Praying the Attributes of God

Introduction

Opening: In order to love somebody you have to know them. This is one of the things that makes marriage so sweet. My wife and I have been married for just about thirteen years, and I'm still learning new things about her. And with every new thing I learn, it adds to my love.

Personal: In the same way that I must know my wife in order to love her, we must know the character of God, the attributes of God in order to love him. The unfortunate reality is that many people who take the title Christian in today's world, don't actually know God. They know a caricature of God, often times that is more fashioned out of their own desires of what they want God to be like rather than what He is actually like. And the great problem with this is that while many people think themselves spiritual in some way, it means nothing if they don't actually know God on his terms through his Son Jesus Christ.

Context: Today, is the second week of Advent. And as we shared last week, Advent is a chance to reorient. Today’s passage is one of those very precious passages in Scripture. It comes from the mouth of Mary, the mother of Jesus. If you remember Mary’s story, an angel appeared to her and told her she would conceive, and give birth to a child, and he would be called Emmanuel, which means God with us. In those days, being pregnant out of wedlock was not only a shameful thing but it could be a dangerous thing, and so she went and visited her relatives, Elizaebeth and Zechariah. And while she was visiting them, young Mary prayed this short but very powerful prayer. What I want to do today is look at mary’s prayer through a particular lens. Mary’s prayer is saturated with knowledge of God’s attributes, what he is like. This young girl really knows God personally. So today, we’ll consider five attribtues of God that we discover in Mary’s prayer, and how those attributes can shape your own prayer life.

Luke 1:46–56 “And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on 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 for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; 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 offspring forever.” And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.”

Meaning & Application

#1 PRAYING GOD’S INDEPENDENCE (46-47)

The first attribute is God’s independence, we oftentimes call this his aseity. Mary begins her prayer, Luke 1:46–47 “And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” Here, Mary begins her prayer by addressing “God.” She had a very definite understanding of the type of God she was praying to. This was not a God like the so called pagan gods of the surrounding nations, who are born and can be killed and squabble over petty arguments. The true God, the living God, is independent. What is meant by this is that God is completely sufficient to himself. He exists wtihout any dependence on anyone or anything.

Outside Time & Infinite Regress: Let us develop this a bit so that you can see how it might impact your own prayer life. God is sufficient in and of himself. He needs nothing. He is not bound by time or space or matter. In fact he created time, space, and matter. Some people rather foolishly thought for centuries that time and space and matter have existed for eternity past. But science has shown now, what the Bible has always said, that the universe came into being. What caused this event of creation? It was someone outside of time, outside of space, not consisting of matter. It was God. People often ask well then who created God. Nobody. He is uncreated. He is before all things, and exists outside of all things. He created all things, but was not created himself.

Apostle Paul at Athens: The Apostle Paul at Athens gets at this as he is speaking in speaking in the Areapogus. He says,

Acts 17:24–25 ESV

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

This idea really gets at the essence of God. And if we are going to approach God we must have a rightful sense of his aseity. God does not need us. He does not need us in order to be fulfilled. He does not need us in order to be satisfied. God is perfect in and of himself. The popular image of God in our media, of some character fawning over men to try to win their approval is not true. AW Tozer says it this way

Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can bring to Him who is complete in Himself.

What This Does For Us: How ought this impact your prayer life? In a very important way. Consider Isaiah 66:1-2.

Isaiah 66:1–2 “Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

In that passage God is saying, “I don’t need anything because I made everything, and I sustain everything.” In other words, “I am totally independent of everything I have created.” And yet, look at the end of verse 2. Who is the one who God will look upon. It is the humble and the contrite of spirit.

Our Great Need of Him: Bringing the attribute of God’s aseity into our prayer lives helps us to realize that the only thing we have to offer God is our great need of him. It places us in a posture of dependence and humility, which is the only right posture in prayer. It removes all sense of pride in prayer. When you approach God in prayer, do you have a sense of your utter dependence on him?

What a God!: Secondly, this attribute of God ought to make a person bow down and say, “What an amazing God I have.” Or like Mary, “The mighty one has done great things for me.” Isn’t that the sense of this entire prayer. What an incredible, mighty, overwhelming God! God is independent. Does this describe your thoughts on God. If not, you might not know God. And I don’t want you to be deceived.

#2 PRAYING GOD’S HOLINESS

The second attribute, and very much related tot he first, that we see Mary bring into her prayer is God’s holiness. Mary prays in Luke 1:49, “for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Holy is his name. In those days names defined a person. Jacob was called Israel because he wrestled with God which is Israel means. Boaz was named Boaz because the name means strength, and he was a strong man of God. God, holy is his name. It is who He is. Just as light is the essence of the sun, holiness is the essence of God. Who he will always will be. Mary sees this as a source of strength. She says it immediately after praying the wonderful and mighty things God has done for her.

Entirely Other: When we speak of God’s holiness we are referencing two ideas that work together to form one idea. On the one hand is God’s nature as entirely other, or perhaps the language of set apart captures it best. Closely knit to that idea is the idea that God perfectly righteous, and true, and good. There is no wickedness in him. He is tainted by sin or by pollution or perversion in any way. God is Holy. You might recall Isaiah chapter 6 when the prophet has the vision of God in his throne room, and the angels cry out before God,

Isaiah 6:3 “And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!””

