Good evening. Now, for those of you who are accustomed to me teaching Sunday school and messages, I've always had my computer up here, but this time I didn't have a chance. In fact, the tab's in my Bible. And I want you to put a marker into Judges chapter six. That will be where we'll be paying most of our time this evening. But I want to jump off and start tonight in 1 Corinthians. So turn over to 1 Corinthians chapter one. 1 Corinthians 1, and I want to read verses 26-29. 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26-29. Not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty. And the base things of the world, and the things which are despised, God has chosen. And the things which are not to bring to nothing the things which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. When I was reading that, I'm thinking, here's Jesus when he's starting his ministry, and he's walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. And he comes across these lowly fishermen sitting in a boat, mending their ripped nets, probably grumbling over the fact that they probably can't make a living because they probably couldn't catch fish or had a good catch. And he comes across James and John and Peter, and he says, follow me. And what do they do? They get up out of those boats, and they follow him. And then walking along the road some day, he comes across a Jew sitting at a money-changing table. I despised you, because you was a tax collector. He's taxing his Jewish brethren with money that the Romans want for taxes, but he's adding a little extra to those taxes for himself, a very despised man called Levi. And he says, follow me. And what does Levi do? He gets up off that money table, and he follows Christ. And just those lowly disciples, those not prominent disciples, those we'll call weak. Disciples turn the world upside down for God because they were made strong through Christ I want you to turn over to Hebrews chapter 11 Hebrews chapter 11. We know Hebrews 11 is the is the What we call the Faith Hall of Fame And of course, as we reach Hebrews chapter 11, we see references to those that we know so prominently, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. But in verse 32, we see The writer of Hebrews writing, and what more shall I say? For the time should fail me to tell of Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Japheth, and of David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, and turned to fight the armies of the aliens. And tonight, I want to look at Gideon. Gideon in Judges chapter 6. Right now, we won't get through the whole thing. After I started going through this, I got quite a list of notes here, and I only got to Judges 6-24, so I won't be getting into 7 or 8, except for some brief glances. But Gideon was one of the ones referenced here, when he said that out of weakness were made strong, and became valiant in battle. That was Gideon. Of course, it was Japheth as well. But Gideon is the one we want to focus on tonight. Before we get there, and we can turn over to our text, over to Judges right now. Just turn over to Judges because we'll be looking at Judges for a while. When we think of the book of Judges, Judges of course falls in after Joshua, right before the book of Samuel. Between the time Joshua died until Saul was made king, Egypt was governed by the judges. Now we think of judges who make court decisions and find people innocent and guilty. These are really deliverers. That's what the word judges means. It means deliverers. Let's just go through Judges, and what I want to do is I want to set the theme of Judges. And I want to look at a couple scriptures relative to helping us kind of get a thousand-foot level view of the book of Judges. First look at Judges 2, verse 11. Judges 2, verse 11. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. Chapter 3, verse 7. Chapter 3, verse 7, so the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. Chapter 3, verse 12, and the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and so the Lord strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. Verse 4, I mean chapter 4, I'm sorry, chapter 4, verse 1, Then Ehud, who was one of the judges, and Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. Chapter 6, verse 1. Then the children of Israel did evil to the hand of Midian for seven years. Chapter 10, verse 6. Chapter 10, verse 6, Then the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals, and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord, and did not serve Him. And then chapter 13, verse 1. Again, the children of Israel did evil on the side of the Lord and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. Do you get a little idea that Israel might have been a little disobedient to the Lord all through the time that the judges ruled? There was a cycle going on in the book of Judges. The Israel would be disobedient to the Lord, the Lord would bring them into bondage to whether it be the Baals, or to Moab, or the Midianites, or the Philistines. After a while, they would grumble and complain and cry out to the Lord. And the Lord, out of His graciousness, would raise up a deliverer, a judge, who would bring them out