Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Way Up is Down | The Gospels | Luke 1:39–56

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Are you chasing personal success over God’s kingdom? What does true greatness look like? Can the "lowly" really change the world? In today’s episode, Keith shares how Luke 1:39–56 reveals through Mary’s Magnificat that God accomplishes his greatest work through the humble and ordinary. Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Luke 1:39-56

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. If you grew up in the 90s Christian subculture, then you know all about Veggie Tales. They were short kid stories where vegetables taught Bible lessons. Believe it or not, they're still pretty good today. But that's beside the point. The company that created Veggie Tales was called Big Ideas, and it was led by a visionary Christian creator named Phil Visher.

By the late 90s, Big Ideas wasn't doing well. It was doing exceptionally well. Between 96 and 99, their yearly revenue grew from 1.3 million to 44 million. But by 2003, they were filing for bankruptcy. What happened? Phil Vischer reflected on this question and said that you might think it was their massively over-budgeted film called Jonah, or perhaps the $11 million lawsuit they lost. These were part of the problem, but they weren't the main thing. Phil Vischer said the main problem was that he wanted to be great.

He wanted big ideas to be great. To quote him, I wanted to build the next Disney. And that desire for greatness ultimately led him to make poor business decisions in the name of growth. That ultimately caused the company to come crashing down. If you go to the bookstore, you'll find bookshelves lined with book after book promising to make you great. A great leader? Help you build a great business. Build a great following online.

Aside from the fact that these books rarely were, believe me, I've tried. these books airbrush a dark reality. The way to true greatness isn't to make yourself greater. The way to true power isn't to accumulate more power. You could summarize large swaths of the biblical storyline by making precisely this point. He has brought down the rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things, but he sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, a nation of ex-slaves, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever. just as he promised our ancestors. Those words are from Mary, the mother of Jesus.

She sang them on a visit to her relative Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with the miracle child, John the Baptist. And Mary knew what she was talking about. Mary was the definition of not great. She was poor. She lived in a backwater town. She had virtually no social standing, and she was pregnant out of wedlock.

But the very fact that God chose her to be the mother of Jesus rewired her conception of herself and reality. If God chose to fulfill his greatest promise through someone as lowly as her, this must mean that God works in ways we do not expect. Because we expect God to work through people who are great, people who are the best leaders with the biggest businesses and the biggest platforms and the biggest bank accounts and the biggest networks and the biggest following. But Mary sees that God works paradoxically through lowly people like her,

and precisely because she knows how unworthy she is, she cannot help but praise God. She says, my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm. He has scattered those who are proud and their inmost thoughts.

Our culture is fixated on being great, but God fixes the world to the lowly. Our culture praises the vision of the proud, but God calls the humble to build his vision of heaven on earth. Our culture thinks the power to change the world is invested in thrones and white houses, but God invests his power to change the world in the womb of a young peasant girl from Nazareth. Many biblical scholars have pointed out that this remarkable song called the Magnificat sets the agenda for Luke's entire gospel. Jesus is the ultimate humble servant whose death brings about God's kingdom. In his ministry, Jesus focuses on the lowly, on the sinners, the weak, the social outcasts.

He gives his most scathing critiques to the elites and the power brokers. But perhaps even more importantly, this song connects Jesus' ministry to the great story of the Old Testament. This is a story about God working through the weak and the powerless, through Abraham and Sarah, who could not have a child on their own, through Israel, enslaved in Egypt, through David, the last born shepherd from a no-name family. God has worked through exactly such people, because when he does so, it magnifies his name and his glory. It becomes absolutely obvious that he is the power, he is the wisdom, he is the one at work. And equally so, because lowly people are not self-deluded. They know they need God.

They know that apart from him, they are lost. The simple truth is that often those who have the least by worldly standards have the most in terms of faith. And this takes us to the heart of how Mary's words connect to our lives. If you have a car, a place to live in, food on the table, you must realize that you're among the wealthiest people in the world by comparison to most. We are in this nation the powerful, the full, the elite. Well, the great risk of having so much is that we will forget we need God. We pray over meals, not because God gave it, but because that's our habit. We pray little outside of that, except in urgent situations, because we think we've got the

ability to manage our own affairs. We think we can handle most of life on our own. We're all on a treadmill of greatness, trying to climb our way up the ladder and forgetting that according to God, the way up is the way down. Mary is throwing serious shade at the idealized American life, and we need to take her critique to heart. So today, reflect on these questions. Are you more obsessed with personal greatness than God's kingdom? Does your prayer life show that you think of yourself as more capable than you probably are?

Do you believe that God can work out his amazing promises through ordinary people like you and me? Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you care about the low level. the humble in heart. I pray, Father, that we would recognize how needy we are and how capable you are. I pray that we would not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.