A (0:00)

If you take your Bibles and go with me to 2 Chronicles, chapter 8, this is where we left off last Wednesday night. So we will continue in our journey through the book of Second Chronicles, which, remember, was a book written originally, first and Second Chronicles, as one book in the Hebrew scriptures, as somewhat of a handbook for those who had been in captivity over the period of 70 years in Babylon. And it was an historical account for their own Jewish histories, that those who had never been to their homeland, who are returning, or those who were in their homeland but had spent the last 70 years in captivity and now at an old age, are returning to their homeland, would have an historical record of a kind of a synopsis of events related to their own Jewish history. The part where we left off here in Second Chronicles, chapter eight has to do with Solomon and the building of the Temple, the first permanent sanctuary in Jerusalem. Remember, his father David had the desire to build it, but God had told David that because he was a warrior and his hands had shed blood, that he was not able to build a holy temple. Solomon would be the one to build this holy temple. In David's lifetime, he was a man of many wars. He was a warrior. His life really was divided into three segments. The early part of his life, he was a shepherd. The middle part of his life, he was a warrior. The latter part of his life, he was a king. In Solomon's lifetime, though he doesn't engage in any wars, he's not a warrior at all. In fact, his very Hebrew name, Shlomo, has as part of his name Shalom, meaning peace. He will be a king of peace. He will be a man of peace. There will not be conflict. He will amass a very strong military force, including chariots and a cavalry, which in some sense was not really in keeping with God's law because he amassed too great of a cavalry, which showed his. His might was in his own strength and his own army and his own resources, rather than in the Lord. And so there's a rebuke about that. But otherwise, his motto is, what we like to say today is peace through strength. Solomon had peace because he had a very strong army, a very strong cavalry, and he had a very vast kingdom. And because he was so well respected and so well known around the world as the most powerful king, nobody. So it was a time of peace, as his name even indicates. Well, we get here to chapter eight, let's have a word of prayer, and then we'll dive right in. Father, thank you for meeting us here tonight, where two or more are Gathered in your name. There you are in our midst. And we just pray, God that you would guide us through these chapters this evening and that you would be most glorified as we study your word together. And that you would draw us near to you, Lord, you would just draw us near to you. I'm sure there are some tonight who just feel weary and distant. And I just pray, Lord, that you would draw them near to yourself. Now as we open up your word, as we study together. Thank you Lord, for being our burden bearer. Thank you Lord, for meeting us here tonight. Just do your good work in our hearts and we give this time to you in Jesus name. And everyone said Amen Here in chapter eight it says, and it came to pass at the end of 20 years, when Solomon had built the house of the Lord and his own house, that the cities which Hyrum had given to Solomon, Solomon built them. So this chapter begins by telling us it took 20 years for him to build both the temple of the Lord and his own palace, his own home. Now we know from scripture, it took seven years to build the temple. It took 13 years for him to build his own home. It's almost twice as many years to build his house than to build the temple of the Lord. I don't know what that says, but that's just the timeline. And so thus 7 years and 13 is the 20 years. And so now the temple is complete, his own palace, his own home is complete. And Solomon is now roughly 40 years of age, 40 to 43 in that time, in that age range. And he had received some cities from Hiram. Hiram is the king of Tyre, which is Lebanon today, and Tyre is still a city in Lebanon, but he was the king of that region. And Hiram, in order to stay in good favors with a very powerful king, gives Solomon some cities. And Solomon built them. It says that he settled the children of Israel there in verse three. And Solomon went to Hamath Zobah and seized it. Hamath Zobah is basically in the region of Lebanon and Syria. And he also built Tadmor, which is also in the region of Syria, in the wilderness, and all the storage cities which he built in Hamath. And he built upper Beth Horon and Lower Bethoron, fortified cities with walls and gates and bars, also Baloth and all the storage cities that Solomon had, and all the chariot cities and the cities of the cavalry, and all that Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. So again, notice here that he has certain cities that are designated as Chariot cities where chariots are made and kept. And he has other cities that are known as the cities of the cavalry. And again, there's a point to which you can exceed your own military prowess. And God warned future Kings in Deuteronomy 