THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"The World Turned Upside Down"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) December 11, 2005; No. 3284 |
Dear
radio friends,
There are very few who celebrate
Christmas the way the virgin Mary celebrated it. When
she contemplated the coming of God’s Son into this world to be the only Savior, she
exalted God and she saw the work of God in glorifying Himself alone.
We find her words recorded for
us in the Scriptures in Luke 1:51-53. This is
part of Mary’s “Magnificat,” her song of praise to God as she contemplates
that she will be the mother of God in the flesh — the promised Savior. We read, “He hath shewed strength with his
arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and
exalted them of low degree. He hath filled
the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” Those words of Holy Scripture, as I said, are
taken from the “Magnificat,” the song of Mary that burst from her heart after
she heard Elisabeth greet her as “the mother of my Lord.” If you study Mary’s song as it is recorded
in Luke 1:46ff., you will see that her song is saturated with the Old Testament
Scriptures. All the words are taken from the
Psalms and from I Samuel 2. And all of them
are arranged in her heart after she has seen, by grace, into the heart of God’s
purpose in sending His Son into the world. She
sees that in the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah, God shall bring down the proud and
will exalt the lowly; that God will turn upside down the judgment of God. He will turn topsy-turvy the thinking of man. He will turn the tables on man. He will reverse man’s thinking. He will bring down the proud and He will exalt the
lowly. We must see that today, too, if we are
to truly rejoice in the birth of Jesus Christ.
There is no aspect of the gospel
that is so distorted, twisted, and misunderstood than that of Christ’s birth and the
reason for His birth. For many, if we were to
ask the question: “What does it mean
that Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem,” they would respond, “Well, it has to do
with some vague feeling of goodwill among men; some good cheer at this holiday season;
some friendliness that ought to last for the entire length of the year.” Others would answer the question, “Well, this
is a call for action among men. It is a call
for no war and the abolishment of armaments and the call that all nations join together in
one and become friendly.”
But Mary, the Holy Scriptures,
and God Himself see it otherwise. Mary, in
the words that I read, as she is inspired by the Holy Spirit, sees that the coming of
Jesus Christ has to do with what God will do — that God is intent to cast down the
proud, the mighty, and the rich, and that He shall exalt, by grace, the lowly, the weak,
and the poor in spirit. It has to do with the
fact that God will topple man in His pride and He will exalt His own love and grace in
Jesus Christ. In the words that I read (Luke
1:51-53), Mary is seeing into the heart of it. She
sees the coming of God’s Son, the Messiah, as the complete reversal of man’s
thinking. The world will be turned upside
down. Man shall be brought down. Sinful man shall be made low. God, and God alone, in His grace shall be
magnified. That is what the coming of Jesus
Christ in Bethlehem is all about.
Mary is given here a glimpse
into God’s purpose in the sending of His Son via the virgin birth. It has become clear to Mary by the revelation of
the Holy Spirit in her heart. By grace she
has caught a glimpse of God’s purpose in the sending of His Son. The birth of Jesus Christ is, after all, the
central moment in all the history of the world. It
is the center. It is the most significant
thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind.
For this (namely, His birth) all else was before, and because of His birth all has
been since. We read in Galatians 4 that in
the fullness of time God sent forth His Son. The
fullness of time, that is, the birth of Jesus, is the focal point of human history.
But what was God’s purpose? Why? What
was in God’s heart when He gave His Son to appear on earth, born of a virgin, now in
human flesh? It is this that Mary sees. Her eyes have been opened through the Old
Testament Scriptures. And in a moment it
becomes very clear to her. It becomes clear,
not only the wonder that she was to be the virgin mother of the Messiah, that she was to
be the human agent to accomplish God’s purpose.
That in itself was staggering. But she
realizes that the purpose was to bring honor and glory to God alone. She becomes very clear as to what God’s
purpose is in the gift of His Son. God has
done this to bring low man pride and to exalt His grace.
It all, so to speak, comes together in her mind.
And with a thrill in her soul she sees that God has turned on its head all of
man’s notions of greatness, power, and riches; that God is bringing man low and
exalting Himself highly; and that God, by the gift of Christ, is abasing human pride and
magnifying His grace.
She may not have been able to
express that truth in all of its wonderful theological truth. That clarity was to follow. But she saw what the apostle Paul saw, when he
wrote, in I Corinthians 1, that the purpose of God is always that no flesh should glory in
His presence, but that he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. She sees the coming of Christ in theocentric
terms. That word means
“God-centered” terms. She sees that
Christ’s birth has everything to do with God and how He shall glorify Himself.
So she says, “My soul doth
magnify the Lord” in the gift of the Messiah.
This is what she says she saw
first. She says that the coming of Christ
into the world was entirely of God and of what God would do. We read, He hath shown the strength of His arm (or
His might) — unaided, calling for none to help Him, resting satisfied in His own
strength — God has brought this to pass.
