homes, our communities, our Church, eventually our city—we do it in the way of having built a culture that’s committed to beauty, to the manifestation of beauty through our actions, but then also through the cultural attainments of who we are. A city is a place of culture. And God says that when a city moves away from Him, their justice and their tents and their high places are perverted, and inevitably the culture will become perverted as well.

So, and notice that the culmination of this call for us to be the city of God, beautiful in all of our attainments—that the culmination of this is that the children will be taught of the Lord. You cannot accomplish this without raising your children as Eli and Amanda are committed to today in the culture of Jesus Christ. You can’t do it without raising your children in what they think and how they handle their possessions and how they rule in their various spheres of influence, to do all that for the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don’t do that, you can’t build the city. And so, what a wonderful thing that in my lifetime, in the last, you know, 30 years, what’s happened is a resurgence of Christian schooling, homeschooling, classical schools. You know, I know that it’s not taken over yet. But that’s what people are doing, and it’s such an important part. A commitment for you today to be people who reflect the beauty of Jesus Christ is a commitment to make sure you raise your children in the culture of Christ, which from what I can see is very difficult to do if you send them away, you know, for 30 hours a week to the culture of whatever nice humanism it might be. But the culture of humanism ultimately—so all these things are part of the men—and this is what beautiful means. It means beginning with the instruction of those that God has called us to.

There are some characteristics of beauty, and I want to I’ll just mention one here today. In Ecclesiastes 5:18, here is what I have seen: “It is good and fitting”—that word could be translated beautiful. There are a couple of different Hebrew terms that can be and are translated beautiful. And it could be here. “It is good and beautiful for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life.”

Now, so we’ve described beauty in the context of building the city of God, manifestly in the places we live—big ticket stuff. And now we see that the Scriptures say that the simple actions of eating and drinking and enjoying the fruit of your labor, which you’re all going to do this week, probably a little, maybe sometimes a little too much. But you know, you’re going to get together and you’re going to do that. And the Lord says that common activity of life, when done in proper response to the Lord, is beautiful. It reflects a beauty. Now, it is beautiful, and that means we should work at keeping it beautiful, right? No everybody off to their own corners with TV trays, for instance. Beauty of community together at the meal place. I’m not against all eating in isolation. But generally the Scriptures commend to us eating in community. And here we’re told specifically that one of the characteristics of beauty is to go about doing the common ordinary things of life in a way that is fitting and proper and reflects the beauty of Christian men and women and Christian boys and girls who look different from the non-Christian neighbors that we might have, who are supposed to be shining examples of the beauty of God in doing the simplest of things—enjoying our food and drink to the glory of God.

So there are many characteristics of beauty. Maybe I’ll talk about others at another time, but this one I wanted to point out because it’s so important as it informs our feasting this week. And not just our feasting, our common ordinary life.

There is an eschatology of this beauty. Psalm 50, verse one—or actually let’s start with verse two. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God will shine forth.” Now that means Zion is us. It’s those who have been gathered as the people of Christ. Ultimately, it’s Jesus. But then it’s us in convocative worship and as the body of Christ. And out of Zion, the beauty, the perfection of beauty, out of this perfection of beauty, God will shine forth into the world. He’ll bring light to the darkness as the solstice season reminds us of. So there is an eschatological effect to beauty that shines forth in the world and brings people to Christ.

Remember we put all this originally in the context of our sermons on evangelism, and the unity of the Church is one of the key elements for showing the reality of Jesus Christ. And the unity and effectiveness and the shining forth of the Church of Jesus Christ, placed in this context, is significant. Now listen to verse one that precedes this. We read: “The mighty one, God the Lord has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its going down. Out of Zion, perfection of beauty, God will shine forth.” And so that places that call to be beautiful and to shine forth as bright lights for Christ as auroras in our darkened places of our culture and world to do that is part of God’s calling, the nations, calling all ends of the earth from the east to the west, calling all the world to come and help build the beautiful city of God.

