Luke 1:39-45

39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” 

This is, as you know, the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent, as you know, refers to the four weeks leading up to Christmas, set aside to help us prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth and anticipate His return.  

We want to help you with those things—preparation, celebration, and anticipation.  One of the ways we plan to do so this year is with Advent readings to start each service (like we had earlier).  Another way is by singing songs celebrating the significance of the birth of Jesus (like we did earlier and will).  And another way still, is by preaching through the poetry in Luke’s Gospel concerning the coming and glory of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.  

Why the poetry?  As I mentioned in a recent sermon, poetry is designed by God with a unique ability to drive truth deep into our hearts.  Poems are often meant to be narrower in scope, but greater in impact, which makes them ideally suited to help us experience the familiar claims of Christmas more fully—more as we ought.  

It’s one thing to factually or conceptually know that in love, God became man to save the world from sin.  It’s something else entirely to be truly moved—to worship or repentance or obedience—by it.  The Gospels are largely meant to give us the facts.  The poetry within the Gospels is largely meant to stir awe and wonder and amazement in us in response to the facts.  

With that, this week I’ll be preaching on Elizabeth’s poetic reply to Mary’s visit.  And next week I’ll be preaching on Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in the following verses (Luke 1:46-56).  

Then, the following week, December 14th, Matt will preach on the song of Zechariah in Luke 1:67-79.

On December 21st, the fourth Sunday of Advent, Pastor Colin will preach on the song of Simeon in Luke 2:25-35.  And finally, on the 28th, the Sunday after Christmas, Pastor Colin will preach on songs from Psalm 40 and Revelation 5 concerning the second coming of Jesus.  

Christmas is, objectively, a time of significant grace from God.  At the very least, it is an annual reminder of the greatest act of love ever and its profound meaning for us.  Therefore, even if this ends up being another “normal” Christmas, it is a gift to be cherished.  At the same time, Grace, we are (and invite you to join us in being) prayerfully hopeful, even expectant, that God will be pleased to do something special in and among us this year.  

With that, the big idea of this sermon is that experiencing the true significance of the incarnation is a miraculous gift from God.  The main takeaways, therefore, are to immerse ourselves in the truths concerning Jesus’ birth and the poetry that celebrates it, and with those things, to prayerfully seek God’s help (for us and the whole world) to respond as we ought.     

Our passage opens with the time-anchoring line, “In those days…”.  But, before we can understand what Luke meant by “those days,” we need to get our heads around the days leading up to them.  That is, before getting to the days of our passage, and the poetry within it, we need a bit of background.  And the background we need goes all the way back to the beginning.  

In the very first chapters of the Bible, in Genesis 1-2, we read of God’s creation of the universe.  There was nothing outside of the godhead, God spoke, and with the power of His Word, He made all that has been made.  With His Word, He set everything in its proper place, ordering everything according to His design.  And with His Word, He commissioned the man and the woman He’d made, who were the crown of His creation, who were alone fashioned in His image, who alone possessed both body and spirit, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:27-28).  

Having done all that, God looked down upon His creation and “saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Then, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).  

Everything was just as it ought to be; that is, until the next chapter, Genesis 3.  We’re not sure how long the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were in the Garden before the serpent, overcome by the Evil One and “more crafty than any other beast of the field” (Genesis 3:1), crawled up to them and whispered his lies.  What we are sure of, however, is that when he did, it changed everything in dramatic and devastating fashion.  

Eve first, and then Adam soon after, in an attempt to be like God, succumbed to the serpent’s treachery and ate of the one tree in the Garden that God had withheld from them.  Having done so, they brought upon themselves and all their offspring the death of God (Genesis 2:16-17).  Their sinful choice made them at enmity with God, causing their spirits to die at once and their bodies to inevitably follow.  

Worse yet, in the interim (in the time between their spiritual and physical deaths), God put a curse on them and the land He’d made for them; one shared by all their offspring as well, all the way down to us today.  The woman was made to suffer in childbearing and feel opposition toward her husband, while the man’s work was made harder, less productive, and less efficient (3:15-19).  Mankind was corrupted and caused waves of corruption so spread throughout all the earth.  

To be left in this cursed state would be unimaginably devastating.  But God did not leave man without hope.  Right in the midst of His curse, God promised a Deliverer.  In condemning the deceiving serpent, the LORD God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). 

