And now, shall we turn again to the
Book of the Acts?
Tonight we'd like to look at Chapter 8.
Acts, Chapter 8.
You remember last night we were talking about
the martyrdom of Stephen, the wonderful way in
which he went home to meet the Lord.
He's one of three in that previous chapter
who had a vision of God.
We find in the opening verses of this
chapter a reference to the man who witnessed
the whole thing.
It says here in Acts, Chapter 8, "...and
Saul was consenting unto his death."
And at that time there was a great
persecution against the Church, which was at Jerusalem,
and they were all scattered abroad throughout the
regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.
And devout men carried Stephen to his burial,
and made great lamentation over him.
As for Saul, he made havoc of the
church, entering through every house, and hailing men
and women, committed them to prison.
Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere
preaching the word.
Then Philip went down to the city of
Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
And the people with one accord gave heed
unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and
seeing the miracles which he did.
For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came
out of many that were possessed with them,
and many taken with palsies, and that were
lame, were healed.
And there was great joy in that city.
But there was a certain man called Simon,
which before time in the same city used
sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving
out that himself was some great one, to
whom they all gave heed, from the least
to the greatest, saying, This man is the
great power of God.
And to him they had regard, because of
a long time he had bewitched them with
sorceries.
But when they believed Philip preaching the things
concerning the kingdom of God, and the name
of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men
and women.
Then Simon himself believed also, when he was
baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding
the miracles and signs which were done.
And now when the apostles which were at
Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word
of God, they sent unto them Peter and
John, who when they were come down, prayed
for them, that they might receive the Holy
Ghost.
For as yet he was fallen upon none
of them, only they were baptized in the
name of the Lord Jesus.
Then laid they their hands on them, and
they received the Holy Ghost.
This chapter really has three subjects in it.
The first one, which I would call the
extension of Pentecost to Samaria.
The second has to do with Simon the
sorcerer, which we shall not consider tonight.
And then the third, which I want to
look at also briefly before the hour is
up, is the entrance, or rather the sending
of the gospel into Africa.
These are three wonderful subjects, but it is
of the first and the last that I
want to speak of particularly.
You will notice that I refer to this
as the extension of Pentecost rather than its
repetition.
This was not a repetition of Pentecost, as
evident when you read the verses that describe
what took place in Samaria.
For example, there is no coming of the
Spirit like a mighty rushing wind.
There is no evidence of him setting himself
upon them in cloven tongues of fire, and
neither is there any speaking in tongues here.
But on the other hand, we find that
somehow through the persecution of the Church they
were led to carry out the commission which
the Lord Jesus had given them right in
the first chapter of this very book, when
he told them that they were to be
his witnesses in Judea and in Samaria and
to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Sometimes it takes just that, to see that
we get out and do the job where
the Lord wants it done.
I am told, in fact I think I
have read it in the history of the
China Inland Mission, now known as the Overseas
Missionary Fellowship, that Hudson Taylor for years had
prayed that the gospel might go out in
that string of islands that surrounds the coast
of China from Singapore right on up to
Japan.
Well, of course they were very busy putting
the gospel out in the interior of China.
But then came the days of the evacuation.
They had to quit China.
And here the field opens up, for which
Hudson Taylor himself had prayed.
And so now these islands from Singapore right
around up to Hokkaido in Japan are hearing
the gospel, some of them for the first
time.
It is remarkable how God works in this
way.
And so we find that here is a
man, Philip, Stephen, the first man of that
Christian businessmen's committee that we looked at in
chapter 6, had been taken home to glory.
And Philip was the number two man in
that list.
And he moves up to place number one.
And so the Spirit of God lays hold
on Philip, and he goes down to Sumeria
and preaches the gospel with wonderful success.
And the news of it goes up to
Jerusalem.
And now Peter and John come down to
see what's really happening.
And you'll notice that it says here that
they prayed that they might receive the Holy
Spirit.
You'll notice that as we were reading it.
Verse 15 of our chapter, who when they
would come down prayed for them that they
might receive the Holy Ghost.
This of course is again different from chapter
2.
Nobody there was praying for them that they
might receive the Holy Spirit.
He just came upon them.
But here we find that prayer is offered,
that the Spirit of God might come upon
them.
Now when you take into account the antipathy
that there was between the Jews and the
Samaritans, this was an act of real triumph
and grace.
For these Jews to come down from Jerusalem
and to pray that the Holy Spirit might
come upon the Samaritans, I repeat, that was
a triumph of grace.
Do you remember that the Samaritan woman said
to the Lord Jesus that Jews have no
dealings with the Samaritans?
On the other hand, it might be that
the Samaritans had to learn that they too
were in some sense dependent upon the Jews.
And so in addition to this prayer on
the part of Peter and John that the
Samaritans might receive the Spirit of God, we
find that they had to lay their hands
on them.
You'll notice it says here in verse 17,
that they then laid their hands on them
and they received the Holy Ghost.
This again is peculiar to what we have
here.
We come to chapters 10 and 11 of
this book where the Gentiles received the Holy
Spirit.
There was nobody praying that they might.
There was nobody laid hands on them.
The Holy Spirit just fell on them as
he did on the Jews in the beginning.
But here there was a real reason to
break down this prejudice that was between these
two groups of people.
And so we see the Spirit of Pentecost,
the blessing of Pentecost, is being spread out
into Samaria.
And then out of this grows the next
subject that we want to talk about a
little bit tonight, and that is the sending
of the gospel into Africa.
And I want to give most of my
time to this this evening, so let's come
down, please, to verse 26 of our chapter.
And the angel of the Lord spake unto
Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south
unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem
unto Gaza, which is desert.
Now this is something else again, to ask
a man to leave a wonderful revival up
there in Samaria and go down into what
the Holy Spirit himself describes here as desert.
And what was he going to meet down
there?
He didn't know.
But here is an illustration of how sometimes
the Lord calls one away from that which
is succeeding very much, and asks us to
do something else.
Because after they had fulfilled that step, that
the gospel was going into Samaria, now the
next thing was to see that it goes
to the uttermost parts of the earth.
And so we read in verse 27 that
he arose and went, and, behold, a man
of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under
Tennessee, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had
charge of all her treasure, and had come
to Jerusalem for to worship.
Returning and sitting in his chariot, he read
Esaias, or Isaiah the prophet.
Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near
and join thyself to this chariot.
And Philip ran thither to him, and heard
him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest
thou what thou readest?
And he said, How can I, except some
man should guide me?
And he desired, Philip, that he would come
up and sit with him.
And the place of the scripture which he
read was this, He was led as a
sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb
done before his shearer, so opened he not
his mouth.
In his humiliation his judgment was taken away,
and who shall declare his generation?
For his life is taken from the earth.
And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I
pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this,
of himself, or of some other man?
Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at
the same scripture, and preached unto him, Jesus.
And as they went on their way, they
came unto a certain water, and the eunuch
said, See, here is water.
What doth hinder me to be baptized?
The next verse is generally omitted in the
better texts, so I continue reading at verse
thirty-eight, And he commanded the chariot to
stand still, and they went down both into
the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and
he baptized him.
And when they were come up out of
the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught
away Philip, but the eunuch saw him no
more, and he went on his way rejoicing.
But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing
through, preached in all the cities, till he
came to Caesarea.
This entrance of the gospel into Africa, at
least this is potentially so, to me is
very interesting because it antedates the entrance of
the gospel into Europe.
And yet with what different results.
We wonder sometimes if there was some failure
on the part of the brethren in Jerusalem
that they did not send a representative into
Africa.
Because here Philip reaches this man in Gaza,
the country of the Philistines, and he has
yet to make his way back to Ethiopia.
But you don't read that any one of
the twelve ever went.
And I'm wondering if this is the reason
why Islam, that's what we sometimes call Mohammedanism,
wonders sometimes whether this was the reason why
this gained such a foothold in North Africa,
even to this very day.
This is the scourge that the missionary has
to meet.
And the interesting thing is that this scourge
is being handled on the part of those
who heard the gospel in Europe.
Men like Raymond Lull, for example, going across
from Spain into North Africa to preach the
gospel there.
And others coming in from the South through
the Cape of Good Hope and bringing the
gospel up in this way.
