Replacing Worry with Worship

I have a friend who is a fellow believer from Afghanistan who is an asylum seeker having sought safety in Australia when he became hunted for becoming a Christian in Taliban country. But this friend of mine is an incredibly strong man in his faith. A man whose faith and his perseverance never ceases to amaze me. But this week, he told me the most horrifying news I could ever imagine receiving. And that is that two weeks ago, the Taliban attacked his village and captured his entire family.

His wife, I think four or five kids, his mother, and he to this day doesn't know what the situation is. Whether they're still alive or whatever. And for two excruciating weeks, he hasn't been able to find out if they're being, like I said, tortured or what conditions they're being kept in. And to make matters worse, he sent a very loyal friend of his to go and find information about his family. And in his and his friend's searching and questioning and asking, he was also captured in doing so.

And of course, my friend is beside himself with guilt for having caused his best friend to be captured and his friend's family to be without a father and an income provider. And so in the midst of this, my friend is wrestling with a question of why God would have this happen. He says his faith is stretched. This man of incredible faith is stretched to an unbearable limit. And I have to ask myself and I'm sure you guys do as well.

Well, we could sympathise, can't we? We can sympathise that even though many of us, most of us, would not even know where to begin understanding exactly the amount of pain that he is in, we can imagine it is excruciating. But it made me think this week, especially as we head into Christmas, about another perilous situation and it's the story of a lady called Mary who received news of a pregnancy and I guess that's a good news story you could say. She was told by an angel that she would give birth to the Messiah. But as we read and we will now in Luke 1, we also get a picture of some of the danger, some of the precariousness of her situation.

Let's have a look at Luke 1:26. And we're going to read until the end of verse 56. Luke chapter 1, verse 26. "In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary and he came to her and said, greetings, oh favoured one, the Lord is with you."

"But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and he 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 over the house of Jacob for ever and of his kingdom there will be no end."

"And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren."

"For nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth."

"And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

"Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all the 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 for ever."

"And Mary remained with her, who is Elizabeth, about three months and then returned to her home." So far our reading. I remember Pastor Bob is here this morning, a sermon that he did not so long ago on Mary as well here and I think it was on the same passage or part of the same passage. But as we look on this, as we reflect on her situation and we reflect on the reality of our life, there are only two ways really of looking at life and how God interacts with that life. One is a way of looking where your life and your experience is projected onto God.

In this sort of bottom up approach, the result is that you can have extremely powerful emotional experiences of God, but it is always circumstantial. When life is good, God is good. God is close. He loves me. God cares about me.

Obviously, look at my life. But when things are hard, you start to wonder, is there really a God? And that objection that you've probably heard before starts to creep in. If God is good, why do bad things happen? The result with this bottom up view is that your starting point will always be with your feelings and your experiences.

And we know, don't we, that emotions are very subjective. They are prone to change. At some point, if you're honest, you'll have to admit that you are projecting your experiences back onto God and think that this is how God must be because of my situation. And so you can decide whether God is right or wrong based on your circumstance. You can decide whether God is good or bad.

Even in this very fleeting moment in time, we create God to be something when tomorrow may be a completely different day. The other way to live is to believe that God is who He says He is. And that's a common lesson taught throughout Scripture, isn't it? To take God at His word. How many times, how many heroes of the faith do we see getting it wrong?

To believe that His word is true, that the Bible is true, and that it reveals the character and the nature of God to us perfectly. Now this is a top down view of life. If God spoke and this is His word, then this is Him revealing to us what we should think about Him. It means that a Christian will interpret then all their life in light of what God has said He is, who He is to us. But the question I want to ask this morning is this: have you been able to let these truths about God, who He says He is, filter all the way down into your heart and into your mind?

Do these truths make you rest easy or do you still wrestle with worry? Is God really who He says He is? This is what my friend is wrestling with. Is God there? Does He care?