God promised to one day send one of Eve’s sons to crush the Deceiver.  In that, through poetic language, God promised to rescue mankind from his fall and defeat his enemies (sin and corruption and disorder and death).  

The centuries that followed were filled with God continuing to provide mankind with every manner of mercy and grace.  God made promises to be present with and bless His people.  He gave His people human leaders to speak on His behalf and guide them (individuals like Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, as well as offices like judges, prophets, priests, and kings).  He gave them laws to flourish under.  He gave them prosperity when they trusted and obeyed Him.  He provided loving correction when they veered from the path of wisdom and blessing.  He miraculously delivered them from slavery and exile.  He provided means of atoning for their sins and restoring the damage they caused.  He filled their lives with reminders of His perfect past faithfulness and of His perfect promises of grace still to come.  He gave them a land and an identity.  Most importantly, He gave them Himself.  

In spite God’s unwavering kindness and faithfulness, however, the centuries that followed were also filled every manner of mankind futilely attempting to find joy, meaning, and even rescue in things other than God.  In short, human history leading up to our passage was filled with mankind rejecting God and His offer of redemption (to greater and lesser degrees) as they awaited the Deliverer.  

Zooming in a bit, the 400 years immediately prior to the “those days” of Luke 1:39, were filled with silence from God.  In judgment, God did not speak to His people and they were left wondering if God’s promises had failed.  Would the promised Serpent Crusher, (Savior, Christ, Messiah) ever come?

Zooming further in brings us to Luke’s Gospel.  Helpfully, it opens with the straightforward explanation of His aim.

1:1-4 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account … 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke stated that he was joining some untold number of other people who had already written down a story, a story of things that had been accomplished among them, things that they were eyewitnesses and messengers of, and all of that so that whoever read his story might know for sure that it was true.  

The question is, of course: What story?  What was it that Luke and others found so important that they needed to write it down and share it?

Curiously, Luke doesn’t say right away.  He doesn’t say anything about the content of the story in his introduction and then jumps straight into a bit of background of his own.  He sets the beginning of his story “in the days of Herod, king of Judea”.  He also focuses in on an Israelite priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.  The three main points of Luke’s emphasis concerning this couple are their old age, their righteousness, and their childlessness (1:5-10).  

Specifically, Luke records a time in which Zacheriah was performing his priestly duties and an “angel of the Lord” appeared to him.  The angel announced that Elizabeth would bear a son, that they were to name him John, that he would be the source of much gladness on account of his greatness “before the Lord,” that he would be “filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb,” and that he would minister in the “power of Elijah,” bringing about revival, preparing a people for the Lord.  

And just as the angel promised, Luke wrote, Elizabeth soon conceived and gave thanks to God (1:11-25).  

We might wonder if that’s what Luke was talking about.  Is that the story he and others were taking care to tell?  It’s certainly remarkable in its own right, isn’t it? But even as we’re wondering that, Luke quickly moved right into another, even more amazing story.  

A short time later, God sent the same angel to a young woman named Mary.  The angel made the same promise to Mary as he made to Elizabeth—that she would “conceive … and bear a son.”  The angel also told Mary what He she was to name Him (Jesus) and that God had really big plans for Him (that “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and he will reign…forever…”).  Just as Elizabeth’s conception was miraculous, so too would be Mary’s (Elizabeth because she was barren and past the age of conception and Mary because she was a virgin).  And all of this would take place, once again, in the power of the Holy Spirit (1:26-38).  

As we come to the “those days” of our passage, then, the heart of Luke’s story begins to take shape: God determined to miraculously bring about the birth of John so, that he would announce the miraculous birth of the Serpent Crusher, the Savior, the Christ, the Deliverer that God had long promised to send.  Soon, Mary would conceive by the Holy Spirit and the child in her womb, Jesus, would fulfill God’s promises.  Great promises had been made and the days of their fulfillment (“those days”) had finally come.

All of that brings us back to our passage with proper context.  Luke continued his story…

39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 

More broadly, “those days” refers to the time of the imminent fulfillment of God’s promises.  More specifically, it refers to the time the two women met, Elizabeth miraculously pregnant with the messenger and Mary miraculously pregnant with the Savior of the world.  Both broadly and specifically, therefore, “those days” represented no small thing.  Indeed, Grace, it is not an overstatement to say that all history had been working toward “those days.”  

