The Great Evaporation Text: Proverbs 11:7
Introduction: The Currency of Hope
Every man lives on hope. It is the fuel in the tank, the currency with which we purchase our tomorrows. Whether you are a pagan or a saint, you get out of bed in the morning because you are expecting something. You are anticipating a future, and you are banking on a particular outcome. The modern secular man, for all his sophisticated cynicism, is a creature of immense and often unexamined faith. He hopes in his 401(k), he hopes in the next election, he hopes in his diet plan, he hopes in his children's soccer prospects, and he hopes that the latest blockbuster will be as good as the trailer.
His entire world is a vast, intricate network of hopes. But it is a network built on a foundation of sand. It is a portfolio of assets that have no ultimate value. The book of Proverbs, in its bracing and unsentimental way, is a book of spiritual accounting. It forces us to audit our books, to examine our assets and liabilities, and to ask the penetrating question: what is your hope really worth? What happens to your stock portfolio when the market of your own life closes for good?
Our text today is a stark and sober appraisal of the hope that is banked in the wrong vault. It is a divine audit of the wicked man's balance sheet, and the final tally is zero. For the man who has built his life on the creature rather than the Creator, death is not a transition; it is a total liquidation. Everything he banked on, everything he worked for, everything he expected, evaporates in an instant. This is not popular, but it is bedrock reality. And understanding this reality is the beginning of true wisdom, because it forces us to find a hope that death cannot touch.
The Text
When a wicked man dies, his hope will perish,
And the expectation of vigorous men perishes.
(Proverbs 11:7 LSB)
The Final Bankruptcy (v. 7a)
Let us consider the first clause:
"When a wicked man dies, his hope will perish..." (Proverbs 11:7a)
First, we must define our terms as God does. Who is this "wicked man?" In the biblical dictionary, wickedness is not simply a matter of breaking a few rules or having a few vices. The wicked man is the one who lives his life as though God does not matter. He is the practical atheist. He may be religious, he may be a pillar of the community, he may be a fastidious rule-keeper, but his life is oriented around himself. He is his own god, his own lawgiver, his own savior. He is, in a word, autonomous. This is the root sin from which all other sins grow. He has rejected the fundamental Creator/creature distinction.
Now, what is his "hope?" His hope is everything he expects to get out of his project of self-salvation. It is the promotion he is angling for, the respect of his peers, the comfortable retirement, the legacy he wants to leave, the pleasure he pursues. His hope is tied entirely to what he can build, achieve, and experience "under the sun." It is a horizontal hope. It is a hope bounded by the horizons of this created world.
And the text tells us what happens to this hope. It perishes. The moment the wicked man dies, the entire edifice of his life's ambition collapses. It does not just fade; it is utterly annihilated. Think of it like a universal power outage. Every screen he was watching, every project he was running, every light he had turned on goes black. Instantly. The plans he made for next Tuesday, the grudge he was nursing, the wealth he had accumulated, it all becomes meaningless cosmic dust. His spirit departs, and on that very day his plans perish (Psalm 146:4).
This is a direct assault on the modern religion of self-fulfillment. Our culture tells us to "follow our dreams" and "live our best life now." But God says that if your dreams are untethered from Him, they are nothing more than ghosts. They are vapor. Death is the great, final fact-checker. It comes to every man and asks one question: "In whom did you hope?" If the answer is anything other than the living God, through His Son Jesus Christ, all that is left is the terror of a wasted life.
The Collapse of Strength (v. 7b)
The second clause reinforces and expands upon the first, giving it a sharper edge.
"And the expectation of vigorous men perishes." (Proverbs 11:7b)
The word here for "vigorous men" can also be translated as "unjust men" or even "men of wealth." The idea is one of strength, influence, and potency in this world. This is not talking about the down-and-out sinner, the man whose life is an obvious wreck. This is talking about the successful wicked. This is the man who made it work. He was the titan of industry, the political strongman, the cultural influencer. He was vigorous. His plans succeeded. His expectations were, for a time, met. He got the girl, the corner office, and the vacation home.
This is crucial. The Bible does not teach that the wicked always fail in this life. Often, they prosper mightily. Asaph was vexed by this very thing in Psalm 73. They are arrogant, healthy, and wealthy, and it seems they get away with it. They build their little empires and their expectation is that this strength, this vigor, will last. They believe their own press. They trust in their own potency.
But death is the great equalizer. It respects no man's strength. The expectation that is founded upon human vigor is a house of cards in a hurricane. Death comes and blows it all away. The rich fool in the parable is the perfect illustration of this verse. He had a bumper crop, so much that he decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. His expectation was for "many years" of ease. But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). His vigor produced a great harvest, but his expectation, tied as it was to that vigor, perished with him in one night.
This is a warning against the idolatry of human strength. Whether it is your physical health, your intellectual prowess, your financial portfolio, or your political influence, if that is the ground of your expectation for the future, you are standing on a trap door. And the hand of God is on the lever.
The Hope That Does Not Perish
So, the proverb confronts us with a universal problem. Every man has hope, and every man will die. For the wicked, death is the end of hope. What then is the alternative? The proverb implies a contrast, which is made explicit elsewhere. "The hope of the righteous is joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish" (Proverbs 10:28).
What is the hope of the righteous? The righteous man is the one who, by faith, has abandoned the project of self-salvation. He has acknowledged his own spiritual bankruptcy and has looked outside of himself to God for deliverance. His hope is not in his own vigor, but in God's grace. His expectation is not for what he can build, but for what God has promised.
For the Christian, death is not the great evaporation, but the great exchange. It is not the perishing of hope, but the fulfillment of it. Our hope is not a horizontal hope, but a vertical one. It is anchored in a resurrected man, Jesus Christ, who has passed through death and conquered it. Because He lives, our hope lives. Peter tells us we have been born again to a "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3).
This living hope is not destroyed by death; it is consummated by it. For the believer, to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). It is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. The wealth we have stored up is not in bigger barns on earth, but treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys. The expectation of the righteous man is not that his earthly projects will continue, but that he will see his Savior face to face. His expectation is the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
Therefore, this proverb is not meant to drive us to despair, but to drive us to Christ. It is a severe mercy. It is meant to make us perform a sober audit of our own hearts. Where is your hope? What are you expecting? Is your confidence in your own vigor, your own plans, your own strength? If so, you are holding a ticket that will expire the moment your heart stops beating.
But if your hope is in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, then death has lost its sting. It is no longer a thief that comes to bankrupt you, but a servant that comes to usher you into your inheritance. It is the doorway into the presence of the one who is our hope. The wicked man's story ends at the grave. For the righteous man, that is where the story truly begins.