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Angels We Have Heard on High
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Joy to the World
My Soul Magnifies the Lord

Luke 1:46–55 “And Mary said, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has begun to rejoice in God my Savior, because he has looked upon the humble state of his servant. For from now on all generations will call me blessed, because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name; from generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him. He has demonstrated power with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position; he has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.””

Introduction
Pray, Introduce.

Introduction: Story about going home for Christmas, reading old letters and pictures, Town of Iola.

Instantly, As I’m reading these old letters, and the backs of these pictures, my brain goes into interpretation mode.

—Written in a different time, a different culture, a different geography. And whether I realize it or not, all of those factors play into how I read these Old letters.

Because they weren’t written to me, so I have to fill in the gaps and interpret based on when they were written.

Which is a lot like the way we ought to read God’s word.

We’re doing a short series I’m calling “The Sword” In which I walk you through how to properly read God’s word, and take into account the language, the culture, the context, so that you can accurately handle god’s word.

Narratio
So for this series, sermons are going to look a little different.
If I’m completely honest, I don’t even know if it’s going to work.
Because I’m testing out a new preaching method
My hope, through this series, is that you all learn and grow, and are better students of God’s word as a result of this series,
Let me lay out exactly what it is that I’m going for here.
When I start a series, when we go through a book of the Bible, when I’m preparing a sermon, there is a process that I go through when I read scripture
There’s a methodology to how I will read a text, what types of questions I ask, what types of things I look for
So that I can discern the meaning of the text, understand the original intent of the passage.
So that i can draw out the “big idea” from the passage.
And then I take that big idea, and I package it up in a sermon
I try to think of cute little stories that I can tell that illustrate the big idea
I try to break down the big idea into smaller points,
I try to think of examples in other places this big idea shows up in scripture
I try to think of ways that the big idea can be applied directly to your lives
Whether you realize it or not, I will think through these points and examples and applications, and I will ask myself
“How would Marie respond to this example?”
Is this application going to be helpful for Terri?
Is this illustration going to resonate with Nancy?
And then I will take all of that information, all of those questions, and I will organize in a way that makes sense
I’ll give it a theme, and a title, and give it an introduction, and transitions, and a conclusion that really helps to drive home the point.
And my thought with this series, is basically, what would it look like, if we peeled back all of that extra stuff that I put on the text,
The examples, and the illustrations, and the structure
And I was able to bring you all into the process before the sermon writing begins, to that initial phase of reading the Bible and trying to understand what it means
That method.
What would it look like if you could sit over my shoulder while I’m reading the passage, and see what types of questions I’m asking, what types of things am I looking for, what steps am I taking in the Bible study process
It’s a lot like the saying if you give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.
The goal of this series is going to be to give you the tools to be able to sit down in front of any passage of scripture and draw out the “Big idea” for yourself.

Two weeks ago we laid the foundation for this project.
We talked about some rules and general principles. Guidelines that we should use when we study scripture

Very quickly here those are again
Be aware of your surroundings
Don’t assume you already know the answer
Don’t come to a conclusion until you’ve gathered all the facts

Be aware of your surroundings
in other words, understand the context of what’s going on when this passage was written. Who wrote, when did they write it, what happened right before this passage, what’s going to happen right after this passage.
Don’t assume you already know the answer
In other words don’t go to the bible looking to confirm something you already believe. Be open to allowing the Bible to change your mind. Don’t fall into “confirmation bias”
Don’t come to a conclusion until you’ve gathered all the facts
Every time you come up with a big idea you have to qualify it with “as long as my big idea agrees with the rest of scripture” Because you might read a passage, come up with a big idea, and then later on in scripture you find something that challenges the big idea you came up with the first go around
And you might have to revisit what you found in this passage, and update your big idea, give it some nuance, give it some qualifications.
And this begins the process of growing your network of understanding of scripture. And it is a process
And then, two weeks ago we started going through the methodology of placing our verse in context
We start way out and we look at how this passage fits within the grand story of the entire bible
And then we slowly zoomed in to the passage, looking at how if fits within the New or Old testament, looking at what genre the passage is, looking at how it fits within the particular book it is written in.

And that process, of understanding the big narrative of the bible, and genre works, is something that we simply don’t have time to do for 40 minutes on a Sunday.
At the start of the year, we’re going to start our mid week bible study up again, and walk you through that process, so if you’d like more of taht, please come to those.

