Mother, Sister and Follower

Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene

C. H. Spurgeon

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781781914472

1

Mary’s Song ¹

And Mary said, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.’

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 intercourse were as useful to our hearts as this visit was to Mary. ‘Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth 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; 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 waits, and 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, 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, ye children of the bride-chamber, to possess today and tomorrow, yea, 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 doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.’

Observe, first, that she sings; secondly, she sings sweetly; thirdly, shall she sing alone?

1. First observe, that Mary Sings. Her subject is a Saviour; 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 wrapt 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. No longer need we 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, bloodwashed and purified, up that starry way, that the redeemed one may sit down for ever on his throne. Let us dream no longer in sombre 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, 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 sang, they scarce knew why. Could they understand why God had become man? They must have known that herein was a mystery of condescension; but all the loving consequences which the incarnation involved even their acute minds could scarce have guessed; but we see the whole, and comprehend the grand design most fully. The manger of Bethlehem was big with glory; in the incarnation was wrapped up all the blessedness by which a soul, snatched from the depths of sin, is lifted up to the heights of glory. Shall not our clearer knowledge lead us to heights of song which angelic guesses could not reach? Shall the lips of cherubs move to flaming sonnets, and shall we who are redeemed by the blood of the incarnate God be treacherously and ungratefully silent!

Did archangels sing thy coming?

Did the shepherds learn their lays?

Shame would cover me ungrateful,

Should my tongues refuse to praise.

This, however, was not the full subject of her holy hymn. Her peculiar delight was not that there was a Saviour to be born, but that he was to be born of her. Blessed among women was she, and highly favoured of the Lord; but we can enjoy the same favour; nay, we must enjoy it, or the coming of a Saviour will be of no avail to us. Christ on Calvary, I know, takes away the sin of his people; but none have ever known the virtue of Christ upon the cross, unless they have the Lord Jesus formed in them as the hope of glory. The stress of the virgin’s canticle is laid upon God’s special grace to her. Those little words, the personal pronouns, tell us that it was truly a personal affair with her. ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.’ The Saviour was peculiarly, and in an especial sense, hers. She sang no ‘Christ for all’, but ‘Christ for me’ was her glad subject.

Beloved, is Christ Jesus in your heart? Once you looked at him from a distance, and that look cured you of all spiritual diseases, but are you now living upon him, receiving him into your very vitals as your spiritual meat and drink? In holy fellowship you have oftentimes fed upon his flesh and been made to drink of his blood; you have been buried with him in baptism unto death; you have yielded yourselves a sacrifice to him and you have taken him to be a sacrifice for you; you can sing of him as the spouse did, ‘His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me... My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.’ This is a happy style of living, and all short of this poor slavish work, Oh! you can never know the joy of Mary unless Christ becomes truly and really yours; but oh! when he is yours, yours within, reigning in your heart, yours controlling all your passions, yours changing your nature, subduing your corruptions, inspiring you with hallowed emotions; yours within, a joy unspeakable and full of glory – oh! then you can sing, you must sing, who can restrain your tongue? If all the scoffers and mockers upon earth should bid you hold your peace, you must sing; for your spirit must rejoice in God your Saviour.

We should miss much instruction if we overlooked the fact that the choice poem before us is a hymn of faith. As yet there was no Saviour born, nor, as far we can judge had the virgin any evidence such as carnal sense requireth to make her believe that a Saviour would be born of her. ‘How can this thing be?’ was a question which might very naturally have suspended her song until it received an answer convincing to flesh and blood; but no such answer had been given. She knew that with God all things are possible, she had his promise delivered by an angel, and this was enough for her: on the strength of the Word which came forth from God, her heart leaped with pleasure and her tongue glorified his name. When I consider what it is which she believed, and how unhesitatingly she received the word, I am ready to give her, as a woman, a place almost as high as that which Abraham occupied as a man; and if I dare not call her the mother of the faithful, at least let her have due honour as one of the most excellent of the mothers in Israel. The benediction of Elizabeth, Mary right well deserved, ‘Blessed is she that believeth.’ To her the ‘substance of things hoped for’ was her faith, and that was also her ‘evidence of things not seen’; she knew, by the revelation of God, that she was to bear the promised seed who should bruise the serpent’s head; but other proof she had none.