This morning we also see that situation in Mary's life. Something that we sort of lose in the Christmas cheer, but it was an incredibly stressful moment. This young woman called Mary, we see moves from a stage of worry to worship. And so this morning's message is on how to replace worry with worship. At Christmas time every year, we often read about the joy of the birth of Jesus, the coming, the peace and goodwill to all men.

We listen to the angels' announcements. We hear the shepherds praising God, the three wise men with their gifts. And apparently a drummer boy who played on his drum for Jesus. But if we look closer at the story and we read the context, we come to understand the huge danger, uncertainty in this story. We, this morning, come to see Mary in a circumstance where she has ample opportunity to be worrying.

This young woman has so much to be concerned about. For those of us who worry well and we probably know who we are, if you have a PhD in worrying, exceptionally talented worriers, think about Mary's situation when she sings this song of praise. This song that Mary sings or this poem that she recites is also known as the Magnificat. And it is shared while she's not quite sure, remember this, whether she's pregnant or not. We're talking a few days after the angel's announcement.

Our mums here would know. You don't always know within the first few weeks if you are pregnant. There may have been no physical markers at all to prove what the angel had said. Soon after being told she would bear the Messiah, she has to get up and she rushes to her cousin Elizabeth. Now this was in Nazareth in Galilee.

She rushes all the way down to Judah, the province in the South. Why does she do something like this? All of a sudden, like she hears this and it's we get the impression it happens very quickly. Because I think she needs to go and see whether this is true. The angel said Elizabeth is also pregnant.

She's actually six months into her pregnancy. Why does Mary go down? I think she wants to see the proof. The whole interaction then with Elizabeth, we find from verse 39, is wonderfully encouraging to Mary. Elizabeth, in her old age, is indeed very pregnant.

And more so, the baby inside her womb leaps for joy when Mary reaches Elizabeth. In verse 42, we see that the Holy Spirit opens Elizabeth's eyes and she receives a prophetic insight and knows before Mary has even said anything or at least said less than hello that Mary is pregnant. And Mary is pregnant not just with a little son or a girl, it's the Messiah. Her son is going to be my Lord, Elizabeth says. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come and visit me? In God's kindness, Mary has shown that God is indeed able to give a miraculous pregnancy. It's a little bit of proof for a doubting Mary. He has done it for Elizabeth. In God's kindness, Mary has been shown that God will indeed, can indeed make her pregnant even as she is a virgin.

Elizabeth calls him my Lord even before Mary tells her what the angel has said to her. And here are the wonderful reasons then for Mary to trust God. But if you are a human being, and Mary certainly was, and if you worry, how do we also not realise that even after affirmation and affirmation and promise and promise of God, the background noise of concerns come creeping back. I wonder after even this event whether Mary wrestled with the question, how believable is it that a virgin can give birth? Let's be serious, Mary.

You probably just made a mistake one night. It's understandable, Mary, it happens. Just don't try and cover up the story with something this crazy. Was there a reason for her to be worried about social stigma? Absolutely.

What about this one? Would her fiancé still want to marry her? Could Joseph believe that Mary hadn't cheated on him? This poor man, how heartbroken would he have been? See the thing is, we think people in those days were stupid.

We think people only today are the ones who don't believe in the virgin birth. But even in Jesus' life, and this was so, so cruel, people came to him. We have it recorded in Scripture in his adulthood and said, at least we know who our father is. What they're really saying is you're a bastard son. And this on top of all the other normal worries that comes with your first pregnancy, this young lady who is not older than 16 probably has to worry about giving birth for the first time in a small town, with no hospital, no medical care and you are poor.

We know that a lot of women died in childbirth. Even up until two hundred years ago, that was quite common. So you can imagine there wasn't much enthusiasm for planning a baby shower. There was enough reason to be worried. And despite all of these reasons, we find Mary worshiping.

Friends, this morning, if you don't remember anything else, please remember this. That worry in your life can always be silenced by worship. If you think about it, the times we worry are the times we are not busy worshiping. They don't happen at the same time. They don't exist in the same frame of mind.

