01 Introduction to the Servant Songs (Isaiah 6:1-13)

Speaker: In this series, we're going to be concentrating on the middle section of the book of Isaiah. We'll be in chapters 40 through 55, and we'll be focusing on the passages that are known as the servant songs. These are prophecies of a servant who will come and suffer for his people and bring justice to the nations. And we know from the New Testament that these are prophecies of Christ. In fact, the book of Isaiah contains the fullest revelation of Christ in the Old Testament, and these prophecies were written about 700 years before the birth of Christ. But before we get into Isaiah, I want to talk about where we are in biblical history so you know the context of when these songs were written and who they were addressed to. This will be reviewed for most of you, but the history of the nation of Israel begins with Abraham. God chose Abraham and promised to bless him. He promised to make Abraham's descendants as numerous as the stars, to give his descendants a land and to bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them. At the Lord's direction, Abraham left his homeland of Ur, which is Babylon, and moved to what we know of as Palestine. Eventually, Abraham has the promised son Isaac. Isaac has a son Jacob, and Jacob, who is also called Israel, has twelve sons. Jacob's entire household of twelve sons, wives, and children end up in Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Israel, and they are in Egypt for over four hundred years. During that time they multiply into a large tribe and become enslaved to the Egyptians. Then God calls Moses to lead them out of Egypt and back to the land of Palestine. Through a number of miracles which culminates in the Exodus, the Lord brings them back. The Exodus, of course, is where God miraculously parts the waters of the Red Sea and the people cross over on dry land, but then when the Egyptian army pursues them, the water closes up again. They stay in the wilderness about forty years with the Lord miraculously providing for them, and then under the leadership of Joshua, they enter the land and conquer the land again through the Lord's miraculous guidance and intervention. And when they enter the land, the Lord again miraculously parts the waters this time of the Jordan River and they walk through on dry land. That leads to a period that we call the judges, where they live in the land but they have no king and they have no central government. They are ruled by the Lord. When they need a national leader, the Lord raises up a judge. Typically they are facing a threat from one of their neighbors, and God raises up a judge to deliver them. Eventually the people get frustrated with this situation and they cry out to the Lord to give them a king so that they can be like all the other nations. The Lord warns them that this is a bad idea, but he gives them a king. Saul is the people's choice for a king, and he is anointed by the prophet Samuel, though he fits the bill outwardly and seemed to have all the qualities you would want in a king, he was not devoted to the Lord. Eventually the Lord replaces him with David, and through a long process David becomes king, first over the tribe of Judah and then over the entire land. Under David the nation prospered. He established the capital in Jerusalem, he made it the center of rule and worship, he expanded their geographic borders to the highest and largest point they ever had, and they enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity, first under David and then his son Solomon. After Solomon dies, two of his sons fight for the throne, and that plunges the nation into civil war. They will eventually split with the two southern tribes uniting around one of Solomon's sons, and the ten northern tribes uniting around a different son. And so for about the next two hundred years, Israel exists as two separate kingdoms, and rarely do they like each other. It's more like a family feud. There are a few times when they more or less cooperate with each other, but most of the time there is tension between the two nations and sometimes outright war. And this is the period during which Isaiah is ministering. Isaiah's name in Hebrew means Yahweh is salvation. He was a prophet to the Southern Kingdom, which is the kingdom of Judah, both before the northern kingdom fell and before the fall of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom. We don't know much about him personally. According to Jewish tradition, he was well connected to the court. Tradition says his father was the son of the brother of King Amaziah. And tradition tells us Isaiah moved in the royal circles through these family connections. Well, there's no way to prove that, but there's also no way to disprove it. The text does seem to indicate that Isaiah came from a family of some rank because he seems to have easy access to the king and a kind of intimacy with the priests and the court proceedings. He was married and had at least two sons who were given symbolic names. One son's name meant a remnant shall return, and the