A Real Hairy Mess

Our pride can entangle us in a mess we cannot escape from on our own.   #daybydaylw   Interested in learning more about becoming a devoted follower of Christ? Go to follow.lifeword.org!   ~~~   Well, here is the climax! 2 Samuel 18:9 tells us that Absalom is caught in the thick of the of the forest trees by the thickness of his hair! His earthly pride and glory has made him to be caught in a trap. But we need to pay attention to the details of this part of the text. The narrator tells us that Absalom’s mule went on without him. The mule was the preferred travel partner of the king, and now that mule goes on without Absalom on his back. Fitting picture, don’t you think? The kingdom slips right out of his hands because Absalom’s vanity gets him all tangled up into a helpless position. Another detail we need to see is that little phrase, “suspended between heaven and earth.” That is a bit dramatic, don’t you think? But it is true, nonetheless. He is rejected by heaven, and he is of no earthly good. His own pride is his own cursing. And he is found to be hanging in the balance, in a tree. And the real nail biter of this text is, “What is going to happen to Absalom? Will he be found, and will people deal gently with him? Remember what Deuteronomy 21:23 says, and this particular verse would have likely been registering in the minds of the original audience—“…for a hanged man is cursed by God.” So the original audience would have definitely thought that Absalom was a cursed man, and that he was cursed by God. And surely he was! You see, we are all Absalom’s in this passage, who face the reality of our earthly pride and glory being the very things that entrap and entangle us in such a mess that we cannot escape or find relief from them. What we deem as our greatest attributes and achievements will be the greatest evidence against us as we stand before a holy God, cursed by our own vanity and pride and sin. Sin is pride. Sin is the boasting of self over God. And the wages of sin is death. We are all riding mules, trying to establish our own kingdoms, in rebellion against God’s kingdom. And whether we realize it or not, we are all riding towards a showdown with the judgment of God. We were all under the curse of sin. But we are people who read our bibles through New Testament lenses. As we read through the OT, we want to understand the OT fully in its original context, but we also know that much of what we read in the NT is a fulfillment of many types and shadows and prophecies. And we read in the NT in Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”