Moving forward, we’re going to assume you have already done all of that
So that we can dive in to exactly how to actually read the text at hand

So if you have your bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 1, we’re going to be looking at verses 46-55
And we’re going to walk through step by step how to read this passage and draw out the big idea.

You should do this with every passage you study.

Summarize chapter(s) in your own words

You are going to read through all of chapter 1, and you’re going to write down a brief summary of what has happened in this section.

You’re not getting distracted, you’re not looking deep into any ideas yet, you’re just getting the facts. What happened.

That might look something like this

1:1-4 Luke explains that he’s writing an account to someone named theophilus, because he wants him to be sure of the things that he was taught—Theophilus is a greek name, it means “lover of God” It’s possible that he’s a person, or it’s possible he represents greek gentile Christians.

5-7 We’re introduced to Zechariah, he’s a priest and his wife elizabeth, they were good people, but they were old and couldn’t have a child

8-17 Zechariah is working in the temple, an angel shows up, and tells him he’s going to have a son, he’s going to be filled with the holy spirit, he’s going to turn people back go god, and be a forerunner before the lord

18-25, Zechariah doesn’t believe the angel, the angel makes it so he can’t speak, and elizabeth gets pregnant

And then we have a break, a new section,
Verses 26-27 we’re introduced to a virgin named mary and her fiance joseph, Implication there being she’s very young, she’s a virgin, so she can’t have a child

28-33 the same angel goes to mary, and says she’s going to have a child, and he’s going to be great, and sit on the throne of david

34-38 Mary doesn’t believe the angel, and he says teh HS will come upon her, and that the child will be the son of God

39-45 Mary goes to see elizabeth,
46-55 she sings a song praising God

57-66 John is born, Zechariah is able to speak again

67-79 Zechariah sings a song and prophesys praising God
Chapter 2, we get the story of Jesus being born, and we’ll stop right there.

You can do this as much as you need. The more the better.

Keep doing this all the way into chapters 3 and 4 if you need to.

But you’re summarizing what has happened.

Step 2, once you’ve done that, you’re going to go through the chapter, and start asking questions.

Ask questions, make observations

You’re going to pay close attention to key phrases and concepts, with your passage in the center
“So that” or “In order to”
Repetition
Contrasts
Cause/Effect
Transition words
Places, people, etc.

Therefore, but, then, after these things.

And as I go back through the chapter, now I’m a little bit closer to it.

I’m going to write down, or circle or highlight verse 4

Luke 1:4 NET 2nd ed.
so that you may know for certain the things you were taught.

That’s a cause and effect phrase. That’s the reason the book is being written.

I’m going to make a note of the places that are mentioned, and the people who are mentioned

This is going on during the reign of Herod, king of Jueda
I might want to put a question mark next to that. Who is herod, where is judea.

Zechariah is from the priestly division of Abijiah
I’m going to put a question mark next to that. It might be important to know who that is

Mary is in a toun called nazareth, that might be important, I might want to put a question mark next to that, that might be important

Repetition, I’m going to make a note that the angel gabriel shows up 2 times.
I’m going to make a note that we have a baby announcement 2 times
The holy spirit is going to be involved with the baby two times
The recipient of the message didn’t believe or didn’t understand two times
The child that is going to be born is going to do great things two times
The person who receives the announcement from the angel sings a song or a prophesy two times

At this point, hopefully it’s obvious that these two incidents, John’s birth and Jesus’ birth, are connected some how.

Then I’m going to start looking at contrasts. How are these two events different.

In one, it’s an old man, in the other it’s a young woman.
In one the old man is punished for not believing
in the other the young woman is not punished for not believing or not understanding
this might be a good place to put a question mark.

The text we’re studying is the song of mary, not the announcement, so we’re just going to put a pin in it for now.

But when you come back, and you study the announcements, that is probably going to be top of your list to look into.
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Once you’ve made all the observations you can think of, then you want to discern what’s relevant and what’s not for your passage.

This one is probably the toughest one.

This is the point in your bible study where you will probably start to pull your hair out the most.

Because now you have this big list of observations, and you’re trying to figure out what matters in terms of the passage you’re reading.

