Blessed

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. There are many of you that have no concept. You never even think about whether or not you're blessed and highly favored.

Then there's others of you who do think about that, but you never really, you might not have the right idea of what that means. And I'm telling you, if you would get this concept, you would have captured the heart of the gospel and you would have captured the message that turned the world upside down and everything in it. Welcome back to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Bidevich, and we're excited to be jumping back into God's Word with you today. Imagine this with me. It's the first century A.D. You're a teenage girl, unmarried, and suddenly you learn that you've got a baby on the way. In that culture, that would be a huge scandal.

Your reputation would be ruined and you'd probably be a social outcast for the rest of your life. That was the situation that Mary faced when the angel told her that she would give birth to the Messiah. And yet she called herself blessed. Pastor J.D. 's explaining that biblical blessings don't always look like we think they should look like.

And that's actually a good thing. So let's jump right into Luke chapter one and a message titled Blessed. Today we're going to look at a concept that would make God personal to us if we would get it. And that is when we have the assurance that we are walking in the blessing and the favor of God. Now, the word blessed is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles.

If you have any exposure to Christianity, you've heard it. We use it, and I'm not always convinced. We really know or even think about what we mean by it. A lot of times the word just means rich, right? If someone's always blessed, that means someone's always got a lot of money.

Sometimes it means that things are going really well for you. You know, almost like it's a Christian version of being lucky. You know, it's a Christian version of may the odds ever be in your favor. In the South, we got a whole, all kinds of meanings for the term bless, right?

I mean, if you're not from the South, you probably pick this up. The phrase bless his heart. There's no blessing at all involved in that phrase.

Bless his heart means he's an idiot, right? Or it's one of those phrases where you can say it, and then you're excused for whatever comes after it, right? Like, you know, you can just say whatever you want, but I can assure you that what's coming after that is not blessing anybody's heart. It's kind of like one of those statements like no offense.

When somebody says no offense to me, I know that what's about to come out of their mouth is very offensive. So you know, so you got that element of blessing. Around here, people like to say it when other people sneeze, which nobody really knows why we say that. I think the most likely theory is that it goes back to the days of the black plague. And when somebody sneezed, it meant they were getting sick.

And if they got sick, they would likely get the black plague. And so you were saying a blessing over somebody really quickly so they wouldn't get the black plague. Regardless, we say it now. And just like all these other instances of saying blessing and favor, we use the word, but many of us have absolutely no idea what it means. When somebody says to me have a blessed day, I never do this, but sometimes I want to stop. So what does that mean?

What do you mean by that? If I were to make a list of the top five things that Christians are confused about, this would definitely be on that list. The phrase blessed and highly favored comes from a statement that the angel Gabriel made to Mary when he told her that she'd be pregnant with Jesus. That statement is found in Luke 1.

So if you have a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out now, open it to Luke 1. And I'm going to take you through a song that Mary wrote where she talks about being blessed. The angel says to her in verse 28, if you want to skim as you're getting there, the angel says to her, you are blessed and highly favored.

Elizabeth, who is Mary's aunt, I guess, her cousin, something like that. When she sees Mary, she uses the word blessed with her three times in two sentences. Verse 42, Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb. Verse 45, blessed is she who believed. Mary then composes a song in which she calls herself blessed and says pretty boldly, I might add, that from that generation forward, people would think of her as the picture of what it meant to be blessed. Luke 1 48, from now on, all generations will call me blessed.

So what does the word mean? You look in verse 46, you'll see a song that Mary composed. This is, incidentally, the first Christmas carol ever written. This song is about what it means to be blessed. And there are many of you that have no conscience. You never even think about whether or not you're blessed and highly favored. Then there's others of you who do think about that.

I say, how are you? You're like, I'm blessed and highly favored. But you never really, you might not have the right idea of what that means. And I'm telling you, if you would get this concept, you would have captured the heart of the gospel and you would have captured the message that turned the world upside down and everything in it. Let me read the whole thing, verse 46 through 55, and then we'll ask some questions about it. Here we go, verse 46. And Mary sang, this is in poetry, 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.

Four questions I want to ask about this song. Number one, would you have thought of Mary as blessed? If you had just met her on the street, had a conversation with her, found out about her situation in life, would you have looked at her and said, there is one blessed and highly favored? Number two, what was the nature of her blessing? Number three, what was the basis of her blessing?

