Socks

2 Samuel 17:25 ESV

Now Absalom had set Amasa over the army instead of Joab. Amasa was the son of a man named Ithra the Ishmaelite, who had married Abigal the daughter of Nahash, sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother.

It is not unusual to have powerful families. We see the Adams’, Bushes, Kennedys, and think that they are somehow special in but they are actually normative to the world of politics, in every country and age of men. It was no different in David’s day. As his son has rebelled against him he has gathered to himself those who he knows and who are able to succeed at the job they have been given. So he hires family. In this case he hired his second cousin (David, Zeruiah, and Nahash are all children of Jesse; Joab and Absalom are cousins with Abigal, Amasa is Abigal’s son). David’s sin with Bathsheba not only divided the country and caused the deaths of twenty THOUSAND men, but also the division of his own family, it was a true civil war. THAT is the destructive power of sin in our lives.

The seventeenth verse of the first chapter of Jeremiah, gives us Jeremiah’s ordination in the presence of God. His commissioning words to Jeremiah tell him to dress for work. When I was a young boy, I quickly learned the value of always taking my shoes off when I would come inside. It was born not out of care for cleanliness but rather out of sloth. When my parents wanted something done outside, my brother would be the one chosen, because he had his shoes on and was able to go do the work quickly and they must wait for me, sin is truly a devious thing. God tells Jeremiah to get ready to work. Take off the kid gloves, the house slippers, and put on the ripped up, stained on, clothes and get outside. A nation who has rejected its founder and creator, that has been allowed to wander away, is hard work to bring back into the corral. It is not the work for sloths but for the diligent. Not young or old but those that have “dressed for action like a man” that have girded up their loins (King James version).

Indeed, we must pray for a generation that fears the Lord, pursues wisdom, discretion, truth, and work, but they do not spring fully formed / cut from whole cloth. It is years of work, diligence, and sacrifice. It requires boys and girls to grow into men and women, more concerned with offending God with their silence than offending friends with their words. As a church are we dressed for action, for the actions needed to salt a society? Are you dear Christian sitting around with your shoes off when God has called for work to be done, waiting for your brother to do the work?

The bible is quite clear that the gospel, and serving the true and righteous king, will divide families, “setting a man against his father, mother against daughter, and a daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:35). Jeremiah 1:19 has God warning Jeremiah that “they will fight”. We are not to expect every battle to be Hezekiah and the band. Jeremiah was beat-up, starved, thrown in a mud pit… and yet God told him “they shall not prevail”. Our enemy will take his toll on us, our family, our church, our nation, yet it will be far worse when “good me do nothing” and say nothing. We must be salt “in word and deed”.

“Gird up your loins like a man” there is work to be done.