How Ought This Impact Us: How ought this impact us in our prayer life? Let me give a few responses.

A True Sense of Our Own Corruption: A true sense of God’s holiness ought to reveal in you increasingly a true sense of your own corruption of heart. Just as oil separates from water, the depth of our own corruption of heart, when before God ought to be starkly seen. When you know the purity of God’s holiness, there is a sense that you hate to bring the impurity of your own life into his presence. Because you see that as beautiful, and when you’re honest about your own corruption of heart, your false thoughts and false actions, you can’t stand to bring that into his presence. But then of course you look to Christ and know that if you are in Christ, God no longer sees your sin, but sees Christ’s righteousness covering you, and you are welcomed in. What humility we ought to have.

An Inward Desire for Holiness: Second, the knowledge of the purity of God’s holiness, ought to inspire in us a desire for holiness in our own lives. Our holiness is a derivative of God’s holiness, it comes to us from God. God is the primary and only cause of all that is holy in this world. It is just as James says in James 1:17,

James 1:17 ESV

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Every bit of holiness in our life is has flowed into our life from the source of all holiness, from God. Holiness in our life ebbs and flows with our days. Though we are filled by the Spirit and equipped for holy living, each of us also wrestle with the flesh and often fall into sinful behaviors, into unholiness. But God stands ever ready with an infinite pool of holiness to pour into your life, ready whn you ask.

Do you have a desire for holiness? Oh friends, if you do not, I am not confident that you know God as He truly is. To know God, is to desire holiness in your life.

#3 PRAYING GOD’S IMMUTABILITY

The third attribute of God we see is God’s immutability. Immutability means unchanging,w hich simply means that God does not change. How precious this is attribute is to the soul if we rightly understand it. See how Mary prayed this attribute in verse 50.

Luke 1:50 ESV

And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

Mary knew that the way God dealt with her fathers and her father’s fathers woudl be consistent with how he dealt with her because he was unchanging.

Malachi 3:6 ESV

“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.

Change is Inevitable: Change is inevitable isn’t it? Our environment changes as people we know and love come and go, enter our lives and leave as quick as they came. Our society changes as policies develop and civilizations rise and decline. Our families change as young children grow up into young adults, and we ourselves grow older each day. It is a running joke between my wife and I to find the newest gray hairs sprouting on the sides of our head. To age is to change. To live is to change. To make decisions and navigate life is to change. This is one of the hardest parts of being a parent. You watch your kids change in front of you, and you just wish you could keep them right as they are. But you can’t.

God Does Not Change: You see, if God changed his character or his plan, or his ways of relating with us, then we would be without hope. For who could know at any given time what God expected of them. But unlike us, God does not change.

His Wisdom: His wisdom does not change: The same wisdom he granted Solomon is the same wisdom that can guide us today. Culture may change, the specific challenges we face may change, but the wisdom needed to navigate them, fixed. Oh that's good news.

His Law: His law does not change. God's sense of morality, what is right, what is wrong. What his judgment will be on the day we die, has not changed. The same code of morality that guided Moses, that Christ lived by, is the same code of morality that we are to walk by.

His Means of Relationship: God’s means of relating to us have not changed. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the USA, or India, or China. God has made one way under heaven for sinful man to be in relationship with him, and that is through Jesus Christ.

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

His Love: His love does not change. When a person repents of sin, truly trust in Jesus as their Lord, we are told that God's love is poured into their heart in a life changing way. That person is never the same. That love cannot change. His love for you does not dwindle when you are weak. It does not leave you when you fail. God’s love for you through Christ your savior is fixed. What else in this world can you rely on.

Romans 8:38–39 ESV

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Illustration: James & Rita Alzheimer's: I read of this story one time that has always stuck with me. James had a beautiful wife that he loved, her name was Rita. They had a wonderful marriage. All their life they had loved Jesus. God had opened wonderful opportunities in their life, he had been mentored and discipled by the legendary CS Lewis. As James and Rita approached their later years, Rita went to the hospital one day and discovered that she was developing Alzheimer's. Here is this older couple going through this discovery and wrestling with how do God’s promises help me here. In an interview James says:

“You see,” he started, looking over at his bride, “Rita is worried that as she loses her memory, she will forget Jesus.” James glanced at us but continued to talk to her. “So I remind her, what matters is not that you remember him, but that he remembers you.”

Our Prayer Life: How ought this impact your relationship with God.

Assurance: First, if you are in Christ, it ought to give you what the old timers called an assurance of salvation, that does not waver as you waver. It ought to make a Christian run to God all the time, commune with God, honest with God. For he is the great constant in your life. His banner is ever on the horizon, it never comes down.

To Those Apart From This: Second, to those who have not truly repented of their sin, acknowledged in full to God, turned from it, and received the love of God through Christ, this reality of God ought to make you run towards his. He is a rock to build your house upon. He is a stable ground to build your life upon. All other ground is sinking sand, but Christ remains steadfast.