And then we'll consider, are you living as one who is blessed and highly favored? Okay, so question number one, would you have thought of Mary as blessed? Again, if you just ran into her, found out the situation in her life, would you have said, there's somebody blessed and highly favored? Well, consider the fact that when Mary's, when this statement was made, you ought to think about the situation that she is in in her life. Her reputation, listen to this, had been irrevocably ruined, at least in her generation it was. A teenage girl pregnant out of wedlock in that culture was a serious scandal. You add to that the fact that she was engaged to another guy and that guy lived a good ways away, so everybody knew that the baby could not be his. She was considered a loose girl and a girl who had cheated on a very good and a very gracious fiance. By the way, the angel did not even tell Joseph about this pregnancy until several months later, which means that Mary had to endure this almost all by herself. And this stained reputation, by the way, would stay with her for the rest of her life. Even after Jesus died, there were people that still said that she had gotten pregnant because she slept with a Roman soldier.

That theory was still around. We know the early church talked about it long after Jesus had died. She had a reputation, and I want you to think about this very soberly, that was ruined by God. God did that to her, right? God didn't have to do it that way, did he? But God chose to do it that way and to ruin her reputation.

Would you have talked to her and said, there's a woman that is blessed and highly favored by God. Plus, she was very, very poor. Indications are she was the poorest of the poor.

Here's how we know that. The Jewish law said that when you had your firstborn son, only your firstborn son, you had to offer a lamb as a Thanksgiving offering back to God. Every Jewish family just about could do that. But the law made one exception, and that was if you were so poor, you could not afford a lamb, you could give two turtle doves, which was essentially pennies.

When Mary and Joseph offered a Thanksgiving offering for Jesus, they offered two turtle doves, which means they were at the lowest possible economic status of anybody in their society. Plus, there's just the difficulty of having a kid. I've been with my wife and seen her bear children four times.

It's difficult for a woman in a marriage when she's taken care of. Scholars say that at her oldest, Mary would have been 17 years old. Be honest, if you were looking at Mary based on the externals, would you have called her blessed?

No. She has not been given a close parking space at the mall of her life, right? But in the core of her being, she is carrying God. And she is going to give birth to a savior that is going to reconcile the world to God. Her blessing consists of two things, and this is question number two. What was the nature of her blessing? What was the nature of her blessing? There are two things in this song I want to highlight for you.

There'll be an A and a B, so if you're taking notes. A, presence, P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E. Notice how much she speaks about God in the first person. Verse 46, God is my savior. Verse 48, he has looked on me. Verse 52, I was lowly and you exalted me.

Verse 53, I was hungry and you fed me. Yet, nothing, when she is making a statement, nothing has changed in her circumstances, has it? She's still poor, her reputation is still ruined, she's still scandalized. Nothing has changed in her circumstances, so when she makes these statements in the present tense, listen, she is not rejoicing in what God has given to her, she is rejoicing in what God has become to her in Christ. At this point, Christ in her is her only exaltation. Christ in her, the baby in her womb, is her only fullness.

Christ is her only sustenance, the presence of God in her only salvation. See verse 48, look at how she says it, they will call me blessed. Why are they gonna call me blessed? They're gonna call me blessed for, see that word for in verse 49? For means, I'm about to tell you why I'm blessed. For, he who is mighty has done great things for me. What great things had God done for her?

None. At least in the externals of her life, it seemed that way. Nothing in her circumstances, but God has taken up residence inside her and he is going to bear her sin, he is going to suffer death for her and he's going to reconcile her to God forever. He who is mighty has done great things for me. You see, the gospel is the three attributes of God you see in verse 49 and 50 wrapped together. You see where it says God is mighty, look at the next word, and holy is his name.

Holy. People have misunderstandings of that word holy sometimes. Holy just means wholeness, that's what it means.

It's something that God created it to be. God is perfect, there is no defilement in him. You and I get used to sin, God never does. You and I watch movies, we're just living a world where it's all around us and so we just kind of learn to live with dishonesty and pride and violence and immorality. God never gets used to it.

Why? Because God is perfect. God is so infinitely perfect and so infinitely holy that there is nothing of our imperfection that God would allow to come into heaven because otherwise we would turn heaven into hell.

We would do what that creation, what we have done with this creation, and that is we would introduce all this corruption into it, which presents a dilemma for us, does it not? How can we ever be close to God? How could God know us? Well, that leads you to that other characteristic, merciful.

