We’re simply two weeks from Christmas. Presents are nonetheless being bought, wrapped, and shipped. Christmas playing cards nonetheless have to be signed and mailed. Free ends on journey particulars are getting sorted. Household event-planning is getting finalized. Maybe you’re multitasking proper now and gift-wrapping when you pay attention. All of us really feel the vacation pressures, after all, Pastor John, as we gear up for one of many busiest holidays on the planet — and one of the crucial costly. The typical American grownup will drop about $1,000 simply on items throughout this season, resulting in a query of nice relevance this month, like on this e mail from a podcast listener named James.
“Pastor John, whats up, and thanks for the podcast. Typically, I hear that we’re to like God for who he’s, not for what he does for us — to like the Giver greater than the items. How can we all know that we’re doing this, particularly throughout this Christmas season? Once I study my very own coronary heart, a lot of what I find out about God appears to be in relation to what he has executed for me, just like the sending of his Son within the incarnation. How do I work together with him on the idea of him, and never merely on the idea of the items he has given me?”
First, I feel it’s completely essential in pursuing that interplay with God in that strategy to get actually clear in our thoughts and in our coronary heart that there’s a big and vital distinction between having fun with an individual who offers items and having fun with the items as a substitute of the individual or greater than the individual. And I feel we have to make clear this and get it fastened in our minds, each from expertise and from Scripture. Let me offer you an instance of what I imply from expertise.
Key 1: Loving the Giver of the Reward
What in case you give an engagement ring? You’ve been in love for 2 years, possibly, and now you’re going to maneuver this factor decisively ahead. You give a hoop. (I’m assuming you’re a person, however gals, you apply it in an acceptable approach.) You give your fiancée a wonderful diamond ring, and she or he spends the remainder of the evening after which the next weeks bragging about this present, taking it and displaying it to all people. She by no means calls you. She by no means seems at you. She by no means takes you by the hand and appears you within the eye. She’s simply thrilled with this diamond, and your intent in giving her that was completely missed.
“The purpose of all God does for us is to make it attainable for us to be with him and him to be with us.”
How would you’re feeling about that? You wished her to have a look at it. Oh, sure, you wished her to like it. You wished her to be pleased about it. You wished her to take pleasure in it. And then you definitely wished her to place it on her hand, take your palms throughout the desk, look you within the eye, and say, “I’d like to spend the remainder of my life with you. You’re ten thousand instances extra treasured to me than this stunning ring.” We perceive from our personal expertise what it means when items are beloved greater than the giver. We get that. There’s no excuse for not getting that. We get it in our expertise.
Then we get it from the Bible relating to God, as a result of it’s in every single place:
- 1 Peter 3:18: “Christ additionally suffered as soon as for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he may carry us to God.” That’s why he died: to “carry us to God.”
- Or Romans 5:11 — after saying that “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2) and “we rejoice in [tribulation]” (Romans 5:3), then Paul provides this in Romans 5:11: “Greater than that, we additionally rejoice in God via our Lord Jesus Christ, via whom we’ve now acquired reconciliation.”
- Or Psalm 16:11: “You give away to me the trail of life; in your presence there may be fullness of pleasure; at your proper hand are pleasures forevermore.”
- Or Psalm 73:25–26: “Whom have I in heaven however you? And there may be nothing on earth that I want moreover you. My flesh and my coronary heart could fail, however God is the power of my coronary heart and my portion without end.”
- Or contemplate the story of the ten lepers healed by Jesus in Luke 17:11–37. Bear in mind? All ten — no leprosy, superior, healed, run away. One among them, a Samaritan, comes again praising God and falling down at Jesus’s ft. What’s the purpose? The purpose is that they missed it. They simply missed it. That is about Jesus. That is about God. Leprosy deliverance was a method to that finish.
So, we all know from expertise, we all know from the Scriptures, that there’s a distinction between having fun with a giver via his items and having fun with items as a substitute of the giver. We all know that. We get that. We all know that the purpose of all God does for us is designed to make it attainable for us to be with him and him to be with us. He does every part for us to be with us as our all-satisfying treasure and Father and good friend and Savior. Getting that clear is the important thing, I feel, to experiencing God in and thru all his items.
Key 2: Remembering the Reward of Jesus
Right here’s another key to assist us expertise God this manner throughout the Christmas season. We must always notice that each present, each good factor that comes into our lives of any type as a token of God’s eternal kindness — all of it, all of it was purchased by the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. Right here’s the logic of Romans 8:32: “He who didn’t spare his personal Son however gave him up for us all, how will he not additionally with him graciously give us all issues?” So, “all issues” are coming to us as believers as a result of he didn’t spare his Son. Right here’s the impact this has: All giving and getting, particularly at Christmastime, turns into a reminder of the demise of Jesus.
Now, what impact does which have? What impact does God intend for his Son’s demise to have on us after we suppose this manner? On the one hand, Christ is the Father’s indescribable present (Romans 8:32; 2 Corinthians 9:15). And Christ is his personal present. Time and again, the New Testomony says Christ gave himself, Christ gave himself, Christ gave himself (Mark 10:45; Galatians 1:4; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:2, 25; 1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 2:14).
Consider it! If God offers his Son, and the Son offers himself for you and to you, it doesn’t even make sense to say we love the present greater than the Giver. The present is the Giver. The Giver is the present. So, since each present shared at Christmastime is feasible solely due to the demise of Christ for us, and thus directs our consideration to the demise of Christ, subsequently each present takes us via the cross to the present who’s the Giver.
“All giving and getting, particularly at Christmastime, turns into a reminder of the demise of Jesus.”
Right here’s the opposite approach of seeing it. In Romans 5:8, Paul says, “God reveals his love for us in that whereas we had been nonetheless sinners, Christ died for us.” So, behind each present that we get or give at Christmastime is the demise of Christ. And that signifies that each present is the overflow of the present of God’s love, as a result of that’s what he reveals when Christ dies. Once you consider God’s love, it’s inseparable from himself. When John Piper talks about having fun with God, I don’t imply, “Oh, however you’ll be able to’t take pleasure in his love.” In a way, his love shouldn’t be a present. It’s what he’s. When actual love binds two individuals collectively, they don’t say, “Hey, the place’s the present?” They are saying, “You’re the present. You’re the present. You’re my love. Your love is your self given to me.”
So, it appears to me that Romans 8:32 is the important thing to Christmas God-centeredness in giving and getting items. Each good in our life as Christians is owing to the demise of Jesus, in response to the logic of Romans 8:32, and that demise is the present of God himself for our eternal pleasure and the present of God’s love, which can also be the giving of himself to us.
