Well, Mary Christmas to all of the Aspastor John podcast listeners out there, on behalf

of John Piper and the whole team at Desiring God, we pray that your Christmas is filled

with the glorious beauty of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

And thank you for joining us for another year on the podcast.

Thanks for all the great questions and your engagement.

We can't do this podcast without you.

Well, the great Christmas hymn, Joy to the World is a celebration of the glory of our

sovereign Savior and the global joy that he brought in his birth in the little town of Bethlehem.

That same hymn calls for every heart to prepare him room.

But what does that mean exactly to receive Christ?

That's the question Pastor John took up in his 1986 sermon, preparing to receive Christ.

Here's what he said.

We regard divine things as stupid, falling.

Let me bring it into the Christmas setting.

By nature, as flesh and blood, we recoil at the humiliating implications of Christmas.

And therefore we redesign Christmas.

Christmas is humiliating because it means I'm cursed and need a Savior.

Christmas means that I am lost and I need a shepherd.

It means I'm sick and I need a physician.

It means I'm a rebel and I need a reconciler and it means I'm dirty and I need a purifier.

Now in that message about Christmas is heralded.

The natural man or flesh and blood hates it so much that it becomes blind to it to protect

...