191215 Sermon on Isaiah 40:1-11 (Advent 3) December 15, 2019 We are in the season for “Dear Santa” letters. “Dear Santa, I’d like this and this and this and this. Be careful that it’s this one and not that one. Make it just so.” Everybody knows that Santa is the giver of good gifts. Christians know that God is the giver or all good things. James, in his letter, says, “Every good act of giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the lights, who does not change or shift like a shadow.” God alone is good, as Jesus says. If anything is good, then, it comes from him. And so might we write our own “Dear God” letters? “Dear God, I’d like this and this and this and this.” What might we put on that list? Better health? More money? More glory? Less sadness? There are a lot of things that boys and girls of all ages want. There are also a lot of things that folks don’t want, too, but that might be what they get. Are these things like coal in the stocking?Even those we know God approves of, get from him things to which we might say, “Yuck! Keep that away from me.” Do you suppose that John the Baptist wrote a letter that said, “Dear God, I’d like to be put in prison. I’d like to be afflicted with doubt. I’d like to have my head chopped off because of a stupid dare that some girl made at a drinking party”? Sounds weird doesn’t it?Or consider the author of our epistle reading, Paul. Do you suppose that he wrote a letter that said, “Dear God, I’d like to be stoned and left for dead. I’d like to be chased and harassed from one city to the next. I’d like to be shipwrecked. I’d like to be given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, which you refuse to remove. Oh, and after all this, I’d like my head to be chopped off too.”This can all sound ridiculous because of a principle that we are hardwired to accept. The principle is that this life is everything. If this life is everything, then you better hold on to every possibility for pleasure that comes your way and don’t let a single one escape. Fight for what is yours. Don’t make trouble for yourself. If trouble or suffering or hardship come your way, then you better figure out a way to get rid of it, otherwise your life will not be worth living.From a perspective such as this, the Christian life that is filled with suffering looks like the stupidest thing anybody could ever do. Paul would agree with you. In 1 Cor. 15 he addresses the resurrection from the dead. Some of the people in Corinth were saying that there was no such thing as the resurrection from the dead. When Paul responds to them he says that if there is no such thing as the resurrection from the dead, then Christians are to be pitied above all people. All that sacrificing and suffering would be to no purpose. If this life is everything, then it only makes sense to try to suck everything out of it that you possibly can. Those who don’t are fools!Paul kind of embraced this label as being a fool. Several times in his letters he calls himself a fool. If people wanted to think that he was a fool, then there wasn’t much that he could do about that. He wasn’t bothered by it because the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of men. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. In Christ Paul has redemption from the devil and the adoption of being a child of God. In Christ Paul has the resurrection from the dead to live an infinitely better life than the one that we have in this sinful flesh. That was why Paul was free to love and thereby also suffer as a Christian. There was nothing that he gave up or sacrificed that would not be given back to him a hundred fold in the life to come. He aspired to live for love—for the good of others—rather than for himself. So if people think he is foolish for living the way he did, then they would also have to think that Christ is foolish and that God is foolish, for God is love. It is not foolish, though,