of that bondage. And they would be OK for a while until that judge died. And then the cycle would start all over again. I think of us sometimes. I think of me. And some of the sins that we do, sometimes the secret sins, or even sins of omission, things we should be doing, like reading the Bible every day and praying every day. And sometimes we get so busy doing things that we push that to the side. That's disobedience to the Lord. We'll seek from forgiveness, we'll come back, we'll start doing what we should be doing, and all of a sudden we get caught up in disobeying the Lord again. And it just seems to be a continual cycle, at least to me anyway. I'm not sure about anybody else here, but I'll use myself as an example. But there are other things too, whether, you know, it could be, you know, we have such an entertainment media out there today that's so distracting, whether it be TV or music or the internet or whatnot, all kinds of things that we can get so easily caught up with that can cause us to not walk in the ways of the Lord and just drift off. Thank goodness, as we've been teaching Sunday, the Lord takes our hand and leads us along and is patient with us and forgiving to us. And also John says, 1 John says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank goodness we got a good and gracious Lord. We look at book of Judges. We look at the book of Judges in chapter 1, the first 26 verses of chapter 1, we see after Joshua's eyes, Israel continues to do the conquest of the land of Canaan. Remember the Lord told them when they go into the new land, they're supposed to rid the land of all the Hittites, the Jesuitites, and the Perizzites, and all the other ites that are in there. And so they continue to do that. Starting in verse 27, now we start to see a different change. Go over to Joshua chapter 1. I mean, I'm sorry, Joshua, Judges chapter 1. And we'll see how Judges chapter 1, verse 27 starts out. Because now they begin to start disobeying the Lord. And I'm not even there yet. So much for my little tabs. Judges 1. Verse 27, however Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean and its villages, or Tanak and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor, and it goes on and on and on. Verse 29, nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites. Verse 30, nor did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron. 31, nor did Asher. Bottom line is they got a little lazy. They got a little lazy and didn't drive out the people that they were supposed to be driving out. I want to read a little bit of that cycle that we were talking about before in Judges chapter 2. So just read along with me. in Judges chapter 2, and we'll read a good portion of Judges chapter 2, starting in verse 1. Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Boshem and said, I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land which I swore to your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall tear down their altars. but you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? Therefore I have said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side, and their God shall be a snare to you." So it was when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel that the people lifted up their voices and wept. Jump down to verse 7. So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, which he had done. Now, Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was 110 years old, and they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnair in the mountain of Ephraim on the north side of Mount Gosh. Then all the generation Then when all the generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work that Israel had done. And then they start, we go to verse 11. Then the children of Israel fell, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they forsook the Lord their God of their fathers and brought and who had brought them out of Egypt, and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were around them. And they bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forgot the Lord, and served Baal and the Asherahs. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So he delivered them into the hands of the plunderers who had despoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so they could no longer stand before their enemies. Whenever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them, and they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them, yet they would not listen to the judges. But they played the harlot with other gods and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way from which their fathers walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord. And they did not do so. And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved by pity, by their groaning because of those who oppressed them and harassed them. And it came to pass when the judge was dead that they were reverted back and behaved more corruptly than their fathers by following other gods to serve them and bow down to them. And they did not cease from their own doings, nor from their stubborn ways." So there is that cycle of constantly getting caught up into sin after sin after sin, and really taking advantage of the Lord, and the Lord continuing just to show His His graciousness to him. And one more thing, look over at chapter 3, verse 5. Verse 5 and 6 of chapter 3. Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, and the Hevites, and the Jezbelites, and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods. So, they were quite heaped into sin, and were really having a lot of problems with their walk and with the Lord. If we go over to Judges 6 now, that's where we're going to start seeing Gideon. Before we get to Gideon though, we read this already, Judges 6, verse 1, Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years. Now, who are the Midianites? We've heard of them before. But maybe you don't remember a lot of them. First of all, Midian was a son of Abraham and Keturah. You remember Abraham's wife Sarah died, Abraham got remarried, married a woman named Keturah. They had, what, five, maybe six children. One of them was Midian. Abraham did not want these children to have any influence on Isaac, so he sent them all to the east, probably gave them provisions, and they all left. Ultimately, Midian would become the land of the Midianites and the family of Midian. The land of Midian is basically, at that time, was Israel's closest neighbor. Kind of takes up the western portion of, western border of Israel, where Jordan is today, and the northwestern section of Saudi Arabia. If you look at a map, that was all the land of Midian. They said it was the closest neighbor that Israel had. One of the things we see about the Midianites also is that when Joseph was sold into slavery, he was sold by his brothers to Midianite traders. Those Midianite traders took him to Egypt and then sold him to Potiphar. When we see Moses, and he kills that Egyptian in Egypt, Once Pharaoh finds out, he flees, because Pharaoh wants to kill him. Where does he go? He goes to the land of Midian, quite a long distance from Egypt. But he goes to the land of Midian. At that point in time, the Midianites were not enemies of Israel, because Israel wasn't in their land of milk and honey yet. But Moses lived in Midian for the next 40 years as a shepherd to his father-in-law's sheep, his father Jethro, who was a priest in Midian. Moses finally goes back to Egypt and brings the children out of Egypt. And as they're coming through the wilderness, in Numbers 22 we see the Midianites again. Israel camps in the plains of Moab. This is when they encounter Balak, the king of Moab. He makes an alliance with the Midianites to try and go up against Israel. So it is Moab and the Midianites and they hire Balaam the prophet to curse Israel. Of course we know the outcome of that. Balaam wasn't successful. He spoke what the Lord told him to spoke and really irked Balaam. In Numbers 25 we see the Lord's judgment on Israel because they're practicing hardolatry with the Moabite women. And in verse 6 of verse 25, that's where we see one of the Israelites bring one of the Midianite women into camp into his tent, and that's when, I'm trying to remember the name of the priest, The priest who shoved the spear through the Israelite and the Midianite woman, his name has not come to mind right now and I never wrote it down. But Moses is commanded by the Lord in chapter 31 of Numbers to take vengeance on the Midianites because of the fact that Israel was caused to sit and be kind to him. And Moses takes the vengeance, but what Moses does, he kills, yes, he kills the five kings of the Midianites, and he kills Balaam, the son of Baal. He takes the women and children captive. that irks the Lord because he says, it's these women that caused you to sin. So he orders Moses to kill the women, every woman who had known a man sexually. And that eliminated a lot of the Midianites, but didn't eliminate them all. We will see the Midianites rear their heads again when we get up here to the beginning of Judges chapter 6. 200 years passes from the time that Moses has this battle with the Midianites until we get to Judges chapter 6, and now we see the Midianites are back. Now they're not as big as they were, but they're big enough to cause Israel problems. If we read chapter 6, I want to read down the first six verses here of Judges chapter 6. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel, because the Midianites, the children of Israel, made for themselves the dens, the caves, and the strongholds that were in the mountains. Things were so bad with these raiders from the Midianites that they couldn't live in their land. They actually had to move up to the mountains and create homes for themselves in the dens. And so it was, whenever Israel had sown, the Midianites would come up. Also, the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them. And they would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza and leave no subsidence for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, coming in as numerous as locusts, both they and their camels, were without number. And they would enter the land and destroy it." So Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord. Let's go to the battle of the Lord in prayer. Father, we're thankful that through all the