So the question is put before us: How do we come to truly appreciate all that “those days” represents?  How do we receive and respond to this news as we ought?  And the answer, once again, is through the God-given mingling of the facts concerning the meeting, their significance, and the poetic utterances they produced.  

The facts, as we just saw, were that God had promised to send as Savior into the world ever since the fall of mankind and that the time had now come.  Embedded in the rest of our passage are more critical facts still.  Let me quickly name four.

The facts of the matter are that the events described in our passage were planned by God, given through entirely unexpected and miraculous means, and are received only as a gift from God.

The question before us, once again, then, is how we get these facts deep into our hearts and down into our bones?  How do these facts move from familiar facets of the Christmas story to the life-changing, life-shaping realities they truly are within us?  

Ultimately, as we just saw, that can only happen by the power of the Spirit as a gift from God.  But, as is often the case, the Spirit brings God’s gifts to God’s people through certain means.  And one of God’s common means of imparting that kind of grace to His people is through—believe it or not—poetry.  It really is a tool designed by God to take us further up and further in to the facts God gives.  It is a tool uniquely suited to reach places in our heart and mind that facts alone often can’t penetrate.  

The songs that we’ll examine in the coming weeks have more poetry than this passage, but it’s in this passage as well.  The beginning of v.41 represents this kind of heart-piercing, grace-infused mingling of fact and poetic utterance perfectly.  

41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb…  

This is further unpacked in Elizabeth’s explanation of what happened in v.44.

…when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

These two women were well-aware of the things I shared in the way of background and facts.  They’d heard and believed them their whole lives.  What’s more, they were becoming increasingly aware of and shocked by the role they were playing in it all.  

How do you process something like that?  How do you contain it?  All by itself, the news that the long-promised Christ is coming ought to be overwhelming.  How in the world, then, do you possibly make sense of the fact that He and His God-appointed way-preparer are in the wombs of you and your relative?!

Elizabeth had to resort to poetic imagery to express it.  The preparer “leapt” (bounded, jumped for joy) in his mom’s belly at the sound of the voice of one carrying the Son of God in her belly.  There’s no doubt that there is a literal truth to this account—that John really did move in Elizabeth’s womb.  But there’s also no doubt that Elizabeth’s response was fundamentally poetic—that it was as if John was dancing inside her.  

The result, with the Spirit’s help, was that Elizabeth couldn’t contain herself.  Therefore, she continued to cry out in more poetic language still.

41  … And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry (a “redundancy of unrestrained joy” one commentator called it), “I am overwhelmed by all that is happening.  I knew it was special when my husband told me of the angel’s message to us.  I knew that even more fully when in my old age, I conceived according to the Lord’s promise.  But I’ve never known it as fully as I do now in the very presence of my Lord.”

And in the midst of recognizing the awesome blessing bestowed upon her (“why is this granted to me…”), Elizabeth also recognized the even greater blessing this was for Mary and Jesus (“blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!).  

Again, how do you describe this kind of thing?  Ordinary language just isn’t enough.  We, like Elizabeth, instinctively know that we need something different, something more.  And so, we end up with one womb containing a baby so filled with understanding and joy that it can’t help but to dance and another womb carrying happy fruit.  We end up with all women of earth gathered together and recognizing that Mary is the most blessed of them.  We end up with poetry.  And that poetry is meant to help snap us out of our numbness to the glory of these claims.  It’s meant to snap us into a fuller appreciation of what they are.  It’s meant to force us to take the good news all the way to its appropriate ends—whole-hearted devotion to the Son of God, born in the flesh (hail the incarnate Deity!).

Grace, in fulfillment of His millennia-old promise, God took on flesh in the womb of a virgin, dwelt among us, lived as a perfect example, died as a substitute sacrifice, and rose as the first born of many brothers.  And all of that to rescue us from our sins, reconcile us to God and others, and restore all that sin has broken in us and in creation.  To understand this is to sing.  And to hear the singing of others is one way God grants further understanding.  

Let us give ourselves, therefore to the facts of Christmas in increasing measure this year, Grace.  And let us add to it the best poetry and music as the God-appointed means they are for driving the facts all the way home.  

And with that, let’s pray for God to fill us with greater understanding of the truth, glory, and grace of Christmas.  Let’s pray that He’d fill us with a greater eagerness to share it with others.  And let’s pray that He’d combine those things to help us sing now with added hope and joy of He who came in yonder stall, thanking God that the long expected Jesus has come and will come again.