 poem we call Isaiah 40 through 55 is one of the greatest poems ever written. I often say to the students that if this poem had been lost and had suddenly been dug up by some archaeologist in the sands of Egypt or Syria or somewhere, it will be splashed all over the newspapers. This is an amazing piece of writing. It's sustained and passionate, it's poignant, it's getting at all sorts of key issues, but rising up out of those issues is a great picture of the one the ancient Israelites knew as the God who was the creator of heaven and earth and who was their covenant God. And yet everything had gone wrong and you can see in this great poem all the things that have gone wrong and that are going wrong and this big picture of God saying actually it's okay I'm in charge we're going to sort this one out. That's what this poem is all about. Of course many people who don't know the Bible that well probably would only recognize one or two lines from it. The end of chapter 40 is very famous, not least because Eric Little read it in the award-winning movie Chariots of Fire. Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. That's a great line and a great promise and it's even greater when you see it in its larger context. Or I'm sure a lot of people, certainly a lot of people watching these courses will know Isaiah 53, the extraordinary focal point, the poem within a poem about the servant of the Lord who has despised and rejected, who has bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressions, the one upon whom the punishment of our sins was laid. Very famous passage drawn on by several of the New Testament writers as we'll be seeing. But again, it means what it means, not within our context first and foremost but within the extraordinary, larger, poetical and theological context of Isaiah 40 to 55 as a whole. In fact, when I was studying theology many years ago now, I remember I had made an intensive personal study of this whole poem partly just because I loved it and because I knew it was central and important. And then when it came to writing the exam, I remember turning over the exam paper and seeing a question saying, quote, the servant songs can only be understood within Isaiah 40 to 55 as a whole, unquote, discuss. And I nearly laughed out loud. I thought this one is for me and it still is for me. This is one of my favorite passages in the whole scripture. What's going on to precipitate this poem? The people of Israel are in exile. They're in Babylon. And that means for anyone in the ancient world that the Babylonian gods must be very strong, certainly stronger than our gods, if they've managed to defeat our God and take us away to live in their country under the rule of their gods. So although the poet mocks the Babylonian gods, he laughs at them, he thumbs his nose at them. Nevertheless, for the people, these gods must have seemed extremely powerful. And so we have a situation where everything's gone horribly wrong. The people who thought that they were the people of the Creator God seem to have got lost. They seem to have been let down. God has somehow appeared to be weak and powerless in the face of this hostile invasion, which has taken them away. But God himself speaking through the Prophet says, No, it's not like that at all. I know all about your failure. It's because of your failure and your sin that you've gone into exile. And now I'm going to do something radically new, something which maybe you never even imagined. And the ultimate horizon of this poem is God's promise of new creation, that there will be a new world made out of the ruin of the old. And again and again, it comes like a refrain that the whole creation will sing and laugh and shout for joy, because God is going to renew it from top to bottom, come several times throughout this poem. And in particular, he hasn't given up on creation, and he hasn't given up on Israel either. God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world as a whole from the idolatry into which it had fallen. So when Israel itself then falls into idolatry, what's God going to do? Is he going to give up on the original purpose? No, he made this world and he's going to renew it. Is he going to give up on the covenant with Israel through which he's going to work in the world? No, he won't give up on that either. He will bring it to a new sort of focal point, a focal point, which is a strange figure called the servant, the servant of the Lord, Yahweh's servant. Who is this servant to begin with? It's not clear. It might just be Israel, but then Israel has failed. So now what got what is God going to do? And the message at the heart of this poem is that Yahweh himself will come to rescue Israel for the sake of his own name. It's his own reputation that's on the line just as it was when Moses pleaded with God for Israel in Exodus 32. And so at the heart of this poem is the promise of forgiveness. Everything that's gone wrong has gone wrong because Israel, like the rest of the human race, rebelled, worshipped idols and so sinned. Exile is the result of that sin. So forgiveness of sins, which is the heart of the poem, means the end of exile, the restoration, not only of Israel, but of the whole creation itself.