When Babylon conquered Israel in battle, the year was around 588 B.C., thousands of Jews were deported 500 miles east as slaves. In their captivity they carried their knowledge of God with them. And many a Gentile thus learned of the Lord.

Psalm 137 was written during this exile. Hear their lament as Jewish slaves living in a pagan land. "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, Zion. On the willows we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs ... how shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

There have been many led against their will to foreign lands. But they went with Jesus and evangelized the people to whom they were brought captive.

A Welshman named Sucant was abducted by pirates in 403 A.D. The sixteen-year-old Christian lad was taken to Ireland and enslaved for five years by the cruelest of Irish chieftains. Eventually Sucant escaped to join a monastery in Southern France. There he changed his name to Patrick, and intended to live out his years in the orderly monastic life of a monk.

Yet in 432 A.D., at the age of 45, the Holy Spirit called Patrick to return to Ireland and carry the gospel to his former tormentors. This Patrick did, investing the remainder of his life in the Irish. During the next 31 years he baptized more than 120,000 people into Christ!

Still today the Irish say of Patrick, "He found Ireland all heathen. He left it all Christian."

So, according to our text, "Men will hear of your great name." And how shall this be? As we go willingly or unwillingly to the nations.