17:16, saying, but he shall not multiply horses for himself. Now, God was not specific about how many horses are too many. But at some point here, Solomon has exceeded what God originally designed. And it's the idea that once you have such a strong military force or a cavalry, you're going to rely on those things more than you're going to rely on God. So there was a limit to it, and Solomon apparently exceeds this. And Psalm 27 said, Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. And Solomon begins to veer here, where he's not trusting so much in the name of the Lord as God, because he's trusting in his chariots and in his horses. Well, it says in verse seven, all the people who were left of the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, who were not of Israel, that is their descendants who were left in the land after them, whom the children of Israel did not destroy. From these, Solomon raised forced labor. And as it is to this day, so remember when the Jewish people took this land, it was occupied by these various tribal people, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, which sounds like parasites, doesn't it? And the Hivites and Jebusites. So all these different tribal people were there. And in order to allow them to remain without just either evacuating them, expelling them from the country, or killing them, he assigns them as forced labor. And thus these people became part of the workforce of the nation of Israel. It says in verse nine. But Solomon did not make the children of Israel servants for his work. Now that just means in terms of the day to day labor, because he did employ Jews, Israelites for the sake of building the temple of the Lord. So it wasn't like they sat around and watched everybody else build the place. They had a role. But the day to day labor force was of these various tribal people, the more important work Solomon reserved for the Israelites. And look at the next sentence of verse nine. Some were men of war, captains of his officers, captains of his chariots and his cavalry, and others were chiefs of the officials of King Solomon, 250 who ruled over the people. And so obviously you're not going to set up some of these tribal People like the Jebusites to oversee your army or your administrative, you know, practices. You're going to set up your own people. So he selects the specific people among the Israelites who are going to be captains and chiefs and officials. Verse 11 says, and now Solomon brought the daughter of Pharaoh from the city of David to the house he had built for her. For he said, my wife shall not dwell in the house of David, king of Israel, because the places to which the ark of the Lord has come are holy. Okay, now this is a loaded verse, everybody. First of all, this is Solomon's first wife. He's going to end up having 700 wives and 300 concubines. Okay? This is his first wife, by the way, none of his wives or concubines are named in the Bible except one. Her name was Naamah. She was the mother of Rehoboam. Rehoboam will ascend to the throne. There's going to be a power struggle and a civil war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Jeroboam not related to Solomon, but the only woman that he was married to that has a name is Naamah, which is kind of funny. The only woman with a name is Naamah. Among all his wives. And this is the first one here, this daughter of Pharaoh. Now, please understand that in those days, it was common, though this was not God's will. It was common to make alliances with foreign countries by marrying children of those countries. I mean, because think about it. If, if you're Pharaoh, king of, you know, the king of Egypt, you're Pharaoh of Egypt, and you know that Solomon and the Israelites are more powerful than you at this time in history. You. You're going to want your daughter to marry Solomon because you know that now he's not going to come attacking your country. He's not going to come attacking his father in law and his father in law's land, right? So this was very common to make these kind of alliances. The problem is 1 Kings 11. Okay, now 1 and 2 Kings gives us a little more detail than 1 and 2 Chronicles. First Kings 11 said that she would be the downfall of Solomon because she would be the beginning of his decline in marrying foreign women who would turn his heart away from the Lord and to their foreign gods. Now let me clarify. There's nothing wrong with different nationalities marrying. When I say foreign, I don't mean that there was a problem that he married an Egyptian woman. Moses married an Egyptian woman. Joseph married an Egyptian woman. The problem is when you adopt their gods in place of your gods, your God, singular in Solomon's case. And that's what began to happen. I like what G. Campbell Morgan said about this. He said, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Notice before I quote him, notice what Solomon does. He's like, I gotta. I can't have Pharaoh's daughter living in the house here, which used to be very holy ground, because his father, King David, had brought the Ark of the Covenant and made a special tent, a special tent that went over that in the city of David. And