Blessed, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We either believe the Bible that Jesus is ours and he's the greatest possession or we don't believe that. Being blessed and highly favored does not mean living a life without suffering a bad situation and parking spaces miles from the mall.

It means having the presence and unalterable promises of God in those situations. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Christmas Day is inching closer and we pray that your week has been full of joy and anticipation as we celebrate with family and friends this season. You know, as Christians, we tend to use the term blessed pretty loosely. When something good happens, we say we're blessed. Or when we start out on a new venture like a new business or building project, we pray for God's blessings.

But what do we actually mean? Is our understanding of that word actually biblical? Those are the questions that we're tackling today as Pastor J.D.

continues his short teaching series called God With Us. We're looking at how Mary talked about blessing when she was pregnant with Jesus in Luke chapter one. Verse forty six, 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? 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?

Would you have said there's somebody blessed and highly favored? You ought to think about the situation that she is in in her life. Her reputation had been irrevocably ruined. A teenage girl pregnant out of wedlock in that culture was a serious scandal. 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.

Plus, she was very, very poor. If you were looking at Mary based on the externals, would you have called her blessed? No, 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? There are two things in this song I want to highlight for you.

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? 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 her only salvation.

Let her be. 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. 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, 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, and then to make you a vehicle of his blessing to others, because that is the greatest blessing. And there are times that God prostrates 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. One of our campus pastors, Rod Dale, told me that his dad three weeks ago was diagnosed with stage three cancer. He said in the prognosis, he says, to be honest with you, he's not good. He said, but to watch my dad, who is a very committed Christian, to watch the difference between him and many of the people that he's around. It has grown in such sharp contrast, the difference in his hope and their hope, that he is able in these last three weeks to say things more loudly, if you will, than he ever said through any of his sermons. He said last weekend at the church where he is a leader, he told the congregation, he said, I know it's okay to cry and to hurt.

There's been a lot of that in my family. He said, but folks, we either believe the Bible, or we don't. We either believe the Bible that Jesus is ours and he's the greatest possession. We either believe the Bible that he is working in this to make us a testimony to others, or we don't believe that. Being blessed and highly favored does not mean living a life without suffering and bad situation and parking spaces miles from the mall.

We believe that Jesus is our Lord. It means having the presence and unalterable promises of God in those situations. It means having a life that God is conforming to the image of Jesus Christ. And it means that he's using you to give people a glimpse of what is by far the greatest blessing, which is not to drive a BMW or live in a great house.

It's to know God. You understand that's the blessing. The blessing is knowing God, bearing God in you and being able to lead others to God. So when you understand that, you say, if God chooses to give me prosperity, then I'm going to leverage it to help people know him. And when he gives me a cross, I'm also going to leverage that so that people could know him. And I'm going to say that I'm blessed and highly favored the whole time because the blessing is not something God gives me.

The blessing is God himself. Now let me be clear with you. Two things I'm not saying with that, because I don't want you to be confused. I'm not saying that God is behind every instance of suffering in your life the same way he was with Mary.

Hey, I realize that there are some extraordinary things happening here. And there are some of you that are in the midst of suffering. And I'm not trying to say God did that to you. But I can tell you that in every situation you're in, God is working all that to make you more like Jesus and to use you as a blessing to others. I'm also not saying that God never gives us earthly tokens of his goodness.

Scripture is filled with examples of him giving earthly tokens. Sometimes it's financial blessing. Sometimes it's blessings in our family. God's a dad. God loves to give his kids good gifts. What I am saying is that you shouldn't be surprised in those times, however, when he appoints us the cross as a way of bringing salvation to others, just like he used the cross with Jesus to bring salvation to us. In those times you are still blessed and highly favored.

God does both in your life, but it seems that his most preferred method for sending the gospel out into the world is the cross. And so you should not be surprised when it happens. You should realize that that is part of the blessing because he's making you a blessing to others. And I realize that that is not popular. I realize it's much more popular for me to stand up here and say, follow God, and you'll always get the close parking space at the mall. Follow God because he's got a heaping helping of blessings coming your way. But see my friend, that's just not what the Bible says.

And you got to make a choice whether or not you're going to believe the actual gospel or a gospel made up by money hungry American pastors who are trying to exalt the blessings of God over God himself. God has more blessing for you than you. Every promises of God is yes in Christ Jesus. If I had 10,000 lives to live, I would give every single one of them to Jesus Christ.

God has filled my life with almost every blessing imaginable. But I also understand that there are places in my life and maybe one day my whole life where God will say, I'm going to make you into the image of Jesus. And I'm going to do that by allowing you to suffer. And when you suffer, it doesn't mean that you're no longer blessed and highly favored. In fact, in that moment, like Mary, that might be when you are most blessed and highly favored.

You got to choose. You got to choose whether you're going to follow a made up God or the actual Jesus. Because if Mary is our example of what it means to be blessed, when you say, how are you? And if I say, you say blessed and highly favored, you ought to at least be willing to walk the path that Mary walked. Number three, what was the basis of her blessing? You should notice in this song that there's very little in the song about Mary.

