There is a story that I want to share as a way of introduction this morning. I'm not too sure if you know of this story, if you know this person because it's actually a story of someone who is a pastor at King's Christian Center, which is down here on the on the coast. I heard this story when I was in Bible college several years ago and it stuck with me because it was just so emotional and so significant. This young pastor got married to his the love of his life. They were a young couple.
He married a young beautiful Christian girl and they started on this life together. One night, this girl complained of having a headache, had a bit of a bump on her head from having knocked it somewhere, somehow. And they thought nothing of it. She took a Panadol and she went to sleep. His wife, this young girl, never woke up from that sleep.
She passed away during the night, right next to her husband of a few months. The ambulance was called, rushed to the hospital, but there was nothing that they could do for her. He had woken up next to her, she was unresponsive. Now, that is such a sad story, but what really touched me, what really was significant to me was what he did after that. This young pastor, this young man having lost his wife, went to his church that morning.
It was a weekday, it was dead quiet, nothing was going on. This huge hall, completely empty. And he was a musician. And in this empty church building, he went, sat behind the piano, and started worshiping God. By himself in the midst of that pain.
Now that has stuck with me since that day of hearing it. And what really shook me was the question, would I do that? If I was in that situation, if I had just lost the love of my life, if I had this vision of, you know, spending a life together with this person and she was taken away in such a sad way, what would I do? Would I worship God in that pain? You see, there's only two ways of really looking at life and perspective on life.
There's one way which is called the bottom up approach. It is to start with your life, with your experiences, and then project that onto God. The result is that when things are good, when your experiences are nice, you feel like God's a good God. You feel that God is blessing you, that He's looking after you, that He cares about you, that He loves you. And when things are hard, you start to wonder, is there really a God?
You start to gravitate towards agnosticism or atheism. Or maybe you think that God is very far away, that He's not really interested in life. That worldview is called deism. God is an impersonal force. Or maybe we come to an understanding that God is good and evil.
He's yin and yang, which is characterised in an eastern religion. Or that God is an aberration of Christian theology called process theology or open theism which says that God may be good, but He's not all powerful because bad things happen. He is good but He's not powerful. He's impotent. He wants to help me.
He wants to do good but He's just not powerful or strong enough. It's a bottom up approach. Can you see how religions have been formed understanding God in this way? From our experiences, from our surroundings, we look to God and we try to understand Him like that. The result is, if you start from a bottom up perspective, with your feelings, with your experiences, and your sin, and your sadness, and your suffering, you project them onto God.
When you need Him most, you'll run away from Him. You'll have questions about Him. You won't worship Him. And if you're going to be in that difficult place, you'll doubt Him. Some of us may be there at this moment.
Some of us might be there right in this church. The only thing that you're certain of this morning is that you're uncertain. Life has gotten very complicated. What's going to happen next? How's this new year going to look?
Maybe it's because of your mistakes. Or maybe it's because of the mistakes of others. But this morning, there's doubt. There's pain. And that is one way.
A way that many people look at God. The bottom up approach. But then there's the top down approach. This approach is to assume that God is who He says He is. That the Bible is true and that it reveals to us the character, the nature, what we call the attributes of God.
It is seeing our life as God sees it. Top down. Believing that and then interpreting the Bible in light of what God says and who God says He is. If that's the case then, as we go to Scripture, we realise that God is good. He made the world which is good.
We have corrupted it through our sin. The sin and the suffering and the sadness that we experience is not because God is evil. It's not reason to doubt God, but it is to understand that we are broken and imperfect. And we understand that God is good, that He is altogether and always only good. And God is working on a plan that has been unfolding throughout history and that is to be the ultimate redeemer, the liberator, the rescuer of this entire universe.
Now this morning, I want us to look at an example of someone who had a top down approach, understanding to life. If you are struggling this morning, if you are struggling with dealing with people that are ticking you off, if you are combating anxieties about failures, situations that are really getting you down, have a look at this story. It's a story about a young girl called Mary. And we see in this story a childlike dependence on God which is amazing. If you have your bibles with you, let's look at Luke 1.
Now if you were here last week, you'll remember that we looked at the birth of John, the prophecy and the foretelling of his birth of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. And now we look directly after this event to the story of Mary. We go to Luke 1:26. In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary.
The angel went to her and said, greetings you who are highly favoured. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favour with God.
You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and He will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. How will this be, Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin?
The angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered.
May it be to me as you have said. Then the angel left her. At that time, Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, she exclaimed, blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear.
But why am I so favoured that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished. And Mary said, my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. For He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant.
From now on, all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is His name. His mercy extends to those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with His arm.
He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as He said to our fathers. Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.
So often we read the story of the birth of Jesus, we listen to the announcements, the angelic announcements. We listen to the story of the shepherds and how they heard their stories. We hear about the three wise men and their gifts and so on. But if we look closer at the story, if we use a little bit of sanctified imagination, we come to understand just the huge uncertainty of this moment. The huge peril.