So our calling to beauty isn’t some sort of like nice thing that’ll give more pleasant meals to us. It is tied to eschatology. It is declared to be one of the central means in which the light and truth of God shines forth into the world and God brings the nations to Himself. God says that beauty is not optional. Beauty is part of His plan for transforming the entire world.

Matthew 5:14 is a very common passage, everybody knows it. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men”—so they can just sort of acknowledge it. No, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. To the extent that our beauty shines forth as Zion, being found and centered in the person of Christ, to that extent, as our light shines forth, men will behold and give thanks to the glory of God. They will praise His name. They will glorify your Father in heaven.

I said that an example of these series of sermons was the wonderful work that a few volunteers—one community group—did here in the sanctuary volunteering to do a ministry with excellence and to create beauty in our worship space so that our joy is enhanced. That’s beautiful. Next year we’ve done good in, but we got to do good out, right? The cross of life, Owen Rosenthal talks about it, points to the past, it points to the future, it points in and it points out. And there’s a balance in the Church of Jesus Christ. Sometimes you have to focus more inward in the context of the Church. Sometimes you have to focus more outward. And we’re doing good beautifying, bringing joy to this season internally. But I’m just really hopeful that when we look at what we’re going to accomplish this next year—and please be praying—there will be a vision meeting in February for the officers of the Church and a few other folks that one of the things we end up really committing ourselves to do is to bring that kind of excellence and beauty to the exterior of our structure that we might shine forth into the world.

We did it a couple years ago. We had a nativity set, and a guy walking down the street came in, talked to me. Because of that set, he was drawn into this Church. I don’t remember another time when that happened. In our families, we need to shine forth into our neighborhoods, into our workplaces, and as a Church, we need to shine forth in an effective way. Believing that God has given us beauty and He wants us to shine that beauty into the world, and that beauty will indeed transform the world.

A part of that beauty is singing. You know, we always have this number of songs in our Christmas service because in the Bible, from the beginning to end practically, when something great happens, people sing. When Eve was presented to Adam, he sang. And throughout the Bible, there are these songs that go on that reflect the joy that we experience. And so Christmas is this radical time of joy as a result of the Advent of volunteerism, excellence, and beauty. It is as well the Advent of joy. When Jesus Christ comes and is born, what happens? The world bursts forth in song.

Now, the songs we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes, but just briefly on your outlines, I’ve got some other examples of psalms from the Old Testament. Exodus 15—the deliverance and victory over enemies. Egypt’s song breaks forth for deliverance over enemies. Numbers 21—when they have water, when the water of life, so to speak, that’ll keep them alive in the wilderness comes, they sing about the well, right? When Jesus Christ comes to deliver us, we sing. When the King comes to give us the water of life from which we’ll never thirst again, we should be singing. And we do sing. In Deuteronomy 31, judgment against committed covenant breakers is accompanied by singing. In Judges 5:1-4, we have Deborah’s song—again victory over enemies. In 1 Samuel 18, we have the King and victory over enemies. Then this is David. And then in 2 Samuel 22, we see again a song of deliverance when David has kind of completed all his works. He writes this psalm of deliverance. And so we sing for the salvation of God and his defeat of our enemies. 1 Chronicles 15—the whole Advent of the King in the context of the Advent of the Holy of Holies. When the King moves into Jerusalem, the spirit of God moves in the hearts of people to cause them to sing and even dance. And it causes the psalmists and Asaf and the choir and David to create these beautiful compositions of psalms to be used in the worship of God. The Advent of the King to Jerusalem produced a joy out of belief for what that meant for them that resulted or was reflected in the singing of songs.

The Advent of Jesus Christ being born 2,000 years ago into the context of the world now means that the whole world will become transformed by the preaching of the Gospel. And our proper response is to sing forth with joy and to see that our joy is actually magnified and made fuller and better through the singing of psalms and hymns to Him. The Song of Songs itself—the Advent of the King in marriage—is reflected by a song.