They are moments when we worry that we have taken our eyes off God. And in the midst of all sorts of reasons to be overwhelmed, Mary begins her worship with the words, my soul magnifies the Lord. Verse 46, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour. The most inner parts of Mary, she says, have been overwhelmed, but not by her external conditions, but by the God who she calls her Saviour. Her soul, her spirit both magnify and rejoice in God.

Her soul glorifies. That's the word there, magnifies to glorify and lift God up to His rightful place as her master, as her king. And then as a result of that, or at the same time, her soul experiences joy. Joy. Magnifying God and experiencing joy.

And why? It's because God has been placed in His rightful spot over her life. Because He is my King, I am free. I am safe. I am secure.

You see, worry denies the care of a sovereign, kingly God. Worry denies the care of a sovereign, kingly God. Tim Keller writes that worry is called a sin in the Bible because it firstly denies the wisdom of God. Worry says that God doesn't know what He's doing. He doesn't know what He's doing.

God is not that wise. This is a dumb move. Wisdom also denies secondly, the love of God because it says He doesn't care about my situation. And then thirdly, worry denies the power of God because it says that He isn't able to deliver me from whatever is causing me to worry. And so Keller goes as far as saying, now worry is practical atheism.

Worry is saying in not so many words, there is no God. And worry is a lie that makes you and I think somehow we have the ability to control our situation. If somehow I can hold on to this fear for long enough and somehow that mental energy can change my situation. But it's a delusion. And in that moment, you cannot worship God really by holding on to worry because true worship is a process of handing yourself over to God completely.

And I say true worship because we know there are sort of lesser forms of it. There is something like half-hearted worship. Perhaps we've started this morning with half-hearted worship. Worship that doesn't hand yourself completely and utterly over to God. Perhaps some of us are wrestling with that even now.

Worship in a half-hearted state, but worship of the Lord says, you have it all. You have it all. You are my King. You are my Saviour. I am neither king nor Saviour.

And true worship becomes something more akin to a rebel laying down their weapons at the feet of the King. The true King. So Mary, even in her precarious situation, worships God wholeheartedly. The second aspect of worship is that we have been given it not for God's sake, but for our sake. Worship is for us.

God doesn't need our worship. That is really important to remember. Somehow we think He's not quite complete until He has it. God doesn't need our worship. God is already eternally satisfied in Himself.

There is a perfect satisfaction in the triune God. John 14:31 says this. Jesus says, I do as the Father has commanded me. I obey the Father so that the world may know that I love the Father. Jesus' obedience to the Father is an act of worship back to the Father.

The Son loves the Father. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Spirit. The Spirit loves the Father and all of them are in one with one another. And so they exist in this perfect relationship of mutual honour, mutual glory, mutual love.

God doesn't need our worship. And yet in grace, He brings us into this wonderful triune relationship with Himself. Why does God do that? For our good. For our good.

So that our joy may be complete. And so when Christians, when we become Christians and our hearts are made aware of God deeply and radically, our worship of Him is in fact very powerfully for our sake. And so in Mary's song, in this moment of worship, we find her listing, if you can believe this, in these few verses, 17 attributes of God. She's just pouring out who God is in this song. 17 aspects of God's character that assure her that God will look after her, that God is who He says He is, that God will look after not only her, but her family, and not only her family, but the whole of Israel and God's elect people.

And we don't have the time to break down 17 points. Everyone says thank God for that. But there are five, I think, main ones that we need to highlight. The first one is, we find it in verse 46, and we've already touched on it. And that is that God is Lord, she says.

God is Lord. What does it mean for God to be Lord? Well, it means that He is in charge, that He is above all, that He is above all kings, all other kingdoms. It means for our charismatic friends here that He is above Satan. Satan doesn't hold a candle to our God.

