Do I Love God for His Gifts or for Who He Is?
00:00:00.000 | We're just a few days from Christmas now and no doubt many last minute presents are being
00:00:08.440 | purchased and shipped and wrapped as we speak and perhaps your multitasking gifts as you
00:00:14.560 | listen to this podcast. Of course, this is the biggest holiday in the States, at least
00:00:19.400 | for giving and receiving gifts. And I just read that the average American shopper will
00:00:25.000 | drop a thousand bucks on gifts this Christmas season, which is incredible. And of course,
00:00:30.520 | you can send your gifts to Pastor John and me at 2112 Broadway Street. I'm joking, don't
00:00:35.400 | send us any gifts. Your audience is our gift. But seriously, this leads to a question especially
00:00:39.980 | valuable now and it's from a podcast listener named James. Pastor John, hello and thank
00:00:45.480 | you for the podcast. I often hear that we are to love God for who he is, not for what
00:00:52.000 | he does for us. To love the giver more than the gifts. How can we know that we're doing
00:00:58.680 | this, especially during Advent and the Christmas season? When I examine my own heart, so much
00:01:03.960 | of what I know about God seems to be in relation to what he has done for me, like in the sending
00:01:09.440 | of his son in the incarnation. How do I interact with him on the basis of him and not simply
00:01:15.720 | on the basis of the gifts he has given to me?
00:01:19.160 | Well first, I think it is absolutely crucial in pursuing that interaction with God in that
00:01:27.160 | way to get really clear in our mind and in our heart that there is a huge and important
00:01:36.280 | difference between enjoying a person who gives gifts and enjoying the gifts instead of the
00:01:45.840 | person or more than the person. And I think we need to clarify this and get it fixed in
00:01:53.120 | our minds, both from experience and from Scripture. Let me give you an example of what I mean
00:02:00.680 | from experience. What if you give an engagement ring? So you've been in love for two years
00:02:08.000 | maybe and now you're going to move this thing decisively forward. You give a ring, I'm assuming
00:02:14.560 | you're a man, but gals, you apply it in an appropriate way. You give your fiancé a beautiful
00:02:23.080 | diamond ring, and she spends the rest of the night and then the following weeks bragging
00:02:33.200 | about this gift, taking it, showing it to everybody. She never calls you, she never
00:02:38.560 | looks at you, she never takes you by the hand and looks you in the eye. She's just thrilled
00:02:44.120 | with this diamond and your intent in giving her that was totally missed. How would you
00:02:52.120 | feel about that? You wanted her to look at it. Oh yes, you wanted her to love it. You
00:02:58.080 | wanted her to be thankful for it. You wanted her to enjoy it. And then you wanted her to
00:03:06.320 | put it on her hand, take your hands across the table, and look you in the eye and say,
00:03:15.000 | "I would love to spend the rest of my life with you. You are 10,000 times more precious
00:03:24.160 | to me than this beautiful ring." We understand from our own experience what it means when
00:03:32.240 | gifts are loved more than the giver. We get that. There's no excuse for not getting
00:03:40.160 | that. We get it in our experience. Then we get it from the Bible when it comes to God,
00:03:46.480 | because it's all over the place. So 1 Peter 3, 18, "Christ also suffered once for sins,
00:03:54.000 | the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." That's why he died,
00:04:00.120 | bringing us to God. Or Romans 5, 11, after saying that we rejoice in the hope of the
00:04:05.720 | glory of God and we rejoice in tribulation, then he adds this in verse 11 of Romans 5,
00:04:11.440 | "More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
00:04:19.960 | we have now received reconciliation." Or Psalm 16, 11, "You make known to me the
00:04:25.640 | path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy." In your presence, fullness of joy.
