The Civic Liturgy of Joy and Judgment Text: Proverbs 11:10
Introduction: The Emotional Barometer of a City
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for personal, quiet-time meditation only. It is a divine manual for living, and not just for living in your own head or your own home, but for living in the world, in the city, in the public square. The wisdom of God has feet, and it walks down Main Street. It has a voice, and it speaks in the city gates. And according to our text today, it has a direct and observable effect on the emotional climate of an entire community.
Our secular, individualistic age has trained us to think of righteousness and wickedness as intensely private matters. Your faith is your business. Your morality is your own affair. What you do behind closed doors is of no concern to anyone else, so long as you are a "basically good person" who recycles and is vaguely nice to others. But the Bible knows nothing of this privatized faith. The Bible teaches that righteousness and wickedness are public realities with public consequences. They are never contained. They are like leaven, or like a virus; they always spread. And every city, every town, every nation, has a spiritual and emotional temperature that is determined by which one is flourishing.
Proverbs gives us a diagnostic tool here. Do you want to know the health of your city? Don't just look at the economic indicators or the crime statistics, though those are related. Look at what makes the people cheer. What causes the city to exult? And what causes it to break out in joyful shouting? This verse presents us with a stark, binary choice. There are two conditions for public celebration: the prosperity of the righteous and the perishing of the wicked. This is a civic liturgy, a public worship service, and the script is written by God Himself. It reveals what a city truly loves and what it truly hates. And in our day, we find that our cities are exulting when the wicked prosper and are throwing parades for what God condemns. And they are enraged when the righteous speak up. This is a sign of profound civic sickness, a culture with its emotional and moral compass smashed to pieces.
So we must understand this proverb not as a relic from a bygone agrarian society, but as a timeless principle of social reality. It is a law of spiritual physics. God has woven a moral fabric into the cosmos, and this is one of the patterns. A city's public emotional life is a direct reflection of its public justice.
The Text
When it goes well with the righteous, the city exults,
And when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting.
(Proverbs 11:10 LSB)
The Public Fruit of Private Faith (v. 10a)
We begin with the first clause:
"When it goes well with the righteous, the city exults..." (Proverbs 11:10a)
The first thing to notice is the connection between the well-being of the righteous and the joy of the city. The word for "goes well" here means to prosper, to be good, to be successful. When the righteous man or woman is blessed, when their business thrives, when their family is built up, when they are elevated to positions of leadership, the entire city benefits. The whole community rejoices. Why?
Because righteousness is generative. It is fruitful. The righteous man, by definition, is one who is rightly related to God and therefore rightly related to his neighbor. He doesn't cheat his customers. He doesn't oppress his workers. He deals honestly. He builds things that last. He creates order and beauty. His presence is a blessing, a source of stability and health for the entire social ecosystem. Think of Joseph in Egypt. When it went well with Joseph, the entire nation, and indeed the surrounding nations, were saved from famine. When Mordecai was exalted, the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced (Esther 8:15). A righteous leader brings justice, and justice is the foundation of peace and prosperity. When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice (Proverbs 29:2).
This directly contradicts the world's narrative. The world tells us that the righteous, particularly the Bible-believing Christian, are the problem. We are the oppressors, the bigots, the killjoys who stand in the way of progress and fun. The world believes that true exultation comes when the righteous are silenced, marginalized, and driven from public life. But God says the opposite is true. The city that sidelines its righteous citizens is cutting off its own oxygen supply. It is like a body attacking its own immune system.
The "city" here is not just an abstract concept. It refers to the people, the community, the body politic. The joy described is a shared, public experience. It's the kind of celebration you see after a great victory. This is because the prosperity of the righteous is not a zero-sum game. It is not a private treasure hoarded for oneself. Because the righteous man loves his neighbor as himself, his prosperity necessarily spills over and enriches the lives of those around him. He is a fountain, not a drain. So when a city sees its godly citizens prospering, it is a sign of God's favor on the whole community, and it is right and good for them to rejoice.