To our millennials, He is above social trends. To our politically active Sky News watchers, He's above whatever we call Australia as a Christian nation or not. Our God is above religion. He's above science. He's above philosophy.

He's even above pastors and preachers. God is Lord. Mary's saying is God, our God is above everything and everyone. There is no one who holds more authority than He does. That's the first thing she says, she declares.

Then she moves on to verse 47 and she says, God is Saviour. Now some people say that Mary was sinless. That even she was immaculately conceived. So she is also not born of human descent or of a male's descent. She wasn't.

She wasn't sinless because she noted herself that she needs a Saviour. My Saviour. God is my Saviour, she says. And a Saviour means a rescuer. It means a deliverer.

And Mary, like all of us, was a sinner who also needed a Saviour. And Scripture, God's story of human history and throughout this story, we see that God is on a rescue mission. He is continually busy working to save His people and those people are us. So she says, God is my Saviour. The third attribute of God is to say that He is omniscient.

Mary says, He has looked upon my humble estate. Verse 48. He has looked upon my humble estate. Our God is a God who sees. And because our God sees, He knows.

Mary says, my God knows that I'm young, that I am poor, that I am in a perilous situation. He knows my fragile state. My God knows that my reputation is going to be seriously questioned. He knows my life is going to be difficult, complicated. But my God knows.

When it comes to worry, we sometimes worry because we think no one knows what I'm going through. And we worry and we carry those things because I must carry this load because no one knows. I must be concerned about this because no one else is paying attention to this very thing. But there's a comfort in knowing that our God knows. He sees our situation.

And there's nothing outside the grasp of His knowledge. There's nothing like that. You know, those so the edge of our knowledge that we have, when I start thinking about calculus math, that's definitely beyond my grasp of understanding. That's sort of where everything gets blurry. That there's nothing like that in the mind of God.

And so we can take comfort and tell ourselves that next time when we are tempted to worry, we can at least tell ourselves that God knows about this situation. And He probably knows more about this situation than I know about this situation. And He probably knows the solution to this situation better than I know what the solution is. And He will know how this solution or this resolution will take place. And then she goes on in verse 49, and this is actually a quite a heavy theme here.

She says that God is mighty. She says it in three different places. Verse 49, verse 51, and verse 52. Verse 49, for He who is mighty has done great things for me, she says. There's nothing, there is nothing that can thwart the power of God.

Demons, Satan, sin, circumstance, nothing can out-think or out-manoeuvre or out-flank Him. He is altogether powerful. He is mighty. He is the one who does the impossible and it's not even difficult for Him. He does the impossible and it's not difficult for Him.

If we worship the same God who created the galaxies, the billions of stars, an egg fertilised without a sperm is not even remotely difficult for Him. What confidence can we have then as believers? Where is the worry when we have this God on our side? And then finally, we see that God is merciful and that's also another dominant theme. Verse 50 and verse 54.

She says, His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation. This is such an incredible encouragement to Mary. Not only is God merciful, but He is merciful consistently. That's important to remember. Not only is God merciful.

Not only did God do something nice and gracious and will He do something nice for Mary now, He will do so in the future as He has done in the generations in the past. Again, Muslim friends and this friend that I've referred to as well, ex-Muslim, they will tell you that Allah is also merciful. Allah is merciful. He forgives sin. He bestows grace.

But Allah is not bound to mercy because He is far higher and He is altogether dispassionate. He cannot have these emotions of mercy for too long. And so at one time He can be merciful and at another time He can be capricious and fickle. This god, this Allah is aloof and He is removed from the human condition. The God who reveals Himself in the Bible.

Mary says is the one who is marked by mercy. He is known for His mercy from generation to generation. He is merciful. Verse 54 sort of fleshes that out, doesn't it?

It says, He has helped His servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy. Again, that word remembrance isn't remembrance in the sense that God had forgotten and all of a sudden, oh, yeah. The people Israel. I better go and check out what they're busy with now. No.