This day there are these among us who have little or no conscious enjoyment of the Saviour’s presence; they walk in darkness and see no light; they are groaning over inbred sin, and mourning because corruptions prevail; let them now trust in the Lord, and remember that if they believe on the Son of God, Christ Jesus is within them; and by faith they may right gloriously chant the hallelujah of adoring love. What though the sun gleam not forth today, the clouds and mists have not quenched his light; and though the Sun of Righteousness shine not on thee at this instant, yet he keeps his place in yonder skies, and knows no variableness, neither shadow of a turning. If with all thy digging, the well spring not up, yet there abideth a constant fullness in that deep, which croucheth beneath in the heart and purpose of a God of love. What, if like David, thou art much cast down, yet like him do thou say unto thy soul, ‘Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.’ Be glad then with Mary’s joy: it is the joy of a Saviour completely hers, but evidenced to be so, not by sense, but by faith. Faith has its music as well as Sense, but it is of a diviner sort: if the viands on the table make men sing and dance, feastings of a more refined and etherial nature can fill believers with a hallowed plenitude of delight.

Still listening to the favoured virgin’s canticle, let me observe that her lowliness does not make her stay her song; nay, it imports a sweeter note into it. ‘For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.’ Beloved friend, you are feeling more intensely than ever the depth of your natural depravity, you are humbled under a sense of your many failings, you are so dead and earth-bound even in this house of prayer, that you cannot rise to God; you are heavy and sad, while our Christmas carols have been ringing in your ears; you feel yourself to be today so useless to the Church of God, so insignificant, so utterly unworthy, that your unbelief whispers, ‘Surely, surely, you have nothing to sing for.’ Come, my brother, come my sister, imitate this blessed virgin of Nazareth, and turn that very lowliness and meanness which you so painfully feel, into another reason for unceasing praise; daughters of Zion, sweetly say in your hymns of love, ‘He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.’ The less worthy I am of his favours, the more sweetly will I sing of his grace. What if I be the most insignificant of all his chosen; then will I praise him who with eyes of love has sought me out, and set his love upon me. ‘I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that whilst thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, thou hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.’

I am sure, dear friends, the remembrance that there is a Saviour, and that this Saviour is yours, must make you sing; and if you set side by side with it the thought that you were once sinful, unclean, vile, hateful, and an enemy to God, then your notes will take yet a loftier flight, and mount to the third heavens, to teach the golden harps the praise of God.

It is right well worthy of notice, that the greatness of the promised blessing did not give the sweet songstress an argument for suspending her thankful strain. When I meditate upon the great goodness of God in loving his people before the earth was, in laying down his life for us, in pleading our cause before the eternal throne, in providing a paradise of rest for us for ever, the black thought has troubled me, ‘Surely this is too high a privilege for such an insect of a day as this poor creature, man.’ Mary did not look at this matter unbelievingly; although she appreciated the greatness of the favour, she did but rejoice the more heartily on that account. ‘For he that is mighty hath done to me great things.’ Come, soul, it is a great thing to be a child of God, but thy God doeth great wonders, therefore be not staggered through unbelief, but triumph in thine adoption, great mercy though it be. Oh! it is a mighty mercy, higher than the mountains, to be chosen of God from all eternity, but it is true that even so are his redeemed chosen, and therefore sing thou of it. It is a deep and unspeakable blessing to be redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, but thou art so redeemed beyond all question. Therefore doubt not, but shout aloud for gladness of heart. It is a rapturous thought, that thou shalt dwell above, and wear the crown, and wave the palm branch for ever; let no mistrust interrupt the melody of thy psalm of expectation, but –

Loud to the praise of love divine,

Bid every string awake.

What a fullness of truth is there in these few words: ‘He that is mighty hath done to me great things.’ It is a text from which a glorified spirit in heaven might preach an endless sermon. I pray you, lay hold upon the thoughts which I have in this poor way suggested to you, and try to reach where Mary stood in holy exultation. The grace is great, but so is its giver; the love is infinite, but so is the heart from which it wells up; the blessedness is unspeakable, but so is the divine wisdom which planned it from of old. Let our hearts take up the Virgin’s Magnificat, and praise the Lord right joyously at this hour.

