Charles Spurgeon on Luke 1:32, He shall be great.

“The man Christ Jesus stooped very low. In his first estate he was not great; he was very little when he hung upon his mother’s breast. In his after estate he was not great; but despised, rejected, and crucified. Indeed, he was so poor that he had nowhere to lay his head; and he was so cast out by the tongues of men that they called him a ‘fellow,’ mentioned him among drunken men and wine-bibbers, and even accused him of having a devil, and being mad. In the esteem of the great ones of the earth, he was an ignorant Galilean of whom they said, ‘We know not whence he is.’ His life binds up more fitly with the lowly annals of the poor than with the [royal] court-circular or whatever stood for that in Caesar’s day. In his own time his enemies could not find a word base enough to express their contempt of him. He was brought very low in his trial, condemnation, and suffering. Who thought him great when he was covered with bloody sweat, or when he was sold at the price of a slave, or when a guard came out against him with swords, and with lanterns, and with torches, as if he had been a thief…?”

“The very man who was despised and spat upon, sits glorious on his Father’s throne. As man he is anointed ‘King of kings, and Lord of lords.’ As man he has been lifted up from the lowest depths, and set in the greatest heights to reign forever and ever.”

Taken from Spurgeon’s sermon preached the in the evening of the Lord’s Day service December 2, 1883, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. No. 1760. Being his last sermon before his journey to the South of France.