None Like You, God! - Luke 1:46-56

Manuel, God with us. I hope that each and all of you can rejoice as we sing that last song and the others as well. I enjoyed hearing our brother Matthew said that he He has come, or he said he will come, and he has come, and he will come again. Maybe we need to write a few more stanzas. Maybe our hymn writer Matthew could come up with another portion to that. Oh, rejoice. How much rejoicing we have, brothers. I was drawn to that last sentence. I've sung it many times before, but all peoples in one heart and mind. This is what God is doing. Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease. Fill the whole world with heaven's peace. This will one day be true, completely. We don't even understand that, I think, with all the strife and things and quarrels that we have and envy and you name it. What a verse. It just made me think of that, I just wanted to share.

Well, we are continuing the Gospel of Luke as we look at the narrative here of before the birth of Jesus. We are looking at chapter one. We're in verse 46 this morning. I want us to remember something pivotal, that God's ways are not our ways, not man's ways. He says in Isaiah 55, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. God's providence works many times in a completely different level than what you and I think things ought to go. Wouldn't you say that as we go through life and we think, well, it ought to go this way, and it just seems things get flipped on its head and God is working in these ways.

And it has been said that, I heard this said, that God's providence is like a wagon wheel. You kids, a wagon wheel is a big, big wheel that we used to use and wagon, horses would pull, but they had spokes on there. And so the spoke that's at the top, as the wagon wheel turns, the top one goes to the bottom and the bottom one goes to the top. We think about in man's way of working things, man puts something on a top and God puts it on the bottom and vice versa. The lowly and the humble God exalts. We see this time and time again where God says every valley shall be raised up and every mountain shall be made low. The providence of God easily cuts down those trees that think they are God's gift to the world. And he takes out of dry ground and brings out of nothing, makes what is out of what was not. God is pleased to look down upon the lowly. the ones that the world thinks are insignificant, the ones that you may feel this way today of being unnoticed, maybe even despised by the world. God looks upon this one. He comes to the poor and the hungry and the needy. He comes to the Elizabeths and the Marys, the Mary of Nazareth here. God loves to attend to the lowly, the humble.

And the passage this morning is Mary's exclamation of praise at what God has done. It's full of gospel teaching in this prayer, this exclamation, whatever we want to call it, as she is speaking of what God has done. who God is and what he has done. And so I pray this morning that the Spirit of God will instruct us this morning to believe like this young girl did, to take this young girl's example of this believer, Mary, and that we will learn much, that we will receive guidance, each of us, on this pilgrim way that we are on. I want to read just one little short poem of another poet before we read this passage. says this children of the heavenly King,

as ye journey, sweetly sing,

sing your Savior's worthy praise,

glorious in his works and his ways.

Let's pray before we read the text. Lord, help us as we seek to receive from you, revive our souls, I pray, that you would stir our spirits, Lord, we confess this morning that at times we fail to rejoice. We are slow to exalt and our hearts are quiet to sing. We confess, Lord, that we are many times more focused on our circumstances and too little on you and your majesty. We pray that we would have hearts, says Mary, that your word would teach us and redirect each of us, that our gaze would be upon the Savior, that we would exalt the Lord and rejoice in God, my Savior. May that be the prayer for each person here this morning. It's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen.