Bibles in the rack in front of you. I believe it's on page like 5:36. Does that say. Is that right? Yeah.

So we're just going to read the first two verses, and then I got one verse for you a little bit later on. So the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem, while the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every 10 to settle in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the other nine remained in other cities. The people gave their blessing on all the men who volunteered to settle in Jerusalem.

Now, the interesting thing is there's this one verse when you flip further down, it's down in verse 14, and it's in this list of names and it's talking about them. And it says this one particular guy says he and his colleagues who were. Now, here's the problem. This Bible translation that I'm using is the net. It's the same one that's in the racks in your pews.

I like it for a few reasons, and there's some times where I don't like it. And today's one of those days. I got angry. This week I was already writing this message, and then I opened my phone, my Bible app, one morning, and it was on the esv. If you're not familiar, that's like kind of a ultra modernization of the King James Version is the way I look at it.

And the ESV said a phrase that I knew was right. So I started looking at all the translations. I studied some, but I never, like, had a Greek and Hebrew class. But I go back on a Bible app that I've got that tells you what the words were in Hebrew, and I confirmed what I knew was right, and the ESV got it right. See this version, it says that he and his colleagues were exceptional men, 128 of them.

Here's the problem with that. It's not what it says. It's not what it says. And I don't know why they translate it this way. And this is why.

It's good sometimes to read multiple translations and see what it's really trying to get at. And, you know, nobody's going to lose their salvation over this mistranslation. Like, none of you have been led astray into a cult or a false idol or something like that over it. But here's what's missing. What it really says is that there were mighty men of valor.

Mighty men of valor. And as soon as I read that, it triggered something in my brain, a memory. I said, I know. Mighty men of valor. I want to go over some of those with you.

I want to go over some of those mighty men of valor that we have. And they're going to be up on the screen. We. It's the next slide. Go ahead and hit it, Matt.

So there we are. So David King David had mighty men of valor. Valor. Now I'm going to be using mostly the Net because that's the version that we paid to download on our pro presenter. That puts the stuff up on the screen.

And the thing is, I. I like truncated. I abbreviated some of them, so there's sometimes just words that are missing. Don't worry about it. You're getting the gist of it today, like so.

So I kind of did the deformed condensed version here. That's what we're really doing. So David's warriors, a guy named jasher beam, killed 300 men with his spear in a single battle. These are going to be from 1st Chronicles 11 and 12, by the way. So, like, this one guy is such a warrior, he kills 300 men with a spear in one battle.

Now, I don't know. I've never killed anyone, to the best of my knowledge. I don't know. I don't think I've been responsible directly or indirectly for anyone's death. But I can only imagine that killing somebody with a spear is a lot of work because you have to push it in them, pull it back out and find another guy.

And that just seems like a lot of work. And he used a spear. Not to be too graphic, I'm sorry, but this is just how my brain works. Okay, so what's our next one? What do we got next?

There's a guy named Eleazar, and he was with David when the army retreated. So now you've got King David and Eleazar, and the rest of the army chickens out and they leave. But these two guys make a stand in a barley field and they defeat a whole Philistine. Like a bit of their army. That's awesome to me.

Next one. What do we got? David? This is another time David has been at battle. He's thirsty and he's laying down.

They're resting, and he says, oh, I wish somebody would get me. I'd like. It'd be just so nice if I had a drink from the. The. The pit or the cistern, the well inside the village of Bethlehem.

That's where David is from. He's had this water. He's a shepherd. He's. He's been like taking care of sheep.

He knows all the best spots remember Psalm 23? He leads me to green pastures. He. He takes me to. To.

To cool water. Like, David knows where to find the best water. And he says, right now I want water from the. The spring. Spring in Bethlehem.

Now, I don't think he meant it. I don't think he was like, seriously, one of you guys go do this. But check out what happens next. Three elite warriors broke through the Philistine forces line. Their enemies were there.

It was behind enemy lines. They bust through enemy lines, and then they drop this. This jug down into the cistern to fill it with water. Now, I can only imagine that the Philistines aren't just going to be like, oh, okay, fine, no problem. They're probably going to try to fight him.

So one guy's lowering a jug with rope down into the well. The other guys are fighting off the enemy army around him. And then they break out of there and try to get back to David. And they do, and they bring him this water. And he's like, where's this from?

And they're like, the. The well in Bethlehem. You. You said that thing. And he's like, I mean, I.

I didn't mean that. Like, thanks, guys. I can't drink this. And he pours it out. This is for my homies.