00:04:32.520 | "At your right hand, pleasures forevermore." Or Psalm 73, 25, "Whom have I in heaven
00:04:38.880 | but you? There's nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail,
00:04:44.600 | but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Or the story of the 10
00:04:50.640 | lepers healed by Jesus in Luke 17. Remember, all 10, no leprosy, awesome, healed, run away,
00:04:59.560 | one of them, a Samaritan, comes back praising God and falling down at Jesus' feet. What's
00:05:08.840 | the point? The point is, they missed it. They just missed it. This is about Jesus, this
00:05:15.560 | is about God. Leprosy deliverance was a means to that end. So we know from experience, we
00:05:24.280 | know from the scriptures that there's a difference between enjoying a giver through
00:05:31.160 | his gifts and enjoying gifts instead of the giver. We know that, we get that. We know
00:05:37.440 | that the goal of all God does for us is designed to make it possible for us to be with him
00:05:46.000 | and him to be with us, does everything for us to be with us as our all-satisfying treasure
00:05:55.680 | and father and friend and savior. Getting that clear is the key, I think, to experiencing
00:06:03.540 | God in and through all his gifts. And here's one more key to help us experience God this
00:06:11.920 | way during Christmas season. We should realize that every gift, every good thing that comes
00:06:19.940 | into our lives of any kind as a token of God's everlasting kindness, all of it, all of it
00:06:27.200 | was bought by the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. Here's the logic of Romans
00:06:33.840 | 8:32, "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not
00:06:40.720 | with him graciously give us all things?" So all things are coming to us as believers
00:06:49.480 | because he didn't spare his son. Here's the effect this has. All giving and getting,
00:06:56.600 | especially at Christmas time, becomes a reminder of the death of Jesus. Now what effect does
00:07:03.320 | that have? What effect does God intend for his son's death to have on us when we think
00:07:10.320 | this way? On the one hand, Christ is the Father's indescribable gift, Romans 8:32 and 2 Corinthians
00:07:20.240 | 9, 15, and Christ is his own gift. Over and over the New Testament says, "Christ gave
00:07:27.520 | himself, Christ gave himself." Matthew 10, 45, Galatians 1, 4, Galatians 2, 20, Ephesians
00:07:34.280 | 5, 2, Ephesians 5, 25, 1 Timothy 2, 6, Titus 2, 4, Christ gave, gave, gave himself. Think
00:07:42.120 | of it. If God gives his son and the son gives himself for you and to you, it doesn't even
00:07:53.720 | make sense to say we love the gift more than the giver. The gift is the giver. The giver
00:08:00.800 | is the gift. So since every gift shared at Christmas time is possible only because of
00:08:09.520 | the death of Christ for us, and thus directs our attention to the death of Christ, therefore
00:08:17.240 | every gift takes us through the cross to the gift who is the giver. Or, here's the other
00:08:29.800 | way of seeing it. In Romans 5, 8, Paul says, "God shows his love for us in that while we
00:08:37.000 | were still sinners, Christ died for us." So behind every gift that we get or give at
00:08:43.880 | Christmas time is the death of Christ, and that means that every gift is the overflow
00:08:49.480 | of the gift of God's love, because that's what he shows when Christ dies. When you think
00:08:57.040 | of God's love, it is inseparable from himself. When John Piper talks about enjoying God,
00:09:05.360 | I don't mean, "Oh, but you can't enjoy his love." In a sense, his love is not a gift.
00:09:11.400 | It is what he is. When real love binds two persons together, they don't say, "Hey, where's
00:09:17.400 | the gift?" They say, "You're the gift. You're the gift. You are my love. Your love is yourself
00:09:26.000 | given to me." So it seems to me that Romans 8, 32 is the key to Christmas God-centeredness
00:09:33.640 | in giving and getting gifts. Every good in our life as Christians is owing to the death
00:09:40.680 | of Jesus, according to the logic of Romans 8, 32. And that death is the gift of God himself
00:09:48.360 | for our everlasting joy, and the gift of God's love, which is also the giving of himself
00:09:56.700 | to us.
00:09:57.700 | Amen. What a great season to meditate on this precious fact that the gift is the giver,
00:10:05.620 | and the giver is the gift that is so precious. Pastor John, thank you. And thank you for
00:10:10.420 | preaching this message year-round, not just seasonally. I appreciate that about you. And
00:10:15.140 | James, thanks for this very excellent question. Well, Christmas anticipation is very thick.
00:10:21.600 | It's getting thicker as Christmas music is on the radio, and the smells of pumpkin spice
00:10:26.840 | are in the air, and the beautiful lights brighten the dark night sky. And in less than one week,
00:10:35.260 | Christmas will all be over. All the gifts will be unwrapped. They'll be worn or played
00:10:41.420 | with or returned to the store for cash or credit. Trees and lights will come down. We'll
00:10:46.740 | put them back into the attic. And it seems to happen every year. There's a subtle sense,
00:10:52.100 | a little pang of letdown. Something tells us that the hype never quite matched the buildup.
00:11:00.060 | What explains that sensation each year that many of us feel? That's the question that
00:11:04.940 | we're going to look at on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to
00:11:09.260 | the Ask Pastor John podcast with pastor and author John Piper. We'll see you next time.
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