years that Israel has been unfaithful to you, that you have remained faithful to them because of your covenant. Father, we thank you that you remember your covenant. And that, as Romans 11 tells us, there will come a time when all Israel will be saved. And Father, we look forward to that time. We thank you for men like Gideon, Japheth, David, and others who so faithfully served you. And Father, let me learn some things from these men and learn what it means to faithfully serve you and listen and obey your word. In Jesus' name, amen. So here's the Midianites. They're impoverished. When we look at Charles Ellicott, the old commentator, he says, they were reduced to pauperism. They were flaccid and helpless. Now, that word flaccid means it's like a muscle that's not used, and it becomes atrophied. They were basically useless. A few years ago, I did a message I called The Cups of God. And one of the cups of God was the cup of confusion or the cup of suffering. And when the Lord makes a country or an individual drink the cup of confusion or suffering, that country or those people become helpless. They become defenseless. They become very fearful. That's what was going on here at Israel. The Lord was making them drink this cup of confusion or this cup of suffering. Of course, the Lord didn't just make Israel drink it. He made some of Israel's enemies drink it as well. And to revert from their land up to caves, things had to be pretty bad. But the Lord was still gracious. In chapter 7, or excuse me, verse 7 of chapter 6, we see the Lord reminding them why they're in this particular situation. And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord because of the Midianites, that the Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel who said to them, thus says the Lord God of Israel. I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all who oppressed you and drove them out before you and gave you their land. Also, I said to you, I am the Lord your God. Do not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. Well, God's about ready to raise up another judge. He's called Gideon, to deliver the Israelites out of the hand of the Midianites. But the first question is, who's Gideon? Well, we just saw in Hebrews chapter 11, he's listed in the Faith Hall of Fame. He's one of those individuals who from weakness was made strong. and did some mighty battles for the Lord. The only other thing we see about Gideon is right here in Judges 6, 7, and 8. So just glean some things here so we can at least know a little bit about who Gideon is. First of all, Judges 6, verse 11, which starts off, Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the timber of the tree, which was in Ophrah. And Ophrah, there's two Ophrahs, by the way. There's one in Manasseh, and there's one in Bethlehem. This is Manasseh, because because Gideon is from the tribe of Manasseh. So the Angel of the Lord sits under a tree in Ophir, which belonged to Joash, the Abrazite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the wine presses in order to hide it from the Midianites. So his father Joash was an Abrazite. The Abrazites were from the clan of Manasseh, and they came through the line of Gilead. Now if you look at There's not much in the scripture, by the way, on the genealogy of Manasseh. You see a little bit over in Joshua chapter 17, verse 2. Some of it also in Numbers 26, verse 29 and following. In verse 26, verse 30, it mentions that Gilead had a son called Jezer. Well, Jezer is the father of the Abrazites. His actual name was Abizer, I think, or something on that order. But they called it, for some reason, scripture calls it Jezer in Numbers 26. But one and the same. So Joash comes through the line of Gilead of the tribe of Manasseh. And of course, Gideon is his son. Now, before we get on to something else, I'm just thinking about that verse we read in Hebrews 11, that out of weakness, some of these men were made strong. Now, when we think of 2 Corinthians 12.9, that's where Paul prays three times to the Lord to help, asked to have the thorn in his flesh removed. And what was the Lord's response? He's not going to remove the flesh because he says, out of your weakness I am made strong. And this whole term on weakness has everything to do with either want of strength, maybe an illness, maybe suffering, calamity, frailty, all the things that the Lord can use to bring out his strength and glory. We think of David. When Saul's army was afraid of the Philistines, a giant, Goliath, would come out, and they'd tremble in their boots. And who took down Goliath? This little shepherd boy called David. Out of his youth, and out of his smallness, and maybe even weakness, he was able to deliver up the Philistine army. Think of Samson. Samson was weak when his hair was shaved off. But yet as his hair started growing back, even though he escaped and he was imprisoned and his eyes were put out, he was able to push that whole stadium down through the weakness, through the Lord empowering him. In Psalm 27.1, David says, the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? So we can be weak, we can be frail, but if we have the Lord and the Lord's strength in us, there