Because God is merciful, he couldn't look at us in that situation and just leave us to be. Isaiah describes it, the mercy of God like a mother feels for a newborn child, which is one that I was just amazed watching my wife watching Veronica with our kids. I mean, there's something, I mean, a dad has it too, but something about the way the mom relates to that child. We'd have these arguments at three 30 in the morning because the baby's upstairs crying and I'd be like, it doesn't sound to me like it's dying or he or she is dying.

I feel like you just leave it alone. But her heart is knit to that child. As a dad, I watch my kids now and I feel a little bit of this.

When my kids are in pain, if there was any possible way for me to take that pain for them, I would do that in a minute. Yet not even that gives you a glimpse of how God, because Isaiah 49 says that's like what God feels, but not even that does it justice. Jesus in Luke chapter 10 said that our feelings for our children compared to how God feels for his children are evil, which is a weird statement to make because I don't ever feel evil when I'm loving my kids, right? I mean, of all the times, that's kind of when I feel like a pretty good person. With you, I can be a selfish jerk.

With my kids, that's when I'm pretty gracious. But what Jesus was saying is that your love for your kids at your best moment compared to the intensity of God's love for his kids, it's like it's evil. God was merciful.

There was no possible way he could let his children suffer. So when Jesus came, it was just to watch Jesus is almost staggering to watch the mercy that he carried with him. It's almost like Jesus is not even in control of his mercy.

It's like a reflex. You remember that story I've told you where Jesus is walking from one place and he's going to heal somebody in this town over here. And while he's walking, some woman comes up and grabs the hem of his garment. And then Jesus turns around and says the strangest thing. Did somebody touch me?

I felt the power go out for me. What's weird about that is he's acting like he's not in control of it. I mean, isn't this the omnipotent God? And he's like, oops, I just healed somebody.

How did that happen? The reason he says it that way is because he's trying to show you that there is so much mercy in his heart. It functions something like a reflex. He cannot be around somebody in need. He cannot be around somebody who is coming to him for mercy without it just flowing out almost uncontrollably for him. See, he is holy, which means he had to do something about our sin. He's merciful, which meant he wanted to do something about our sin.

He's mighty, which meant he was able to do something about our sin, which you put those three characteristics together and what you come out with is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, because God was doing his mightiest work for us. Listen, when he came to Mary and he was born and he lived and he died to save me, it is the mercy of God that is the best expression of his power. Did you know there is only one thing in all the Bible that is called the power of God? Only one.

You know what that is? Only one thing is other things are God uses his power to do, but only one thing has ever called itself the power of God and that is the gospel. The gospel is the power of God. David thought of it this way. Psalm chapter eight, he says, God, I look at the heavens. I look at the stars. I look at the creation.

And then he uses those interesting words. He says, you created all this with your fingers. It didn't even take your arm. It just took your fingers. You know, I read, I was reading this book to my kids the other morning, and it says that if you could scale down the Milky Way to the size of North America, the size of our solar system in the Milky Way would be the size of a teacup sitting in the continent of North America.

The size of the earth would be like an almost imperceptible speck of dust inside the teacup and you and I would be a speck on a speck in that teacup. God created all of that with his fingers. His fingers didn't even take his arm. Yet when he did this, that Mary is talking about, do you notice she said by the strength of your arm? Did you notice that the gospel is called itself the power of God?

It reminds me of a song we sang when I was a kid. It took a miracle. It took a miracle for him to put the stars in place. It took a miracle for him to hang the world in place. But when he saved my soul, came and made me whole, it took a greater miracle of love and grace.

The gospel is the power of God because it is mercy in action. It is God's promise to you that he will take all the things in your life and use them for good. It is the promise that though you have forsaken him, though you have walked away, though you have defiled him, he never stopped loving for you. He never gave up on you. He came after you.

He took the rebel. Not only did he make them his son and daughter, but he took the penalty of their sins into his own body because he did not want to live without you. That is the power of God. My friend, would you really still consider the question of whether or not you're too guilty for God to save? Would you really entertain the thought that your life is too messed up? The addictions are too strong.