Still further, for we have not exhausted the strain, the holiness of God has sometimes damped the ardour of the believer’s joy; but not so in Mary’s case. She exults in it; ‘And holy is his name.’ She weaves even that bright attribute into her song. Holy Lord! when I forget my Saviour, the thought of thy purity makes me shudder; standing where Moses stood upon the holy mountain of thy law, I do exceeding fear and quake. To me, conscious of my guilt, no thunder could be more dreadful than the seraph’s hymn of ‘Holy! holy! holy! Lord God of Sabaoth.’ What is thy holiness but a consuming fire which must utterly destroy me – a sinner? If the heavens are not pure in thy sight and thou chargedst thine angels with folly, how much less then canst thou bear with vain, rebellious man, that is born of woman? How can man be pure, and how can thine eyes look upon him without consuming him quickly in thine anger? But, O thou Holy One of Israel, when my spirit can stand on Calvary and see thy holiness vindicate itself in the wounds of the man who was born at Bethlehem, then my spirit rejoices in that glorious holiness which was once her terror. Did the thrice holy God stoop down to man and take man’s flesh? Then is there hope indeed! Did a holy God bear the sentence which his own law pronounced on man? Does that holy God incarnate now spread his wounded hands and plead for me? Then my soul, the holiness of God shall be a consolation to thee. Living waters from this sacred well I draw; and I will add to all my notes of joy this one, ‘and holy is his name.’ He hath sworn by his holiness, and he will not lie, he will keep his covenant with his anointed and his seed for ever.

When we take to ourselves the wings of eagles, and mount towards heaven in holy praise, the prospect widens beneath us; even so as Mary poises herself upon the poetic wing, she looks adown the long aisles of the past, and beholds the mighty acts of Jehovah in the ages long back. Mark how her strain gathers majesty; it is rather the sustained flight of the eagle-winged Ezekiel than the flutter of the timid dove of Nazareth. She sings, ‘His mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.’ She looks beyond the captivity, to the days of the kings, to Solomon, to David, along through the Judges into the wilderness, across the Red Sea to Jacob, to Isaac, to Abraham, and onward, till, pausing at the gate of Eden, she hears the sound of the promise, ‘The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.’ How magnificently she sums up the book of the wars of the Lord, and rehearses the triumphs of Jehovah, ‘He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.’ How delightfully is mercy intermingled with judgment in the next canto of her psalm: ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.’

My brethren and sisters, let us, too, sing of the past, glorious in faithfulness, fearful in judgment, teeming with wonders. Our own lives shall furnish us with a hymn of adoration. Let us speak of the things which we have made touching the King. We were hungry, and he filled us with good things; we crouched upon the dunghill with the beggar, and he has enthroned us among princes; we have been tossed with tempest, but with the Eternal Pilot at the helm, we have known no fear of shipwreck; we have been cast into the burning fiery furnace, but the presence of the Son of Man has quenched the violence of the flames.

Tell out, O ye daughters of music, the long tale of the mercy of the Lord to his people in the generations long departed. Many waters could not quench his love, neither could the floods drown it; persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword – none of these have separated the saints from the love of God which is in Christ our Lord. The saints beneath the wing of the Most High have been ever safe; when most molested by the enemy, they have dwelt in perfect peace: ‘God is their refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’ Ploughing at times the blood red wave, the ship of the Church has never swerved from her predestined path of progress. Every tempest has favoured her: the hurricane which sought her ruin has been made to bear her the more swiftly onward. Her flag has braved these eighteen hundred years the battle and the breeze, and she fears not what may yet be before her. But, lo! she nears the haven; the day is dawning when she shall bid farewell to storms; the waves already grow calm beneath her; the long-promised rest is near at hand; her Jesus himself meets her, walking upon the waters; she shall enter into her eternal haven, and all who are on board shall, with their Captain, sing of joy, and triumph, and victory through him who hath loved her and been her deliverer.

When Mary thus tuned her heart to glory in her God for his wonders in the past, she particularly dwelt upon the note of election. The highest note in the scale of my praise is reached when my soul sings, ‘I love him because he first loved me.’ Well d...

Table of contents

• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• About this book
• 1. Mary’s Song
• 2. Obeying Christ’s Orders
• 3. Martha and Mary
• 4. Concentration and Diffusion
• 5. Over Against the Sepulchre
• 6. Christ’s Manifestation to Mary Magdalene
• Other Books by Christian Focus
• Christian Focus