The Necessary Festivity of Judgment (v. 10b)
The second clause provides the flip side, the other occasion for public celebration. It is one that makes our modern, sentimental sensibilities very uncomfortable.
"And when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting." (Proverbs 11:10b LSB)
Let us be very clear. This is not talking about personal vindictiveness or taking morbid pleasure in the suffering of an individual enemy. This is not about celebrating a private grudge. This is a public and civic response to the removal of a public menace. The "wicked" here are not just people who have different political opinions. They are those who actively work to tear down the moral and social order. They are the corrupt judge, the tyrannical ruler, the predator, the purveyor of filth, the one who sows discord and profits from misery.
Their perishing is a cause for "joyful shouting," the same kind of triumphant cry that Israel gave when Pharaoh's army was drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 15). It is the same kind of shouting heard in heaven when Babylon the great is judged (Revelation 19:1-3). This is not unseemly gloating; it is the celebration of justice. It is the joy of deliverance. It is the relief that comes when a cancer is removed from the body politic. When the wicked rule, the people groan (Proverbs 29:2). When they are removed, that groaning turns to gladness.
Our culture has lost the capacity for this kind of joy because it has lost its understanding of objective evil and divine judgment. We have been catechized into a soft, therapeutic tolerance that sees all judgment as hateful. We are told to feel sympathy for the criminal and to suspect the motives of the victim. We are supposed to believe that even the most monstrous evil is just a cry for help, a product of a difficult environment. But the Bible is far more realistic. It recognizes that some people give themselves over to wickedness and become a blight on the community. Their removal, whether by the hand of God or through the lawful execution of justice by the civil magistrate, is a public good. It is a restoration of order. It is a cleansing. And it is right to celebrate it.
Think of the joy in the land when the wicked queen Athaliah was put to the sword and the rightful king was restored. The Bible says, "all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet" (2 Kings 11:20). The perishing of the wicked brings peace. It restores sanity. The joyful shouting is not just relief; it is an affirmation that justice matters, that God's law is good, and that evil will not have the last word.
Conclusion: Tuning the City's Heart
So what is the application for us? This proverb forces us to examine our own hearts and the heart of our community. What makes us cheer? What do we celebrate? Do we exult when a godly man is promoted, or do we grumble with envy? Do we rejoice when a faithful Christian business thrives, or do we secretly hope it fails to confirm our cynical assumptions?
And on the other side, are we capable of joyful shouting when God's justice is done? When a corrupt politician is exposed and removed from office, do we celebrate that as a victory for righteousness? When a wicked ideology that has been poisoning our children is finally defeated and cast out, do we sing praises to God for the deliverance?
This proverb is a call to align our public emotions with God's public standards. We are to love what God loves and hate what God hates. And we are to do so openly, as a community. The world wants us to be quiet about our righteousness and ambivalent about their wickedness. God commands the opposite. He wants our righteousness to be a source of public joy, and His judgment on wickedness to be a cause for public celebration.
Ultimately, this proverb points us to the gospel. The greatest prosperity of the most Righteous One, Jesus Christ, brought about the greatest exultation for the city of God. When He was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, it was the ultimate "going well with the righteous." And all those who are in Him share in that prosperity. His victory is our victory.
And His victory also accomplished the perishing of the ultimate wicked one. On the cross, Jesus crushed the head of the serpent. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them (Colossians 2:15). His resurrection was the down payment on the final judgment when all wickedness will perish forever. And on that day, when the new Jerusalem descends, the city of God will exult, and there will be joyful shouting that will echo through all eternity, for the wicked will have perished, and the Righteous One will reign forever.
Our task now, as citizens of His heavenly kingdom and residents of our earthly cities, is to live in such a way that our lives give our neighbors a foretaste of that final celebration. We are to be the kind of righteous people whose success makes the whole city glad. And we are to be the kind of people who long for, pray for, and work for the justice that will one day cause all of God's people to break out in joyful shouting.