second one meant hasting to the spoil, hurrying to the prey. Isaiah 1.1 gives us the dating for the book. He says, The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amaz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Well, those four kings' reign date his ministry from about 740 BC to 680 BC, which means his ministry spanned about fifty or sixty years. According to tradition, Isaiah was martyred during the reign of Manasseh, who was the king right after Hezekiah. And tradition tells us that he was executed by being put into a log and sawn in half. Again, there's no way to prove that tradition, but there is a reference in Hebrews that may refer to this event. Speaking of the fate of the prophets, Hebrews 11.37 says they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. Well, we don't know of any other prophets who were sawn in two, so that could be an obscure reference to the death of Isaiah. He will live to see the fall of the northern kingdom, that's the kingdom of Israel, which happens in 722 while Hezekiah is king in the south. And though he will write about the fall of the southern kingdom, the exile and the return from exile, he will not live to see it. The book of Isaiah is a remarkable prophecy. The first section of the book, chapters 1 through chapter 35, is set against the background of the threat of the Assyrian Empire. The last section of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, is set against the Babylonian captivity and is addressed to the people who were in captivity in Babylon even though they weren't there yet. So they are addressed to people who lived about 120 to 140 years after Isaiah died. So they are set against the exile, even though the exile has not yet happened. So he's a unique prophet in that he not only prophesied to his contemporaries, but he wrote prophecies addressed to a generation some 120 years later. You'll notice there was a middle section, chapters 36 through 39, which I didn't talk about. That is a prose history section. The rest are all poetic sections, but in those chapters, 36 through 39, we get historical sketch that covers an incident from the reign of Hezekiah. And I want to go over that because I think that sets the theme and sets the tone for the section we're going to look at beginning in chapter 40. In chapter 38, we're told that Hezekiah, who was the king of the kingdom of Judah, had contracted a terminal illness. Isaiah told Hezekiah that he will die from this illness, but the king pleads to be spared, and the Lord grants him fifteen more years of life. Well, with 2020 hindsight, we can see that Hezekiah lived too long because during those fifteen years he sired Manasseh, who is the next king and was the most wicked king in the history of either the northern or the southern kingdoms. And then in chapter 39, Hezekiah receives into his court the king of Babylon. Babylon at this time was a kind of rising power. Assyria was still dominating, but Babylon was on the march and on the rise, and Hezekiah invited the Babylonian king into the court and showed him the royal archives and the royal treasury. He's boastful and he wants to display his wealth. Well, when the king went back to Babylon, he must have put a reminder on his calendar. When we go west and conquer the world, sack Jerusalem, they've got a great treasury. Sometime later, the next king, King Nebuchadnezzar, reads that reminder and sacked the city of Jerusalem three times, eventually destroying it and taking the people into exile. And with both kingdoms gone, that raises the question, now what? Remember, Isaiah wrote these prophecies to Judah, the southern kingdom, before the exile began, before Jerusalem was sacked and Nebuchadnezzar looted the temple. But he's writing to them as if they are already in exile, and he's addressing them before it happens as if it has happened. So he's talking about a time when all of God's people are scattered and dispersed, and the Davidic throne is in danger of disappearing into the sands of Babylon. Well that raises a question. What does it mean when God's people are scattered? Does the exile mark the end of the history of God's people? Have they finally committed a sin that God will refuse to forgive and redeem? Have they finally gone so far as to forfeit the promises that God made to Abraham? You can read in Deuteronomy there are curses to disobeying the covenant, there are blessings to obey in the covenant. God has now enacted the curses of the covenant as stated in Deuteronomy, and part of those curses are exile. But what's after the exile? Is exile the end of the history of God's people? That's one of the main questions we're going to be answering through the servant songs. We'll see that the exile is not the end, that God has a plan and it involves the servant. Let me tell you a little bit about what it was like to be in exile in Babylon. We actually know a great deal about it. There were three deportations from Judah. Nebuchadnezzar came three times and sacked Jerusalem. The first time he took a number of rulers and leading people back to Babylon. Then he came