Christmas is not about what man
is going to do. It is all about what God has
done. It is the record of His activity. It is the revelation of His glory. The Christmas gospel is not first the call to us
to do something. It is not the call to be at
your best, put into effect in society a spirit that will bring peace. Here is God’s Son, now what should we do? But the Christmas message is, first of all, a
declaration of what God has done. He has
exalted Himself. He has shown the strength of
His saving grace.
Secondly, Mary sees the coming
of Christ as something that is certain, bringing a sure salvation. We should note the tense in which Mary is singing. She sings in the past tense, as if it is an
accomplished fact. She sings: “God hath showed His strength; He has
scattered the proud; He hath put down the proud in their imagination; He hath
filled the hungry.” All of those things
were yet to be in the future. All the work of
Jesus Christ was yet in the future — what He must yet do upon the cross and in the
resurrection. Yet, she is speaking as if it
has all been achieved. The child in her womb
has just been conceived. She is in the very
first months of her pregnancy. Yet, in her
womb is the key to all the future. In her
womb is the mighty God, the One through whom God has willed to triumph. She sees God’s purpose in Jesus Christ as
certain and sure.
And the third thing that she
sees is that God’s purpose in Christ is exactly to turn the world upside down —
that there shall now be a complete reversal of man’s thinking, that man’s notion
shall be turned down or reversed and God shall be exalted.
The coming of Christ will cut across man’s thinking. The proud, the mighty, the rich shall be
scattered, shall be brought low, shall be sent away empty.
The exact opposite shall happen through the birth of Jesus than what man would
think.
Mary sees that in herself. She refers to herself as a handmaiden, a
slave-girl. There is the upside-down again of
man’s thinking. Whom would we pick to be
the mother of the Son of God in the flesh? We
would look for the lofty, and for beauty, and for power, and for regal splendor. But God finds just a handmaid, an unknown little
girl, a teenaged girl. God is going to bring
man down and He is going to exalt His grace alone.
What was God doing in sending
Jesus Christ into this world? What was He
doing? He was turning men upside down. Everything that pointed up to man (his pride, his
strength, his glory) God brings it all down. What
points down to man (God, grace, sin/redemption) God turns that around and exalts Himself. The tables were turned on man’s estimations.
Note what Mary says. First of all, “He hath scattered the proud in
the imagination of their hearts.”
The imagination of the heart is
a figurative expression for man’s pride, for his haughtiness, for his arrogance, when
man thinks himself to be something. We find
this expression often in the Scriptures. For
instance, in Jeremiah 3:17 we find that there are men who walk after the imagination of
their evil heart. That is for man to say,
“We know, we can solve. Obedience to God
is not the way. Submission to a Bible is not
the truth. We can discover truth. We can make our own way.” That is when men begin to imagine themselves to be
great. We are the experts. We are the brainy people. We are puffed up.
We are proud of our learning and of our power.
We begin to dream of how much we will be able to do.
We will fantasize of our glory. In
Jesus’ day the world was simply full of it.
We must not think that pride and
great imaginations of what man can do are something original to our society. Oh, no. The
Greek philosophers and their Roman followers (or clones) were all about that. The Greek philosophers said, “We are man, and
we will put God on the table and we will dissect him.”
In the coming of God’s Son,
God declares that He has scattered the proud in their imaginations. He has blown them away. He has exposed their folly. He declares that man, of himself, cannot know the
truth, cannot solve his problem of sin unless God reaches down in grace and instructs him
and gives him to believe Jesus Christ. He
will remain in ignorance and in the darkness of his unbelief. God declares that man in his wisdom cannot save
himself. Man in his wisdom is proud and he
will not acknowledge that his problem is sin.
He will say the reverse: Man is
developing, man is improving, man will save himself.
But God, in the gift of His Son, by giving His Son to be the sin-bearer in human
flesh, has made them look silly in the coming of His Son.
Man says, “We are sufficient. We
know where we came from, we know where we are going.”
And God gives His Son into the world and God says to man, “No, you do not. You cannot save yourself.” God says, “I can put the truth right before
you, and you will reject it. You cannot find
your way. I must bring salvation to
you.” God has scattered the haughty. And the gift of Christ, that manger in Bethlehem,
declares that man is fallen. He is foolish,
he is blind, he is haughty, he is a dreamer. And
only God’s Son in the flesh can bring him to light and salvation. The gospel sweeps away as dust all the philosophy
of man. It throws it out the door and
declares that there is one way to truth. And
that is only through Jesus Christ.
But Mary says there is more. She says that God hath put down the mighty from
their seats. Seats refer to thrones. It is a reference to the status of man, to his
power. It is a reference to leaders of the
world, to corporate executives, to politicians, to kings who boast of their power. God always brings down human power. Man says, “We will accomplish our agenda. We will rule, we will control, we will manipulate. We shall succeed.”