If you don't know what that means, you're not in thug culture. I guess I'm not either, but I still know what it means. Anyway, this is for my homies. He. No, really, what he says is.

He says, I couldn't do this. This is your lifeblood. Thanks for getting that, Tim. I appreciate it. He's like, this is.

He's like, this would have been. This could have been your life blood. You could have died doing this. So he offers it up to God as an offering. I still don't know if that was a jerk move or not.

I'd probably be a little ticked. Like, no, literally, I could have died. You better drink that water. You know, I get that way when my daughter, like, finally at a restaurant, is like, I'm going to eat a meal instead of just like the free chips and salsa or table bread or whatever, and she orders a kid's meal and then won't eat it because it's not just right for what she's feeling at the moment when it comes. And I'm like, there's another, like, what are kids meals now?

Seven, eight bucks. I'm like, now I feel like I've got to eat it, you know, like, so that it's not going to waste Anyway, we. What's the next one that we've got, Matt? The number is Abishai. Now, by the way, Joab, it says Abishai is the brother of Joab.

Joab had become the commander of David's army because David had gone to the city of Jerusalem, which was inhabited by a group of people called the Jebusites. And he goes there, and the Jebusites are like, you'll never get us. He's like, we will, though. He's pretty self, you know, self assured about it. And so he says to his guys, he's like, whoever of you breaks into that city, you get to be the commander of my army.

It's like a contest. Joab's like, got it. He goes in, he breaks in. It doesn't really say how, he just does it because he's that cool. And David's like, you're the commander of the army now.

In hindsight, it wasn't the best thing. Joab ends up doing a lot of murders, you know, and so David's kind of like, you guys will be the death of me. You. You guys. Well, Joab, Joab was his brother.

Abishai was one of these three elite warriors that had broken inside and gotten the water from that well. Abishai, he killed 300 men with a spear just like the other guy. That was real simple. All right, moving on, next one. So there was.

He became one of. No, what's this one say? From the three. He was given double honor and he became their officer. So Abishai wasn't one of the three, but he became their leader.

So it's like when you need a special mission done, maybe one of those off the books, you know, kind of, you know, black budget missions. You're like, I don't need this in the official records. You talk to Abishai, you're like, abishai, we need the guys. He's like, I got it. And they go and they take care of whatever needs to be taken care of for the king.

And so he wasn't one of the three, but he's their leader. So what. What do we have next, Matt? We're getting down near the end of these. There's this guy named Benaiah.

He's really cool. Says he performed great exploits. He struck down two sons of Ariel, of Moab. Ariel, I don't know if you're familiar. Like, that was the Little Mermaid's name, I think so that's kind of a weird girl name.

And if you're a dude that has two sons and your name's Ariel. They've probably gotten made fun of a lot because her dad's got a girl name that's the name of a mermaid. I know my timeline's off on that, but just go with me here. I'm just saying they were probably tough. Like the Boy Named sue, the Johnny Cash song, you know, he's like, I knew I wasn't going to be around, so I had to give you a name that would toughen you up.

No Johnny Cash fans. Okay, man, you guys gotta. All right, I'll move on. We'll cut that out too. Anyway, he killed these two guys that were their enemies.

He also went down in a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. I don't know why it matters that there was snow or how the lion had gotten in there. I think it was supposed to be a lion trap. But anyway, it didn't kill the lion. So he's like, that's cool, I'll take care of it.

And he jumps down into the pit with the lion and kills it. He didn't have to. The lion's already in the pit. It's not going to hurt anyone. And he's like, nah, I'm going to do it though.

So that's pretty cool, right? You guys aren't that excited. This is so exciting how awesome these guys are. Let's wrap this up. Matt, what do we have next?

He even killed an Egyptian who is seven and a half feet tall. I think NBA player height. You know, he's like that tall. This Egyptian had a spear as big as the cross beam of a weaver's loom. I'm sure you understand exactly how big that spear was at this point.

Next. These were the mighty men who helped David in battle. They are armed with bows and they could shoot arrows or sling stones left or right handed. So this group of guys, see what they did. They were up to next.

Next slide. These were gadites and they were military leaders. The least of these guys that could shoot bows left or right handed, or sling stones left or right handed, the least of them could take on a hundred men. Like the weakest one of them could could take on 100 men in battle. And the strongest of them could take on a thousand men in battle.

That's quite a ratio. These guys are awesome. They had done something really cool. They went across the Jordan river when it was at flood stage and it would overflow its banks. They went across the river at flood stage.

