We're just a few days from Christmas now and no doubt many last minute presents are being purchased and shipped and wrapped as we speak and perhaps your multitasking gifts as you listen to this podcast. Of course, this is the biggest holiday in the States, at least for giving and receiving gifts.

And I just read that the average American shopper will drop a thousand bucks on gifts this Christmas season, which is incredible. And of course, you can send your gifts to Pastor John and me at 2112 Broadway Street. I'm joking, don't send us any gifts. Your audience is our gift.

But seriously, this leads to a question especially valuable now and it's from a podcast listener named James. Pastor John, hello and thank you for the podcast. I often hear that we are to love God for who he is, not for what he does for us. To love the giver more than the gifts.

How can we know that we're doing this, especially during Advent and the Christmas season? When I examine my own heart, so much of what I know about God seems to be in relation to what he has done for me, like in the sending of his son in the incarnation.

How do I interact with him on the basis of him and not simply on the basis of the gifts he has given to me? Well first, I think it is absolutely crucial in pursuing that interaction with God in that way to get really clear in our mind and in our heart that there is a huge and important difference between enjoying a person who gives gifts and enjoying the gifts instead of the person or more than the person.

And I think we need to clarify this and get it fixed in our minds, both from experience and from Scripture. Let me give you an example of what I mean from experience. What if you give an engagement ring? So you've been in love for two years maybe and now you're going to move this thing decisively forward.

You give a ring, I'm assuming you're a man, but gals, you apply it in an appropriate way. You give your fiancé a beautiful diamond ring, and she spends the rest of the night and then the following weeks bragging about this gift, taking it, showing it to everybody. She never calls you, she never looks at you, she never takes you by the hand and looks you in the eye.

She's just thrilled with this diamond and your intent in giving her that was totally missed. How would you feel about that? You wanted her to look at it. Oh yes, you wanted her to love it. You wanted her to be thankful for it. You wanted her to enjoy it.

And then you wanted her to put it on her hand, take your hands across the table, and look you in the eye and say, "I would love to spend the rest of my life with you. You are 10,000 times more precious to me than this beautiful ring." We understand from our own experience what it means when gifts are loved more than the giver.

We get that. There's no excuse for not getting that. We get it in our experience. Then we get it from the Bible when it comes to God, because it's all over the place. So 1 Peter 3, 18, "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." That's why he died, bringing us to God.

Or Romans 5, 11, after saying that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and we rejoice in tribulation, then he adds this in verse 11 of Romans 5, "More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." Or Psalm 16, 11, "You make known to me the path of life.

In your presence there is fullness of joy." In your presence, fullness of joy. "At your right hand, pleasures forevermore." Or Psalm 73, 25, "Whom have I in heaven but you? There's nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Or the story of the 10 lepers healed by Jesus in Luke 17.

Remember, all 10, no leprosy, awesome, healed, run away, one of them, a Samaritan, comes back praising God and falling down at Jesus' feet. What's the point? The point is, they missed it. They just missed it. This is about Jesus, this is about God. Leprosy deliverance was a means to that end.

So we know from experience, we know from the scriptures that there's a difference between enjoying a giver through his gifts and enjoying gifts instead of the giver. We know that, we get that. We know that the goal of all God does for us is designed to make it possible for us to be with him and him to be with us, does everything for us to be with us as our all-satisfying treasure and father and friend and savior.

Getting that clear is the key, I think, to experiencing God in and through all his gifts. And here's one more key to help us experience God this way during Christmas season. We should realize that every gift, every good thing that comes into our lives of any kind as a token of God's everlasting kindness, all of it, all of it was bought by the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus.

Here's the logic of Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not with him graciously give us all things?" So all things are coming to us as believers because he didn't spare his son. Here's the effect this has.

All giving and getting, especially at Christmas time, becomes a reminder of the death of Jesus. Now what effect does that have? What effect does God intend for his son's death to have on us when we think this way? On the one hand, Christ is the Father's indescribable gift, Romans 8:32 and 2 Corinthians 9, 15, and Christ is his own gift.

Over and over the New Testament says, "Christ gave himself, Christ gave himself." Matthew 10, 45, Galatians 1, 4, Galatians 2, 20, Ephesians 5, 2, Ephesians 5, 25, 1 Timothy 2, 6, Titus 2, 4, Christ gave, gave, gave himself. Think of it. If God gives his son and the son gives himself for you and to you, it doesn't even make sense to say we love the gift more than the giver.

The gift is the giver. The giver is the gift. So since every gift shared at Christmas time is possible only because of the death of Christ for us, and thus directs our attention to the death of Christ, therefore every gift takes us through the cross to the gift who is the giver.

Or, here's the other way of seeing it. In Romans 5, 8, Paul says, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." So behind every gift that we get or give at Christmas time is the death of Christ, and that means that every gift is the overflow of the gift of God's love, because that's what he shows when Christ dies.

When you think of God's love, it is inseparable from himself. When John Piper talks about enjoying God, I don't mean, "Oh, but you can't enjoy his love." In a sense, his love is not a gift. It is what he is. When real love binds two persons together, they don't say, "Hey, where's the gift?" They say, "You're the gift.

You're the gift. You are my love. Your love is yourself given to me." So it seems to me that Romans 8, 32 is the key to Christmas God-centeredness in giving and getting gifts. Every good in our life as Christians is owing to the death of Jesus, according to the logic of Romans 8, 32.

And that death is the gift of God himself for our everlasting joy, and the gift of God's love, which is also the giving of himself to us. Amen. What a great season to meditate on this precious fact that the gift is the giver, and the giver is the gift that is so precious.

Pastor John, thank you. And thank you for preaching this message year-round, not just seasonally. I appreciate that about you. And James, thanks for this very excellent question. Well, Christmas anticipation is very thick. It's getting thicker as Christmas music is on the radio, and the smells of pumpkin spice are in the air, and the beautiful lights brighten the dark night sky.

And in less than one week, Christmas will all be over. All the gifts will be unwrapped. They'll be worn or played with or returned to the store for cash or credit. Trees and lights will come down. We'll put them back into the attic. And it seems to happen every year.

There's a subtle sense, a little pang of letdown. Something tells us that the hype never quite matched the buildup. What explains that sensation each year that many of us feel? That's the question that we're going to look at on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with pastor and author John Piper.

We'll see you next time.