Two Futures, Two Destinies Text: Proverbs 10:28
Introduction: The Great Sorting
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical, but it is not a book of sterile, fortune-cookie moralisms. It is a book about reality. It describes the world as it actually is, under the government of a holy God. And because the world is governed by a holy God, it is a world with a distinct grain. You can either go with the grain, which is righteousness, or you can go against it, which is wickedness. There is no third way. You are either planting a tree that will one day bear fruit, or you are planting a weed that will be pulled up and thrown into the fire.
Our modern sensibilities chafe at this. We want a world of infinite options, a world without consequences, a world where everyone gets a participation trophy and all paths lead to the same vague, happy destination. We want to believe that a man can build his house on the sand of his own subjective feelings and have it stand just as firm as the man who builds on the rock of God's revealed Word. But God is not mocked. Reality is not negotiable. The universe does not grade on a curve.
Proverbs is a great sorting hat for humanity. It relentlessly, and without apology, divides all of mankind into two camps: the wise and the foolish, the diligent and the slothful, the righteous and the wicked. And it teaches us that these two paths do not simply represent different lifestyle choices; they lead to two entirely different, and entirely opposite, destinations. This is the great antithesis that runs through all of Scripture and all of human history. This proverb before us today puts it in the starkest of terms. It is about the fundamental orientation of a man's heart, the object of his hope, and the ultimate outcome of his life.
The Text
The expectation of the righteous is gladness,
But the hope of the wicked will perish.
(Proverbs 10:28 LSB)
The Teleology of a Godly Life
Let's take the first clause:
"The expectation of the righteous is gladness..." (Proverbs 10:28a)
The first thing to notice is the word "righteous." In our day, this word has been made to sound stuffy, self-righteous, and priggish. But in the Bible, righteousness is a relational term. It means to be in right standing with God. It is to be rightly aligned with the grain of His universe. A righteous man is not a perfect man, but he is a man whose life is oriented toward God, who fears God, and who seeks to walk in His ways. In the ultimate sense, under the new covenant, a righteous man is one who has been declared righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. He is clothed in a righteousness that is not his own.
And what is the "expectation" of such a man? The Hebrew word can be translated as hope, prospect, or eager longing. It is the forward look of his life. It is what he anticipates. And the end result, the destination of that hope, is "gladness." Joy. This is not a fleeting happiness dependent on circumstances. This is not the giggling of a fool. This is deep, resonant, foundational joy. It is the joy of a harvest, the joy of a wedding feast, the joy of a victory.
Why is this so? The righteous man's hope is gladness because his hope is fixed on the right thing. He is not hoping in his own strength, or in his portfolio, or in the promises of politicians. His hope is in God, in His promises, in His character, and in His ultimate victory in history. The righteous man knows that the story of the world is not a tragedy or a farce. It is a divine comedy, and it ends with the laughter of the saints and the wedding supper of the Lamb. He knows that "for those who love God all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28). This doesn't mean that every day is a picnic. The righteous suffer. They face trials. But their suffering is never meaningless. It is always being worked by a sovereign hand into something glorious. Their expectation is not for a life free of trouble, but for a life where trouble itself is redeemed and turned to joy.
This is a profoundly postmillennial sentiment. The righteous man expects the gospel to win. He expects the kingdom to advance. He plants trees whose shade he may not sit in, but he plants them in the sure and certain hope that his children and his children's children will. His expectation is gladness because he knows that Christ has already won the decisive victory, and that all of history is now simply the mopping-up operation.
The Dead End of Rebellion
Now we turn to the contrast, which is the engine of so many of the proverbs.
"...But the hope of the wicked will perish." (Proverbs 10:28b)
The "wicked" are the flip side of the righteous. They are those who are out of alignment with God's reality. They live as if God does not exist, or as if He does not matter. Their lives are oriented around themselves, their appetites, their ambitions. They are building their own little kingdoms on the sand, in defiance of the great King.
And notice, they also have a "hope." The wicked are not nihilists in that sense. They are always hoping for something. They hope for wealth, for power, for pleasure, for a legacy built on their own name. They expect that their schemes will succeed, that their rebellion will go unpunished, that they can defy the laws of moral gravity forever. Their hope is that they can be their own god and get away with it.
But the verdict of Scripture is blunt and final. Their hope "will perish." It will come to nothing. It will rot. It is a bubble, and the pin of reality is coming for it. Why? Because their hope is invested in a losing cause. It is tied to a sinking ship. They are betting against the house, and the house is owned by Almighty God. Every project that is undertaken in defiance of Christ is doomed to fail. Every tower of Babel, whether it is built by an ancient Mesopotamian king or a modern globalist bureaucracy, will end in confusion and ruin. Their hope perishes because it is built on a lie, the lie that man can be sovereign, that sin has no consequences, and that death is the end.
When a wicked man dies, his hope dies with him. His portfolio is worthless. His reputation fades. His pleasures are over. His kingdom of dirt evaporates. He has spent his entire life chasing the wind, and in the end, that is all he has to show for it. His expectation was for more and more of what this world offers, but the world and its desires pass away (1 John 2:17). The hope of the wicked is a check written on an account with no funds. It will inevitably bounce.
The Great Exchange
So we have two paths, two hopes, and two destinies. One ends in gladness, the other in ruin. The application, therefore, is not simply to "try harder to be righteous." The fundamental problem is not what we do, but who we are. By nature, we are all born into the camp of the wicked. Our hopes are naturally perverse, selfish, and doomed to perish.
The only way to move from one column to the other is through a divine intervention. It is through the gospel. Jesus Christ is the truly Righteous One. He lived the perfect life of trust and obedience, His expectation always fixed on the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). And on the cross, He took upon Himself the "perished hope" of the wicked. He entered into the ruin that our rebellion deserves. He took our dead-end destiny upon Himself.
And in exchange, He offers us His destiny. He offers us His righteousness. By faith in Him, we are declared righteous before God. His perfect record is credited to our account. And with His righteousness comes His hope. We are born again to a "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Our expectation becomes gladness because our hope is no longer in ourselves, but in Him. It is a hope that cannot perish, spoil, or fade.
Therefore, the call of this proverb is a call to repentance and faith. It is a call to abandon the perishing hopes of this world and to embrace the living hope offered in Jesus Christ. It is a call to align your life with the grain of God's universe, to build on the rock, and to set your expectation on that final, unshakable gladness that He has promised to all who are His.