But to think of this, that here was
a man, one man, to whom the gospel
was preached.
And we may be sure that his own
joy would effervesce and boil over to the
point where he certainly would talk about it
when he got back there to Ethiopia.
We like to believe that there was some
entrance of the gospel at that time.
But I'm raising a question in your minds
and mine, just why is it that we
find such different results in Europe?
Paul goes into Europe, and we find the
gospel spreads without the hindrance of such things
as Islam.
It spreads rapidly to the North and the
West.
And so it had spread to the East,
if we may trust history, that St. Thomas
went to India.
But, of course, there we also see that
Islam had quite a bit of success, as
is evidenced today by the population of India.
But these things, I think, are good for
us to consider as we think of the
commission given by the Lord Jesus in the
beginning, and wondering whether if these men had
literally taken the Lord Jesus at His word
and had gone into the uttermost parts of
the earth, whether Islam would ever have taken
hold the way it has taken hold in
North Africa.
I'm just wondering about that.
I haven't any answer to the question.
And by the way, somebody will be coming
up after the meeting asking me whether I
believe Simon was saved.
I don't know.
So there's your answer.
I won't have to answer that one after
the meeting.
I have a standard answer for a lot
of questions, and that's one of them.
One three-word answer, I don't know.
But I do have some thoughts about the
passage which I'm talking about here tonight.
But then I'd like to see how the
Spirit of God really used this man, and
what kind of a man he was.
You notice it's not a down-and-outer
that he's choosing here.
So many of our stories, especially those that
I heard in my boyhood days about the
success of the gospel, they were collections of
stories about people who had really gone down
to the bottom—right down to the bottom.
In fact, so far down as one of
Mel Trotter's converts used to say, he was
so far down, he had to reach up
to touch bottom.
And then those of us who had grown
up in Christian homes, we wondered about this.
And there's one hymn to this day that
I can't sing.
I can't sing the second verse of it.
All my life was wrecked by sin and
strife.
I can't sing it, because it wasn't.
My life wasn't wrecked by sin and strife.
The Lord graciously preserved me from this.
And I have no hesitancy in criticizing it,
because after all, it's only a human production,
you see.
Probably true of the man who wrote it.
But here is a man whose character evidently
is above reproach.
And you'll notice again and again the Lord
chooses this kind of people.
Nicodemus, for example, was a man like this,
wasn't he?
Nicodemus must have had a good reputation at
home.
I dare say he was a man respected
by the community.
The Lord Jesus doesn't pinpoint any sin like
drunkenness or adultery or robbery or anything.
He simply says to Nicodemus, you must be
born again.
You must be born again.
Without this, you can neither see nor enter
the kingdom of God.
But you'll notice he doesn't charge him with
any infractions of the law or anything like
this.
And here's a man, I say again, honorable
in his position.
He was an honorable man.
He was a great man with his mistress,
the Queen of Ethiopia, Candacy.
Yes, he had charge of all her treasure.
And evidently he was a seeking soul, because
he was reading the prophecy of Isaiah, and
he had been up to Jerusalem to worship,
from which we gather that he was probably
a proselyte to Judaism.
There was something about this that attracted him,
for I do not think of him as
being a Jew.
He may have been.
We're not told about that.
But I rather think that he was an
Ethiopian and outside the pale of Judaism, but
attracted by what he saw there.
And it's interesting as one reads, for example,
the life of Dan Crawford, that wonderful Scotch
missionary to Africa, especially in his second book,
which is not so well known.
The first book, Thinking Black, is probably better
known, although it's also an old book now.
But the second book, Back to the Long
Grass, in which Dan Crawford shows the influence
of Judaism coming down into Africa itself, even
to the choice of terms and customs.
Some of the things that they did in
Africa could only be explained on the grounds
that they were founded upon some Jewish practice.
Take, for example, this story, which comes to
me from John Alexander Clark, who labored for
a long time in Africa as a missionary.
He told how one night he heard unearthly
cries outside of his cabin.
He went out with his lantern to see
what was going on, and he found two
or three Africans beating another African, and they
left him supposedly dead.