again, a second time around 597 BC, and then the third and final time he came was in 588 BC. So the siege of Jerusalem begins in 588 with the final destruction coming in 586 when Nebuchadnezzar's troops level the city and burn the temple to the ground. So there's different dating systems. Some people date the fall of Jerusalem from 588 when the siege began. Some people date the fall of Jerusalem from 586 when the temple was finally destroyed and the city leveled. All of the leading people, all the artisans were deported and resettled in Babylon. And the Babylonians wanted to keep the captives under their thumb, so they placed them as close to the city of Babylon as they could, and they served as slaves to Babylonian households. So here you have the Judean princes, the leaders, the rulers, the professionals and craftsmen, and they're doing manual labor and menial tasks as slaves and servants in Babylon. Babylon was located on a great plain that was arranged in a square. It was about fifteen miles to a side. We know a lot about it because a man named Herodotus wrote about the fall of Babylon about fifty years after it fell. So now we're talking about when Babylon is conquered by the Persians. And about fifty years after that, this man named Herodotus went to the site and wrote an eyewitness report of the condition of the buildings in the city. Babylon was not destroyed, it was taken virtually without a fight, so the cities were still there. And he describes what Babylon was like, so we know quite a bit about what it was like for the exiles. It was approximately the size of San Francisco. It was surrounded by a great wall that was 85 feet high and 65 feet wide, and outside of the wall was a moat. There was a smaller wall on the inside, giving the city a second line of defense, and around the wall there were about a hundred gates, eight of them named for Babylonian gods. So if you were a Jew, it didn't really matter which way you approached from, you were going to go through a gate that was named for a god who was not your god. There was the Ishtar gate, the Marde gate, there was a gate named after Adad, and so on. So entering through any of these gates you'd be struck by the large number of temples dedicated to pagan gods. There were fifty-three temples in Babylon, and they were dedicated to all their assorted gods. Then there was the Great Zigura, which was probably located on the foundation of the Tower of Babel. Nebuchadnezzar's palace complex was located there, and on each and every brick of his palace he had his name inscribed so that people would read the name Nebuchadnezzar thousands of times. If you walked the main route from the Ishtar Gate to the Temple of Marduk, there were these great limestone slabs with beveled edges, and every one of the edges read to the honor of Marduk, to the honor of Marduk. So everywhere you looked you'd see a temple dedicated to an idol, and you would see prosperity and security and ease and peace. Meanwhile, off to the west, your hometown, Jerusalem, would be lying in ruins. The temple was smoking, the walls were down, there was not one stone left on another, the king was in chains, and Jewish life as was known, was in ruins. While all around you people were living to the honor of foreign pagan gods and enjoying peace and prosperity. That had to raise the question among the exiles, where is the God of Israel? Where are the promises made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? Does the exile mean the end? Have we finally done it? Have we finally forfeited the promises that God made to Abraham? So is the exile the end of God's people? And the passages we're going to be studying are the section that answers those questions. Now remember, these are real historical questions. We have the benefit of about 2,000 years of extra history, and we know how the story turns out. But at the time, the people living then, for them, this kind of devastation was new. God's people had never been dealt this kind of a blow or faced this kind of discipline from God. And it was a very real possibility to them that God could abandon them and refuse to redeem them. Now also remember that they had these prophecies that we're going to be studying before the exile began. So they were not left to walk the road to Babylon in the dark. Before it even started, those who had listened to the prophets Isaiah and Micah would know that God had not left them without hope, that God had not abandoned them. And as we'll see, he's going to go to great, almost incomprehensible lengths to redeem his people. That's what the servant songs are about. They are the announcement of a new servant, a new covenant, and a new age, and they explain the new thing that God is going to do after the exile and how he will finally free and restore his people. Now let's meet Isaiah himself. I'd like to look at Isaiah 6, which is essentially his call or his birth as a prophet. This experience had, I think, such a profound effect on Isaiah that it influenced his prophecies, his language, and the way he describes God. Isaiah 6 1 starts telling