(upbeat music) - Well, happy Christmas Eve, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Pastor John, last time in the last episode, I shared a clip from you preaching on Christmas of 1981, 40 years ago, at the youthful age of just 35. A clip that's older than you were when you preached.

It's amazing to hear your voice as a rookie pastor back then, but we're now zoomed into real time here in the studio. You are 75 now, and Christmas 2021 is tomorrow. For a lot of Christmases, you've been thinking about the implications of Christ's coming, but particularly this year. I know you've been giving a lot of thought to the holiday over these past several weeks leading up to Christmas.

Tell us why and what's on your mind on this Christmas Eve. - Tony, I learned back in October that I'd be preaching at my own church at Bethlehem the Sunday before Christmas, last Sunday. From that time in October until now, the wonder of Christmas that has taken hold of me in a fresh and powerful way is the amazing reality that the personal, infinite, eternal, holy creator of the universe sent his son into this tiny speck of human habitation called earth in order to be condemned to death in my place.

Sometimes we just have to do what Psalm 46 says, namely, be still and know that I am God. In other words, we have to just pause and let staggering reality sink in. Christmas Eve is a really good time, I think, to do this. So what reality do we need to let sink in today?

Reality like this, before and above and outside of all created reality, outside of the entire scope of the universe with its countless light years of expanse, outside of all that, there is and there always has been a personal, infinite, eternal, holy God. He is absolute reality. He is the most real, real.

The most ultimate thing he ever said was, "I am who I am." He is simply there. He's there, like Francis Schaeffer said. The God who is there, above, before, outside all reality. Think of it, eternal reality could have been a gas. Nothing existed before the original reality to make it what it was.

It just was. Only we discover it's not an it. It's not an it. Ultimate reality is a person. It's just mind-boggling. I am who I am. We don't create him. We don't define him. We don't counsel him or help or enrich him or initiate anything with him. He is who he is and he reveals himself.

Long ago and in many and various ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by a son. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2. We must be still today, it seems to me. I must be still and let this sink in.

From all eternity, the infinite, eternal, personal, holy creator has existed as father and son and Holy Spirit. Now, what could that possibly mean? Son, son, God has always had a son. These are mysteries that make Christmas breathtaking. God has a son. He has had a son forever. The son never came into being.

He is not created. There never was a time in the infinite eternity past when he did not exist. The apostle John comes to help us as our mouths are agape with astonishment. He comes and he says, "In the beginning was the word "and the word was with God and the word was God." The word was with God and the word was God.

So God was with God. Yes, God was with God. And the God who was with God, the word, was the son of God. Verse 14, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us "and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son "from the father, full of grace and truth." And we mark that moment.

We mark that moment when God sent God into the world. We mark it with a celebration called Christmas. One day a year to be still and know that from all eternity, God had a perfect image of himself, a perfect radiance of his glory, a perfect essence of his nature.

And this God who was with God was the word and was the son. And when the time was perfect, Paul says, when the time was full and perfect to accomplish all God's eternal purposes for humanity, God sent God, the word, the son, to this tiny speck of human habitation called earth and the foundations of Christmas were laid.

Now the question is why? Why? And the answer God himself gives and that I have been so sweetly captivated by since October is Romans 8, 3. God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son. That's Christmas. Romans 8, 3, Christmas.

By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, and here it comes, he condemned sin in the flesh. God sent God as the God man. The flesh God to be condemned in his mortal flesh. And the one who condemned God was God. God condemned sin in the death of the God man, Jesus Christ.

Whose sin? Jesus didn't have any. Jesus was the one person in the world who didn't deserve to be condemned. The rest of us did. John Piper has accumulated almost 76 years of sins. Thousands upon thousands of sins. Any one of which was offensive enough against a holy God to plunge me into eternal ruin.

I don't stand a chance on my own to be acquitted before a God of justice. I am under condemnation, condemnation, and justly so. The righteous law of God that I have broken hangs over my head like a curse. What hope is there then for me? In a very short time, John Piper, age 75 now, will stand before God to give an account of his life.

So what hope do I have? Be still and know the meaning of Christmas. God has done what the law, hanging over me like a curse, could not do. The law can't pay for my breaking the law. So what did God plan to do from all eternity? God planned to send God, the Son, the God man, so that in his mortal flesh, without any sins of his own at all, he might bear the condemnation I deserve.

By sending his own Son for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. Or as Paul says in Galatians 3.13, Christ became a curse for John Piper. So what does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and the King's Son steps forward, takes the rope off my neck, puts it on his own, looks me in the eye, and just before he drops to his own death in my place, he says, "I love you.

"I love you. "Go show what I'm like now to the world." What does Christmas feel like to me? It feels like a man drowning in the icy Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic, desperate to be taken into a lifeboat, but being refused. Why? There's no room in the lifeboat.

It's full. And a man, the wealthiest, healthiest, most influential man on that ship, pulls me in as he jumps overboard to make room for me and looks up as I float away in safety and says, "I love you." What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a courtroom where your life, my life, hangs in the balance.

The prosecuting attorney is the unassailable law of God. The defense attorney does not exist. There is no defense. It is manifest to everyone in the courtroom that all evidence is against me. And the judge, the son of the king of the realm, brings down the gavel, guilty, sentenced to execution, everlasting ruin.

And as they leave the courtroom with me in bonds, the judge follows me out, pulls me aside and says, "I'm gonna take your condemnation. "You go now and show the wonder of this moment to the world. "I love you." So, Tony, that's where I've been now these months leading to this moment on Christmas Eve.

Romans 8, 3, "God has done what the law could not do "by sending his own son, Christmas, "in the likeness of sinful flesh, "and for sin he condemned sin, my sin, "in the flesh." What Christmas stands for is infinitely precious. It is. And I would simply plead with all our listeners, come to Jesus Christ this Christmas.

If you will embrace Jesus Christ, the son of God as your precious savior, all that God is for you, all that God is for you in Christ, in him, will be yours, no condemnation ever. And it will be a very Merry Christmas. - Amen. Infinitely precious. That's no overstatement.

Thank you, Pastor John. Well, on behalf of John Piper and the Desiring God staff in Minneapolis and around the country and around the world, we would all like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Christ-filled Christmas weekend, relishing in all of these glories that we talked about today.

I am Tony Reike, and we'll see you back here on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)