The Humility of Mary

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"A Young Girl with a Big Assignment"

"Mary Was a Humble Woman"

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Dannah Gresh: Do you know those manger scenes? Yeah, creches, nativity sets. They go by a lot of names.

Come with me on a little tour of my house. I want to show you some of our manger scenes. 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, by the way. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. And I guess today I’m your manger scene tour guide, too.

Okay, I realize this is audio only, so you’re gonna have to use your imagination.

My husband, Farmer Bob, likes to collect nativity scenes. So, come on in. Check out this one over here on the mantel. It’s the only one that’s really mine . . . it's not Bob's! And no, it’s not a real Fontanini. My parents were making ends meet when they bought it, so it’s a look alike, but I sure do treasure it! I got it for my first Christmas . . . fifty-seven years ago. I'm a Christmas baby. I was born on December 17, so . . . nativity.

This one over on the coffee table . . . let me wind it up. It is a tiny one, but the grandbabies like to listen to it play and watch it spin—a little music box creche.

Look at this one . . . the set of clay figures from the state of Arizona. It's made from the clay of the land. I bought it the year Revive Our Hearts had a little gathering in Phoenix. We like to remember our trips by adding to this collection.

I don’t have time to show you all of our manger scenes. 

But every single nativity scene has the various figurines that go with it. Oh, there might be a shepherd missing, or a sheep, but you’ve got to have at least Baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!

Sometimes I like to imagine what it was like for Joseph and Mary. I mean, having to have the baby in a barn was not ideal. But a lot of things in their lives had been out of the ordinary already.

Today on this program, we’re going to focus on things we can learn from Mary of Nazareth, the mother of our Savior Jesus.

Janet Parshall, who’s the host of In the Market, a radio program heard on many of our stations—had some interesting thoughts about Mary and the character qualities she exhibited. Janet shared this at a True Woman conference, sponsored by Revive Our Hearts.

Janet Parshall: Think of all the great women in history. Talk about Cleopatra. She was the queen of Egypt; she was the wife of Caesar—a legendary beauty, still hailed to this day. Or we could talk about Queen Elizabeth I of England. She was the virgin queen who it is said when she ascended to the throne quoted from the 118th Psalm, “It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (v. 23). She was a female ruler that changed the course of history and further opened the doors for spiritual reformation.

Or you could talk about Abigail Adams, whose love for her husband and love for her country guided us through some of our early tempest-torn years. Or you could talk about Rosa Parks, a woman whose dogged, yet gentle determination fanned the flames of liberty for all Americans regardless of the color of their skin. But added to that list, most assuredly, has to be the name of Mary. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And that takes us to where our story begins. Luke 1:26,

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 named Joseph, from the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored 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 favor 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 him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (vv. 26–33)

What amazing news! Two times in this passage, by the way, the word virgin is used to describe Mary. And later on we will see in verse 34 that Mary herself describes her condition as being a virgin. That hearkens back to the prophesy in Isaiah, a virgin. No question whatsoever on her status—she is a virgin.

Now in her day and age, Jewish men got married in their late teens, early twenties. The rabbi set the age of marriage for the woman and the age, the minimum age a woman could get married was twelve. Twelve! That meant Joseph was older than Mary. Mary was twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old. She's a teenager; she's a junior high girl. Mary is a girl from a small town. She is in every sense of the word a small town girl from the tribe of Judah, the royal line of David.

Most likely she was poor. Most likely she was illiterate. Girls in those days were never given education, but that doesn't mean—we'll see this in a minute—that she was in any way, shape, or form ignorant. She knew the Torah; she knew the Word of God. Out of the abundance of her heart the mouth would speak. The Bible, by the way, never mentions her parents, never describes her physically, and the only way you really get to know Mary is the way in which she starts to react to this profound news delivered in a pretty amazing way. “And Mary said to the angel,” and we read this now in verse 34,

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered 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. (vv. 34–35)

Now the question she asks is not a question of doubt, it's a question of curiosity. She's a teenage girl, understands she's a virgin and isn't quite sure how all of this is going to happen. The answer is this: The third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is going to enable you to conceive, and it's going to be a miracle.