You know what that means? The rest of the army ain't coming. The rest of the army isn't coming. You're going across there this elite force that can, you know, switch up, switch hand, you know, what do they call it in baseball, you know, switch hitter, a switch hitter, but with their weapons. These guys are awesome.

And they just go over there and like, hey guys, we're here to fight you. And they're like, what? Why? They're like, cuz we want your land. God told us it was ours, so we're taking it.

And they just start kicking everybody out of these cities where they were pagans that were worshiped false gods. And they said, God told us this is our land, so get out of here. So the question really is, what does all this have to do with anything? What does all this have to do with anything? Were you thinking that yet, fairy?

I know you were. Okay, so that's good.

First of all, I hate cities. Like cities, big cities. I hate them. I lived in one. Like I said, I lived in Nashville for 11 years.

Part of that time was in the suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee. So it was, you know, we were on a kind of a cul de sac road. That was nice. Nobody stole anything from me on that road. But then when I moved, we moved to take a church and we moved into this parsonage.

It was this really nice historical place. But it was, but our neighborhood was five minutes from downtown Nashville. So we lived in the city and it was nice. They did steal many thousands of dollars of my stuff there. I had good insurance, thank God for that.

But like, here's a non exhaustive list of things I hate about cities. Okay, you ready? Here we go. So first of all, there's just too many people, right? There's lots of crime, lots of theft, lots of all kinds of stuff.

They overdevelop it and there's no natural areas. And the natural areas they do have aren't natural. They're man made. It's like, okay, come on guys. That's, that's not really how God would have made that park.

You know, we made that park so we could feel like we're out in nature, but we're really not. It doesn't work. It's too loud. And if I hear your music, I don't like it. Even if it's something I like to listen to in my house.

I don't want to hear it coming from your car stereo or from your open windows. Like that's not cool. I don't like it. Most of the time what they choose to listen to, I don't appreciate, I'm glad that the trend that they had here in Zephyr Hills a few years ago of these high school punks putting loudspeakers like you would have like at a, at a, at an auction or some loud like a car lot where they'd call out like hey, so and so, come back to the back lot and it's just a loudspeaker. No sub, no mid range, just that high end, real high end sound, like the tweeter kind of thing.

It would be like that. But they would put them on the outside of their truck, hook them to their radio and whatever they're listening to in the cab, we're hearing really loud, but it sounds terrible, absolutely terrible. Finally one day one of them comes by playing like, you know, Alan Jackson, Randy Travs, like he's got some of these old, you know, like older guys. When country was still country, when it was still good music, when it still sounded like music, they were playing that and it's like, I appreciate your taste. I still don't want to hear it at 7 o' clock through my windows.

You know, they're like, they're like these windows here on the church are single pane, they're the crank out ones. So they really don't seal very well. And I hear every bit of it.

There's a nightlife full of all kinds of everything that people can imagine that you might do wrong as a human being, to yourself or to others. Debauchery, the scriptures might call it. That's going on in cities. I'm not saying that everybody lives in a city does this. I'm saying that cities promote this.

Cities have lots of opportunity for these things and is something that's calling and enticing to people constantly. Hey, come do this. Hey come enjoy this. And like I've said before, sin. If it wasn't fun in the moment, people wouldn't do it.

Sin is fun at the time when you're doing it. Most of the time it's really enjoyable most of the time in the moment. But it's later on when we realize what it's cost us, what has taken from us, what it is, how it has harmed us and those around us that we recognize that sin is so bad. There's. There's also these corporations, they.

I'm not saying every corporation is, is greedy or evil, but there are so many that they seem to promote such greed and such ev. That's going on. Let's go back one more. I wasn't quite done. They're they're, they're supporting evil.

They're doing all this stuff with their, their influence that they have. Cities, a lot of times can be impersonable and unhospitable. Like, there's videos you'll see sometimes online of people that'll say, like, hey, look, look at this nice thing that somebody did to help a stranger. You know, they, they helped him out with this thing or that thing, or, or people are talking online how they finally met their neighbor and they borrowed a stick of butter or whatever. And it's like, that was, if not weekly, maybe daily.

Where I grew up, we were constantly helping each other out, borrowing tools or helping with their lawn with their mower broke or borrowing. You know, my mom would send me down to the neighbors on my bike with a bag or a container to get sugar or butter or flour, whatever thing that you forgot, you know, and then of course, you would always bring, you know, bring some more back to them to replace it. And that's just how we lived. I'm like, that was the life where we lived. And now people, people are celebrating that as like something abnormal in the city, because it is abnormal, because cities aren't very personable and hospitable, normally speaking.