After they had gone, John Alexander Clark went
over to the man and found that he
was still alive.
And so as best he could, he dragged
him into his cabin and administered restoratives, and
by morning light the man was back to
consciousness.
So he said to this man, he said,
Why did these Africans beat you up?
Well, he said, I don't belong to their
tribe.
He said, Our tribe and their tribe were
at war, and I was taken as a
prisoner.
And he said, I did something which offended
my new master, and the result was I
got the beating that I got last night.
Well, said Mr. Clark, couldn't we redeem you?
Couldn't you be redeemed rather?
Yes, the African said, I could be redeemed.
Well, he said, What would it cost to
redeem you?
Well, he said, I suppose a bolt of
cloth or a gun.
Oh, said Mr. Clark, I'd be glad to
give both, both a bolt of cloth and
a gun to redeem you.
The African shook his head.
He said, No.
He said, You can't do it.
Oh, yes, he said, I'll show you.
Oh, he said, I don't question that you
have these things, but you can't do it.
Well, why can't I do it, said Clark?
He said, Because according to the custom of
my people, it has to be one of
my own race who redeems me.
Where'd they get that idea?
You read about it in the book of
Ruth, don't you?
About the kinsman-redeemer.
So this thing was spilling over into that
land, even before the Christian era, probably.
You see?
But now this eunuch was riding back on
his chariot, reading the prophecy of Isaiah.
I'm going to imagine that at this point,
instead of being intercepted by a man called
Philip, he's intercepted by one of our modern
theologians.
Says, Good afternoon, sir.
I see you're reading a book.
May I ask the title?
And the eunuch says, Yes, the title of
this book is a prophecy by Isaiah.
Oh, yes, yes, he said.
We studied about that in seminary.
You know, of course, that that book was
not written by a man called Isaiah.
It's probably the work of at least two,
if not more, authors.
And it's all, they're all gathered together under
the same name, Isaiah.
Well, but, says the eunuch, how do you
arrive at this?
Well, he said, you'll see when you read
through the book that there's a tremendous difference
between the first part of the book and
the second part of the book.
He said, they couldn't possibly have been written
by the same man.
The man who writes in the first chapter
that nothing, nothing sound in them from the
crown of their head to the sole of
their feet, nothing but wound bruises and putrefying
sores.
And then in chapter 40, he says, Comfort
ye, comfort ye, my people.
He said, you can see the tremendous difference.
And then he said, you know, our scholars
have investigated the text, and they found out
that some of these words were current in
the time before the exile of Israel to
Babylon.
And there were some that became current after
they got into exile.
And then some of these terms are clearly
post-exilic, and, oh, we can put them
on the terms.
But, you know, then the eunuch says to
him, yes, but I'm interested in this man
about whom he's writing.
This man that's mentioned in the twenty-fifth,
fifty-third chapter.
Of course, there weren't any such chapter divisions
in those days, but we're using our own
text now as our illustration.
And he says, this man who was wounded
for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,
he said, I'm interested in this man.
Oh, well, says our theologian, you know, that
man is probably just a symbol.
He probably stands for the nation of Israel
who is being punished for the sins of
the Gentiles.
I've actually heard that.
That isn't fiction.
Oh, says this man, that doesn't get me
anywhere.
And just about that time, the Lord says
to Philip, you go and join this chariot.
Isn't it wonderful how the Lord sends somebody
in at that particular moment?
You know, this is a good moment, isn't
it?
To go and join himself to this chariot.
And Philip, ignoring the theologian with all of
his Ph.D., D.D.'s, T.H.D.
degrees and everything else, he says to this
eunuch, do you really understand what you're reading?
Well, I suppose the eunuch, if he really
had such an experience as I've described, which,
of course, is purely fictional, but possible, he
would have said, yes, I was just talking
to a man who got me all mixed
up.
Perhaps you can come up here and help
me.
And how wonderful that he had reached the
very point where Philip had a ready-made
text.
You know, this is tremendous.
You know, the more you believe in the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, the more you
see the beauty of this, that God takes
into account not only the occasion, the moment
when these two men get together, but also
the fact that he was reading the Scriptures.
And what if Philip had not been conversant
with this Scripture?
What if Philip had said, oh, let me
see that again.
What does it say?
Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I've read the Bible
through lots of times, but I've never seen
this.
Wouldn't that have been terrible?
You ever find yourself in a fix like
that?
I'm putting it up to you tonight, beloved.
Are we sufficiently conversant with the Word of
God, so that when a thing like this,
a text like this, which I'm sure every
one of us here ought to know, could
we begin at this same Scripture and preach
unto Him Jesus?
You know, to me, this is a moment
that shows to me that Philip was a
man who was saturated with the Word of
God, and the Holy Spirit of God could
use him to do this thing at this
particular moment.
I lay it upon your hearts, beloved.
I'm speaking to you tonight as if I
were speaking to myself.
Oh, to be so thoroughly saturated with the
Scripture that no matter where someone takes it
up, we can answer his question concerning it,
or at least give some explanation of it.
You know, people come to you sometimes with
the most unlikely text, don't they?
Yes.
A man said to me one day, he
said, doesn't the Bible say somewhere that money
answers all things?
I said, it certainly does.
He said, I didn't think you'd agree with
that.
Well, I said, it's in the book.
Money answers all things.
Well, he said, how about your gospel then,
when you tell me that it's free and
this?
He said, the money answers all things.
I said, wait a minute, brother.
Where does it answer all things?
I said, have you read the book in
which that text is found?
I said, if you have, you'll find that
the characteristic phrase in it is, under the
sun, under the sun, under the sun.
Yeah, money answers lots of things under the
sun.
You can find that in the highest circles,
can't you?
Yes, if you really want to get to
the top somewhere, if you've got the money,
you can get there.
Yes, if you get there.
Money answers all things.
And this was written at least a thousand
years before Christ.
So this is no new idea.
It doesn't belong to the twentieth century.
But this is just another little sample of
how one can be faced with a text
at some time or other.
And how wonderful was this text.
To understand the substitutionary work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is here pictured as a
lamb before her shearers is dumb, as an
animal that doesn't open its mouth when it's
going to be slaughtered.
What a picture.
I'm sure that the eunuch probably recognized this
immediately, but never connected it with a certain
man called Jesus.
And yet John the Baptist had proclaimed, as
you remember, we did this a week ago,
yesterday morning, when he pointed them out and
said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world.
And Peter takes up the text in his
epistle and says, He's a lamb without blemish,
foreordained for the foundation of the world.
He led as a lamb to the slaughter,
as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.
He opened not his mouth.
Of whom speaketh the prophet this?
Of himself or some other man?
Of whom?
What a wonderful thing to introduce people to
Jesus as simply as that.
Just as simply as that.
And friends, when you do this, you're doing
something that you can't do with any other
great religious leader.
No Mohammedan would ever, no Muslim would ever
understand you if you said that Mohammed was
led as a lamb to the slaughter.
No Confucianist would ever think of using such
a figure concerning Confucius.
No Buddhist would ever think of using such
a figure of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.
This seems to be a figure which is
reserved for one and one only.
This is unique.
It comes back to some of those things
we started talking about at the beginning of
last week.
The uniqueness of our Christian faith, the uniqueness
of our Lord Jesus, led as a lamb
to the slaughter.
I was forcibly brought home to me some
years ago.
My dear father-in-law, who is now
in glory, he was a cattleman.
And one day in Chicago, he said, I
would like to go down to the abattoir,
which of course is the French word for
the slaughterhouse.
So we went down to the south side
of Chicago, and through a friend who was
a veterinary surgeon inspecting animals there for the
United States government, Dave Eggers, Dave got his
permission to go in.
Well, we were introduced where they were killing
the hogs, and there was lots of noise,
lots of noise.
They were squealing almost until the last drop
of blood was out of their bodies.
They were squealing.
Where they killed the steers, that wasn't too
bad either, because they struck them a blow
on the head, and they fell unconscious, and
then were hoisted up, and their throats cut,
and their blood ran.
We took all of this.
We got where they were killing the sheep.
All we could hear on the pavement was
the pitter-patter of their little feet as
they were going up to be killed, and
not a sound out of them.