shouldn't be anything that should keep us afraid or fearful. If we go back to Joash again, Gideon's dad, we're going to see in chapter 6 verse 25 that Joash had obviously fallen into this idolatry that many of the people in Ulphra had fallen into. It says in verse 25 of chapter 6, now came to pass that night that the Lord said to Gideon, take your father's young bull, the second bull of seven years, and tear down the altar of Baal, your father has, and cut down the wooden image that is beside it. When they worshipped Baal, they also worshipped Ashtaroth. Baal was the sun god, Ashtaroth was, they called the mother goddess. And they honored the mother goddess with some type of a pole called the Ashtaroth pole. Here's Gideon being told to go to your father's property and tear down the altar of Baal and destroy the Ashtaroth pole. You talk about having some difficulty witnessing to your family. Here this guy's being told to go toil down your father's idols. What a challenge he has. We'll get back to that probably maybe later on, maybe next message. But there's one other thing to look here. Go down to chapter 28. It says, when the men of the city arose early in the morning, there was the altar of Baal torn down, and the wooden image that was beside it was cut down. The people, or the men of the city, would come out to Joash's property and do their worshiping. So I don't know whether Joash was their priest, but he was some type of a prominent guy. He had the temple, and he had the Asherah pole. He had the place of worship there on his land, and all the people would come out to worship it. But Joash has a turn, and we'll see that turn probably not this time, but maybe next time we get into this. Joash has some pretty good insight when it comes down to bail. We also find out that Gideon had a lot of kids. Gideon had 70 children through his wives and his concubines. One of those children was Abimelech. And we find Abimelech in chapter 9 of Judges. We won't go there. When Gideon did the battle and was victorious in the battle against the Midianites, all the people wanted to make him king. And Gideon was kind of humble. He said, I'm not going to become king. The Lord's your king. You should be serving the Lord. I'm not going to become king. Well, his son Abimelech was not that gracious. When they wanted to make Abimelech king, he took him up on it, and he became king for three years. He suffered a horrible death, if you remember the biblical story about the king who went up to the tower of Thebes, I think it was called, Thebes. He's at the tower, and a woman on top of the tower drops a millstone off the top of the tower and crushes the king's head. That was Abimelech. He didn't last too long as the king. Gideon's name means hewer. And that means fell or a tree. It's not to say that he was a forest man or he worked in the forest, but basically it means to cut asunder, to cut off. It's a title given to a warrior. And that was Gideon's name, Huer, or that's what it meant, Huers. Also Gideon had some brothers, if we go over to Judges chapter 8 verses 18 and 19, you'll see that he mentions two brothers that were killed by the kings of Midian. Some commentators will say his brothers were king, I'm not that sure. The two kings of Midian basically say they had the image that they were the sons of a king. And of course, Gideon also had another name, and that was Jerubal. And we'll talk about later on about how he got that particular name. But the important thing about Gideon, what Hebrews 11.32.34 says, is out of weakness he was made strong. Judges chapter 6, verse 11. This, by the way, I'm trying to do this verse by verse, so verse-in-verse commentary, if you will, through the Book of Judges. Now, the angel of the Lord came and sat under the timber of the tree that was in Ophrah. We'll stop there. The words used here for the angel of the Lord are malach, Jehovah. Now, Donnie didn't talk about that when he was talking about the names of Jehovah. Of course, malach, Jehovah, was not the name of God. But malach means ambassador, or angel, or envoy, or messenger. This was a messenger of Jehovah. Of course, we see the angel of the Lord throughout the scriptures. The angel of the Lord appeared to talk to Moses through the burning bush. He talked to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He talked to Samson's parents. Most of the commentators tell us that the angel of the Lord is either a theophany or a christophany. Appearance of God in the physical form of Christophasy is the appearance of the preeminent Christ. Which one was this? I don't know, but the bottom line is it was a unique angel. He spoke as God, and he also exercised the authority of God, and that was the angel of the Lord. And of course, we remember the scriptures, when everybody finally realized they saw the angel of the Lord, what did they say? We've seen God. We're going to die. So quite possibly, this was, in fact, God in the form of a man. Now, when it comes down to the rabbis that used to teach the scriptures. And they had something called the Talmud. And I'll just call the Talmud a documentary of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses. They had something called