Transcription downloaded from https://sermons.barvas.freechurch.org/sermons/70812/guest-preacher-mr-donald-macaulay/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Now, in a sense, it doesn't really matter which passage you turn back to, although it would probably be easier in some ways to stay with the Ethiopian eunuch.

[0:13] Two weeks ago, I'm sure many of you will remember, the Reverend Donald MacLeod, North Tolstoy, was here, and he preached on the Ethiopian eunuch.

[0:27] And in the course of that, he mentioned that I would open up the historical connection between the Ethiopian eunuch and the Queen of Sheba, if anyone was really interested.

[0:45] And I decided that, well, yes, I was interested enough to have a go at it and to try and link the two parts together for you this evening. Because when we read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, there are many questions that come up to us.

[1:05] And perhaps the first one that comes up to us is, how on earth did the Ethiopian eunuch come to a knowledge of the worship of God?

[1:18] Because that's what we read in the chapter. In Acts 8, we read that he had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

[1:36] Before we can clarify that, we need to go back and look at this particular section with the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.

[1:50] There are two parallel passages that relate this to us. The one we read in 1 Kings 10 and another passage, which is virtually exactly the same in 2 Chronicles 9.

[2:02] And there is no variation whatsoever between the two versions or the two accounts of the visit of the Queen of Sheba.

[2:15] Now, I'm not going to focus on Solomon this evening. Solomon is, of course, a subject not only for one but for a series of sermons. And I'm sure we're all aware of the wisdom of Solomon and his writings and so on, and of his origins from Bathsheba, who was the, as you will remember, the wife that David had taken after he had conspired to the murder of her husband indirectly.

[2:45] And, of course, which led to that beautiful Psalm, Psalm 51, of David's repentance later on. And Solomon is God's choice for the throne.

[2:58] And you will remember in the history of Solomon how he prayed for wisdom. And we see various of the, in the account of Solomon's reign, we see various examples given of that particular wisdom.

[3:13] And the commonest one that is given is usually of the judgment of Solomon. You remember the two women who claimed the child between them.

[3:24] And that Solomon had said, well, bring a sword and divide her in half. And one of the women immediately says, no, don't do that. While the other one says, yeah, go ahead, have each. And, of course, the true mother could not stand to see the child being sacrificed in that way.

[3:41] And there are many other examples of his wisdom that are given in various places. We're told that the details of his life and his reign and so on are also written in the account of Nathan, in the book called the Book of the Acts of Solomon.

[3:59] But this book is lost to history. We don't have any extant copies of it. And, therefore, all the detail that we have is what's in the Old Testament.

[4:13] And that has led to modern-day scholars debating whether Solomon actually ever existed. Now, that may be strange for us to think of that.

[4:25] But when we take the word of God as being infallible and true, we have no doubt that Solomon existed. There are two of his psalms in the Book of Psalms. We have the Song of Solomon and so on.

[4:37] And the evidence, the biblical evidence, is overwhelming. Nevertheless, they claim that archaeologically, no artifacts of Solomon's reign have ever been found.

[4:51] And, therefore, they have cast great doubt. Modern scholars have cast great doubt on whether Solomon is what they call a legend king, who didn't really exist, but was conjured up later on by the writers, the rabbinic writers later on.

[5:10] But I don't want to get into that controversy just now. And we see the visit of this queen of Sheba. Now, history doesn't, or to be more correct, Scripture doesn't tell us her name.

[5:26] It doesn't really tell us anything about her. Except that she is a seeker after the wisdom of Solomon. She has heard, as we read, of the wonder of his reign and his magnificence and his wisdom and so on.

[5:43] And, therefore, she has come for herself to find out the truth. Now, thankfully, there are other sources that we can consult in order to find out more detail about the queen of Sheba.

[6:00] The two accounts of her are very short, so the 13, 14 verses that cover the visit of her to Solomon. But now, on the internet, one is able to find so many documents available that were not, perhaps, available to us easily in years gone by.

[6:22] And in the ancient book of Ethiopian history, called the Kebra Negast, which means the glory of the kings in Arabic, we find not only the name of the queen of Sheba, but a much more detailed account of her visit to Solomon and of many of the questions that she asked of him.

[6:50] And you remember, Scripture tells us that there was nothing that Solomon couldn't explain to her. And there was nothing that she asked for that he denied. Now, again, I'm not going to go into a sort of detailed summary of many of the questions that she might have asked Solomon.