Now, Scripture doesn't tell us the day, the hour, the moment when this occurs. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Scripture draws a veil of privacy across that moment, and we are not allowed to peer in. Calvin said this, “It's mysterious secrecy, withdrawn as if by a cloud from human scrutiny. That magnificent, miraculous moment was between Mary and the Holy Spirit, and none other.”

So as she goes to this experience it's amazing to me, not the question that she asks, but rather the questions she doesn't ask that really tell us who Mary is.

• She doesn't say, “What's Joseph going to think?”
• She doesn't say, “What's this going to do to my potential marriage?”
• She doesn't say, “What are my parents going to think?”
• She doesn't ask, “What is going to happen to my reputation?”
• She doesn't say, “What will my future in this town be like going forward?”
• She doesn't say, “How am I supposed to raise the son of God?”
• And she doesn't say, “Why me?”

Mary takes in this news, and because of her heart condition, humbled, submissive, obedient, she says pretty profound words, “Behold, I'm the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (v. 38).

Mary doesn't argue with the illogic of the announcement. Mary doesn't wrap her response around her circumstances. Mary does not barter with God for what she thinks might be something better.

So Mary declares that she is a—and this is an interesting word—a doulos, a servant, a handmaiden. It's interesting to study handmaidens throughout history, because handmaidens would often sit quietly and wait in the chambers of their mistresses. With simply a wave and hand, the mistress would direct the handservant to do anything. Without dialogue or discussion, in immediate obedience, the handmaiden would respond when the mistress waved her hand.

And in the hierarchy of help, handmaidens were deemed to be the lowliest of servants. So when Mary calls herself a doulos, a servant, she empties herself completely of her, and allows the Holy Spirit to completely fill her. That's what a handmaiden does: obeys and obeys and obeys without question. No wonder the word “blessed” is so subscribed to the definition of Mary.

Mary knew who God was; she knew His Word and had learned to trust Him. And when His messenger sends the most incredible news to a thirteen-year-old girl from Nazareth, she is ready, she is prepared to say “yes.”

Now what would you or I have said in those set of circumstances?

Would we be willing to go where God calls? Or would we be hesitant?

• Would we say “yes” if it meant that people would mock us?
• Would we say “yes” if it meant people would marginalize us?
• Would we say “yes” because our hearts are humbled, submitted, and obedient?

Dannah: Hmm, would we say yes? Great questions there from Janet Parshall, speaking some years back at the national conference, True Woman.

I wrote a six-week Bible study for tween girls based on the life of Mary. As I was contemplating on just how difficult it was for Mary to say "yes" to the Lord, there was one thing that really touched my heart: her song!

My soul will magnify the Lord,
I rejoice in God my Savior,
In the wonder of His favor.¹

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We read the lyrics to this song in Luke 1, and I’ll read it over you in a minute. But first, let me give you some perspective. This song is so special it has a name. We call it "The Magnificat." Magnificat, of course, means what it sounds like it means: “magnify.” And that’s a pretty fitting name, because through this song Mary magnifies God’s name. 

And to magnify something, as you know, means to make something bigger.

When you think about it, that’s ironic! Mary was magnifying God’s name. That’s like saying you want to magnify . . .I don’t know . . . the universe, right? Can we actually make God bigger? It’s a good question! 

Let's think about this. We magnify God’s name like a telescope magnifies a faraway galaxy. It’s already huge, and doesn’t need to be bigger. But when we use a telescope to magnify it, it looks bigger to us. We have help seeing that galaxy through our very limited human vision! 

Magnifying God works the same way! There are some things we do that help us focus on who God is and see just how big He is—even though our understanding is limited. Worshiping Him is one of those things we do to magnify God. Worship helps us put God in His rightful perspective in our eyes. Through our worship we draw close to Him, and as a result, can magnify His name to other people, making God’s greatness more evident to them! Through Mary’s worship, God was magnified.