Just a couple of lines. The rest is about God, God's character, God's presence, God's promises. There is nothing you should note in here about Mary's personal worthiness. You see, there's a belief that some hold that Mary, and that is that Mary was sinless, that Mary is somebody you should pray to. In fact, there's a little subtle difference in language.

In fact, it's so subtle, you hardly notice it. But people will say, blessed is Mary above women. Not one time in the Bible does it ever say blessed are you above women.

It says blessed are you among women. To believe that Mary is sinless, to believe that she is someone who is part of the saving that happened to us, goes completely against the spirit of this song. Mary says God is my savior. Mary sees herself not as full of righteousness, but as guilty, unworthy, empty, hungry, and weak, in need of mercy, in need of help, in need of strength, in need of a savior. That's why she says, verse 46, my soul magnifies the Lord. Mary was not amazing, Jesus was amazing. So her soul magnified him, not herself.

And for you to idolize her misses the point of her song. You see, your life can only magnify one thing. And if you're going to magnify your virtue, you're going to miss the righteousness of God. Because the gospel is that you were sinless, so God saved you. You were weak, so God helped you. You were dead, so God went into a grave and resurrected from the dead, so that he could be your life, your righteousness, your wisdom, your power, your help.

He could be all of it. So that the glory would go to him and not to any other human being. And it is a betrayal of the gospel. It is a betrayal of God. It is a betrayal of the gospel itself.

When you don't learn from Mary's life that Mary's point is not about Mary, it is about God. God is the righteousness. God is the holy one. God is the savior. God is the merciful one.

God is mighty. You see, Jesus would later take similar ideas in Mary's song and he would say it this way, blessed are the poor in spirit. The poor in spirit have nothing, right?

That's why they're called poor in spirit. Therefore, they're eligible for the righteousness of God. The weak, Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn in their guiltiness.

Because they understand their guiltiness, they're ready for me to forgive them. Blessed are those who are weak and helpless and dead because I will give them life and strength and help in life. Now, given all this, given this definition, number four, are you living as one who is blessed and highly favored? Are you living as one who's blessed and highly favored? Notice this, in Mary's song, those whom you would naturally think of as blessed are not.

Look at verse 51. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. There were thoughts in Greek. Some translations say imaginations.

You know what a translation in our vernacular is? Dreams. People who had all their dreams come true. Are they blessed? When verse 51, he scattered them. Verse 52, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones. They were at the top of their class.

They were at the highest point in their career. They were the rulers of the world, yet God brought them down. Verse 53, and the rich he has sent away empty. There's nothing wrong with dreams, riches, positions of power.

The problem is when you magnify them. When they become your source of delight, when they become your source of identity, when they become your source of pride, at that point you have given them glory and your soul no longer magnifies the Lord. So often it is, listen, that earthly blessings become curses because they take us away from the true blessing, which is the presence and the promises of God. You understand that failures for you can become the gateway for you to know the true meaning of blessed and highly favored, which is the presence and the promises of God and not any earthly success. God's greatest gift to you can be a failure because it puts you in a place where you need to feast upon God.

Here's a question I ask myself all the time. What do you rejoice in? You see, Jesus made a statement to his disciples. He said, don't rejoice that the demons are subject to you. Rejoice that your name is written down in the Lamb's book of life.

Let me translate that. Don't rejoice that you're successful in whatever it is you're doing. Don't rejoice, JD, that your church is successful. You rejoice that you know me. And if you ever let the former, the success, keep you from the latter, it will have become a curse to you. God's greatest blessings may be in the form of failures because it doesn't mean that God is no longer favoring you.

That might be the way that he favors you. What do you magnify? Here's how you know.

It's very simple. It's whatever you rejoice in. Whatever you rejoice in.

You see verse 46, Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my savior. The two statements magnify and rejoice, they're connected. Whatever you magnify, you rejoice in.

So here's the question for you. What has to be true in your life for you to have joy? When you look into the future, be honest, what has to be there for you to have joy?

Because that's what you magnify. I've told you before that joy functions something like a smoke alarm in your heart. Joy or the absence of joy or what you take joy in shows you the true state of your heart. If you are a person who this morning is not joyful, regardless of what you do, regardless of your situation, it shows you that your soul is magnifying something besides God.

If you are a person who has difficulty finding joy in God, when you find it very natural to have joy in other things, it shows you that the fundamental state of your heart has grown cold and corrupt. You see, I'm talking to senior adults here who genuinely could not give two cents about the gospel. But man, you know, you sure feel good when your grandkids come over. And praise God for your grandkids, but your soul magnifies them and it doesn't magnify God your Savior.

I'm talking to men who were here this weekend because your wife dragged you here. You're not into the songs. You don't get joy from the message.

But later on this weekend, you're going to be watching that team that you love, and they're going to run some ball across a made up line, or they're going to stuff a leather ball through an iron hoop, and you're going to jump up and you're going to yell and scream because you magnify the pursuits of a team of a bunch of guys. You don't even know them personally, but you don't rejoice in God your Savior. You don't find joy in the things of the gospel.