[7:10] I'm sure your own imagination could figure out some of those. But without any question, she would have asked questions about the worship of the God of Israel.

[7:24] A visit to the temple, although she wouldn't have been allowed inside it, a visit to the temple would have shown her the magnificence of the edifice that had been raised, that Solomon had built, in order to worship the God of Israel.

[7:41] And therefore, it's likely that many of her questions would have been about the worship of this particular God. And it seems that whatever Solomon explained to her, that her curiosity and her seeking after her knowledge of God grew more and more all the time.

[8:05] We don't know how long she stayed with Solomon. But given the fact that her journey from Sheba, come to where Sheba was in a minute or two, must have taken two or three months, probably.

[8:19] Might have been a little bit faster than that, if she'd come part of the way by sea. We don't know, to be sure. There must have been many things that she would have questioned Solomon about.

[8:37] Why was she so interested in the God of Israel? Well, we know, of course, from the covenant of grace, that no one is interested in the God of Israel unless the Spirit of the Lord moves them.

[8:52] And it is clear that the Spirit of the Lord was at work here, in the Queen of Sheba, to, first of all, to bring her on her journey, and in the conversations and the details that she had with Solomon.

[9:12] We're told that her name in the Kebra Nagast, it tells her that her name is Balkes or Bilkes. That would be the English translation.

[9:22] In the Arabic, it's Makeda. And she asked many, many things, which were questions of science and so on. You can look it up online.

[9:33] You'll find the Kebra Nagast. You'll find a lot of detail of this visit given. And some of the questions, a large amount of them were riddles, which Solomon was able to answer.

[9:47] But there were many other questions as to, for example, why did God reveal himself only to the Hebrews, to the children of Israel?

[9:59] Why was there no worship of God elsewhere on the African continent? Now, in a sense, the answer to that was that there had been, but it had died out.

[10:13] And you remember, of course, if you go back as far as Jacob visiting Pharaoh, and Joseph with Pharaoh, it would seem that a certain amount of the Jewish religion, or the Hebrew religion as it was then, was taken on board by Pharaoh and some of the Egyptian priests as well.

[10:37] Although later on, when we read in Exodus, that a king, a pharaoh arose, who knew not Joseph, this was the Hiskos, who conquered that part of Egypt at that time, that they had no knowledge and no interest in the God of Israel.

[10:55] And so, it dies out in that particular part. Fast forward a thousand years or so till we come to Solomon, and here we find this woman coming from a long, long distance, the Queen of Sheba.

[11:09] Where was Sheba? Well, there are two accounts of this, and they're both very interesting. One is that the kingdom of Sheba was an island kingdom in the Blue Nile.

[11:26] Now, again, if you're familiar with geography, you will know that the River Nile divides in two, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile continues south-southwards into Africa, and the Blue Nile turns and winds its way, or it comes down from the mountains of Ethiopia.

[11:44] And according to some scholars, the kingdom of Sheba was halfway up the Blue Nile. Now, there are others who maintain that the kingdom of Sheba was actually modern-day Yemen.

[12:03] And it seems from historical accounts that both Yemen and Ethiopia at one time were ruled by the same set of kings. Whatever, we don't know exactly, and we will probably never know exactly where Balthus came from.

[12:22] But the fact that she came to visit Solomon is extremely important. Not only for herself, because we believe that she became a worshipper of the God of Israel, of Jehovah, and not only herself, but you read in that chapter, in Kings, and again in Chronicles, that Solomon gave her whatever she asked for.

[12:54] What was it she asked for more than anything else? Well, according to historical sources, she asked that she be given a company of Levites and a number of priests and, some think, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant to take back with her to Sheba and to instruct her own people in the worship of Jehovah.

[13:26] And if that is true, and I see no reason why it wouldn't be true, then that would explain to us many things about the history of Ethiopia.

[13:40] There was something else that she took back, probably unintentionally. Who knows? Again, we cast no judgment here. But when she comes back to Ethiopia, she is bearing a son by Solomon.

[13:56] Again, that's very well documented in the Arabic accounts. There's no mention of it in Scripture at all, of course. But this son, who was Menelech I, establishes what is known as a Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia.

[14:18] And that dynasty maintains the Jewish worship until the time of the Ethiopian eunuch.

[14:29] In other words, fast forward about a thousand years and we come to the Ethiopian eunuch. And this explains to us why the eunuch was coming to Jerusalem to worship.

[14:45] He obviously had a knowledge of Jehovah, the worship of Jehovah in Ethiopia. Otherwise, why on earth would there be any point in him coming to Jerusalem?

[14:59] And it's a curious fact of history, perhaps not so curious, that the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia and the worship of Jehovah and later the Christian religion is maintained in Ethiopia until 1974.

[15:20] Not that long ago. Until the emperor Haile Selassie is overthrown by the communist rule that overtakes there.

[15:31] And even still today, there is a large Jewish community in Ethiopia which is known as the Beta Israel community and still worshiping as Jews.

[15:45] And if you go, again, if you have time and you're interested in history, if you have a look at the history of Ethiopia, you'll find that there are various struggles between the Jews and the Christians throughout the history of Ethiopia, but that Christianity becomes the first and foremost religion after about the first century.

[16:05] In other words, in the times of the Ethiopian eunuch. that explains quite a lot of the background to the eunuch coming to Jerusalem forum.

[16:18] But I want to take a closer look at the eunuch himself. We have nothing in history, nothing in the Kerben-e-Grast, which wasn't written until the 14th century apparently, that tells us anything about the eunuch himself.

[16:33] But it's curious that the eunuch, and I think Mr. McLeod pointed this out very well, that the eunuch was an official of Candus, Queen of Ethiopia.

[16:46] Candus was simply a title, like Pharaoh or something like that. It wasn't actually a name. But this guy is equivalent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[16:59] And he certainly would not have come to Jerusalem by himself. We read, of course, Philip approaching the chariot. I'll come to that later.

[17:10] But he would have come with a retinue of servants and probably a military guard as well. And he would have been seen as a person of high authority, a diplomatic visit, if you want to put it that way, coming to Jerusalem.

[17:29] And yet, he has a problem. He's come to worship, but he is a eunuch. Now, there are some who maintain, and they may be right on some occasions, who maintain that the word eunuch simply meant a court official.

[17:49] Personally, that may be the case in some situations, but I don't think it's the case here. The custom of castration for people, for particularly those who would be servants in responsible places, and particularly responsible for the king's harem, as was common in the Middle East, was well known.

[18:16] Unfortunately, it's a custom that still goes on in some parts of the world up until today. But this eunuch had come to high office, probably second in the kingdom of Candace.

[18:32] And yet, coming to Jerusalem to worship under the Old Testament law, he has a problem. According to the Mosaic law, he would have been excluded from the temple worship.

[18:51] If you go back to the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 23, in the first verse, we are told specifically in this, no one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

[19:10] And therefore, in that situation, the eunuch would have been unable to enter the temple courtyard. We don't know if he was a Jew.

[19:21] Some maintain that he was a Jew. Some maintain that he wasn't. We just don't know. But if he was not a Jew, he would not have been able to get past what was called the court of the Gentiles.

[19:35] But as a eunuch, he would have been excluded not only from the temple, but as Deuteronomy says, from the assembly of the Lord.

[19:46] In other words, he would never be able to become part of the regular worshipping congregation of Jews. And that was what the Mosaic Law had established many years before this Ethiopian eunuch comes to Jerusalem.

[20:07] It's interesting that if you study eunuchs in the Bible, fascinating study, I hadn't actually done it until this week when I was preparing this, there are a large number of eunuchs mentioned in scripture in various places.

[20:26] You remember those who took care of Daniel in Babylon, Daniel and his young friends, that the one in charge of them was a eunuch and so on.

[20:36] And we find in various other places in the Old Testament that the eunuchs are mentioned. Now, Jesus speaks of eunuchs.

[20:47] If you turn with me for a second or two to Matthew in chapter 19. Matthew in chapter 19.

[21:03] Matthew in chapter 19. And at verse 12, Jesus is speaking to the disciples and the scribes and the Pharisees about divorce, etc.

[21:17] and so on. And at verse 10, the disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But he, that is Jesus, said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

[21:34] For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

[21:48] Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it. Now, of course, that is one of the passages on which the Roman Catholic Church has built the idea of celibacy among the priests.

[22:07] Again, I'm not going to go into that topic, that would be to digress a bit here, but you see our Lord speaks clearly about it, that it was a well-known condition in his own time.

[22:22] And he refers at the end, eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And many times the example of the apostle Paul is brought up here.

[22:37] Again, that's questionable. I personally believe that Paul was a widower. And my evidence for that, and again, you can argue this one with me later on, my evidence for that is that as a young man at the feet of Gamaliel, as a Pharisee, he was a member of the San Edwin.

[22:57] And nobody could be a member of the San Edwin without being married. And therefore I believe that Paul was a widower. But again, that's digressing down another part.

[23:08] But he also speaks, Paul also speaks about this situation and when he's talking about people marrying and not marrying etc., his idea is that it is better for some who, if they are to serve the kingdom of God fully, that they never marry, but devote themselves entirely to the work of Scripture.

[23:35] Now, that's a difficult thing for us to assess. You may well have your own judgment on that one. And it's a difficult thing. There are some people who do that and whose main objective in life is to proclaim the kingdom of God and they do not let anything else enjoy interfere with that.

[23:58] But that contradicts in a sense the original commandment that we were given, that a man would leave his father and his mother and become one flesh with his wife.

[24:11] And if everyone to do that were to do what is mentioned there as eunuchs in that sense, then who would bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

[24:25] But that's another argument altogether. And so we find that this eunuch is in a difficult situation when it comes to coming to the temple.

[24:40] Was he allowed in? Who knows? He may well, as a diplomat, as a foreign dignitary, he may well have been allowed access perhaps to one of the outer courts in order to worship.

[25:00] But it's evident that one of the things that he does on his visit to Jerusalem is to buy a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

[25:11] Now it's very probable that in his own country, if the Queen of Sheba had taken the books back with her and the worship of Jehovah along with priests and Levites and so on, it's very probable that only, they would have only had the Torah, that's the first five books of the Old Testament, maybe Judges, maybe Joshua, maybe part of the Psalms of David as well.

[25:47] They might have had some of that. But they certainly wouldn't have had any of the post-Solomon writings. And therefore it would seem that the eunuch is unfamiliar with the worship and the prophecies, particularly the book of the prophet Isaiah.

[26:09] And this is what we see that he's reading in Acts 8. This is the passage that we see that he is reading here at verse 32.

[26:21] Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this, like a lamb he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its chair and asylum, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him.

[26:35] Who can describe his generation? for his life is taken away from the earth. And you remember the question that he asks there and as we see, who is the prophet speaking about, about himself or about someone else?

[26:50] And Philip opening his mouth, beginning with the scripture, told him the good news about Jesus. Now he may well have bought other scrolls as well.

[27:02] We don't know. Scripture doesn't tell us, but it's probably likely that he may have brought some of the other prophetic scrolls as well. One thinks particularly of not only Isaiah, but the book of perhaps Jeremiah as well.

[27:18] And he may well have had access to the writings of Daniel and Ezekiel. But it is the scroll of Isaiah that the spirit of the Lord has directed him to read.

[27:32] And this, of course, as you well know, this is taken from chapter 53 of Isaiah. About whom is the prophet speaking?

[27:45] And Isaiah 53 is, of course, the famous chapter that we have there about the servant king, the servant Jesus, who is to give his life.

[27:58] And I know that you are well familiar with that. I'm not going to go into the details of Philip dealing with him. Mr. MacLeod dealt with that very well in his own sermon.

[28:11] But it's interesting that if you look at what we find here, after that he is Philip, he baptizes the eunuch, that we see in verse 39, when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more.

[28:28] And went on his way rejoicing. Now, what is he rejoicing in? No, not only is he rejoicing, of course, in the gospel, in the good news of Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy on the cross, and who has died for atonement for sin.

[28:51] And there is no doubt that the eunuch would be able, through the help of Philip, to have seen how the Old Testament types, prevalent at the time of Solomon, and in the Mosaic worship, are fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[29:10] That, of course, is the problem for the modern-day Jew. He cannot see that Messiah has come. He cannot see how the Old Testament has been fulfilled fulfilled in Calvary, in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[29:30] And very often, if you take them, if you take a Jew to read Isaiah 53, you will find that in the Hebrew-Jewish versions of the Scriptures, chapter 53 is omitted.