The precarious situation. We see Mary in a circumstance where she has ample opportunity to worry, to doubt, to question. This young woman had so much to be concerned about. Now for those of us who worry well, who are worry warriors, who have a spiritual gift of worry. Maybe you've come to the point in your life where there's a lot to be worried about.
Health, finances, relationships, children, future security. There's a lot to be worried about in life. Well, Mary is in this situation, in her life. The scriptures we read this morning are a recording of a season in her life where Mary was away from home. She had left Nazareth and she had gone to see Elizabeth.
She was away from home. She didn't know exactly what would wait for her when she returned. She was pledged to marry Joseph but now she was pregnant. Would Joseph want to marry her? Would Joseph believe her?
After all, she said that she was a virgin. Who would believe that? Would Joseph perhaps marry her and then quit, divorce her? Leave the situation? Would she just be yet another single mom?
What about her reputation? She would be called a harlot, a tramp. She had told everyone, I love God. This is a miracle. God has made me pregnant.
And they would all laugh at her. They would make fun of her. You know, we think that it's hard to imagine the immaculate birth, the virgin birth of Jesus today. But people were no different back then. People doubted it as much then as they do now.
Who was going to believe in a virgin birth? In fact, we see in Jesus' life, people came up to Him much later and they would say to Him, we know who our fathers are. Who's your father? In other words, they called Him a bastard son. Call Him the son of a whore.
Not to mention the concern for her actual pregnancy. I mean, that would have been just so terrifying. She's in a little town with no real medical sort of expertise. She's a young girl. The amount of death that resulted from pregnancy is astronomical.
Mums died regularly giving birth. Babies died regularly giving birth. Imagine being in that little town. It's dangerous. I mean, and then there was the actual physical threat to her if she gave birth to this illegitimate son.
She could be dragged into the city square in the town center. She could be stripped and put rags on her and be spat on and be abused because she was a woman of disrepute. Think about it. What would her family be thinking? What would her friends be thinking?
What a way to start for a young 16 year old girl. What a way to start. Mary is in a season in her life where she has a lot to be worried about. We don't think about it when we come to Christmas, do we? She has a lot to be worried about.
But rather than worrying, we find her worshipping. She says and she makes she proclaims this amazing poem. Mary begins with saying, my soul glorifies the Lord. My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
You see, worship is what we were made to do. Every human being was created to worship. People don't think about it that way. People say, well, I'm an atheist. I don't worship.
But the fact is we were hardwired to worship by God. God created us to worship Him. But sin, the corrupter of life, came and corrupted us. So what we were meant to worship, who we were meant to worship, God, we exchange for other things in life. We worship entertainment.
We worship power. We worship money. We worship comfort. We worship human bodies. We were created to worship.
It's like when those people say, no, listen. I just don't believe I don't worship. It's like them, like a computer saying, you know, I might be a computer but I want to be a fish. It's just not possible. Or a car that says, now I have a top speed of 220 kilometres an hour but I'm gonna go 500 kilometres an hour.
It's impossible. That car, that computer are hardwired to be a car and a computer. We were hardwired to worship. So Mary, in this precarious situation, does what a Christian's deepest desire should be and she worships God wholeheartedly. You may be worried this morning about a lot of things.
A lot of things in life, uncertainty, business, tough business, gets slow around Christmas. It's tough. Life isn't always easier as a Christian. But this is the difference. What you do in that moment of worry, that is the difference.
Like a little girl running to her daddy when she gets a fright, Mary runs to God, tells God and herself for that matter who she understands God to be. Worship isn't just for God's sake. God is eternally being worshipped in the Trinity. The Father honours the Son. The Son honours the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit honours the Father. And this dance between the Godhead, between the Trinity happens. God doesn't need our worship, but God created us to be invited into that worship, to become a part of that amazing dance, which is the Godhead. Our worship isn't just for God's sake. It is for our sake too.
It is to remind us of who God is. In Mary's song, we find her listing, if you can believe this, 17 attributes of God. This young 16 year old girl, illiterate probably, not going to school, can't read. Hasn't read scriptures by herself ever. Lists 17 attributes, characteristics of God.
We're going to have a look at just a few of them. We can't, for the sake of time, go through all 17, but it is amazing. The first thing we see is her saying that God is Lord. God is Lord. What this means is that God is in charge.
He knows this situation. I know this terrible precarious situation, but He is above all. He's above all kings. He's above all kingdoms.
He is the creator, the king of everything. He is Lord. He is master. He's above Satan. He's above demons.
He's above other religions. Her God, our God, is above everyone and everything, she says. My soul glorifies the Lord. And she says in verse 47, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour. So God is Saviour to her.