The relationships are too broken. You realize that the creation, all the world that we see, this entire universe, God didn't even take his arm. He just did it with his fingers. It's not called the power of God. There was more power that went into your salvation than went into the creation of the universe. When you get that, if you ever get that, you say what David said and you say what Mary said, which is essentially this, to know that God, to be filled with this God, that's blessing. That's the treasure, the greatest blessing, the blessing that makes all other blessings appear insignificant in comparison is that God is ours.

You see that? See, the problem I have with the prosperity gospel is that it prioritizes earthly blessings that God can provide over God himself. God becomes something like a pinata and faith is the whacking stick. If you whack God just right with the whacking stick of faith, then out of him comes the candy that you need, which is prosperity and power and privilege.

What Mary is trying to say is God is his own candy. The greatest thing that God could ever give you is not necessarily to fix your reputation, to get you the job, to elevate you to a position of power. God might do those things. He might have purposes in doing those things for you, but the greatest blessing God would ever give to you is God himself. You should not turn God into a pimp that gets you into some other kind of blessing because God himself created you so that he would know you and love you. The greatest gift he could ever give to you is his presence. Letter B, promise.

Promise. Verse 54, he has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, just like he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Christ was the fulfillment of a promise that God gave to Abraham to bless him and to make him a blessing. Did you know it had been 2,000 years since God made that promise? And I'm sure there were many people who thought that by this point God had forgotten about it because things were not going well for Israel. I'm sure there were some who said God has forgotten about us if he even exists at all. Did you know it had been 400 years since God had spoken to Israel? What Mary says is, oh no, God had not forgotten. In all things, he was working just like he promised to bring forth Jesus, which was a greater blessing than any of us dreamed. You see, in the same way he's working in and through you, sometimes invisibly, sometimes silently, sometimes in your 400 years of darkness to bring forth Jesus from you, and sometimes it might feel like he has forgotten.

Don't some of you feel like that this weekend? Don't you feel like you're in that 400 years of silence? Don't you say, God, I think you've forgotten me if you even exist at all? But what Mary is trying to say is do not believe for a second that he has forgotten you because he remembers his mercy.

And it might be a long time since a promise has been made, but God has a long memory and God never forgets, and God sent Jesus, and that proves to you that what he started, he will finish. There's a book I read to my kids in the mornings sometimes when I can get them at the table and they're paying attention. It's a book by Sally Lloyd-Jones called Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. It's a kid's book. I read this statement to them the other day that Sally Lloyd-Jones wrote. I'm pretty sure it went over their head because they're not always dialed in. I mean, they're trying to put Cheerios on their face and see who can, you know, and I'm like having this deep spiritual moment with God. So I needed to share it with somebody who would pay attention and that's going to be you.

Here we go. Listen, when God promises to bless you, he is saying, I'm going to make you into everything I've ever met for you to be. It means that God is taking every day and every single thing that happens in it, good and bad, to make you stronger, to mend whatever is broken inside, to change you into the person you were always meant to be. God takes everything. That's the promise, good and bad. It's not to turn all the bad into good right now. It's that he is taking all the bad and good to make you into what he wants you to be, which is somebody in the form of Jesus Christ to make you like Jesus, to make you love and know God the way that Jesus does, and then to make you a vehicle of his blessing to others, because that is the greatest blessing.

So see, let me go back to that question I posed at the beginning. Listen, why did God do it this way? Why did God choose to ruin Mary's reputation when he didn't have to? Why did he choose to leave her poor for a time when he didn't have to? Why?

Here's why. Listen, this is very important, because he was allowing Mary to taste of the cross, because the cross was how he was going to bring salvation to the world. God saved the world. Listen, not through Jesus's exaltation. God saved the world through Jesus's humiliation and crucifixion. In the same way, God extends salvation to the world. Listen, not to the church's prosperity, primarily, but to the church's death. God uses both.

I realize that. And there are times that God prospers you, and he does that for a reason so that you can spread what he's giving you. But I also want you to understand that God allows his people to share in the cross, because it is in the cross that God does his best work. Don't be surprised when it happens, and don't think you're not blessed and highly favored, because you are blessed and highly favored, not because all the circumstances in your life is good, but because of the presence and the promise of God. That's the true definition of blessing. It's the promise and presence of God. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. If you enjoyed this message and want to share it with a friend, you can find all the messages available free of charge at jdgreer.com. Christmas is here, and we know this is a busy time of year. We're so glad that you set aside time to join us today. This program is here every day on your radio and online because of friends like you.

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