And then here's the real thing. A lot of that's just me being crotchety about cities and my personal view, but cities. And, and this is, this is actually the biblical view. And the interesting thing is Nehemiah comes from Babylon, and Babylon is talked about through the rest of your Bible after that through the New Testament, through the book of Revelation. Babylon is evil personified.

Babylon is everything that's wrong with a city, but no matter what city it is. In fact, even Jerusalem in the book of Revelation gets called that wicked Babylon, because Jerusalem had taken a turn where it was just as evil as Babylon had been. It was just as wicked and idolatrous as Babylon had been. And Babylon signifies everything wicked and wrong with a city. And so the cities in our day are just the same.

They tend to have these, like, political views and cities, if you look at a map of voters, they tend to be very blue, very left and Democrat leaning. And I know there's a lot of people, there's a lot of Christians that say, well, I'm a Democrat. And I'm like, you know, you're probably a Democrat from the way it was decades ago when they were helping, helping the working class people, when they were helping people that were down and out. But some of the things that the Democrat party stands for now on its party platform are just downright wicked and evil. And so you say, well, I can be a Christian and a Democrat.

I say, maybe, I don't know, sometimes it's hard to be a Christian and a Republican or a Christian and a Libertarian. I'm not really trying to say one way or the other like, oh, you have to vote this party or that party. There are so many things that I say. These things come from that party, from the people that are pushing that party towards the far left of where it should be, and they're pushing it so far there. And these are things that are not congruous with the biblical viewpoint or from the heart of a Christian.

And because of that, these cities, they tend to vote that way. Cities tend to be deep blue in their voting records. And then you get out to the rest of the area and we have to live with what they are. If there's more people that live in the cities of a state, that those states tend to go that direction and the rest of us have to live with that. And you might be quite moderate or central in your thinking, but you're like, well, now all this crazy stuff is happening, and I didn't vote for those things to happen, but now I have to live with it because these cities decided it is.

So. So on our next slide, the main problem that we see is that cities tend to set the culture upstream from the rest of us. You know, like there's, there's a. There's a saying like, you know, if somebody, if you're camping and somebody's bathing upstream, you know, because you got to bathe where you can, don't get your water downstream from that, you know, like, it's just a bad idea. There's probably bad stuff in the water.

You should definitely bring a filter or one of those tablets. If you don't go camping, that's fine. I like camping. So the problem is these, these, the things that are upstream, these corporations, these cities, they set the culture and that flows downstream to us. People are influenced by all of this.

Cities need mighty men and women of valor. We need that. So my big question when I look at this and I see that in Nehemiah 11, those first couple verses, it says there weren't enough people living in the city of Jerusalem. What was going on was they had rebuilt the walls, the temple is functioning, they've got all the servants in place. The people have committed to bringing all the things that are necessary for temple worship.

The sacrifices, the wood for the altars, all the stuff they're providing the tithe and the offerings throughout the land. They're collecting it in all their towns and villages. The Levites and the priests are bringing that into the storehouse of God so that the temple can function as it was designed to do. They're committed to doing all those things. But there's one thing that's left.

There's not enough people living in the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is underpopulated. And the ones that are there might be great folks, but there's not enough of them to keep it going. And the thing that I noticed, the very first three, four words is the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. See, the people that held sway over the whole nation were living in the city, but they don't know what it's like.

They don't grow their own crops, they don't build their own equipment. They don't provide much of anything. That ruling class still exists today. They. They get voted in.

They have all this tenure in office, but they've forgotten what it's like to live with their feet on the same soil that we walk on. And so we say, man, those people in Congress, those people in the state senate, those people in the governor's office, whatever it is, those people in the White House, all this stuff, these people don't know what it's like. They don't know what it's like to live like us, to struggle to find money for insurance because it's gone through the roof in Florida. Oh, they tried to send us money after the hurricanes, but here we are still struggling to figure out, how are we going to pay for these things. You know, it really doesn't fix it.

And so we say, okay, well, that's all fine and well, but you guys have lost touch with the reality that we live in. And yet somehow we have to follow your lead. And even when we do vote, we say, well, I have to vote for the lesser of the evils. I have to vote for the only ones that are on the ballot. I voted in the primary, but the person that raised more money was the one that won the primary.