Some people say that Mary was sinless. She wasn't sinless. She knew she needed a Saviour. If she was sinless, she didn't need one. If she was perfect, there was no need for one.
She notes that she needs a Saviour. We're all sinners like Mary. We all need a Saviour. A Saviour means a rescuer, means a deliverer, a hero. How many of us watch a movie and it's all dark and serious and the situation looks bleak.
But then the hero comes and it just becomes bright. It just becomes awesome. That is what a hero does. Scripture is God's story of human history and His involvement, His plan of a rescue mission. He is the hero in this story.
He is the Saviour. Verse 48 says, for He has been mindful. He has been mindful of my humble estate. So she says, God is omniscient. God knows everything.
He's all knowing. God is mindful. He's seen my situation. He knows me. There's so many religions, so many philosophies of an impersonal God who doesn't know us by name.
The Bible says, God knows the very hairs on our head. God knows. He is omniscient. My God, Mary says, knows that my reputation might be destroyed. God knows I am poor.
I don't have resources. I don't have finances for this situation. But my God is mindful. My God knows. She says in verse 49, He is mighty.
It means that no one and nothing can thwart God. Satan, sin, demons cannot overpower God. He is completely powerful. He can conquer all. He is mighty.
He is the one who can do great things. Again, if we can't believe that, if we really really believe that, then we will move from worrying to worship. If God is for us, who can be against us? And she lists so many other things. She says that God is personal.
God is holy. God is merciful. He is worthy. He is powerful. God is sovereign.
He is gracious. God is generous. God is just. God is humble. God is faithful.
God is eternal. This is all she says about God. It is the perfect worship song. Just proclaiming God's awesomeness. Instead of worrying, this girl in this precarious situation worships.
She worships. And instead of us worrying about things that could possibly go wrong, our challenge this morning is instead of being fixated on that, instead of putting so much of our emotional, physical, psychological energy in that. Take that energy and put it into worship with God. Imagine that. Imagine that.
Sometimes, if we've been in the reformed churches for a while, we struggle with this singing worship thing sometimes. And I might not be speaking for you. I might just be speaking from my own experience. But sometimes we can tend, we can come in and we realise again how sinful we are, how broken we are, and we are. But that's where it stops.
And we don't feel like singing very much. We don't feel very joyous because we feel horrible. We feel powerless. We feel broken. And we are.
But God is good. God is mighty. God is Saviour. God is Lord. God is sovereign.
And if we don't sing, if we don't open up our hearts, if we don't put all that energy into worship, it's because we're not yet thinking about Him, we're still stuck with us. We're still stuck with our own situations, own problems. We're still thinking about us. We're not thinking about Him. We're stuck with our sin, not with our Saviour.
We need to be thinking about Him. Now the Bible says that there is rejoicing with God. God rejoices when we confess our sin and we trust in Him. How cool is that? God rejoices.
God sings. God is happy when we say, God, I am broken and I really need You, but You are worthy and You are good. God rejoices. He smiles on that. And so if God rejoices like that, when we get right with God, then they should be rejoicing with us when we know we are right with Him.
If God is singing, we should be singing. If God's celebrating, we should be celebrating. And so we move then from our sin to our Saviour. We move from sin to song. It's such a great opportunity for us to grow our spirituality during this time of Christmas.
Especially in view of our Christmas carols tonight. A whole service of singing and worship. Open yourself up this morning, this week, to experiencing God deeper through worship. Think about what you're seeing. Think about those words.
Let the emotion of the moment overtake you just a little bit more. Us guys, I'm talking to the blokes now especially, we struggle with this emotion thing sometimes, don't we? It's a bit weird for us to sometimes be emotional and expressive. We don't do the singing thing especially very often. Now the girls, they've got their glee, they've got their musicals and so on.
When guys are around a car dropping in a new engine, you don't see them break out into song. Now, alright, you do the lead, I'll do the harmonies. You do the dance moves, I'll follow. Anything like that. It just doesn't happen.
But I've been wrestling with this, you know. I might not do that, but boy do I get emotional at a rugby game when a Springbok winger scores an amazing try. Now, if I'm in the stand, I'm doing fist pumps, I'm shouting loud, I'm emotional. Or if I'm playing volleyball and I smash a perfect lion hit, I do a lot of fist pumps. I'm excited about that one.
I'm emotional. I'm expressive. So how often do I do that? But when I come to worship my Saviour, my God, who has done this amazing thing, who has won the ultimate game, why do I stand like this and sing? Why?
I know worship is a matter of the heart. So why don't I sing the loudest, most expressive song? The biggest victory song that there ever is. All of my expressions are an outflow of what's going on in my heart, isn't it? So for us guys or everyone really, if we'll do this at a sporting event, when someone does something amazing and you leap out of a seat when something just crazy happens.
If you move your body with excitement. How about this? The tomb is empty. Sin and death has been won. Conquered.
Overcome. I think we can move our body for that one.