#4 PRAYING GOD’S MERCY

Fourth, Mary prayed God’s mercy. We see this in verse 50 these words.

Luke 1:50 ESV

And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

God’s mercy is a result of God’s goodness. God has an innate propensity to pity and help those who are in misery. The writer Thomas Watson wrote of God’s mercy, that it is his “darling attribute.” In other words, though God has other attributes like wrath, and anger towards sin, his mercy is most often spoken of. Thomas Watson writes,

“The bee naturally gives honey, it stings only when it is provoked; so God doees not punish till he can bear it no longer.”

The Pinnacle of God’s Mercy: All through Scripture we see God offering mercy to us. Forgiving again and again and again and again. The pinnacle of God’s mercy is the cross. Where Christ was crucified underneath the wrath of God. In that moment, God’s mercy is most easily seen because it was us who had earned the wrath of God. It was our sin that belonged underneath his judgment. But God loved us so much, he could not bear for his beloved to undergo such wrath, that he sent Christ to undergo the wrath of God on our behalf. And when we place our faith in Jesus. When we believe that God is really willing to forgive all of our sin, God has mercy on us. Rather than wrath, we get adoption. Rather than judgment, we get the filling of the Holy Spirit. Rather than being cut off, we get a new family with a great inheritance.

For Those Who Fear Him: Look carefully at Mary’s words. Who is it that receives this overwhelming mercy, it is those who fear God. Those who see Him as God and position themselves underneath his authority. The person who does not fear God is still acting as their own God, they are acting in defiance of God. God’s mercy is not for everybody, it is for those who fear him. And the greatest act of demonstrating that you do not fear God is to not receive His Son whom He sent.

What Ought This Do: What ought this do to our prayer lives

Delighting in God: First, it ought to make us run to him, for if we have been adopted into his family through faith in Jesus Christ, then there is nothing we could ever do that cut off the faucet of his divine mercy. It is an everflowing fountain that he delights for us stand beneath, and wash ourselves in. His mercy does not run out. What hope does this give sinnerrs like us who sometimes make the same mistakes over and over again.

#5 PRAYING GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE

Fourth, we consider the attribute of God’s omnipotence. God’s omnipotence is his perfect power over all things. He is not just powerful, he is perfectly powerful. Mary hints at this attribute in verse 51.

Luke 1:51 ESV

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

In fact in some ways every verse of this prayer can trace some root back to God’s omnipotence. Repeatedly she considers all that God has done. Nothing stands in God’s way. What he sets out to do, he accomplishes exactly as he sets out to do it. Many people have an image in their mind of two great powers, God and the Devil, vying for power, with the fate of the world held in their hands. No! The fate of every molecule is in his hands.

Prone to Questioning: We are prone to questioning God’s power, if not with our words then with our minds and with our actions. Like Martha who doubted the power of God to raise Lazarus from the dead when she looked at Jesus and said, “He has been dead four days.” Moses doubted God’s power when he asked God where the food would come from to feed all of Israel as they walked through the wilderness,

Numbers 11:21–23 ESV

But Moses said, “The people among whom I am number six hundred thousand on foot, and you have said, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat a whole month!’ Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, and be enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, and be enough for them?” And the Lord said to Moses, “Is the Lord’s hand shortened? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.”

This is great affront to God, to doubt his power. To doubt his power is to doubt that he is God. How do we doubt his power.

When We Cease to Pray: We doubt his power when we cease to pray for miraculous interventions in the lives of those we love. I am guilty of this. We begin to believe the lie that such a person is impossible to come to faith in Jesus, and so we grow weary in our prayers. No! God saved a wretch like you, he can save a wretch like them. Therefore this attribute ought to lead to Persevering Prayer. A prayer that is in it for hte long haul because you know you’re God is able!

When We Don’t Believe God Can Change Us: Secondly, when we don’t believe God can change us. One of the most common question I get from people is something like this. “Pastor, I see you up there with all this passion for God, but honestly I just don’t have a passion like that. My relationship with God feels distant, it feels forced at best.” Now, there can be a number of factors that cause that. If you ongoing sin that is unrepented of, that will hinder you. If you’re undisciplined, that will hinder you. But do you know the only thing that can make your heart beat for God. It’s not more discipline. It’s not thinking happy thoughts. It’s God. Only can give you a desire for God. Only God can make your heart beat for God. But here’s good news, haven’t we already seen that God is merciful, and he loves to give good gifts to his children. If that is you today, be like the man in Christ’s parable that would not take for an answer, and kept knocking on the door until the neighbor answered. How much more does your heavenly father delight in giving good gifts to his children.

Closing

Today, we have considered an aspect of prayer that perhaps has been overlooked, how to pray the attributes of God. But in reality, the conversation has gone further, we’ve looked at who God is and how to relate to him as a whole. The centrality that he ought to have in our lives. As Advent continues, now is the time to reflect on life. Now is the time to ask the hard questions. Where are you with God?

Transition to Reflective Prayer by Groups