[29:44] And very often, it's omitted on purpose, so that their eyes are blinded. It's a very sad thing, that, and it's very difficult to deal with Jewish people when that Scripture is particularly hidden from him.

[29:59] But the eunuch himself, obviously, is beginning now to understand the atoning work of the cross, and to understand the blood that cleanseth from all sin.

[30:14] And it's no wonder that he goes on his way rejoicing. It's the same rejoicing as you and I had when we first came to faith. But nevertheless, we have a lot to learn from then on.

[30:28] When we come to faith, there is immense joy. And as we go on in the Christian walk, perhaps at times our joy is dampened down.

[30:39] And it is then a matter of perseverance, the perseverance of the saints. But I find it reassuring that if the eunuch had kept reading Isaiah, which I'm sure he did on the journey, he would have come eventually to chapter 56.

[31:00] And if you turn with me for a minute or two to Isaiah 56. verse 3, we find the following.

[31:23] Isaiah 56 at verse 3, just a little bit further on in chapter 53, verse 3.

[31:59] than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Isn't that a marvelous promise for the eunuch to be reading on the road down to Gaza?

[32:16] Philip has left him at this point or has been taken away by the spirit. And the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing.

[32:27] And so we find that the eunuch is almost certainly the one who is responsible for bringing what we would call Christianity into the Jewish world of the Ethiopian race.

[32:43] Christians. And the history shows us very clearly that there were large numbers of Christians in Ethiopia and there still are.

[32:55] There are still large numbers of Jews there as well. And to this day the priests in Ethiopia maintain that they have the Ark of the Covenant.

[33:08] Now I personally believe that this is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant that was given by Solomon to the Queen of Sheba.

[33:22] Where can you go to see it? Well you can't. It's as simple as that. It is kept in the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in the city of Aksum in Ethiopia.

[33:35] And it is guarded by a priest who is elected for life and his sole job is to maintain the church locked at all times so that no one can enter.

[33:49] And therefore theologians, historians have been unable to prove whether the Ark of the Covenant or even a replica of the Ark of the Covenant is actually in Aksum and the church in Aksum or not.

[34:07] At the Ethiopian Orthodox Church maintain absolutely strongly that it is the original Ark of the Covenant.

[34:18] I think probably they're mistaken there because we read of the Ark of the Covenant being available in the Temple after Solomon's reign, not only in the Holy of Holies, but that it is of course on the temples destroyed by the Babylonians later on that the Ark of the Covenant is taken into captivity in Babylon and probably melted down because of its gold, etc.

[34:44] and so on. So this replica is maintained in Aksu. It's a very interesting story. Again, you can look up the internet and I'm sure you'll find much more details on this one.

[35:00] But time is passing. But to think of it this way, isn't it amazing that if you go back to Solomon's time, that this visit of the Queen of Sheba is used by God to establish his worship in Ethiopia and then a thousand years later to bring the eunuch to Jerusalem and to bring him to faith.

[35:28] And you notice that it is Philip who brings the gospel, who explains the gospel to the eunuch although it is the angel of the Lord who says to him.

[35:44] And sometimes I wonder why didn't the angel speak? to the eunuch himself. And yet if you go through scripture again, it's a very interesting study to do on angels, you find that angels never preach the gospel.

[36:06] They are, you might be thinking about that. Angels never actually preach the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is entrusted to human beings.

[36:17] Or the angels are witnesses, the angels stand around, the angels reinforce the preaching. But you would have thought it would have been much more impressive for the angel to have stood by the chariot of the eunuch than for Philip.

[36:37] It's an interesting question, how did Philip gain access to the chariot? You would have thought that a solitary man standing on the road with this company passing by, and there must have been a detachment of guards or soldiers or what we would call these security nowadays, how was Philip able to approach the chariot?

[37:01] It's not a closed chariot we tend to think of, you know, that it was a coach and horses and so on, but as far as we know in those days they were all open chariots. And he was able to speak to him probably from the side of the road, but it's amazing that he was not prevented from doing so.

[37:20] And you can see the more you look at this, you can see the hand of the Lord at work in so many ways. Not just in Philip's encounter with the eunuch, but in his conversion, and in the fact that he is visiting Jerusalem at all.

[37:39] what a comfort Isaiah 56 must have been to him as he read further on, going on his way rejoicing. And what do we see?