Here’s what that looked like on that amazing day when Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Let me read some of Mary’s song over you, and I hope you’ll soak in it. I hope you'll magnify God with me.

Luke chapter 1, verse 46 begins like this. “And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all 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 forever.” (vv. 46–55)

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. Mary’s praise was full of references to Scripture. She magnified the Lord.

Now, get this . . . When our eyes are fixed on God, they can’t be focusing on our worldly problems. Worshiping Him puts our trials in perspective, too. They get smaller—more manageable—when our vision gets focused on God. 

So, got any problems this Christmas season? They seem, I don’t know, extra painful on the backdrop of the Christmas decorations, don’t they? Well, Mary faced that. She was a pregnant teen who could have worried. Instead, she worshiped. A faithful girl worships instead of whining when she has troubles. 

Let’s hear now from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She also sees characteristics in Mary that we should imitate. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: What comes overflowing out of your life when you experience the goodness, the grace, and the mercy of God?

Do you just go on as if nothing had happened? Do you find yourself taking time to stop and say, “God is great. God is good, and I thank Him, I bless Him for His goodness”?

Praise was not just something that Mary felt inside, though she certainly did that, but it was something she expressed verbally so that others could hear it and be blessed. I know there are times in my own life when I feel thankfulness for the goodness of God, but so many times I just hurry on and don’t stop to say it, to say it to others, to say to the Lord, “You have been so good, and I worship You; I thank You.”

As we read this passage, we see something else about Mary, and that is that she was a woman of the Word. She was a woman of the Word. In Mary’s prayer that we’ve just read, there are at least twelve quotations from Old Testament Scriptures.

Now most of us, if pressed, would have a hard time in a prayer coming up—by memory—with a dozen Old Testament quotations to work into our prayer. But she used the Word of God, with which she was obviously very familiar, as a part of her worship, her prayer, and her praise. Those quotations are all woven together.

It’s not something that she had to say, “Now, wait a minute, let me go get my Bible so I can read a psalm of praise to the Lord.” That’s what I would probably have to do, but instead she knew these psalms. She knew these passages. They were embedded in her heart. They were part of her thinking.

I see in Mary someone who listened to the Word of God attentively, who made it a part of her life, made it a part of her heart, and out of, then, the overflow of that Word, came this prayer as she prayed the Word back to God. Ladies, if we’re going to be used of God in our generation, we’ve got to become women of God’s Word, women who know the Word of God.

Now, if we women want to be used of God in our day, we need to get this Word into us. We need to get into it, get it into our minds, get it into our hearts so that when we are challenged, when we are having to respond to the circumstances of life, what comes out will be the Word and the ways of God. That is the only reliable, unchanging source of authority for our lives.

So I ask you these questions:

• Do you love the Word of God? Do you really?
• Do you make it a part of your everyday life? Or is it just a category of your life?
• Do you read the Scripture?
• Do you memorize it as Mary evidently had?
• Do you share it with others?
• Do you pray it back to God?
• Do you share it with others who may be in your pathway?
• Do you use the Word in practical ways, in real-life situations?

As we move into Luke chapter 2, we’re going to see some more characteristics of the woman that God uses. We read in verse 19 of Luke chapter 2 that after the shepherds left the manger scene, after the birth of Christ, the Scripture says that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart,” Luke chapter 2, verse 19. She “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Then twelve years later, as we go to the end of Luke chapter 2, we read another incident in Mary’s life, this is after Mary and Joseph had found Jesus at the age of twelve talking with the teachers in the Temple, and once again, verse 51 of Luke chapter 2, we read, “[Mary] treasured all these things in her heart.” 

These verses tell me that Mary was a reflective woman. She was a reflective woman. That’s something that I don’t know a lot about, to tell you the truth, and it’s something that very few people today experience on a very consistent basis. What is this passage telling us about Mary?

