Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 606
Delivered on Sunday Morning, December 25, 1864, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Luke 1:46, 47.
MARY was on a visit when she expressed her joy in the language of this noble song. It were well if all our social communion were as useful to our hearts as this visit was to Mary. “Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” Mary, full of faith, goes to see Elizabeth, who is also full of holy confidence and the two are not long together before their faith mounts to full assurance and their full assurance bursts forth in a torrent of sacred praise!
This praise aroused their slumbering powers and instead of two ordinary village women, we see before us two prophetesses and poetesses upon whom the Spirit of God abundantly rested. When we meet with our kinsfolk and acquaintance, let it be our prayer to God that our communion may be not only pleasant, but profitable. Let us pray that we may not merely pass away time and spend a pleasant hour, but may advance a day’s march nearer Heaven and acquire greater fitness for our eternal rest!
Observe, this morning, the sacred joy of Mary that you may imitate it. This is a season when all men expect us to be joyous. We compliment each other with the desire that we may have a “Merry Christmas.” Some Christians who are a little squeamish do not like the word “merry.” It is a right good old Saxon word, having the joy of childhood and the mirth of manhood in it. It brings before one’s mind the old song of the midnight peal of bells, the holly and the blazing log.
I love it for its place in that most tender of all parables, where it is written, that, when the long-lost prodigal returned to his father safe and sound, “They began to be merry.” This is the season when we are expected to be happy. And my heart’s desire is that in the highest and best sense, you who are Believers may be “merry.”
Mary’s heart was merry within her—but here was the mark of her joy—it was all holy merriment, it was every drop of it sacred mirth. It was not such merriment as worldlings will revel in today and tomorrow, but such merriment as the angels have around the Throne of God, where they sing, “Glory to God in the highest,” while we sing, “On earth peace, goodwill towards men.” Such merry hearts have a continual feast.
I want you, you children of the bride-chamber, to possess today and tomorrow, yes, all your days, the high and consecrated bliss of Mary that you may not only read her words but use them for yourselves, ever experiencing their meaning—“My soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” Observe, first, that she sings. Secondly, she sings sweetly. Thirdly, shall she sing alone?
I. First observe that MARY SINGS. Her subject is a Savior. She hails the Incarnate God. The long expected Messiah is about to appear. He for whom Prophets and princes waited long is now about to come—to be born of the virgin of Nazareth. Truly there was never a subject of sweeter song than this—the stooping down of Godhead to the feebleness of manhood! When God manifested His power in the works of His hands the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. But when God manifests Himself, what music shall suffice for the grand Psalm of adoring wonder?
When wisdom and power are seen, these are but attributes. But in the Incarnation it is the Divine Person which is revealed wrapped in a veil of our inferior clay—well might Mary sing when earth and Heaven even now are wondering at the condescending Grace! Worthy of peerless music is the fact that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” There is no longer a great gulf fixed between God and His people. The humanity of Christ has bridged it over. We can no more think that God sits on high indifferent to the wants and woes of men—for God has visited us and come down to the lowliness of our estate.
We no longer need bemoan that we can never participate in the moral glory and purity of God, for if God in Glory can come down to His sinful creature, it is certainly less difficult to bear that creature, blood-washed and purified, up that starry way that the redeemed one may sit down forever on His Throne. Let us dream no longer in somber sadness that we cannot draw near to God so that He will really hear our prayer and pity our necessities seeing that Jesus has become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh! He was born a babe as we are born, living a man as we must live, bearing the same infirmities and sorrows and bowing His head to the same death.
O, can we not come with boldness by this new and living way and have access to the Throne of the heavenly Grace, when Jesus meets us as Immanuel, God with us? Angels sung, they scarcely knew why. Could they understand why God had become Man? They must have known that here was a mystery of condescension. But all the loving consequences which the Incarnation involved, even their acute minds could scarcely have guessed!