[37:51] We see that God is sovereign in all things. God has purposes at times in allowing things to happen that you and I are totally unaware of.

[38:04] It's only when you look back in history, it's only when you look back in your own life that you can see the hand of the Lord at work. Sometimes things happen to us that we find so difficult to understand why are they happening.

[38:24] And yet, when we look back over our lives, we can see the purpose of the Lord in allowing these things to happen. Very often, they are to teach us humility, to teach us to depend entirely on God himself, rather than on our own efforts.

[38:46] others. And you can see that in so many biblical stories. There's a lovely poem, I didn't bring it with me, called The Master Weaver. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it.

[38:58] Have a look for it on the internet. And you see again the purposes of God in weaving together the threads of black and the threads of gold. And sometimes you don't see the picture until you turn the whole thing over and you can look at it.

[39:12] But it's only in our lives that looking backwards we can see what the hand of the Lord has done. The eunuch is brought into the covenant of grace.

[39:26] No one is excluded from the covenant of grace. No one. The Old Testament regulations on who was to be excluded from the community of Israel in that sense are now been superseded by the work of the cross.

[39:45] the atoning work of the cross. And so you and I have no excuse. Unlike the eunuch we have the full picture given to us in scripture and the scriptures of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

[40:01] We can put the two together and see how they all fit together to show the glory of God to show the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And perhaps maybe even this evening you're not really impressed by the providence of God or how God works things out for his own purposes.

[40:25] But nevertheless all you have to do is look at the story of the Queen of Sheba and connect it to the eunuch and see how God's providence is at work.

[40:37] How God's underlying purposes are behind everything that happens to each and every one of us that are to be brought to faith.

[40:50] Examine your own life. See the people that God put in your way to speak to you. Study the word of God.

[41:01] That's what we were singing in Psalm 119 how the psalmist is singing of the praises of meditating and studying on God's word.

[41:13] And I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that Psalm 119 is an acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet. And therefore it is widely believed and I agree with us that David wrote it for Solomon to teach him to meditate and to study on the word of the Lord.

[41:33] We know that Solomon fell from grace later on. We know that he sinned. But that doesn't mean that he lost his salvation. Each and every one of us fall and sin in thought, word and deed every day of the week.

[41:54] But aren't you glad that the blood was shed, that atonement was rendered, and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.

[42:08] May the Lord bless these thoughts to us. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word this evening.

[42:20] How wonderful it is to be able to see things in the Old Testament that lead us to the spread of the gospel, a spread that is still bearing fruit in many parts of the world, not just in Ethiopia.

[42:35] And we thank you that that gospel came even here into our own land. We thank you for those who have gone before us, who taught and explained to us, and who testified to us of our need of salvation.

[42:50] And we pray for any here this evening who as yet do not know you as Savior, that you might strike them with the knowledge of your word, and open their minds and hearts to see their need of salvation.

[43:05] You remind us daily that here we have no continuing city. And we thank you, O Lord, for the provision that you have made for your people, to take them into glory along with yourself, to worship for all eternity.

[43:22] We thank you for that. We pray that you would bless your word this evening for soever it was preached. Who was us now as we conclude our worship and pardon sin through Jesus Christ our Lord.

[43:35] Amen. Let us conclude then by singing verses in Sing Psalms, Psalm 72. Sing Psalms 72, page 93, verse 10, verse 10, we'll sing the verses from 10 to 15, then Tarsus in the distant shores will send the tribute of their kings.

[44:06] Sheba and Sheba's kings will come and bring to him their offerings. All kings will humbly bow to him and nations watch of him with fear. He'll save the needy when they call, the poor for whom no help is near.

[44:21] And so on to verse 15, Long may I live, may Sheba's gold be given to him abundantly, may people ever pray for him and bless his name continually.

[44:34] Let's sing these verses unto God's praise, Psalm 72, and sing Psalms, then Tarsus and the distant shores. Shabbat Shalom.

[45:11] kings will come and bring to him their offerings.

[45:24] All kings will haply bow to him and nations worship him with fear.

[45:46] He'll save the needy when they call the poor for whom no help is near.

[46:05] He will take pity on the weak and save them from oppressive might.

[46:26] He'll rescue them from violence their blood is precious in his sight.

[46:46] long may he live may she but gold begin to abundantly!

[47:05] May people ever ever pray for him and his name continually!

[47:24]  continually continually