And so here in the Gospel of Luke, we see a series of songs that is provided for us. Now, you know, people say, “Well, are they really songs?” Well, they’re certainly song-like in their structure. And even though it says that Mary said the Magnificat, in Revelation, for instance, when it says the angels sang a song and they said in the Bible—in the Old Testament and New Testament—not much difference between saying something and singing something. So the Church has traditionally seen these four songs that we recite every Christmas Sunday. The Church has seen these four as a quartet reflecting the joy that we’re to have in the coming of Jesus Christ. And that reflection of joy is found in singing and in these particular songs explicitly.

So let’s talk about them a little bit. The first is the Magnificat. Now the names of these—it’s just the Latin first word of the Latin translation of these songs. So that’s all it really is. So it’s a title that means something. So Magnificat obviously comes from the first line of this psalm, or this hymn rather. And let me get my copy of it out where Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Now, what does it mean to magnify the Lord? Well, it means to increase the creaturely response to God for what He has accomplished. It’s used in various places throughout the Scriptures where we’re said to magnify, to have more of, to give credit, glory, honor to the Lord is to magnify His name. And it’s a concept we don’t normally think of today, but it’s a concept that’s quite predominant in the Scriptures.

So we magnify God’s name with joy and song. When you meet together in your homes, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, you will magnify the Lord through the singing of Christmas hymns. And men—particularly if there’s one application out of the sermon, it would be really good if you would enter into those songs with your wives, with the women. They’re usually much more prone to sing. I think they’re less prideful or something. But men, this is what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to magnify the Lord with the joy of the season. And that joy is to be reflected in song. You know, Doug mentioned the choir at the Grotto this Saturday. I was going to do the same thing Friday night here. That’s what that is. It’s almost it seems like the natural response of people in response to the incredible beauty and excellence of the Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in His birth. The response is naturally to sing songs to praise His name. And the Bible tells us that when we do that, we magnify the name of the Lord.

So men, sing this Christmas. Receive, sing on Christmas Day. Lead your family in singing. Bring your children up in the culture of Christ. And the culture, the nurture of Christ is a culture of singing and joy for what Christ has definitively accomplished.

Now, this first song is quite interesting in history. It has been banned from being publicly read at various times over the last 2,000 years. It is seen as a revolutionary song for reasons we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. In more modern times, it was banned in Mexico. It supposedly was banned by the British in India at certain times when they were occupying or running India. It was banned in Mexico for a period of time and other South American countries. You know, we sing these songs sometimes and we sort of lose the meaning and significance, and we hear that this thing was banned and we think, “Why would you want to ban a simple little song about baby Jesus?” Well, this simple little song about baby Jesus is a lot more significant than that, right? Because what it does is it talks about what the Church has traditionally referred to as the great reversal.

What has He done? In verse 31, “He has shown strength with His arm. And how has He shown strength?” Here it is. “He’s scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” So people that use their intellect, the imagination of their hearts, their thoughts, proudly against God, people that don’t submit their thinking, take every thought captive—Mary says that God has definitively already, it will work its way out in history, but it is an accomplished fact that those people are judged by God and put aside. He scatters those who refuse to use their intellect, mind, and imaginations to the glory of Christ.

Secondly, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.” Oh well, this is the one, of course, that gets them going—the rulers—because they don’t like this. You know what it means is that those that will not rule for Jesus—we’re all rulers and authorities, right? We all have various things we rule over. And ultimately, if you don’t use your rule, if you don’t consecrate whatever rule and dominion—to exercise eyes to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the King of Kings—then history is about the taking down of people that refuse to submit their kingly characteristics to the Lord Jesus Christ. And contrary-wise, He exalts them of low degree. It doesn’t matter the station you’ve been born with. If you consecrate what you do, how you govern things in your life for Christ, the long-term pattern of history declared definitively to be accomplished by Mary in this song is that you will be raised up, that you’ll be seen as the faithful one who will be made faithful of more things.