Solomon's like, I can't bring my. My wife to this sacred place because the Ark of the Covenant used to be here. This is holy ground. I got to build her a whole separate house outside of this sacred territory. And G. Campbell Morgan wrote, to build a house for Pharaoh's daughter outside the holy city is to open its gates sooner or later to Pharaoh's gods. End quote. And that is exactly what happened. So Solomon's like, you know what? I can't have her living here in this holy ground. I'm gonna build her a separate house. Now, we've been going through the Bible looking at different principles. So here's a principle here from chapter eight. Are you ready, everybody? Here's the principle. If she's unholy for God, she's unfit for you. Okay, now let me just park it here for a little bit and talk about this. And, ladies, you can insert he instead of she, okay? Because this is the principle. If this person doesn't measure up to God's ideal, they're not a good person for you to marry or date. Solomon knew that his wife was someone he should not have married. And thus he's building her a whole separate house to keep her outside of the place that's holy. So he's already aware of this. He knows this isn't right. I did this because of an alliance. You know, maybe she's pretty. I don't know. The Bible doesn't say what his reasons were particularly, but he knows enough to know he shouldn't have married the girl. So he puts her in a separate house outside the holy area. So, look, this is important for people to understand. I can't tell you how many lives have been ruined because people think to themselves, well, I'll just change him or I'll change her when we get married. I've heard that over and over again. And it can be, like, serious stuff. Like, I know he's a Muslim, but you know what? He'll soon enough come to believe In Jesus. And look, I've even seen serious problems when people say even like, well, I know she's Catholic, but look, if you are not spiritually aligned, do not date and certainly do not get married. Because that is the most important factor in a relationship is how you are both committed to Christ and are aligned spiritually. That's the most important thing. There are gonna be other things in marriage that you will and must overlook. Okay? That's not one of them. That's not one of them. There's gonna be some stuff like, you know, ladies, he's messy. He's messy in the bathroom. You're gonna have to over. Amen. I heard an amen. You're gonna have to overlook that. Or maybe guys, maybe her car is messy. She keeps her car a mess. There's goldfish and french fries all over the place. You're gonna have to overlook it. Maybe you're all's taste in what kind of restaurants you like or what kind of music you like to listen to are completely different. You can overlook it. You cannot and must not overlook the importance of spiritual compatibility. A lot of things in life are gonna change in the course of your marriage, and there's gonna be a lot of adjustments you have to make in the course of your marriage. That's not one of them. That's a non negotiable. You have better be on the same place spiritually. You better have the same commitment to Christ. Now one might be a little bit more spiritually mature than another. Okay? You may not be both the same, you know, length as a Christian, but you better have the same values, you better have the same biblical beliefs, you better have the same commitment to Christ. That, that is absolutely essential. Look, I, I can, I can tell you, you know, Terry's sitting over here in the front row. When I first met her, of course I fell in love with her physically because she's beautiful, right? Although she hadn't seen the light because she was dating another guy at the time. All right? So she was in darkness, you know, and, but my, but my. Obviously, obviously your friend impression of somebody is often like physical, but it better be deeper than that. And I remember we were both in the same, like young adults group. In fact, Pastor Kelly Schroeder and Jane, they were our young adult pastor and wife, okay? They were our group leaders. And I fell in love with her beyond just how beautiful she is. I fell in love with her heart because I started hearing her. The way she would talk about things in our young adults group, the way she would talk about the Bible the way she would talk about the Lord. And I started realizing, wow, we're on the same page about stuff. And her belief system is aligned with my heart the same way I see scripture the way. And we were just very, very spiritually compatible. So like for two years I kept praying that she would be incompatible with her boyfriend. And then that eventually happened. Praise God for mission trips that took him away. But anyway, that's another story. That's another story. That's why I love missions. I love mission trips. Praise God for mission trips. I just love mission trips. It's okay. It all worked out. He found another woman, married her, it's all good. But I'm telling you, the thing that like attracted me to my now wife was beyond the physical. It was the spiritual, because that's the non negotiable. And that's the part you cannot and must not