Sermons 2025

ADVENT MIDWEEK 2

The Song of Elizabeth
Luke 1:39–45

Sermon Outline
    4.    Mary essentially walks into her cousin’s bridal shower, grabs the microphone, and sings that her baby is more important than Elizabeth’s.
    3.    But instead of being jealous, Elizabeth sings with Mary because she believes Mary’s baby is her glory too.
    2.    Unlike Elizabeth, we think glory is a zero-sum game in which others’ glory or Jesus’ glory costs us ours.
    1.    Instead, Christ made you a sinner no more and wrapped you in his glory.

Elizabeth Sings That You Have a God Who Has Given You His Glory.

Sermon

We often treat glory as a zero-sum game. The way we obtain glory, we often think, is to take it from someone else. The more glory our neighbor has, the less we have, or so we think. To use a musical analogy, we don’t believe in glory duets. If someone else is singing, the only way to make ourselves more glorious is to take the microphone and sing a song in praise of ourselves.
This is why, I suppose, our society has a bunch of unwritten rules trying to regulate this impulse. It’s why we warn people with a variety of phrases like “Don’t upstage him” or “Quit stealing her thunder.” This is why women other than the bride aren’t supposed to wear white at the wedding. It’s why you don’t start boasting of your own work-related accomplishments at a man’s retirement ceremony. It’s why a young woman shouldn’t announce her pregnancy at her friend’s baby shower.

4.
And yet, that last thing is essentially what the virgin Mary does when she greets her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s whole pregnancy is essentially a prolonged celebration, for a couple reasons. One, Elizabeth is old, far too old to be having children, especially when you consider that she’s been barren her entire life—something similar to Sarah’s conception of Isaac in the Old Testament. And on top of this, an angel told her husband that the child Elizabeth is going to bear is going to be a prophet, as I mentioned last week, this is something the Israelites haven’t seen in about three hundred years.

This is all pretty amazing. There’s a spotlight that’s glowing on Elizabeth in this moment. This is her moment to sing the song of glory, the song of the wonderful things God has done for her. But when Mary comes to visit, our Gospel text strongly implies that Mary immediately tells Elizabeth everything she’s just heard from the angel Gabriel. She tells Elizabeth that she’s going to give birth to the Christ Child, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Mary essentially walks into her cousin’s bridal shower, grabs the microphone, and sings, “My pregnancy is even more miraculous than yours, and my baby is going to be even more important than your baby.”

3.
While many of us might be filled with sorrow, jealousy, or indignation in this moment, Elizabeth is filled with joy because, as a Christian, as a believer in the promise of salvation growing in Mary’s womb, Elizabeth doesn’t see glory as a zero-sum game. She doesn’t see it as a song she needs to sing instead of Mary. She sees it as a song she sings with Mary.

“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’ ” (vv 41–44).

Elizabeth knows that Mary’s baby is Elizabeth’s glory too. That’s why Elizabeth says what she says after feeling John the Baptist leap for joy in her womb as the mother of God comes into their presence. That’s why Elizabeth is filled with humility and asks the question, “Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Elizabeth responds with humility and awe, she gladly shares the spotlight with Mary and even gives it to her, because she knows that the Man who is going to save her from her sins is now the little unborn child in Mary’s womb.

2.
We don’t think like Elizabeth. Rather, we think like the world and follow its zero-sum game, its song-of-glory ways. When Christ and his Word come into our presence, we don’t want to yield the spotlight, even when that spotlight is illuminating things that are far less glorious than what Elizabeth had surrounding her. So the Word says, “Look, Jesus is here forgiving your sins. Jesus is here to heal your broken hearts and cast out your demons and to give you the gift of eternal life. So put away your pride. Let go of your sins. And come find rest in the arms of God.”

But we don’t. Instead of singing the praises of Mary’s Son, we sing our own praises. We worship our own pride, boasting of our own righteousness before the world. We sing the songs of anger toward those who have sinned against us, thinking that tearing them down will clothe us in more glory. We sing songs of despair as we look out at the world, thinking that lamenting the filth of our neighbors can somehow make us clean. In all of this, we think if we can rip the microphones out of other people’s hands, we can make their glory our own and become someone worthy of love and attention. In all of this, we hear Christ singing to us, calling us to turn from our sins, and we sing, “I don’t care how good your news is. I’m the important one right now. This is my day, my moment.”

1.
But it’s not your moment. In fact, the very existence of your life belongs to Jesus, the same Jesus who was born of the virgin Mary, and the same Jesus who came into this world not to take the spotlight away from you but to welcome you into his spotlight.

The child in Elizabeth’s womb grew up to be John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way for the Christ who would die for the sins of the world. And the child in Mary’s womb grew up to be that crucified and risen Savior.
With the spotlight firmly fixed on Christ, the nails were pierced into his hands and feet. And as he hung on that cross with those lights burning onto his head, Jesus shed his blood and took away your sins, took away your pride, your arrogance, took away your refusal to hear his Word. As his body was broken apart on that cross, Jesus took away all your self-worship and idolatry. And as he took his final breath, as he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46), Jesus sang the song that made you a sinner no more, the song that wrapped you in his glory and made it your own possession.

Then after hanging—and three days of lying—lifeless with that spotlight shining on him, Jesus began to move again. He lifted up his head, picked his life back up, cleared his throat, and told you that the hour had come for you to sing with him forever, for you to join the song Elizabeth sang with and to his mother, the song of salvation for all who believe.

“Blessed is Mary among all women,” Elizabeth sang, “and blessed is the fruit of her womb.” Now we can sing that song too because the holy fruit, the Lamb of God, has made you blessed. He’s washed you clean, fed you with salvation, and shown you that you don’t have a God who competes with you for glory.

Elizabeth Sings That
You Have a God Who Has Given You His Glory.

So sing with him forever. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.