the Talmud, which I guess it was translated out of the Chaldean language. And in that Talmud, they would have their thoughts, their ideas. their comments of things. And they were apt to always call the angel of the Lord the glory of God. To them, it was the presence of the Lord. And we think of James and John and Peter when they went up on the mountain with Jesus. And Jesus was transfigured before them. And they saw Jesus' glory. That was the glory of the Lord. And so the angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, the presence of the Lord was one and the same when it came down to the Hebrews. Now, when we go back to Judges 6, after we see the angel of the Lord sitting under the tree that belonged to Joash, there's Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress. Why is he threshing it in a winepress? Well, he's trying to hide it from the Midianites. It says so right there. We know the Midianites. were impoverishing them. Where would they normally thresh wheat? On a big threshing floor, sometimes with a big threshing wheel pulled by ox. But it was out in the open, and it was someplace where it was windy, because once they threshed that wheat, they would throw the wheat the threshed wheat in the air and the wind would blow the shaft away and the wheat itself, the grain, would actually fall down on the floor. But they couldn't use the presses because they'd be seen and they'd get robbed. So here's Gideon in a wine press. Now I had to do a little bit of research here in terms of the wine press. When we look at, of course, our translation, New King James says, in the wine press. And the Holman Christian standard says, in the wine, that. I think they're one and the same. Typically, when we think of wine pressing, we think of that barrel that we see people hiking up their clothes, and they're stomping the grapes in the barrel. Well, some of the vats were like that. Some of the vats were, but most of the vats were, in fact, all the vats were in the ground. They were dug into the ground. Okay, probably most likely because the grape juice sat there and had to remain cool. And I would imagine if it was above ground, it would be it would be heated by the sun and probably wouldn't be that good. If we turn over to Isaiah chapter five, we see a little bit of mention here about the wine vat, and most of the translations, a lot of the translations will say wine vat. Ours says wine press, and one other place says wine vat. If we go over to Isaiah chapter five, verse two, it talks about the Lord preparing his vineyard. He dug it up, and he cleared out its stones, and he planted it in a choice of vine. He built a tower in its midst, and he also made a wine press in it. Or the Hebrew word is he hewed out a wine press. He dug out a wine press for the wine. If we go over to Haggai, Haggai chapter 2, Haggai is between Zephaniah and Zechariah. If you get to Zephaniah, go forward a book. If you get to Zechariah, go back a book. Haggai 2.16 In those days, when one came to a heap of 20 ephahs, there were but 10. When one came to the wine vat to draw out 50 baths from the press, there were but 20. The wine vat was a place where the grape, the grape juice or the wine itself was stored. And when Jesus gives that parable about the vineyard over in Matthew 21, And I can read it to you. You don't have to turn there Matthew 21 in verse 33 Jesus says here another parable There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it Dug a wine pressed in it and built a tower so it was dug in the ground So there's so he's in this wine vat You know maybe threshing this wheat and occasionally looking up to see if the Midianites are coming to rob him But he's in a place where he can't be seen and If we go over to chapter 1, excuse me, chapter 23 of 1 Samuel, we'll see that that was one of the most common places the enemy would go to look when they were invading Israel. 1 Samuel chapter 1, let me get there. Again, I can read it to you. You don't have to necessarily turn there if I can find it despite my tabs. I guess I like computers better. I like PowerPoint. In any case, it's David. David is summoned to a city, the rest of the city, because the Philistines are robbing the threshing floors. So it was very common to impoverish the enemy, to impoverish Israel. when they were being raided by these enemies. In the first place, they would head to these threshing floors. And here's why Gideon is in this wine vat, trying to hide the small amount of wheat he's got left from the raiding Midianites. So the angel of the Lord appears to him in Judges chapter 6, verse 11. And what does he say to him? He says, the Lord be with you, you mighty man of valor. Now, first of all, let's take that first thing, the Lord be with you. That was a greeting. That was just a normal greeting. Again, in the Talmud, they say that it translates to the word of the Lord is your help. They, the Jews, equated the word of the Lord and the glory of the Lord as one and the same. It was that important to them. And I think puts a lot more understanding when we read John chapter 1, which says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God, to a Jew who was really looking for the Messiah.