overlook. This is a downward path for Solomon because this is the first among 700 wives. And 1st Kings 11 says, and his foreign wives turned his heart away from the Lord and turned them towards idolatry. And he is, look, remember, he's the wisest man on earth. And it just goes to show you that God can give you something and you squander it. God gave him wisdom and he didn't use it. So he marries for the wrong reasons, but he realizes he shouldn't have, so he builds a house for her and puts her outside the holy city. I mean, I mean, how messed up is this? So it's just a reminder to us. Look, among all the various things in relationships that can attract you to a person, make sure the spiritual compatibility and your mutual commitment to Christ is absolutely paramount because other things will change and other adjustments need to be made. And you need to overlook a lot of things in the course of marriage. That is one that is non negotiable. And I've just seen, I've just, I'm just telling you, I've seen too many families that, and too many marriages that suffer because they got married for other reasons besides commitment to Christ and the spiritual unity that is critical. So please hear that now for some of you, you're already in, you know, a marriage or, and you realize after the fact, I'm not telling you to change it. I'm just saying primarily for those of you who are heading into a relationship, heading into marriage, be wise about this. Spiritual compatibility and mutual commitment to Christ is absolutely essential for a healthy marriage. Marriage is hard enough. Marriage has enough challenges. Life has enough challenges. You don't need that one. In the mix of challenges, we don't get along, we're not spiritually compatible. And he wants to go to this church and I want to go to that church. And he believes this about God, and I believe that about God. And this is how he wants to raise our kids. And I think the Bible says this. I mean, it's endless. So this has to be something if you're heading into a relationship. You settle now and do not settle for anything less. Is everybody hearing me? Do not settle for anything less. All right, enough of that. There's three people who get what I'm saying. All right? Verse 12. Verse 12 says, and then Solomon offered burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of the Lord which he had built before the vestibule, according to the daily rate offering, according to the commandment of Moses, for the sabbaths, the new moons, and the three appointed yearly feasts, the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of Tabernacles. And according to the order of David, his father, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their service, the Levites for their duties, to praise and serve before the priests as the duty of each day required, and the gatekeepers by their divisions at each gate. For so David, the man of God had commanded. They did not depart from the command of of the king to the priests and Levites concerning any matter or concerning the treasuries. Now, all the work of Solomon was well ordered from the day of the foundation of the house of the Lord until it was finished. And so the house of the Lord was completed. And then Solomon went to Ezion, Geber and Elath on the sea coast in the land of Edom. You can circle Elath, because that is the same Israeli city today called Eilat. E L I A T. It's the southernmost tip of Israel on the Red Sea. And it's one of three port cities actually for the country of Israel. They have Ashdod in the middle, and they have Eilat on the south, and then Haifa in the very north. Those are the three port cities for Israel. So I've never been to Eilat. I've been told many times I need to go there. It's like this resort city on the beautiful shores of the Red Sea. But that's the same city spoken of here. Verse 18 says, and hyrum sent his ships by the hand of his servants and servants who knew the sea. And they went with the servants of Solomon to ophir and acquired 450 talents of gold from there and brought it to King Solomon. Now, there's great discussion about where Ophir is located. Nobody seems to know. Some scholars think it is a part of India. Some scholars think it's part of Saudi Arabia. Some scholars think it's part of Africa, of the African coast. Nobody really knows. But it is well known for its resource of gold. And he gets a lot of it from Ophir. End of chapter nine says. Now, when the Queen of Sheba and a lot of people who don't even know their Bibles have heard of the Queen of Sheba. When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, circle the word heard. We'll get back to it later. She came to Jerusalem to test Solomon with hard questions, having a very great retinue, camels that bore spices, gold in abundance, and precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she spoke with him about all that was in her heart. And so Solomon answered all her questions. There was nothing so difficult for Solomon that he could not explain it to her. And when the Queen of Sheba had seen, circle that word, the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers and their apparel, and his entryway by which he went up to the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. Now, the word spirit in Hebrew is ruach and is the same word in the Bible. For breath she is breathless. She has seen and beheld so much that it takes her breath away. Now, I asked you to circle the word heard and seen. We'll come back to it. But she is now the Queen of Sheba. Now, like this is also debate, where is Sheba located? Some say Saudi Arabia, or particularly in the area of Yemen, there's also great debate that she was from Ethiopia. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit as we get further in the text, but just kind of tuck that away. So she has heard about his reputation, and she comes there, and she comes there bearing gifts. I mean, I don't know if his love language was gifts, but she's bringing them. And she brings all this. She brings spices and gold and precious stones, jewels. I mean, she shows up here, she's traveled hundreds of miles, whether it's the area of Yemen, whether it's Ethiopia, whether it's some part of Saudi Arabia. She's traveled hundreds of miles, if not more than a thousand miles to get here with all of this and a great retinue to go with it, camels and the whole deal. And she comes because she has heard about Solomon's reputation. And she sees it too when she gets there. And it just takes her breath away. And verse five says, and then she said to the king, it was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However, I did not believe their words until I came and saw it with my own eyes. And indeed the half of the greatness of your wisdom was not told me. She's like, this is double what I even heard and thought. This isn't just the half of what was told me. You exceed the fame of which I heard. Verse 7. Happy are your men, and happy are these your servants who stand continually before you and and hear your wisdom. Blessed be. Now notice this. Blessed be the Lord your God. I want you to notice there's going to be three times she says, your God here. Blessed be the Lord your God, who delighted in you setting you on his throne to be king for the Lord your God, because your God has loved Israel to establish them forever. Therefore he made you king over them to do justice and righteousness. Now, one of the things that I, I want to focus on in this section has to do with the reputation that Solomon had and how it exceeded what she had even heard when she saw it with her own eyes. I think it is a good takeaway for us. Here's a principle from chapter nine, that we should live in such a way that what people hear and see about you will draw them to the Lord. She recognized that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had so blessed Solomon that he was wise and wealthy, and that everybody who attended him, his servants, his attendants, were happy. She makes mention of that in verse, in verse 7. Happy are your men, and happy are these your, your servants who stand continually before you. So she's amazed at all of this. And I think it is a good takeaway for us that, that people need to be able to see the Lord and, and hear about our lives and know that it's the Lord behind our lives as a testimony of his grace and of his goodness and of his faithfulness. The tragedy here is that she doesn't seem to personalize God because she refers to God as your God. And that's a sad note because of all the things that she witnesses here, it doesn't seem, I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem that it translates to her that he can be my God too. And we know that even though she is a foreigner, she's A Gentile we know in other cases, Rahab, for example, Ruth, for example, you have other Gentile foreign women who come to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But the way she says three times here, you're God, it doesn't seem to indicate that she personalized it. So the one takeaway is as it relates to all of us, hopefully, our lives. We are living in such a way that what people hear about us and what they see about us draws them to the Lord. The now, whether or not they accept the Lord, that's not on us. But we should be living our lives in such a way that we are not a stumbling block to anybody who's interested in Christ. We should be a stepping stone to Christ. There's one little possibility why it is that she did personalize the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And that's because Jesus actually refers to this story and commends her in Matthew 12:42. And you don't need to turn there. I'll just read it. But this is where Jesus is being questioned by some scribes and Pharisees who don't believe that he's Messiah. And here he is, you know, teaching and doing miracles, and they're like, that's still not enough. And what miracle are you going to show us that we might believe? And in Matthew 12:41, verse 40, Jesus. Now I'll just back up to verse 39. Jesus says to them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a son. And no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So he uses what Jonah went through as a parallel to his own impending death, burial and resurrection. Verse 41. This is still Matthew 12. The men of Nineveh, Jesus. Now look, he's condemning