The Great Unraveling Text: Psalm 49:16-20
Introduction: The Envy Trap
We live in an age of curated envy. Men spend their hours scrolling through digital representations of other men's lives, gawking at their prosperity, their influence, their apparent success. The glory of their houses, as the psalmist puts it, is broadcast in high definition for all the world to see. And the natural, fallen response of the human heart is to be afraid, to be overawed, to let a little bit of green-eyed discontent creep into the soul. We see a man become rich, and we feel ourselves become poor. We see his glory increase, and we feel our own significance diminish. This is a spiritual disease, and it is epidemic.
The world has a very simple and very loud message: the man who does well for himself is the man to be praised. Success is its own justification. If you get the corner office, the big house, the admiring followers, then you have won. You have blessed your own soul, and the world will line up to bless you right alongside. This is the gospel of materialism, the liturgy of mammon. It is a worldview built entirely on what can be seen, what can be held, and what can be counted. It is a philosophy for a world without a final audit.
But the Word of God crashes into this flimsy, self-congratulatory consensus with the force of a battering ram. The psalmist here is giving us a dose of ultimate reality. He is pulling back the curtain on the whole charade. He tells us to look past the temporary stage lighting and see the final act. This psalm is a wisdom psalm, which means it is intensely practical. It is designed to equip the saints to live sanely in a world gone mad with avarice. It is a call to recalibrate your fears. Do not be afraid of the rich man's temporary ascent. Be afraid of his eternal trajectory.
The central argument of this passage is that death is the great unraveling of the materialist's life project. Death is the final, unanswerable refutation of the man who trusts in riches. All his glory, all his accumulated honor, all his self-blessing comes to a hard, final stop at the grave. And the man who lives for this life alone, without understanding of the next, is ultimately indistinguishable from the beasts of the field. This is not poetic hyperbole; it is the Word of the living God. It is a truth designed to liberate us from the tyranny of envy and to anchor our hope in the only one who has conquered the grave.
The Text
Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich,
When the glory of his house increases;
For when he dies he will not take any of it;
His glory will not descend after him.
For while he lives he blesses his soul,
And men will praise you when you do well for yourself,
But his soul shall go to the generation of his fathers;
They will eternally not see light.
Man in his honor, but who does not understand,
Is like the animals that perish.
(Psalm 49:16-20 LSB)
The Antidote to Awe (vv. 16-17)
The psalmist begins with a direct command, a prescription for the sickness of envy.
"Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich, When the glory of his house increases; For when he dies he will not take any of it; His glory will not descend after him." (Psalm 49:16-17)
The command is "Do not be afraid." This is interesting because we tend to associate our reaction to the wealthy with envy or jealousy, not fear. But the psalmist understands the human heart. The fear here is a kind of reverential awe, a sense of being intimidated or overwhelmed by another's prosperity. It is the fear that maybe they have cracked the code. It is the fear that God is blessing them and not you. It is the fear that mammon is, in fact, the real god of this world and that you are on the losing team.
The "glory of his house" refers to the whole impressive display: the wealth, the possessions, the reputation, the power. It is the man's earthly kingdom in miniature. And when it increases, it can be a dazzling and distracting spectacle. The world says, "Look at that! Be impressed! Strive for that!" God says, "Do not be afraid. It is a vapor."
Why should we not be afraid? The psalmist gives the iron-clad reason in verse 17. "For when he dies he will not take any of it." This is the great reversal. Death is the customs agent at the border of eternity, and he lets no luggage through. As the apostle Paul would later put it, "For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world" (1 Timothy 6:7). The rich man's hearse will not have a U-Haul trailer behind it. His glory, his earthly weightiness, will not descend into the grave with him. It all stays behind. All the assets are frozen. The portfolio is liquidated. The game is over.
This is not just a comforting thought for the poor; it is a severe warning to the rich. It establishes the absolute futility of a life dedicated to accumulation. Every stock certificate, every title deed, every luxury car is a temporary lease. To build your identity on such things is to build your house on sand, just before the final tsunami hits. The Lord Jesus told the parable of the rich fool, who built bigger barns for his abundant crops and planned to "relax, eat, drink, be merry." But God said to him, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). That is the question this psalm forces upon us. All that glory, all that stuff, whose will it be? Not his.
The Mutual Admiration Society (v. 18)
In verse 18, the psalmist diagnoses the self-deception that fuels the materialist's life.
"For while he lives he blesses his soul, And men will praise you when you do well for yourself, " (Psalm 49:18)
Here we see the feedback loop of folly. The rich man engages in constant self-talk, what the Bible calls blessing his own soul. He looks at his accomplishments, his bank account, his influence, and he says to himself, "You have done well. You are secure. You are significant." He is the author of his own benediction. He is his own priest, and his own god.