And now they're the best choice that I have. And so we look at all that stuff and we look at city life, and we say, why in the world would anyone that's a mighty man or woman of valor move to a city because you've got the leaders there. And then they have this lottery where 1 out of 10, I guess the losers that won the lot, like the one out of ten that got selected, you know, they get told you're moving to the City now, by the way, in a city, there's a lot of stuff you can't do. And I should probably cut this out because of time. But you know what?

I love it so much. We're going to do it in a city. There's a lot of stuff that men like to do that you can't. All right, let's go through this list. Rapid fire.

I'm going to wrap this up. It's illegal to, like, you know, set up a gun range in your yard, by the way. Most of these things are things that we did when I was growing up. We would do target practice in our front yard. The neighbors would come over, they'd do it too.

It was a great time. You know, you can't go hunting in your yard. In the city, legally, you can do anything you want. It's America. But I mean, legally, you probably can't.

You can't have giant bonfires. I mean, we would have bonfires where we would fill up half of this sanctuary full of brush and stuff that we had cut up over the summer, and then we would burn it in the fall. It was a great time. Can't do that in the city. They call the fire department every single time.

And the police, if you mouth off to the fire department, you know, they give you big tickets. Did you know the fire department can write you big tickets? They can. I almost got one once. Fortunately, I was polite and didn't mouth off and they didn't write me a ticket.

The cops don't like you doing burnouts on your street. Can you imagine that? They really don't like you doing that in the city. I know you guys aren't trying to do burnouts on the street. I did as a teenager.

I thought it was great. Of course we had a gravel road and it was real easy. And they really frown on you blowing stuff up.

Yeah, they really don't like that. I don't mean like to be destructive unless it's your stuff that you want to destroy. Like if you have an old washing machine that doesn't work and you want to take it to the scrapyard, but first you want to blow it up and get to shoot it. You buy this product called tannerite. It's not that expensive for the amount of fun you get out of it.

You mix these two inner chemicals together and you put them inside the washing machine. You shoot it with a rifle. It has to be a rifle, not a handgun. Has to be a high velocity round and it'll explode when it's impacted by a High velocity round. This is legal to buy.

You can get it on the Internet, maybe even at Rural King. Today you just can't do it here in the city, you know, and it will blow up. You need to stand far enough away that bits of the washing machine don't hit you. There's some fun videos on YouTube of people, I think they survive, but they ducked really quick when parts of it come flying at them. So just be real cautious when you do this in the country, can't do it in the city, and even the suburbs are terrible.

Sorry to some of you guys, but have you ever heard of or lived in an hoa? Oh my goodness. You know what an HOA stands for? Hateful, obnoxious authoritarians. There's always somebody that has too much time on their hands to just go around to the clipboard and be like, well, so and so had their garage door open for too long.

The rules won't allow that. You didn't have a cover in front of your trash cans. My grandfather in law, Amy's grandfather, they told him that he needed to paint the boards that he put up to block his trash cans. So he painted them bright red because they didn't give him a color. And, and that was his way of telling him, nah, I do what I want, you know, I would not make it in an hoa.

But I do have an idea for a good HOA that men, maybe a few women would like. All right, now this hoa, this idea that I have is like, okay, so you go in, you pay your HOA dues, but here's what your HOA dues pays for. First of all, there's like an equipment rental, but it's free. You just have to sign equipment out. So if you want to dig a hole to put in a fence or whatever, you got the post, hole diggers.

If you need a bigger hole, you can like dig a trench with the excavator. You just sign it out, whatever. There's all this equipment that you can sign out, but then there's a woodworking shop. You just bring your lumber in and they got all the tools and sanding equipment and all this stuff there. Then there's an automotive shop because there's no limit on how many.

Like one of these days I'll get that car running projects. Some of you guys, you ever have those? I know a couple of us do like, I'll get that running one day. I'm not ready to get rid of it just yet. You can take it to the shop and work on it, when you get around to it, it has a lift.

It has an oil change bay. This is cool stuff, right? You guys aren't getting nearly excited enough. Then there's another one is the metal fab shop, you know, with torches and cutters and all the welders. It's a great time.

This is just for me, huh? There's a gun range there, by the way. You can grow anything you want. You can have any animals for pets that you want. Huh?

You can have any animals or pests that you want. Except cats. Those are illegal. That's the only rule. No cats.

This is. This is the men's HOA thing. You know, the question is, with all that stuff that I've said, I said all that to say this. Why would mighty men of valor ever move to a city? Why would they do it?

I mean, yeah, they lost the lottery. One out of 10. They could have said no, though. Who's going to fight them? They're the mighty men of valor.

Who's going to tell them no? I'm staying in. I'm staying out there. My. Don't bother me.