the people of his day, these unbelievers, the scribes and the Pharisees. And he says, the men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And indeed, a greater than Jonah is here. He's talking about himself. Next verse. The Queen of the south, meaning the Queen of Sheba. This story will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed of a greater than Solomon is here. And he refers again to himself. So he cast the queen of Sheba in a positive light there, at least in terms of the fact that she traveled a great distance because she was curious about Solomon and the God of Solomon. And in Jesus day, people won't walk across the street to appreciate what they had in front of them in the personification of God in flesh, who is greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon. So because Jesus points her out as rising up to condemn the generation, you know, maybe she did personalize the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but her immediate takeaway is your God, your God, your God. Back here in our text, in verse nine, it says, and she gave the king 120 talents of gold. One talent, everybody is 75 pounds, 120 times that. Now, I did the math of the going rate of gold right now, okay, it's 9,000 pounds of gold at around $5,000 an ounce right now. She gave him the equivalent of over $660 million worth of gold. And she had to haul it on the backs of camels, I guess, all the way from Sheba. She gave him 120 talents of gold in great abundance. And precious stones, there never were any spices such as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Also the servants of Hiram and the servants of Solomon who brought gold from Ophir brought algom wood, precious stones. Algam wood is a very fine grained wood. It's like reddish in color today. Sometimes they call it sandalwood. Some, some guitars and some instruments are made with algum wood. But look, look what it says here. There was so much of this precious wood that verse 11, and the king made walkways of the algum wood for the house of the Lord and for the king's house also harps and stringed instruments for singers. And there were none such as these seen before in the land of Judah. And it says now King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all, all she desired, whatever she asked, much more than she had brought to the king. And so she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants. All right, so this is the part about Ethiopia that's kind of curious. Some believe that where it says here, Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired, whatever she asked, and much more, that she wanted a child by Solomon. Now, this is not in the Bible, what I'm about to tell you, but this is the way this traditional story goes, that Solomon impregnated the queen of Sheba, she goes back to Ethiopia. This is an Ethiopian tradition, okay, she goes back to Ethiopia and, and she has a Son. According to this Ethiopian tradition, the queen's name was Makkedah and the son that she bore was named Menilek. And there is this belief that Menelik went back to visit Solomon at some point as an adult and took back with him the Ark of the Covenant. Now again, this is not in the Bible. I'm just sharing with you some of the traditional stories. What is interesting is that they actually did some DNA among Ethiopians and found a Jewish lineage among the Ethiopians. And so much so I came across some background on this. There's a 14th century document known as the Glory of the Kings. 14th century that says Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had a son named Menelik who later returned to Ethiopia. And in recent years, this article I was reading was from 2021. So just before that. Modern genetic testing has validated some of these claims. For example, an Ethiopian group known as the Beta Israel, or House of Israel was officially recognized by the Israeli government in 1973. The Gefat G E F A T. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Gifat. It's another isolated Ethiopian Tribe estimated at 20 to 30,000 people. They live in southern Ethiopia and more of the rural countryside. And the Gifat have faithfully observed Jewish laws and customs. Again, this is 20 to 30,000 Ethiopians known as the Gifat. In this particular tribal group, gat translates as the trumpet blowers. They were given that name centuries ago because they would blow the shofar in in their worship times. In addition, around 500 B.C. whether or not the whole story about the Queen of Sheba and Ethiopia is true and a son, again, we don't know from the bible, but around 500 BC we don't. We do know historically that a group of Israelites migrated to Ethiopia to escape religious persecution and they became known as this Beta Israel. Now let me tell you how much Israel has come to believe and understand that Ethiopians, many of them can trace their lineage with Jewish blood. There was a, a time in what year was this? 1991, when there was such political instability in Ethiopia. There was tribal wars in Ethiopia with rebel forces that Israel as a nation came to rescue Ethiopians, Jewish Ethiopians to get them out of Ethiopia during this time of rebellion in 1991. So