The Inevitable Harvest: Two Destinies Text: Proverbs 10:24
Introduction: The Great Antithesis
The book of Proverbs is not a collection of inspirational quotes for your coffee mug. It is a book of divine physics. It describes the fundamental grain of the universe, the moral law of cause and effect that God has hardwired into the fabric of reality. To read Proverbs is to understand how the world actually works, not how our therapeutic, sentimental, and rebellious age wishes it worked. And central to this wisdom is the absolute, unbridgeable distinction between the righteous and the wicked. There is no third way. There is no demilitarized zone. You are in one camp or the other.
Our culture despises this kind of binary thinking. It wants everything to be a spectrum, a shade of gray, a matter of personal preference. But God is not a relativist. From Genesis to Revelation, He sets before us two paths: the way of life and the way of death. And in our text today, Solomon boils down the emotional and practical destination of these two paths into one sharp, clean antithesis. The wicked are governed by their dreads, and the righteous are defined by their desires. One is a life of running from a guilty conscience; the other is a life of running toward a glorious inheritance. One is a life of inevitable implosion; the other is a life of guaranteed fulfillment.
This proverb is a spiritual diagnostic tool. It forces us to ask: what is the engine driving my life? Is it fear, or is it desire? Is it the gnawing dread of what might happen, or the confident longing for what God has promised? The answer to that question reveals your ultimate allegiance. This verse is a promise and a warning, and it shows us that in God's economy, everyone, without exception, gets what's coming to them.
The Text
What the wicked dreads will come upon him,
But the desire of the righteous will be granted.
(Proverbs 10:24 LSB)
The Boomerang of Dread (v. 24a)
We begin with the first half of the verse, which describes the destiny of the lawless man.
"What the wicked dreads will come upon him..." (Proverbs 10:24a)
The wicked man is a man in flight. He is running from God, and because he is running from God, he is running from reality. But you cannot outrun the architecture of the cosmos. The wicked man spends his life trying to build a soundproof room to block out the voice of his conscience and the law of God. He stuffs his ears with the cotton of materialism, hedonism, and self-worship. But deep down, in the quiet moments he so desperately tries to avoid, he knows. He knows he is a fraud. He knows he is accountable. He knows that judgment is real.
And this knowledge creates a constant, low-grade hum of dread. What does he dread? He dreads exposure. He dreads consequences. He dreads failure. He dreads sickness, poverty, and ultimately, death. He dreads the final accounting. As Job, that great sufferer, lamented, "For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me" (Job 3:25). The wicked man's life is a frantic attempt to manage his fears, but God's promise here is that his fears will manage him. The very thing he is running from is the thing he is running to. It is his destination.
This is not karma; this is covenant. This is the outworking of God's curse on lawlessness. When you build your life on the sand of self-will, you live in constant dread of the storm. And the storm is not a possibility; it is a certainty. The man who builds his financial empire on deceit dreads the audit, and the audit will come. The man who builds his relationships on lust dreads the day of relational collapse, and that day will come. The culture that builds its civilization on the murder of its unborn dreads its own demographic and moral implosion, and that implosion is coming.
The dread of the wicked is a self-fulfilling prophecy because it is rooted in a correct, albeit suppressed, understanding of reality. He knows, deep down, that he cannot get away with it. His fear is a testament to the law of God written on his heart. And God, in His perfect justice, will honor that fear. He will say to the wicked, "You were right to be afraid." He will bring their fears upon them because they chose the path that leads directly to the object of their dread.
The Granted Desire (v. 24b)
The contrast could not be more stark. We move from the world of dread to the world of desire.
"But the desire of the righteous will be granted." (Proverbs 10:24b)
This is one of the most staggering promises in all of Scripture, and we must understand it correctly. This is not a promise that God will function as a cosmic vending machine for every fleeting whim a Christian might have. This is not about getting a new chariot or a better parking spot at the marketplace. The key word here is "righteous." The desires of the righteous are granted because, by definition, a righteous man's desires have been shaped, pruned, and cultivated by the Spirit of God.
The righteous man is not one who is perfect, but one who has been declared righteous in Christ and is being made righteous by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. His core desires are being re-engineered to align with God's desires. As the Psalmist says, "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). This is not a transaction; it is a transformation. As you delight in Him, He reshapes your "wanter." You begin to want what He wants.
So what do the righteous desire? They desire what Jesus told us to desire. They hunger and thirst for righteousness itself (Matthew 5:6). They desire for God's name to be hallowed, for His kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. They desire to see their children walk in the truth. They desire the flourishing of the church, the conversion of the lost, and the establishment of justice in the land. They desire to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant" at the end of their lives.
And the promise is that these desires, the big ones, the foundational ones, the kingdom-oriented ones, will be granted. This is the engine of postmillennial optimism. We are not on the losing side of history. We are not fighting a mere holding action until the cavalry arrives. We are on the side whose deepest, God-given desires for victory, for growth, for reformation, are guaranteed by God Himself. Our desire is for the knowledge of the glory of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and God has promised to grant it.
Conclusion: The Great Exchange
So we are left with two portraits. The wicked man, haunted by his fears, who will one day find himself in a head-on collision with them. And the righteous man, animated by his desires, who will one day see them all gloriously fulfilled.
The gospel is the bridge between these two realities. On the cross, Jesus Christ entered into the ultimate dread of the wicked. He became the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He took upon Himself the full, unmitigated terror of God's judgment that we deserved. The ultimate dread of every wicked man, separation from God and the full force of His wrath, came upon Him.
Why? So that the desire of the righteous could be granted. He took our dread so that we could receive His desires. He faced the ultimate curse so that we could inherit the ultimate blessing. Through faith in Him, our dread-filled hearts are exchanged for desire-filled hearts. We are no longer running from a holy God; we are running to a loving Father.
Therefore, examine your heart. What is your primary motivation? Are you driven by the fear of man, the fear of failure, the fear of what might be lost? Or are you driven by a Spirit-wrought desire for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom? The first path leads to the realization of your worst fears. The second leads to the fulfillment of your best desires. The choice is before you. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.