Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Introduction
There’s only one season of the year that has its own songs — Christmas.
I know that some of you likely have a love-hate relationship with Christmas music, especially if you’re a music person.
Over the years, the songs have become more and more trite and weird.
But, it’s also true that some of the richest, most glorious theology that the Church sings all year long is during the Christmas season.
Songs about who Christ is:
“Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
late in time behold him come,
offspring of the Virgin's womb:
veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th'incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel.”
(“Hark!
The Herald Angels Sing”, verse 2)
Songs about what Christ was born to accomplish:
“No more let sins and sorrows grow
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found” (Joy to the World, Verse 3)
Come on, yall!
Find me words the pack more punch with more beauty than those!
You see, you don’t just tell your family that your baby has been born.
You exclaim it!
You don’t just tell your best friend that your engaged.
You shout it!
And, you don’t just say that God was born as a baby to save you.
You sing it!
Some things are just too great, too wonderful, too magnificent to merely say.
God’s Word
This morning, we turn to the original Christmas carol.
The very beginning of the rich history of singing of our Savior’s birth.
And, it’s his mom, Mary, singing to God about the Savior growing in her womb.
It’s known as the Magnificat, and it’s a great place for us to think about Why We Sing: (headline)
We have “seen” God.
Handel’s Messiah is among the most significant musical compositions of the last 500 years.
In it, he arranges Biblical passages from Isaiah and the Gospels in musical form so that your heart soars when you hear them.
It provides both an explanation of Christ and a response to Christ in a way that provokes emotion and awe.
That’s really what Mary is doing here.
Mary quotes or alludes to no less than a dozen OT passages.
And, it’s both to further explain what’s happening and present a response to it by arranging these passages so that they provoke praise and awe.
I mean, she’s pregnant with the Son of God.
You can’t just say it!
So, she sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord!” She’s saying, “I see the Lord.
I really see Him!
I see Him at work by using me, and I see him at work by fulfilling his promises!”
There are two ways to “magnify”.
You can use a microscope to make something tiny look big, or you can use a telescope to make something that is enormous but appears small because of distance appear as it actually is.
That’s what Mary is doing.
She’s using her telescope to see God better.
And, what she sees is Good News.
When God is bigger, “problems” are “smaller”.
Luke 1:46-47 “And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,”
There’s a lot going on in Mary’s life.
She’s got real problems to deal with.
She’s an unwed mother betrothed to a man whose not the father in an honor/shame culture.
Yet, she sings, and she shows how we can sing when we’re tempted to be overwhelmed by life.
Mary has her telescope aimed at God so that she can see that her world revolves around him.
In fact, God-centeredness is a major theme for Luke in his gospel.
In Matthew the words “God” and “Lord” are used 59 times.
Luke uses them 194 times.
Especially notice the juxtaposition between “Lord” and “Savior.”
It’s a parallel; so, it’s two words that mean the same thing.
So, she could be tempted to look to her sin, and think, “There’s no way I’m up for this.
It’s too big.”
But, instead of seeing her sin, she looks at God and sees her Savior.
Her problems are melted down to size.
Corre Ten Boom says, “Look around, and you’ll be distressed.
Look within, and you’ll be depressed.
Look at God, and you’ll be at rest.”
Train your telescopes on him, brothers and sisters.
When God is bigger, “joy” is “greater.”
Luke 1:46-47 “And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,”
Art’s richest history is decisively Christian.
Why? God is more than our words can articulate.
God is beyond our imaginations’ ability to elaborate.
God is deeper than our philosophies can explicate.
That’s how art helps.
Art is what we use to attempt to express the inexpressible.
Hans Christian Anderson said: “Where words fail, music speaks.”
That’s what Mary does.
She magnifies God, and her heart overflows with joy that has to be expressed.
We can rejoice in God by magnifying him.
One way to see this as a cause and effect: She “magnifies” and then she “rejoices”.
We see him as He truly is and suddenly our problems shrink and our burden lightens and our heads our lifted.
We rejoice.
But, check this out.
These words are meant to be interchangeable too.
That is, another way to see this is as a statement and elaboration.
Not only do we rejoice in God by magnifying him, but we magnify God by rejoicing in him.
When we see him so clearly that our hearts are filled with joy, God is properly seen and exalted.
And so, magnifying leads rejoicing, and rejoicing leads to magnifying.
It’s the beautiful cycle of worship that keeps our hope fresh, our problems small, and our joy big.
So, singing exalts God, and it shrinks your problems.
And, the more you exalt God, the more your problems shrink, and the more you sing.
That’s why we sing.
God has “seen” us.
Tolstoy once said, “Music is the shorthand of emotion.”
It provides an outlet for that which we feel most deeply.
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