All right, you got your sword?

Let me see a sword check. Beautiful. Turn with me to Hebrews, Chapter 11, Hebrews, Chapter 11 beginning in verse 32. I want to remind you if you're just joining us. The book of Hebrews is a New Testament letter who we don't know who wrote it, and yes, that is unique, that we wouldn't know who authored it, but I believe part of the confusion around that is so that we will simply focus on what is written and not go beyond the obvious context of this church family.

It's a small church somewhere in Italy made up of Hebrew believers, meaning they were Jewish

by birth, and they have believed that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one of the Old Testament

scriptures, and because of the Old Testament scriptures,

and because of that belief in Jesus, they're experiencing persecution from two different fronts.

Number one, they're being persecuted by their former Jewish brethren who now see them as people

who have betrayed them and left them completely, and they're being persecuted by the Roman Empire

that is not very fond of Christianity at this point in history.

And so the temptation for any group of people that's feeling persecution and rejection from multiple sides is to walk away.

To go, I don't need this.

And maybe I still believe in Jesus, but I don't need all of the associations with this

group of people. And it's probably a house church, so not many people. So if you're losing people,

and you're going to feel that as a church body in the first century. And the writer of Hebrews

writes to this church to go, it is worth it to stay. Jesus is better. That is the purpose of the book

of Hebrews. So when you get to Hebrews 11, you're getting all these amazing examples from the Old

Testament scriptures of what it means to walk by faith in the family that you now belong to. It's the same

story that you belong to. And in the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at just verse 32, because it's actually kind of been funny if you're there in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 32, say I'm there. He says, and what more shall I say? I do not have time to talk about Gideon. And Mark Lamb made the joke, well, he might not have time, but we do.

So we did a whole sermon on Gideon from the book of judges.

Barak, we're going to talk about him today.

Samson, we're going to talk about him today.

And Jephtha, we talked about him last week,

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