And then third, “He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away empty.” And this is why in South America liberation theology—oh, He’s for the poor and against the rich. Well, of course, we know in the Scriptures that’s not true. So the context of the Scriptures reveals to us that what He’s talking about here is if you don’t use your wealth, your possessions, if you don’t consecrate them to the purposes of the King—whose birth she was exalting in, and that we exalt in this coming Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday—if you don’t use it for Him, then you’re going to be judged in history and you will instead see your riches taken away. You’ll go hungry, and that’s the way history moves forward.

Now, this is the threefold office of Christ, right? Christ is declared to be prophet, priest, and king. A prophet understands the mind of God and declares it. A priest consecrates his things, all things—he consecrates them to the service of Yahweh. And a king rules over things again for the purposes of the Triune God. So what this is saying is that in the threefold designation of Christ, we see reflected who we are. We’re prophets, priests, and kings. And if we don’t take that seriously, if we don’t submit to Christ in those things, God will bring temporal judgments upon us. And He will over time turn over the ruling of people and nations, the consecration of things, and the intellectual endeavors of a culture. He’ll give them to those who submit themselves as prophet, priest, and king to the great prophet, priest, and king, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So there’s a great reversal that Mary says has happened. Definitively Jesus said He came to bring justice to victory, and Mary says that is what will happen. And because of that, people have looked at this song and thought, “My golly”—usually non-Christians understand the significance better than Christians do in our day and age—”will beauty save the world? Yeah, it will. Do it through a process that,” as I said, “the Church has referred to as the great reversal.”

Contrary-wise, when people use this psalm for socialistic purposes, they like it as well. Here’s the song. “Sing we a song of high revolt. Make great the Lord God’s name exalt. Sing we the words of Mary’s song.” Oh, God at war with human wrong. Sing we of God who deeply cares and still with us our burden shares. God who with strength the proud disowns, brings down the mighty from their thrones. And then the song goes on to talk about the exaltation of the poor. And this was a song written and developed for so-called liberation theology in South America where actually, you know, liberation meant that God is actually on the side of you being poor no matter what the reasons for your poverty are, and He’s against you being rich no matter if you’ve done that righteously or not. This is not what the Magnificat is talking about, but it is talking about a significant the great reversal of all human history. This is what we join in.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood the significance of the Magnificat. Here’s what he had to say. “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings. This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of the earth that God takes out. It is about the power of God,” Bonhoeffer said, “and the powerlessness of humankind. These are the tones of the women prophets of the Old Testament that now come to life in Mary’s mouth.”

Now, that’s a great comment, and that’s the truth. When we sing the Magnificat, when we rejoice in song, we rejoice in God’s control of human history and specifically having to do with prophets, priests, and kings. Mary’s song is a song of joy for that particular reason.

Now, the second song in the quartet is the Benedictus. And I want to just point out one thing about the Benedictus. This is sung by John’s father at his birth, and this is a description of what John will accomplish, but the greater truth of what Christ will accomplish as well. And what we—and it’s about deliverance. It’s about defeat of enemies. As we said, so many of the Old Testament songs are, verse 71 says that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant. So He’s going to give us deliverance over enemies. Like Mary’s song says, this is an aspect of His covenant faithfulness. He remembers, He acts for people in time. And this is the result of God’s mercy to us.

But this is the purpose of this salvation: “the oath which He swore to our father Abraham: to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.” Redemption is to a particular purpose, and the purpose is the service of God that we’ve been talking about for the last four weeks, and that we might do it in righteousness and holiness. In other words, we might do them excellently. We might do them beautifully. We have been redeemed. And the Benedictus is a great song reminding us of the victory of God over sin and over all of our enemies, but reminding us—but this isn’t so that we can go fishing. This is so that we can get to work for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, that involves times of fishing occasionally, but do you see what I mean? We’ve been delivered to a particular purpose, which is to serve God Himself.