us that King Uzziah is dead. Well, under King Uzziah, Judah prospered both politically and economically. He became king at around the age of sixteen and he reigned for fifty-two years. And Israel had not had a king like Uzziah since King Solomon. According to 2 Chronicles 26, 4 and 5, Uzziah did right in the sight of the Lord, and under his reign the kingdom prospered both politically and economically. Uzziah had an elite army of over 300,000 troops commanded by 2,600 military officers. And he had the best technology of the day and was highly mobile. When Uzziah fought, God helped him. He conquered many of his neighbors and he expanded Israel's borders. And with this political expansion came economic prosperity. In the Negev, he built forts to secure the water supply, he brought the Arabian trade route by the sea coast and secured the mineral wealth of the Rift Valley, and he developed the agriculture in the Judean hills. So under his rule, Israel enjoyed this great long period of peace. But then Uzziah became proud and he was cut off from the Lord. In 2 Chronicles 26, it tells us that Uzziah became so proud that he thought he could enter God's presence and take God's holy fire for himself. When he went in to do this, the priest challenged him, and Uzziah became angry, and while he was still holding the burning stick of incense in his hand, God struck him with leprosy, and he remained a leper until he died. He had to live in a separate house and was cut off from the house of the Lord. When he died, the world begins to change. Within a five year period, King Uzziah of the Southern Kingdom died, that was in seven hundred BC. The king of the northern kingdom died, and over in Assyria to the east, that king died, and a very ambitious king named Tiglath Pelazer came to the throne. And that brings Assyria under Tiglath Pelazer, becomes Assyria becomes a world power. It had been going through a period of decline, but under this new king, they start rebuilding and they will emerge as the world power that will threaten Judah and the northern kingdom Israel. They want to expand their empire and they want to capture those lucrative trade routes to the west, so they start looking to conquer their neighbors, Israel and Judah. So the signs start to appear that the prosperity under Uzziah has ended and there is trouble coming from the east. These events happened in close succession, so the death of the king in the south, then the death of the king in the north, and the rise of this new king in Assyria. They all kind of speak that something's changing, something's happening. You could compare it to what we call the Arab Spring a few years back, where you could sense that there was change coming, the governments were shifting, something momentous was happening, but you weren't sure which direction is it going to lead. Is it going to be a good thing or a bad thing? That was the atmosphere and the climate in the kingdom when Isaiah begins to prophesy. And that's the context for the vision in Isaiah 6. The world is changing. The era of peace and prosperity is coming to an end. It's about to be replaced by an era of war and spiritual decline and rebellion. And what happens? Isaiah sees God. Look at Isaiah 6 1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. No other prophet dates himself from a king's death, only Isaiah. He entered the prophetic office while Uzziah was still alive, but it's curious that he doesn't date his reign from the like the fifty-second year of Uzziah. Instead, twice he dates himself from the year of Uzziah's death. And I think he does that because he knows that Uzziah's death is significant. His decline, his being cut off from the Lord and stricken with leprosy, and then his eventual death says something about what the nation is going to. They are symbolic of the fate of the nation. God's people are about to live alienated and separated from God in the exile. What's about to happen to the nation is mirrored in Uzziah's death. In chapter five, Isaiah writes this is Isaiah chapter five verses one through seven Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured, I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting, and he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold an outcry. That question is the question we're left with. What more can have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? That's from verse 4. What more could I have done? Have the promises of God been forfeited? He says, Okay, well I've done everything I can, I'm now going to break down the walls and let the vineyard be trampled. This is symbolic of letting the people go into exile, and it raises the question, now what? Have we gone too far? And yet in all this political chaos, this decline that's coming, the king dying, what's happening in all this chaos and turmoil, Isaiah sees God. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now notice that he doesn't exactly see God. He sees God's sovereignty and he sees God's glory. The Bible tells us that no one has ever seen God face to face. So what's going on here? Isaiah is seeing his sovereignty and his glory. He describes his robes, his throne, his attendance, but notice he does not go on to describe the Lord Himself. His sovereignty is described as he sits on his throne. His glory is described as his robes fill the temple. He is high and exalted, but he himself is not described. He sees God's sovereignty. He sees him seated high, lofty, and exalted. So the Davidic throne is about to become vacated. There's political chaos and unrest. And yet when King Uzziah dies, and now there's all this unrest, the immortal one is seated undisturbed, untouched by all the climactic changes on the earth. So immediately Isaiah is presented with this contrast between earthly political chaos and despair and God's sovereignty. And that's going to be an important message to the exiles. And then he sees God's glory. The train of his robe fills the temple, so there's no room here for man's glory. Bruce Walkie writes, the train of his robe suffocates every human pretension. Not only does he see God's glory, he sees the glory of the Lord's servants. Look at verses two through four. Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. The verbs here are very active, the covered, the covered, the flying, they're this continuous action kinds of verbs, presenting the scene of constant motion as these winged seraphims fly around, and the song is continuous. They're singing it over and over. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. That Lord of hosts or Lord Almighty, it refers to the commander of all the armies of nature and of angels and of nations. And repeating a word three times is the strongest Hebrew superlative. So they don't have like a good, better, best. They use repetition to get that same idea. So good, better, best is holy, holy, holy. God alone is holy. And Isaiah is so affected, I think, by this vision that in his book he refers to God as the holy one of Israel twenty-six times. Shaking is the customary reaction of the earth to the divine presence, and shaking would also have prohibited Isaiah from entering God's presence or stepping farther into the into the temple, just as smoke prevented him from seeing God. So, right at this point in history, when there's political chaos on the earth, when there's human disillusionment in Judah, war is about to break out, idolatry is rampant, the exile of the north is about to happen, and then eventually the exile of the south, and yet here the seraphim are singing that God is holy, he sits on his throne and fills the whole earth with his glory. And what happens to Isaiah? He sees his own sinfulness. He's prevented from entering, and he tells us why himself. Having seen the sovereignty of God, his mighty rule over creation, the nations and the angels, having seen his glory and his sovereignty, Isaiah is now brutally aware that he is a sinful human being. Look at six five. And I said, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Woe is the word used by the prophets when they want to pronounce judgment on someone. It's not a temporary setback. It's not kind of, oh, alas, alack, this is I am completely lost, I am totally undone. The word ruined is a stronger Hebrew word than the word that was used when to describe Uzziah being cut off from the house of the Lord when he was smitten with leprosy. It's used of this terrible silence that follows death or disaster. It means utter, complete and utter ruin. So Isaiah is in utter despair, and the whole nation is in the same condition. He sees, look, there's meaning, there's perfection, there's righteousness and holiness, and I have no part of it. But God doesn't reveal himself to destroy, he reveals himself to redeem. He reveals himself to redeem us, and he immediately acts in his grace to save Isaiah. Look at six and seven. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. Now notice what Isaiah has done. Nothing. He is neither seeking nor expecting pardon. He didn't ask, he didn't beg, he just admitted he was ruined, and God immediately acts to redeem him. The initiative is all God's. So fire is often a symbol of God's wrath or his unapproachable holiness. The altar was the place where God accepted the sacrifices, and this burning coal that the seraphim picks up comes from the altar, and with it he touched Isaiah's lips. The effect is instantaneous. And they stress that as one happened, the other happened, so that the action happened at the same time. Isaiah contributes nothing to his atonement. It is all from God. And notice the work is comprehensive. Isaiah confessed his unclean lips and those of his people, but God says his guilt or iniquity has been taken away and been atoned for. The price has been paid. So this is the releasing of a judge saying the ransom's been paid, the price has been paid in full. Not just the specific confessed sin, but the whole burden of guilt has been atoned for, has been pardoned. Notice the contrast with Uzziah. Uzziah went into the temple and tried to grasp God's holy fire for himself. He tried to bypass the work of the priest and take matters into his own hands, and he was cut off and lived out his days in the isolation of leprosy. Isaiah basically humbly recognizes his own sinfulness. He comes in humility, he recognizes his brokenness, and God sends a burning coal from his altar to cleanse him. Instead of cutting him off like King Uzziah, the prophet Isaiah is purified. And the difference lies in how the two men approached God. Uzziah presumptuously sought to take for himself, but Isaiah sees the holiness of God, immediately recognizes his need for someone else to save him, and receives grace and atonement. God acts to save and redeem and atone. The effect is reconciliation. Now Isaiah hears God. Before he heard the voice of the seraphim, but now he hears the voice of the Holy One of Israel. Look at 6.8. