The Maker's Image and the Malignant Heart Text: Proverbs 17:5
Introduction: The High Cost of Contempt
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is a divine manual on how to navigate the world as it actually is, not as we wish it were. It deals in the sharp-edged realities of human nature, divine justice, and the created order. And in this world, God has established certain non-negotiable truths. One of them is this: you cannot understand your fellow man until you first understand that he is made in the image of God. And you cannot understand poverty, or calamity, or your own heart's reaction to them, until you first anchor yourself in the reality of the Creator.
Our text today presents us with two seemingly distinct sins, linked together by a common root. The first is the sin of looking down, of mocking the poor. The second is the sin of looking on, of taking pleasure in the disasters that befall others. We might be tempted to think of these as minor character flaws, a bit of unfortunate snobbery or a touch of uncharitable rubbernecking. But the Holy Spirit, through Solomon, tells us that these attitudes are not minor at all. They are high treason. They are a direct assault on the character and authority of God Himself.
The first sin is an insult to God as the Creator. The second is a defiance of God as the Judge. Both reveal a heart that has set itself up in God's place, a heart that presumes to edit the world God has made and to applaud the tragedies God permits. This is not simply bad manners; it is bad theology, and bad theology always, without fail, produces a poisoned character. This proverb forces us to look at the poor man on the street corner and the ruined man on the evening news, and then it forces us to look in the mirror and ask what our reaction to them says about our relationship with their Maker.
The Text
He who mocks the poor reproaches his Maker;
He who is glad at disaster will not go unpunished.
(Proverbs 17:5 LSB)
Contempt for the Creature is Contempt for the Creator
We begin with the first clause:
"He who mocks the poor reproaches his Maker..." (Proverbs 17:5a)
The sin here is mockery. It is not simply noticing poverty, or analyzing its causes. It is contempt. It is the sneer, the joke at the expense of the destitute, the attitude that sees a man's poverty not as a hardship to be pitied or a problem to be solved, but as a character flaw to be ridiculed. This is the pride that says, "I have my life together, and you, evidently, do not, and this is a source of amusement for me."
Now, the Bible is not sentimental about poverty. It acknowledges that poverty can be the result of laziness, folly, and sin (Prov. 6:11, 24:34). We are not required to pretend that all poverty is the result of systemic oppression or simple misfortune. But we are absolutely forbidden from mocking the poor, regardless of the cause. Why? Because the reproach does not terminate on the poor man. It shoots past him and strikes God Himself.
The reason is the imago Dei. Every man, woman, and child, from the king in his palace to the beggar in the gutter, is stamped with the image of God. That image may be marred by sin, dirtied by circumstance, or distorted by foolish choices, but it is there. To mock a man for his lowly condition is to mock the one who made him. It is to look at a divine masterpiece, however vandalized, and to laugh at the artist. It is to say to God, "One of your statues is broken. What a shoddy craftsman you are." This is an intolerable blasphemy.
This principle cuts through all our modern, politicized nonsense about poverty. The progressive wants to make the poor a mascot for his guilt and a justification for his statist power grabs. The hard-nosed capitalist can be tempted to see the poor as mere economic units who have failed to compete. Both are wrong. The Bible commands us to see the poor man as a fellow image-bearer. His poverty is a call for our compassion, our wisdom, and our help, not our contempt. Whether his condition is his fault or not is a secondary question, relevant to how we help, but entirely irrelevant to whether we mock. To mock him is to reproach your Maker, and God does not take insults to His handiwork lightly.
The Sin of Schadenfreude
The second clause moves from contempt for a person's state to delight in a person's ruin.
"...He who is glad at disaster will not go unpunished." (Genesis 17:5b LSB)
This is the sin of schadenfreude, that ugly little thrill we feel when something goes wrong for someone else. A rival's business fails. A celebrity we dislike is publicly humiliated. A neighbor who flaunted his new car wrecks it. And in the dark corners of our hearts, a little voice whispers, "Good." This proverb tells us that God hears that whisper, and He marks it down for judgment.
Why is this so serious? Because to rejoice in calamity is to usurp the role of God. Judgment belongs to the Lord. Vengeance is His. When disaster strikes, it is either an act of God's direct judgment, a consequence of living in a fallen world He sovereignly oversees, or the result of another man's sin. In none of those cases is our glee appropriate. If it is God's judgment, we should tremble, not gloat. If it is the outworking of the fall, we should mourn, not celebrate. If it is the result of sin, we should hate the sin, but pity the sinner who is caught in its consequences.
To be glad at disaster is a form of malice. It is a close cousin to envy. Envy wants what another person has. This sin is glad when he loses it. It is a heart that feeds on the misery of others. It is the spirit of the Edomites, who stood by and gloated when Jerusalem fell. And what did God say to them through the prophet Obadiah? "You should not have gloated over your brother in the day of his misfortune... for the day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head" (Obadiah 1:12, 15).
Notice the certainty of the text: he "will not go unpunished." This is not a maybe. This is a divine promise. God is the defender of the afflicted and the avenger of the wronged. When you align your heart with destruction, you place yourself under the judgment of the God of life. You are cheering for the other team. God's justice is not a spectator sport for our amusement. When the hammer of God falls, your only proper response is awe and fear, lest it fall on you next.
Conclusion: The Gospel Cure for a Contemptuous Heart
These two sins, mocking the poor and rejoicing at disaster, flow from the same poisoned well: a heart full of pride and malice. It is the heart of the Pharisee who thanks God he is not like other men. It is the heart of the older brother who resents the grace shown to the prodigal. It is, at bottom, a heart that does not understand the gospel.
What is the cure? It is to see yourself rightly in the light of God's law and His grace. You and I were the ultimate poor. We were spiritually destitute, bankrupt, with a debt to God's justice we could never hope to pay. We were not just poor; we were enemies of God, deserving of nothing but His wrath. And did God mock us in our poverty? No. He sent His Son.
And we were headed for the ultimate disaster. The calamity of an eternity in hell was our just destination. And was God glad at our impending doom? No. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Instead, He took pleasure in crushing His own Son on the cross in our place, so that the disaster that should have been ours would be averted.
The gospel demolishes the pride that mocks the poor. How can I mock a man for his financial poverty when I was spiritually bankrupt and Christ paid my infinite debt? The gospel destroys the malice that rejoices in disaster. How can I gloat over my neighbor's house burning down when the fires of hell were my own just desert, and Christ quenched them with His own blood?
When you see the poor, you are to see a fellow image-bearer for whom Christ's grace is sufficient. When you see disaster, you are to see a reminder of the far greater disaster from which you have been saved. Your response, then, should not be mockery or glee, but rather humility, compassion, and a profound gratitude that leads to generosity. You are to be a conduit of the very grace that was shown to you in your poverty and that rescued you from your disaster. To do anything less is to reproach your Maker and to invite His certain punishment.