Don't mess with me unless there's a fight. Unless there's a battle. But I think mighty men of valor recognize that even in the city, there's a big fight going on. There's a battle to be fought that doesn't involve weapons of war, but it involves weapons of prayer, warriors. See, we have to.

We. We have to recognize that there is a spiritual battle for the lives of the people around us that's going on right now. And in the city is amplified. Oh, sure, we got problems in rural areas. And I don't know where Zephyrhills fits in this because it's like 15 times larger than I would like to live in for a city.

It's just way too big. But nevertheless, you've got these problems in cities of all sizes. You got, of course, theft and drugs and all that stuff. I get it. Human trafficking is a huge thing.

It's all going on somewhere in the city where the culture is set and where the, the people are following that culture downstream. We need people that will rise up and say, not in my city. In my city, I'll stand and I'll fight that spiritual battle. I'll spend time on my knees and on my face in prayer. I'll vote.

I'll stand up in city meetings or school board meetings or whatever it is. I might run for office if I have to. I'll do all these things because I'll Be the one that stands up and fights that battle. I'll be the one that says, not while I'm still here. That's not going to happen while I'm here.

And the leaders can all live in the city and try to tell us how to live, but we're going to stand on the word of God and say, no, this is how I live. And I'm not going to be governed by things that are immoral against the will of God. See, mighty men of valor, mighty women of valor. Valor in this case is, it's, it's not just, it's not just people that are. You don't have this like pride or arrogance that says, look at me, look how strong I am.

It's a humble person who's willing to step up when the need arises. Sure, you might get some glory from, from winning the battle, but you reflect all that praise and glory to God because you want to see souls saved, because you don't want people to go to hell. And the cities are leading people to hell. Whatever that city is, whatever that structure is that a authoritarian structure that, that sets this culture that we tend to follow, we look at that and we say, I'm not going to stand for that anymore. Too often we fought that stand within the church and we said, okay, if it's just, we're going to make sure that we're strong and that we have our own walls that protect us from all that stuff outside.

But we don't go and fight that battle outside. We don't wake up in our homes in the morning and get down on our knees before God and say, lord, there's a battle going on, use me to fight as one of your mighty people of valor today. We need them to stand up. And by the way, for those of you who think, well, somebody that has more energy, more years, more strength, more wisdom, more knowledge left than I do, they can stand up and fight that battle. I got one last little story.

I'll be as brief as I can. There's this guy named Gideon. You can read about him if you go back to the, the Book of Judges, chapter three, and the next few chapters after that. Because you see, I found out there's a few more people that are called a mighty person of valor in the Bible. There's even a non believer named Naaman who has leprosy.

And he's a Syrian enemy of the people of Israel. And yet he was considered a mighty man of valor. And then he gets to know the one true God and he serves him. You Got other people like Joshua, by the way. Joshua that leads the people.

After Moses dies, he leads them into the promised land of Israel. He's called a mighty man of valor, which he didn't really think that he was that strong. But you've got this guy Gideon. Gideon, at the time, Israelites are once again being oppressed. This is hundreds and hundreds of years before our story with Nehemiah.

Gideon is afraid of the Midianite army who has held sway over the Israelites. And Gideon is down in a. A wine press because he's. He's hiding as much as he can from the Midianites. And he's threshing grain and he's trying to get to retain a little bit of the harvest that he's worked so hard for because the Midianites were stealing everyone's grain that they could find and starving the Israelites out.

And he's down there. He's hiding. He's doing it probably at night or at sundown so that he can't be seen. And the angel of the Lord shows up. You know what he says?

I thought for so long it said, greetings, mighty warrior. That's what my translation said. It's not what it says. He says, greetings, mighty men of valor. Gideon's like me, not me.

I'm not that strong. I'm hiding here. I'm the weakest in my family line. My family's the weakest in our clan. Like I'm not a mighty man of valor.

He says, oh, yes, you are. Later he tells him, go in the strength that God gives you. That's my challenge to you all today. You might say, I'm not a mighty person of valor. Oh, yes, you are.

God has called you to do this. You go in the strength that he has given you, and you go and you say, lord, I'm your vessel, willing to fight wherever you call me to, fighting against the evil and demonic forces that threaten to take the lives and the eternities of our friends, family and neighbors around us. And you say, I won't do it on my watch. I won't let it happen on my watch. I going to fight for just one more.

For just one more. Are you willing to stand up for that? Are you willing to be that mighty person of valor today? Ask God how you can do that and spend time on your face every day.