Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2219
“And Mary said, My soul does magnify the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” Luke 1:46, 47.
IT is very clear that Mary was not beginning a new thing, for she speaks in the present tense, and in a tense which seems to have been present for a long time, “My soul does magnify the Lord.” Ever since she had received the wonderful tidings of the choice which God had made of her for her high position, she had begun to magnify the Lord. And when once a soul has a deep sense of God’s mercy and begins magnifying Him, there is no end to it. This grows by what it feeds upon—the more you magnify God, the more you can magnify Him. The higher you rise, the more you can see. Your view of God is increased in extent and, whereas you praised Him somewhat at the bottom of the hill, when you get nearer and nearer to the top of His exceeding goodness, you lift up the strain still more loudly and your soul does more fully and exultantly magnify the Lord!
“My soul does magnify the Lord.” What does it mean? The usual meaning of the word, “magnify,” is to make great, or to make to appear great. We say, when we use the microscope, that it magnifies so many times. The insect is the same small and tiny thing, but it is increased to our apprehension. The word is very suitable in this connection. We cannot make God greater than He is. Nor can we have any conception of His actual greatness. He is infinitely above our highest thoughts! When we meditate upon His attributes—
“Imagination’s utmost stretch In wonder dies away.”
But we magnify Him by having higher, larger, truer conceptions of Him, by making known His mighty acts and praising His glorious name so that others, too, may exalt Him in their thoughts. This is what Mary was doing—she was a woman who was given, in later life, to pondering. Those who heard what the shepherds said concerning the Holy Child Jesus, wondered, but, “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” They wondered—Mary pondered. It is only the change of a letter, but it makes a great difference in the attitude of the soul—a change from a vague flash of interest to a deep attention of heart. She pondered. She weighed the matter. She turned it over in her mind. She thought about it. She estimated its value and result. She was like that other Mary, a meditative woman who could quietly wait at her Lord’s feet to hear gracious words and drink them in with yearning faith.
It is no idle occupation, then, to get alone and in your own hearts to magnify the Lord—to make Him great to your mind, to your affections—great in your memory, great in your expectations. It is one of the grandest exercises of the renewed nature! You need not, at such a time, think of the deep questions of Scripture. You may leave the abstruse doctrines to wiser heads, if you will, but if your very soul is bent on making God great to your own apprehension, you will be spending time in one of the most profitable ways possible to a child of God. Depend upon it, there are countless holy influences which flow from the habitual maintenance of great thoughts of God—just as there are incalculable mischiefs which flow from our small thoughts of Him! The root of false theology is belittling God and the essence of true Divinity is greatening God, magnifying Him and enlarging our conceptions of His majesty and His Glory to the utmost degree.
But Mary did not mean, by magnifying the Lord, merely to extol Him in her own thoughts. Being a true poetess, she intended to magnify the Lord by her words. No, I must correct myself—she did not intend to do it—she had been doing it all along! She was doing it when she came, panting and breathless, into her cousin Elizabeth’s house. She said, “My soul does magnify the Lord. I am now in such a favored condition that I cannot open my mouth to talk to you, Elizabeth, without speaking of my Lord. My soul now seems filled with thoughts of Him. I must speak, first of all, about Him and
say such things of His Grace and power as may help even you, my goodly elder sister, still to think grander thoughts of God than you have ever before enjoyed. My soul does magnify the Lord.”
We must recall the fact that Mary was highly distinguished and honored. No other woman was ever blessed as she was. Perhaps no other could have borne the honor that was put upon her—to be the mother of the Human Nature of our Savior. It was the highest possible honor that could be put upon mortal and the Lord knew, at the appointed time, where to find a guileless, lowly woman who could be entrusted with such a gift and yet not seek to filch away His Glory. She is not proud. No, it is a false heart that steals the revenues of God and buys the intoxicating cup of self-congratulation. The more God gives to a true heart, the more it gives to Him. Like Peter’s boat, which sank into the waters the more deeply, the more fully it was laden with fish, God’s true children sink in their own esteem as they are honored by their Lord! God’s gifts, when He gives Grace with them, do not puff us up—they build us up. A humble and lowly estimate of ourselves is added to a greater esteem of Him. The more God gives you, the more do you magnify Him and not yourself. Be this your rule—“He must increase and I must decrease.” Be you less and less. Be you the Lord’s humble handmaid, yet bold and confident in your praise of Him who has done for you great things! From now on and forever, let this be the one description of your life—“My soul does magnify the Lord; I have nothing else to do any more but to magnify Him and to rejoice in God my Savior.”