on May 24th and 25th, it was called Operation Solomon. That's what the Israelis designated it, Operation Solomon. It was a covert Israeli airlift in May of 1991 that transported the the already over 14,300 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Within 36 hours. The operation was meticulously planned by the Israeli government, the Israeli Defense Force and the Jewish Agency with support from the American Jewish organizations. Listen to this. A total of 35 aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C130 Hercules planes and El Al Boeing 747s were used. Non stop flights transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in just 36 hours. One El Al airplane, a 747, carried at least. Are you ready for this? 1088 passengers, one 747 carried 1,088 passengers. And two babies were born on the flight. It set a world record for the most passengers on a single aircraft. Here's how they did it. The Israelis took all the seats out of a Boeing 747 on El Al Airlines. And then people just sat in the airplane because. And I was reading the article, it says, because the Ethiopians were generally not very heavy bodied people. So they could get a lot more people on there because their weight was lighter and they didn't have luggage because this was a rescue mission to get them out of Ethiopia. So one aircraft had 1,088 Ethiopians, but they transported over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in this airlift called operation Solomon in May 24th and 25th of 1991. And the operation successfully evacuated the entire Ethiopian Jewish community in a single rapid mission. This marked the largest individual aliyah mission in history and demonstrated Israel's commitment to rescuing Jews worldwide. About, I don't know. Now, 10 years ago when I was taking one of our tour groups from the church to Israel, I was baptizing people in the Jordan river and I finished baptizing our group and this one young guy, probably in his 20s, Ethiopian, and asked me, came up to me and he said, would you baptize me? And I said, well, do you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? He says, yes, I'm an Ethiopian Jew, but I've trusted Yeshua, I've trusted Jesus as my Messiah. I said, okay, so I baptized the guy, never met him before, just baptized him. And then we're exiting and I'm talking to him and we get behind this stone wall and he just completely. He just came in with a sweater and jeans and he just starts completely changing as I'm talking to him and I'm like, okay, I think we're done with this conversation. Nice to have met you. And it just. Modesty's not a thing, I guess. I don't know. He just wanted to get out of his wet sweater and jeans. But it was just, you know, the thrill of seeing people from all over the world who identify with this Jewish messiah, Jesus, whether their bloodline is Jewish or, like mine, is Gentile. The same Savior unites us all. From all countries, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, the same Lord. So we'll pick it up there next week. Let's pause and pray. Father in heaven, we thank youk for your word tonight. And we thank youk, Lord, for the lessons we can learn. We pray, God, for those who are in a relationship right now, if it's not a holy relationship, we pray God, that they would end it. And for those. I'm talking about for people who are dating, Lord, if they're in a dating relationship, that they would end it if it's an holy alliance, Lord. And that you would direct single people to godly men and women so that that would be the most important thing, a mutual commitment to Christ. And we pray, Lord, that our lives would be lived in such a way that what people hear about us and what people see about us would draw them to you, would not turn them off about you. That there wouldn't be anything about our witness or our testimony that would repel people, that would make them think to themselves, I don't want to be like that person, so I don't want to trust Jesus myself. We pray, Lord, that our witness would always reflect you well. We know, Lord, we are frail, sinful people. There are going to be times that we disappoint you and we disappoint ourselves. But we pray that what people hear and see, for the most part, would draw them to you, Jesus. We thank you, Lord, for how you are the Lord of Jews and Gentiles alike, that people around the world who may not even know each other, like that Ethiopian guy I met. And yet we can know Jesus and be united at the cross, regardless of our nationality or ethnicity. That, Lord, all of us can. The whole world. You died for the sake of the whole world. That all of us can come to you and trust you. You are no respecter of persons. There's not one class of people or race of people or group of people that you died for. You died for the sake of the whole world. That whosoever believes in you shall not perish but have everlasting life. So thank you, Lord, for that. Thank you for the body of Christ. Thank you for the richness of what heaven will be when every tribe and nation and people and tongue will be singing your praises around your throne one day. We give you glory and praise and we thank you in Jesus name, amen and amen.