The word treasured—where it said “she treasured all these things in her heart”—it means "to keep them there, to guard them, to preserve, to keep them safe, to keep them close, to keep them carefully." What picture does that give you of Mary? It says to me that Mary took time to meditate on what God had done.

So here’s the question for this characteristic:

• Do I take time to remember what God has done and to meditate on what He is doing in my life and in my circumstances?

Mary was a reflective woman, and we need to learn to reflect and meditate on what God is doing in our lives.

Now I see also that Mary was a humble woman. It’s interesting to me that very little is said of Mary in the Scripture after the birth of the Lord Jesus, and that suggests to me that she was content to be in the background. She was content not to be a well-known woman. Now, she’s well known to us today, but she didn’t know that she was going to be well known. She was content not to have others know who she was.

I believe that’s because the deep driving motivation of her life was to make Jesus known. What mattered to her was that people would know who He was. In her humility of spirit, she said, “It’s okay if nobody knows who I am. What matters is that they know Him.”

You see, when the angel came to tell Mary that she was going to have a child, the angel had said of that Son, “He will be great. He will be the Son of the Most High God,” and Mary just embraced the will of God (1:32 paraphrased). The angel didn’t say, “You will be great.” The angel said, “He will be great.”

Even among those of us who wouldn’t think we aspire to fame or to be well known, there’s something inside all of our hearts that wants to be recognized, that wants to have others notice what we do. But the woman God uses is the woman who is content not to be recognized, not to be appreciated, not to be noticed.

Some of you, day after day, are being faithful in tending to matters of your home. You’re being keepers at home. You’re extending hospitality through your home. You’re extending mercy to the poor and needy, as we’re told that the virtuous woman does. But in some of your cases, no one knows what you’re doing.

Are you content not to be recognized, not to be appreciated, not to have people make a big deal about what you’re doing because you’ve accepted the goal for your life that you will make Him to be known? Your goal is to make Him to be seen, to be great, and it really doesn’t matter then what others think about you.

When Mary prayed her great prayer in Luke chapter 1, verse 48, she said, “[God] has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” She did not see herself as worthy of the favor of God. She knew that it was all of God’s goodness and His grace that He was using her. She really had the spirit of John the Baptist. Remember how he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30, ESV).

Are you willing to decrease—to be less known, to take the place of humility—in order that He can increase? You can never go wrong on the pathway of humility because it’s not about us—it’s all about Him. It’s about what God is doing through His Son Jesus in our world, and we’re just instruments.

Some time ago I remember meeting a woman who was a well-known violinist in an Eastern European country. She talked about this matter of humility, and she held up her violin and she said,

It would be foolish for this violin to think that it is anything. What makes it something is when someone who knows how to play it begins to play it. We are as that block of wood in the hands of God, and if any beautiful music comes through our lives, it’s not because we were anything. It’s because the Master knew what to do with us and how to use us as simply an instrument in His hands.

So we realize it’s not about this block of wood. It’s about the Lord who wants to make beautiful music through us, reflecting His glory to others.

• Are you content to serve God without human recognition?

If no one ever knew or saw or applauded the things that you’re doing to serve your family, to love your mate, to serve the body of Christ and minister in your church or your community, if no one ever saw or knew or said “Thank you,” would you keep doing it anyway?

• Is it your goal that He might increase and that you might decrease?

That’s the pathway to joy. That’s the pathway to being a woman that God can use—a humble woman walking in the pathway of humility so that He can be seen to be great through us.

Dannah: There are certainly some great qualities modeled in the life of Mary of Nazareth. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talks about more of them in a series she taught about Mary. You’ll find a link to it when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and select today’s program. 

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Have a wonderful week, and if you have a manger scene set up in your home, next time you walk by it, think about the lessons you can learn from the life of Mary.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

“Away in a Manger (Music Box),” Four Daughters, Christmas Lullaby Music for Baby—Instrumental Song Collection, ℗ 2019 Project of Hope.

¹“Magnificat,” Keith and Kristyn Getty, Joy—An Irish Christmas, ℗ 2011 Getty Music Label, LLC.

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