The third song is the Gloria in Excelsis, Luke 2:14. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Something hard to tell what it says from then on. We don’t rely upon one verse for a theology of who gets blessing and who doesn’t. So we can solve the grammar dilemma of this by simply thinking in a broader context. You know, some people say it’s a universalist verse—that all men now are the recipients of God’s goodwill and peace will come to them. But of course, this contradicts what other Scriptures say.

But the big picture of the Magnificat is that once more, even the highest heaven, at the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, sings forth. They respond in joy, with joy at the center of their being reflected in song, because of the wondrous thing—the beautiful, excellent, wondrous thing that God has brought to pass in the birth of the Christ child. And not only that, but it tells us that glory to God and that’s going on in the highest will be reflected on the earth, right? “And on earth peace.” God’s order will be established in the world, and this order will be manifest amongst the men that God is pleased with that please God with their actions—with the Church ultimately, those who are united to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gloria in Excelsis reminds us that the reversal in history and that the being saved to serve will have the effect of the whole world in the words of one of our hymns giving back the song that now the angels sing.

And then finally, the Nunc Dimittis. It’s almost a quiet reflection after the great crescendo of the angelic host. Now there’s kind of like an epilogue in this fourth song. And the emphasis here is “Now I can depart in peace according to Your word. You’ve kept Your word, Lord God. And the end result is that I no longer need to look forward to what You’re going to do. You’ve done it.” And as a result, I can depart the place of worship and gathering, the place of beauty, with beauty upon me in the restful way that I go about entering into the rest of my life. So the Nunc Dimittis is this great reminder that we go in peace, resting in the finished work of Christ, and then also that God brings this light to the Gentiles.

So the final concluding comment of these four songs—this quartet of joy reflected in song—is that there will be a light taken to the Gentiles. And the obvious implication is that the beauty and excellence of the incarnation and birth of Christ will bring all the world to Jesus Christ. We know that we’re assured of that in these songs. And that means we don’t have to go about our week grumbling and disputing about the difficult things that may go on in our lives, that may go on in our neighborhoods, and that certainly are going on in our nation. God is the sovereign controller of human history. And He’s revealed to us in these songs what His purpose of history is: to exalt those who see themselves as prophets, priests, and kings under the great prophet, priest, and king, the Lord Jesus Christ; to bring us into a proper service of Him in righteousness and holiness, so that all the world will give back the song, “Glory to God in the highest,” and that we will be light then put forth into the world and the Gentiles will come to the bright light of the rising of Jesus Christ as they see that light through us, through our lives, through our messages, as we bring them the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, Simeon is said to have sung this song after he had waited for the consolation of Israel. That’s what the text tells us a couple of verses earlier from the song itself. What does that mean—the consolation of Israel? Well, that word consolation means comfort, right? And so ultimately what happens is that this song is reflecting Isaiah 40:1 and 2, which is a common song of joy sung during Christmas. “Comfort, yes, comfort My people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, her iniquity is pardoned, she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” For all the difficulties, now He doubly blesses them as they move into the future.

Isaiah 51: “For the Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in it. Thanksgiving and the voice of melody.” The coming of Jesus means new creation. It means new Eden. It means that human history has been changed inevitably and assuredly forever, and that the Gentiles—all the nations of the world—will indeed be discipled by the light-bringers of Christ who do things excellently, with beauty and with joy. And that the end result of this is the joy that results in singing songs to the Lord God for the wondrous act, the story of Christmas itself.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful songs that we see here in the text of Luke’s Gospel. Help us this week to be informed by these songs. Help us, Lord God, more than anything else to rest in the comfort that You bring to us through the assurance that not only are our sins forgiven, and not only that You indeed are enabling us to be servants of Yours, delightfully so, but that the whole world will indeed give back the song of “Glory to You in the highest.” In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.