Audio Recording Sermon manuscript: All four of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, make reference to our Old Testament reading, Isaiah chapter 40. All four Gospels refer to Isaiah chapter 40 when John the Baptist is brought up. He is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’” This is the way that others saw John the Baptist, and it is the way that he saw himself. He was the forerunner of the Christ. With his preaching of repentance, and with his baptism, God set people’s heart and minds straight. This is a very needed thing, for our hearts and minds are not naturally straight, but rather crooked. Psalm 14 describes us quite well when it says, “They are corrupt. They do disgusting things. There is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all the children of Adam to see if there is anyone who understands, anyone who seeks God. Every one of them has turned away. Altogether they have become rotten. There is no one who does good. There is not even one.” And if you should want to disagree with the Psalmist’s characterization of you and of every single person, I’ll just ask you one question: Have you sought after God? That is, have you panted and thirsted after him like a deer for water? Have you loved him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Have you even genuinely prayed the Lord’s Prayer—that God’s name would be holy to you, that his kingdom should come to you, that his will and not your will would be done? If Psalm 14 doesn’t describe you, if you are good, then you have no need for John the Baptist to set you straight. You have no need for Jesus Christ. You can stand on your own two feet. But then you might consider the preaching of John the Baptist that was prophesied hundreds of years beforehand by Isaiah: “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a wildflower in the countryside. Grass withers, flowers fade, when the breath of the Lord blows on them. Yes, the people are grass. Grass withers, flowers fade, but the Word of our God endures forever.” You believe that you are good enough. Then why does death hunt you down? Why does God hunt you down? God is not in the habit of punishing those who do his will. That would be like a father punishing a child right after the child had done exactly what the father had asked him to do. Wouldn’t that be supremely evil—to spank a child for doing good? That seems to be how the devil would parent. So if you are good, then why should God punish you? Why should you die? Either you are not good or God is some kind of devil. But, in our times especially, we have to talk about one more possibility, because it is so popular of an opinion. Folks say that people die because that’s just natural. The leaves burst forth with life in the spring, thrive in the summer, wither in the fall, and die and decay come winter. All around us we have this pattern of birth, growth, decline, and death. “The fact is,” they say, “there is no God. Nature just takes its course.” This is seen as being very sophisticated wisdom. Because science and stuff. The only reason those ancient people talked about God so much is that they were such idiots that they couldn’t conceive of anything so sophisticated as there not being a God. But that is not true. With the psalm that I have already quoted from, Psalm 14, I left off the very first verse: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” This psalm was composed by King David around 1000 B. C. He, obviously, was able to conceptualize such a thing as believing that there is no God. In fact, it is the opening theme to his whole song on the wickedness of mankind. And, indeed, we can go back even further. What were Adam and Eve hoping in after they fell into sin? Where not they hoping with all their heart that there was no God? For if there was a God, then they would surely die. So please, please, please let there be no God. They almost died with fright and disappointment when they perceived t