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am, send me. Something we can learn from this, we don't hear God's voice until we have first seen his holiness, recognized our sinfulness, and been touched by his cleansing. Notice that Isaiah is neither coerced nor directly addressed. John Oswald writes of this, having believed with certainty that he was about to be crushed into non-existence by the very holiness of God, and having then received an unsought for and unmerited complete cleansing, what else would he rather do than hurl himself into God's service? And that's the birth of a prophet. It begins with Uzziah's death, which opens the door to this vision, which leads to despair when he recognizes his own sinfulness in the face of a holy God. But that opens the door to cleansing, and cleansing leads to service. Look at six, nine, and ten. And he said, Go and say to this people, keep on hearing but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes lest their lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Now that's probably the strangest commission you've ever heard. Okay, Isaiah, go tell the people not to understand and bring about spiritual blindness. How's he supposed to obey that? And notice it's comprehensive. Verse nine speaks to both the outside, seeing and hearing, and the inside, understanding and perceiving. And verse ten rounds out the picture by pulling in their heart. So their heart, their ears, their eyes, their mind, they're all closed, making the point that they will not be able to understand the message Isaiah is to give them. It's a strange call, but Isaiah preaches his message with such simplicity and clarity that the people of his day scorn him and see him as fit only to teach little children. And as you'll study the book as we study the book, you'll see that Isaiah did not understand this call to mean that he was supposed to expound great tangled philosophical arguments or deliver his message in obscure allegories and parables. Rather, he chooses very simple, very clear language, plain speech, obvious metaphors, and a very simple and reasoned approach. He openly, clearly, and simply presents the truth. If his hearers reject it, and God tells him from the outset that they will reject it, what does he do but present the truth again? And as they continue to reject, he continues to preach, maybe even more clearly than before. So Isaiah's task then is to declare the message of the Lord with exceptional clarity and simplicity, and the outcome of that will be that the people will reject the truth. Now Isaiah seems to understand that because I think his next question, how long is not how long must I speak, but how long will they turn away, how long until they understand? How long will they be blind to the truth? Look at six, eleven, and twelve. Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until the cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. So basically, until the exile. First Israel will fall in seven twenty-two BC, Judah will fall in five eighty-eight BC, and everyone will be sent away and the land will be forsaken. So Isaiah knows at the outset of his ministry it's going to end in exile. But he knows that this colossal tragedy stemmed from a single cause. The people hear the word of God and they reject it. Notice verse 13. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a pterobinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is in its stump. Even here, with the prophecy of the exile, God tells him the tree will be cut down, but there will still be life in the stump. Through God's grace and mercy, a remnant will survive, and that remnant is a testimony to the promise that there is hope, there is a future, and there is salvation. And from this remnant will spring the servant. And the servant will enact a new covenant, a new age, and bring forth salvation to the nations. And that's the section that we're going to cover in the next few weeks. We're going to learn who the suffering servant is, what he's going to do, how he will establish his kingdom, and what his kingdom will be like. The podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. You can email me at feedback at wednesdayintheword.com. Also please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts Google Play or however you get your podcast.com. As always, thanks for joining us.