That's why you can barely make it through a message awake, right? Because there's no joy in that. That tells you something's wrong. I'm not yelling at you saying put on an act.

That's the last thing I'm telling you. I'm saying, look at what it says about your heart. I'm talking to young ladies who have no joy when they read the Bible. If you read it at all, it's a discipline.

You got to get through it every day. But man, you sure light up when there's a sale at the mall, right? You'll spend hours online looking at clothes you cannot afford, but you can't spend 15 sustained minutes conversing with the God who cared about you enough that he became man so that he would die and save you.

And that shows you something's wrong. You see what you magnify, magnify is very similar to the Hebrew word for glory. The word for glory, I told you this is the word kabod.

Kabod means weight. To magnify something is to give it weight, to give glory something is to give it weight. What is so weighty in your heart that it causes you joy and is so weighty that you couldn't imagine being happy without it because that is what you're rejoicing in. Here is Mary in the worst possible circumstances rejoicing because she is blessed and highly favored in the presence and the promises of God and that is magnified in her heart.

I think Mary might have been familiar with and maybe even quoting partially the words of Habakkuk and I'll say it tell you this and then we're done. Habakkuk 3 17, listen to this, though the fig tree should not blossom nor fruit beyond the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls. Stop, let me tell you what, let me translate that. That's a Hebrew way of saying everything's gone wrong.

The stocks have plummeted, the job has been lost, the wife has left, the kids have forgotten, everybody has forgotten, everything has gone wrong, all of it's gone. Yet I will rejoice in what? The Lord. Not what the Lord gives me but the Lord himself. Not what he is going to do for me but what he has become to me. I will rejoice in the Lord who is holy merciful and mighty has reconciled himself to me, taken up residence in me, give me promises that can never be revoked and a presence that will never be taken away.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. Not that he will give me strength but that he is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers running through fields of poverty. He makes me tread on high places to walk right over top of those mountains of pain. Sometimes God takes out in the mountain of pain and sometimes he gives you these kind of feet that walk over the mountains of pain because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world and you're rejoicing in the presence and promises of God. My favorite part of these verses is the way verse 18 opens. You hear this? Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

Can you hear a determination in that? What it means is after verse 17, I don't feel like rejoicing. Habakkuk's not superhuman. Mary's not superhuman.

I'm not superhuman. You don't go through a situation like verse 17 and come out with a giddy little smile on your face feeling like everything's okay and sometimes it means you choose. I'm going to rejoice in the Lord because everything's falling apart but I'm going to choose to rejoice and believe in the presence and promises of God because either he's telling the truth or he's not. You see I told you this last week but there are some of you here that at Christmas time this is the worst Christmas ever for you. For the first time in your life you're going through Christmas without a loved one.

Maybe it was a mom or dad. Maybe it was a son or a daughter that's not with you this Christmas and they were last Christmas and it's going to be unbelievably difficult for you. Maybe this is your first Christmas going into it as a divorced man. Maybe you're facing Christmas this Christmas without a job. Maybe this is the umpteenth Christmas in a row for you that you're going into it single and you thought by now it would be different.

Maybe your kids aren't coming back for Christmas. Maybe they've all but forgotten yet I will rejoice in God my Savior. I will choose to believe in the presence and the promises of God. They never change and he's greater than any other blessing he gives. He is the blessing and with him I can listen give up all that I have because in him I have all that I can. God's presence and promises are with you.

That's all you need regardless of your external circumstances. It's a gift. It's his blessing upon us.

Have you received it this Christmas? A counter-cultural message from Pastor J.D. Greer today on Summit Life. So J.D., it's back again. It's time for our annual day planner.

This is one of our most popular resources and a staple that so many of our listeners have come to rely on. Yeah, you know there's nothing magical about the new year but it does present a natural opportunity for reflection. Ultimately the sum of our lives is a bunch of small decisions that we make and this will help you you think through those decisions to ask what is God doing in your life and where is he taking you this year and how are you going to be able to look back on 2022 and say I use it the way God wanted me to use it. One of the tools in doing that is taking time through a planner like this one to think about the year and to think about what God, what he has set you up for and how he wants to use you. We're also including a one-year Bible reading plan which is one of the most important tools on my own spiritual walk.

By the way, you can get that as a free download if you want to go check it out. Jdgreer.com, you can take a look at that Bible reading plan there. You could also find out about this planner because I think this will be a helpful tool for you as you enter the new year. As God has blessed you this past year through the teaching of this ministry, will you extend that gift to someone else by donating today? Your support right now is critical to help us continue this ministry in the coming months and we'd love to have you partner with us. As our way of saying thanks for your support, we'll get you a copy of that 2022 Summit Life Planner. This is a great tool for busy students, parents, businessmen and women, anyone really. You can keep track of your deadlines, create to-do lists and throughout the planner you'll find Bible verses to remind you of what you're learning on the program.

We're even including a year-long Bible reading plan to help you grow deeper in the gospel throughout the year. Ask for a copy of the 2022 Summit Life Planner when you give a generous year-end gift of $35 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgreer.com.

I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to join us again next time when we're wrapping up our teaching series called God With Us, Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.