And my father-in-law, a veteran cattleman,
turned to me and said, Carl, let's get
out of here.
Couldn't take it.
Friends, there's something pathetic about this, and sometimes
when I find I'm in what's known as
a backslidden state, and who doesn't get there,
I feel the need to read again the
closing chapters of one of the four Gospels,
to have my soul moved afresh by the
sufferings of this one who was led as
a lamb to the slaughter, and a sheep
before her shearers is done.
Oh, my blessed Savior, Lamb of God, what
a name!
A name that God preserves even in the
book of Revelation.
And this is an interesting thing about the
word lamb in the book of Revelation.
It is always in the diminutive, in the
original language.
Always in the diminutive.
Not because it wants to belittle the one,
but rather to express that feeling of affection
which people in other countries have when they
use the diminutive.
I remember how I was surprised by this
in Central America as a missionary.
I was accustomed to being called Don Carlos.
But when they started calling me Carlitos, which
is the diminutive of my name, I said
to my companion, Mr. Knapp, I said, what
are they trying to do, belittle me?
Oh, no, brother, he said, they've just begun
to love you.
This is it.
So this is the lamb.
And the eunuch receives it.
He doesn't argue.
He doesn't say to Philip, now, who wrote
this, the first Isaiah or the second Isaiah?
He could have gone back to the twelfth
chapter of John, and that's a good passage
to go to, since we've been talking about
that.
Let's do that for just a moment.
John chapter 12.
And here's the Lord Jesus talking about this
very prophecy.
In John 12, in verse 37, I read
this.
But though he had done so many miracles
before them, yet they believed not on him,
that the saying of Isaiah's the prophet might
be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath
believed our report?
And to whom hath the arm of the
Lord been revealed?
That, of course, is the first verse of
chapter 53 of Isaiah, isn't it?
That then would be in the second part
of Isaiah, right?
Verse 39, Therefore they could not believe, because
that Isaiah said again.
Well, this means we're going to have another
saying by the same person.
This time he quotes from chapter 6 of
Isaiah.
He says, He hath blinded their eyes, and
hardened their heart, that they should not see
with their eyes, nor understand with their heart,
and be converted, and I should heal them.
That's out of the first part of Isaiah.
The first is out of the second part,
this is out of the first, and it's
the same person saying both things.
The Lord Jesus is telling us what?
That the book of Isaiah has one author.
And verse 41, Mustn't be omitted.
These things said Isaiah when he saw his
glory, and spake of him.
So, Philip is on solid ground in taking
this very text and preaching unto him Jesus.
And how wonderful it is that after Philip
had baptized him, Philip's work was done, and
so well done, that the Spirit of God
could take him away, and apparently he was
never missed.
Oh, friends, if there ever was a prayer,
that one needs to pray as a servant
of the Lord Jesus, just this, that when
you've done your work, you could drop behind
the pulpit and you'd never be missed.
This is exactly what happened.
But coming back to what I believe is
the theme for us here tonight, in this
chapter, first of all, a prepared soul, reading
the word of God, prepared for the message,
and a prepared instrument to tell him what
that word meant.
And beloved, to you and to me tonight,
who know the Lord Jesus Christ, this should
be the burden of our prayer, Lord, make
me that kind of an instrument for thee.
Let us turn in closing to hymn number
344.
344, out in the highways and byways of
life, many are weary and sad, carry the
sunshine where darkness is right, making the sorrowing
glad, tell the sweet story of Christ and
his love, tell of his power to forgive,
others will trust him if only you prove
true, every moment you live.
Number 344.
Shall we rise?
Out in the highways and byways of life,
prepared for
the very job that, and the heart prepared
to receive the message, oh Lord, give us
something of the joy of dealing with people
like this eunuch, searching for something and wanting
to know the man who could, oh Lord,
we thank thee, we know thee as that
man, the man Christ Jesus.
We thank you, Lord Jesus, that thou art
most willing to become a man in order
to do this very thing.
And so we pray that thou wouldst bless
this portion of thy word to us, as
we continue to meditate upon it, may we
be moved to go out and do likewise.
These things we ask as we commit ourselves
now into thy hands again for another night,
in Jesus' precious name, amen.