It's indicating that this Jesus who will be born from the virgin Mary is in line with all the promises that He has made to Israel. This Saviour Jesus will be the culmination of all the merciful promises God has made in the past. In mercy, God honours His promises. God is merciful. Not once but all the time.

He is known by His mercy. So friends, sort of wrapping up. I don't want to trivialise the song of Mary into a simple moralistic story about worry. That would be reducing it far more than the glory that it holds. That's not the aim of this bit of Scripture, but I think there is an element we can take from it.

Mary's situation was not easy. It was terrifyingly perilous. And in the midst of that, in spite of being overwhelmed with circumstances and the possibilities of rejection and the multitude of possibilities for a young, fragile woman and what she could have dreaded and worried about, we find worship. And I speak from my own experience to confirm this, but when we find ourselves worshiping God, the worry fades away. But the more important meaning of the song as we will also celebrate in the coming weeks, the great Magnificat is a greater reason we should hand over all our burdens and worries to God.

And that is summed up in what this song is pointing to. As Christ the Saviour. The one who would be the embodiment of the might of God. The warrior God that this song alludes to. The God who is King and comes to do battle for His people.

Jesus is the all-knowing God who saw our greatest need, who saw the need for us to be reconciled back to this glorious triune God in His perfect relationship. And He came to fix us, for us to enter into that. And friends, His victory over sin and death means that He has shown Himself to be the Lord and the King who Mary rejoiced in. And so now because of that sacrifice, His death and His resurrection, we have also overcome. And that must be the thing that puts steel in our spines.

It must give confidence to our hearts that a conquering Saviour who has paid the penalty of the cross, if we believe that, then we can have nothing less than unconquerable hope. And so we cannot return to the delusion of worry because if God could rescue us from such a terrifying threat, the threat of eternal separation from Him, will He also not care for us in the little things? Will He also not put food on our table? Will He also not give us strength under stress? Will He also not give us courage in the face of opposition?

And so we may sing in our hearts like Mary did. We may sing by the power of the Holy Spirit like Mary did. We may sing because Jesus is our Saviour and our life is already vindicated, saved, secured by His grace. May we sing until the worry passes away and have that peace take root in our hearts. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word to us this morning. Lord, we ask that we may receive it by the power of the Holy Spirit who makes these words resound with our souls. We ask, Lord, that for those of us who are perhaps in really difficult situations, situations that will make any of us sympathise. Lord, I pray that they will be given incredible peace and an assurance, a security. You are the God who holds them.

The God who knows how the situation will pan out. The God who sees their pain. The God who also cares about that pain. The God who is merciful all the time. Lord, we ask for strength to endure.

We pray for a perspective, a vision to even understand when things go from bad to worse. Help us to see that you are still at work. Help us to know that you are doing something in us and those around us. Lord, I want to pray for my friend. I want to pray for his situation, God.

Lord, I ask for peace. I ask that he can rest and sleep through nights. Lord, I pray for protection over his family. Even as they don't know you personally. Oh God, may even in this situation, you reveal yourself in an incredible way.

Lord, and even if they were to lose their life, we pray by your mercy that the little bit of witness that my friend could have with his family, Lord, that that can speak. And that somehow they may reach out and find the God that they've been looking for. We pray for my friend's friend who is also captured. We pray for his family. We pray for just food on the table for them.

We pray for funding, for help. We pray for government intervention if that's possible for the Australian government. We pray for the Afghan government. Father, we pray against the wickedness of the Taliban. Oh God, how many times do we read in the Psalms a prayer of faithful people praying for the arm of the wicked to be broken and we pray that, oh God.

Bring peace to Afghanistan. Bring peace to that region, Lord, we pray. We entrust ourselves. We entrust our hearts and our minds to you again. Help us to find the peace that comes with Christmas time, that is promised at Christmas time.

Help us to not take up the yoke, the shackles of worry again. In Jesus' name. Amen.