Some of it is going to be important, some of it is going to be important for a DIFFERENT section, but not the one you’re trying to read.

So you go through, and you look in your study bible, or your commentary, ok,
Who’s herod? and you read about him, and who he is, and what he did, and you find out all this information.

And you look at your passage and say , “maybe that’s realavent. Maybe not. I’m not seeing the connection”

You look up the priestly division of Abijiah. You find out in 1 Chron 24 that abijah was one of 24 priestly divisions who took shifts doing the temple work.

Is it relavent to our passage? Doesn’t look like it.

And as I said, this is the most frustrating part.

Because you’ve made all of these observations, and you don’t know which ones are relevant until you do the work.

But here’s the great thing.
You have that knowledge.
And there will come a time when that knowledge is relavent.

There will come a time in which you’re reading scripture and the name herod pops up.

And you’re going to say “oooh, I remember that one time I was studying luke and I found all of that information on the herod family. Let me go look that up again, because that’s going to be relavent here.

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So you go through that process, and to give you the quick version here, the big thing that stands out to me is that both Mary and Zechariah, sing a song of praise.

Mary and zechariah are opposites. If you did your research in part 1, you know that luke likes to use opposites to make a point
Male female pairs, old and young pairs. Rich and poor pairs.
That’s a technique Luke uses, and so we should see that these two songs sung by opposite pairs are going to relate to each other some how.

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With that data you’ve collected, now we can begin to zoom all the way in on our passage and study the small section.

And you’re going to make observations about the text. Anything you notice.

Contrasts
Comparisons
Lists
Cause and Effect
Figures of Speech
Conjunctions
Verbs
Pronouns

And all of this is on the handout

Read the section in multiple translations.
Notice where other parts of Scripture are being quoted
Circle key phrases that might require more historical background

Luke 1:46 NET 2nd ed.
And Mary said, “My soul exalts the Lord,
Luke 1:46 NIV
And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord
Luke 1:46 ESV
And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
Luke 1:46 NLT
Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.
Luke 1:46 NIrV
Mary said, “My soul gives glory to the Lord.

If you have tools to look up original languages, this is where you would do it. But you don’t have to. You have enough information to know that the word there has a wide range of meaning.

If you have multiple english translations, you’re going to

Luke 1:47 NET 2nd ed.
and my spirit has begun to rejoice in God my Savior,
Luke 1:47 NIV
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
Luke 1:47 ESV
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
Luke 1:47 NLT
How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!

Luke 1:46–47 NET 2nd ed.
And Mary said, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has begun to rejoice in God my Savior,
We’re reading poetry here.
Notice the repetition.
My soul exalts, my spirit rejoices

Circle those words draw an arrow from soul to magnify, and from spirit to rejoice

Luke 1:48 NET 2nd ed.
because he has looked upon the humble state of his servant. For from now on all generations will call me blessed,
Ooh, I’m circling that because. Any time you see the word “Because, so that, for, in order to” Circle that bad boy, that’s important.

Mary is exalting god, and her spirit is rejoice in God, why?
Because he looked upon the humble state of his servant

Luke 1:48 NIV
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed,

Mary rejoices, because God looks with favor on the humble, of the ones who serve him.

Let’s keep reading.

Luke 1:49 NET 2nd ed.
because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name;
we have a prounoun here, He, make sure we write down who he is: It’s God

And we have a list of qualities of God here in this verse.

We have another Because. let’s circle that, and bring it back to verse 47- 47.

Mary rejoice and exalts god because
He’s looked upon his humble servant

He’s mighty, because he’s done great things, because he’s holy.
He’s done great things,
his name is holy

Luke 1:50 NET 2nd ed.
from generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him.
You should notice, here the word generation gets repeated. You might want to circle that.

You get the idea.
We’re going to speed through this for sake of time here,

But we see
Luke 1:51-55

Luke 1:51–55 NET 2nd ed.
He has demonstrated power with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position; he has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

And because we noticed that this song is related to zechariahs song, let’s go ahead and read it, with the same method
Luke 1:68-79

Luke 1:68 NET 2nd ed.
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he has come to help and has redeemed his people.
Exact same idea as mary’s song. Notice the “Because” Zechariah blesses God because he helps his people

Luke 1:69–71 NET 2nd ed.
For he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from long ago, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.
Notice how both zechariah speak about salvation, mary calls God her Savior
Notice how both of them speak about God’s power.