And the world eagerly joins the chorus. "Men will praise you when you do well for yourself." This is the central ethic of the secular world. Self-interest is the highest good. Doing well for yourself is the definition of a life well-lived. The world has no other standard. It cannot see any other standard. So when a man succeeds on these terms, he is applauded. He is put on the cover of magazines. He is asked to give motivational speeches. He becomes a pillar of the community. He and the world are in perfect agreement. They have formed a mutual admiration society, with him at the center.
But notice the profound spiritual blindness here. The man blesses himself, and other men bless him. But one crucial character is missing from this scene: God. There is no mention of God's blessing. The man is living in a closed system of self-referential glory. He is measuring himself by a standard that will be utterly incinerated on the last day. This is the essence of worldliness: to live for the applause of the crowd in the stands, forgetting that the only opinion that ultimately matters is that of the Judge.
The Dark Inheritance (v. 19)
Verse 19 describes the man's final destination, the end of his self-blessed journey.
"But his soul shall go to the generation of his fathers; They will eternally not see light." (Psalm 49:19)
All his life, he has been building his own legacy, his own house, his own glory. But in death, he does not go to the house he built. He goes to the "generation of his fathers." He joins the long, sad procession of all who have lived and died apart from God. He is gathered to his people, but it is a grim family reunion. This is not the blessed rest of the righteous, who are gathered into the bosom of Abraham. This is the company of the damned.
And their eternal state is described with chilling finality: "They will eternally not see light." This is a picture of Sheol, the Old Testament abode of the dead, understood here not merely as the grave, but as a place of conscious, eternal darkness. Light is a metaphor for life, for joy, for truth, for the presence of God. To be deprived of light eternally is to be cut off from all that is good. It is to be in outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus, the Light of the World, warned of this place more than anyone. The rich man's glory was all about earthly light, the spotlight of human praise. His eternal inheritance is the polar opposite: unending, impenetrable blackness.
The Great Humiliation (v. 20)
The psalm concludes with a summary statement, a final verdict that is repeated from verse 12 for emphasis.
"Man in his honor, but who does not understand, Is like the animals that perish." (Psalm 49:20)
This is the bottom line. This is the epitaph for the man who lives for earthly honor. For all his pomp, for all his glory, for all his self-congratulation, if he "does not understand," he is no different from a beast.
What is it that he fails to understand? He fails to understand the Creator/creature distinction. He fails to understand that he is not his own. He fails to understand the reality of death, judgment, and eternity. He fails to understand that true life is not found in the abundance of possessions. He fails to understand that he has a soul that will outlast his body and his bank account. He has mastered the rules of the market but is a fool in the things of God. His intelligence is a merely animal cunning, directed toward survival and comfort in this life alone.
And so, his end is the same as the animals. "Is like the animals that perish." From a purely physical perspective, this is obvious. His body will decay in the ground, just like a dog's. But the psalmist means something more profound. The man who lives without eternal understanding has reduced his existence to a merely biological one. He has lived as though he had no soul. He has pursued the same things an animal pursues: food, shelter, comfort, dominance. And so, in the final analysis, his life project has no more eternal significance than that of a beast. He perishes. His name is forgotten. His glory evaporates. All that remains is a soul in darkness, having squandered the very thing that made him different from the animals: the capacity to know and worship God.
Ransomed from the Beastly Life
This psalm is a bucket of cold water in the face of our materialistic age. But it is not meant to leave us in despair. In the middle of this very psalm, there is a hinge, a turning point. The psalmist says, "But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me" (Psalm 49:15). This is the gospel. This is the only escape from the fate of the rich fool.
The man who trusts in his wealth cannot redeem himself or his brother. The price is too high. But what man cannot do, God has done. The ransom for our souls has been paid, not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Jesus Christ, who was truly rich, for our sakes became poor, so that we by His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He is the one whose glory did descend after Him, into the grave, and who then burst forth from that grave, conquering death and Sheol forever.
To have "understanding," then, is to understand this. It is to understand that you are a sinner destined for darkness, and that Christ is the only Light. It is to transfer your trust from your own portfolio to His finished work. It is to stop blessing your own soul and to start blessing the God who has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
When you grasp this, you are set free from the fear of the rich man. His success no longer intimidates you, because you see that he is playing a fool's game with Monopoly money. His glory does not awe you, because you have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You can live in this world, and even be blessed with earthly goods, without being captured by them. You can hold them loosely, as a steward, knowing that your real treasure is in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
The choice before every one of us is the choice presented in this psalm. Will you live for the temporary honor of men, bless your own soul, and perish like a beast? Or will you trust in the God who redeems, anchor your soul to the resurrected Christ, and be received by Him into eternal light? That is the only question that matters. That is the only understanding that makes us truly human.