But in the sending of His Son,
God puts down the mighty. He dethrones the
mighty. He declares that all human might is
vain and worthless. He declares that no
matter how a man strives to accomplish his own ends, he is but flesh, he is but grass. He cannot do it.
By the giving of His Son God declares that all power and all might is His and His
alone; that He alone can be a Savior; that He has the might to save and none else. He declares that all are judged by Him, the living
God, as sinners. And He alone has the way of
salvation, freely by grace, in His Son.
Then, thirdly, Mary says that
the rich hath He sent away empty. Rich, here,
is in the moral sense, not the financial sense, but rich in the sense of those who pride
themselves as being better than others and therefore can catch the eye of God.
In Jesus’ day it was the
Pharisee who prided himself in his morality and who said, “We, we are the people of
God. We have done great things. We deserve much more than others, for we are of
good stock.” It refers to those who are
self-righteous. When the self-righteous and
the morally perfect stand before the Christ child in the manger, they go away empty. They go away sorrowful. Why? Because
the coming of this Son declares to them that they are nothing but miserable, naked, filthy
sinners. That there is none good, no not one. That unless Christ dies, all are damnable and
cannot save themselves. They go away empty. Those who trust in themselves that they are
righteous, that they are good in themselves, are sent away empty by the Christ child. For the Christ child declares that all are undone,
naked, empty-handed sinners.
Oh, God has turned upside down
man’s thinking in the birth of His Son. He
declares now those who are blessed. The world
says they are blessed who are wise, who are proud, who are powerful, who are influential,
rich, and have many resources. And in the
sending of His Son, God reverses that. He
turns the applecart over. And He says that
those who are blessed are the ones who are saved by this mighty Savior and who, therefore,
are given to know, by God’s grace, that they are, of themselves, foolish and hopeless
and unworthy sinners.
This is the whole Bible. The whole Bible declares that they are blessed who
are by grace given to be made poor and contrite and broken sinners, whose trust is in this
little child: Jesus Christ, the Savior. Is that true for you?
The blessing is found in these
things first in Jesus Christ. God gives true
knowledge and wisdom. He gives us to know
God. Christ is given to bestow upon us the
true knowledge of God in the heart. He is
given to reveal it unto us. By faith in this
Christ child, as our Savior from sin, we are made truly wise. We are given to know ourselves as hopeless
sinners. We are given to know the excellency
of the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Apart
from faith you can know nothing. Only
through faith in this Christ child do you know what man is:
a sinner. Only then do you know what
life is: Christ. Only then shall you know what the world is all
about. Only by faith in this Christ child is
there knowledge.
Secondly, in Christ God has
exalted those who are of low degree. He has
exalted those who belong to Him, those who are given that condemning knowledge of their
own sin. He has exalted them in the sense
that He has saved them from their sins. Your
name might not appear on the New Year’s list of the great accomplished men or women
of the world. But, if you are a son or
daughter of God, if you belong to this Christ child, you are blessed. You are blessed in Him. You are exalted in Christ. You are a forgiven sinner, heir of life eternal.
Then, thirdly, Mary says that in
Jesus Christ we are filled with righteousness. He
hath filled the hungry with good things; the rich he hath sent away empty. Those who are morally complacent in themselves,
who trust in themselves, find nothing in Christ. But
those who are hungry, those who know themselves to be sinners, those who know themselves
vile and cannot understand why God would have anything to do with them, those who confess
with the apostle Paul that in their flesh dwells no good thing and who, therefore, go on
to say with him, “Oh, wretched man that I am” (Rom. 7), they shall be filled. They shall be filled with Christ and His
righteousness. This is why God sent His Son
— to fill us up with salvation. The
destitute, the empty, the hungry, the impoverished — they are filled with the grace
of salvation in Christ Jesus. And God, and
God alone, does this.
This is what God has done in the
birth of Jesus Christ. This is what Christmas
is all about. Do you believe this? Or are you too wise for these things, too
self-reliant, too rich in yourself, too proud to bow before a manger, a dirty stable, an
infant child — God in the flesh, the only way of salvation!
If that is true of you, that you
are too wise, too self-reliant, too rich in yourself and you say, “Well, his coming
is significant, it just shows us what we can do if we put our minds to it,” if that
is your response, repent! Cast away the awful
pride that is around your spiritual neck and that will choke you and damn you.
But, by grace, all those who
embrace this child, who see themselves in shame for their pride, who see themselves as
powerless to save themselves, indeed, naked, who see themselves as empty-handed and do
nothing to save themselves but, by a wonderful grace, embrace this Child Jesus who is
everything now to them, these are the ones whom God exalts.
God says you are blessed in Him. You
are blessed forever. You are made wise to
know. You are exalted in the strength of the
Lord. You are filled with His righteousness.
This is what God has done in the
giving of His Son. Let us go to Bethlehem. Let us bow before Him there. And let us rejoice in the overflowing of
God’s grace.
Shall we pray?