Luke 1:72 NET 2nd ed.
He has done this to show mercy to our ancestors, and to remember his holy covenant—
“he has done this to” That’s another “because” word, to show mercy to our ancestors, and remember his holy covenant.

Mary talks about “Generations and Abraham” Zechariah talks about “ancestors and God’s covenant”

These are parallell ideas. God’s covenant was made to Abraham. God is faithful to it.

Luke 1:73–79 NET 2nd ed.
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham. This oath grants that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, may serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him for as long as we live. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s tender mercy the dawn will break upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

These two passages are telling the same story. Giving the same praise to God.

—And you’ll go through this process. Spend as much time as you need make observations of every little detail in the text as possible.

Spend some time on it, put the book away and come back to it the next day, and you will notice even more.

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And now. After all this time, we are ready to do what we set out to do, which is to discern the big idea of this text, and what it means, and how I can apply it in my life.

In this phase you are going to follow these exact steps in this exact order.

You can not do this out of order.

the previous steps, going from big sections down to little sections, you can do those steps out of order. it doesn’t matter.

Looking for historical information, and then looking at repetition and contrasts, you can do that stuff in any order, and it doesn’t matter.

These next few steps you have to do in order.

Determine what the passage meant to the original audience.

This is the part of the process that requires us to stop thinking about us, and start thinking about, what did it mean for them.

Remember in our summary, we determined that the original audience is “Theophilus” who was either a Greek Christian, or the name “lover of God” in greek represents Greek gentile Christians.
And they were being written to to know the certainty of what they had been taught.
The songs that we read lay out some important details about God

In response to the announcement of the Birth of Jesus, Mary praises god because
He looks with favor upon the lowly
He is mighty and merciful and powerful
He lifts up the poor, and humbles the mighty
And that he’s fulfilling the promise to the Israelites by showing mercy, and fulfilling the covenant to abraham, and sending the messiah, Jesus.

Both of these songs focus heavily on God’s response to Israel

We can assume that Luke’s gentile audience is also reading hte book of Acts..we know this because the book of Acts is also addressed to Theophilus.

The book of Acts is a book about the good news of God’s kingdom going out from the Jews to the rest of the earth, to the gentile nations. It’s the good news that God’s salvation is not only for israel, but it’s for all of the world.

And so for the gentile audience, they’re seeing the certainty of what they’ve been taught,—that Jesus is the Jewish messiah, that God first blessed the nation of Israel.

Everything they had been waiting for, all of the promises made to israel, all of the pain, all of the hardship they had gone through

In this moment, God was redeeming them through his son.

And so we might say, the purpose of this passage, what it meant to the original audience, was that God blesssed Israel, and he gave them the messiah they had been waiting for, because he cares for them, because he is mighty.

That’s the meaning for the original audience.

Step 2
2. We determine the big picture principle

here we have to keep in mind all of the ways we are different than the original audience, and all of the ways we are the same.

We’re not waiting for the Jewish messiah
We’re not in a culuture and time period where Jew and Gentile relations are tense
We’re not in a time where the transition from the Israelites being God’s people to all the world being God’s people is actively taking place.

But we are a gentile audience. We do need to recognize God’s movement through history.

And so the principlizing big picture idea for us, might be

God blesses his people, he keeps his promises. and he redeems the humble, because he is mighty.

3. Apply the principle to OUR situation

We can magnify the Lord. We can rejoice in our salvation as Christians.
We can trust that he keeps his promises.

The Christmas story, for them, was a moment in which God’s promises were revealed.

And we look back on that as a reminder that God remembers his people in their suffering. God keeps his promises, and from generation to generation, while we wait for him to fulfill his promises, we can be confident in his power and strength

We can be confident that he rules over all the earth, and has power and dominion over all things, all rulers, all principalities..

We have a promise that one day he will return, one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Christ is Lord

One day he will rule over the earth, and that all suffering will cease.

As we look back on the first coming of Christ, and what it meant to the people at the time

We can be encouraged that he will come again, that he will fulfill the promises he’s made to us.
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Silent Night! Holy Night!
King of Kings
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

My Soul Magnifies the Lord

Luke 1:51-55

Luke 1:68-79

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Luke 1:46GS-NETBIBLE

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