Mary Worships God (New Year Service)

This passage deals with Mary, who, after the angel's visit and the news that she will conceive the Messiah, visits Elizabeth and offers praise and worship. Although Mary knows her own weakness and the impossibility of her situation, she accepts it in obedience, desiring God's word to be fulfilled. Amazed and grateful that she, lowly as she is, has been entrusted with God's great work, she offers God heartfelt worship.

The sermon emphasises that Mary's attitude was not a mere religious act but a resolve to take part in God's deep providence and plan once she had understood it. It says that God's will, which cannot be known by worldly wisdom, is revealed to believers through the Holy Spirit, and that believing and obeying it is true wisdom. It also points out that, just as Mary praised God amid hardship and misunderstanding, believers too should take part in God's will without being shaken by whether their circumstances are good or bad.

The sermon asks believers not to become proud by asserting their own righteousness, but to live only for the holiness of Jesus Christ. Just as Mary praised the Lord even in the hardship of conceiving a child as a virgin, it asks whether we will live a life of worshipping God, fulfilling our duty as believers to the end, through the hardships and joys of this year.