The Long Defeat of the Gaudy Godless Text: Proverbs 23:17-18
Introduction: The Glare of the Present
We live in an age that is pathologically shortsighted. Our entire culture is a conspiracy against the future, a grand collusion to live entirely in the flashing, buzzing, ephemeral now. The sinner on his yacht, the godless celebrity preening on the red carpet, the corrupt politician smirking his way through another scandal, all of them seem to be getting away with it. They prosper. They flourish. Their laughter is loud, their champagne is cold, and their consequences, it would seem, are nonexistent. And the Christian, trying to walk the narrow way, looks on and is tempted to a peculiar kind of spiritual vertigo. The psalmist Asaph confessed this very thing, saying his feet almost slipped when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. It is a potent temptation, this envy of sinners. It is the temptation to believe that the story the world is telling you with its high-definition televisions and glossy magazines is the true story.
But the book of Proverbs, like all of Scripture, is given to us to correct our spiritual astigmatism. It is God's prescription lens to enable us to see reality as it actually is, to see past the glare of the immediate and into the solid, settled realities of the future. The world judges on a curve, grading by the quarter. God grades on a straight line, and the final exam covers the whole of human history. What we have in our text today is a sharp, two-verse corrective. It is a command followed by a promise. It is a call to adjust our focus, to shift our gaze from the gaudy and temporary success of the wicked to the fixed and certain realities of God's coming kingdom. It tells us what not to do, what to do instead, and why the whole thing is the most rational course of action a man could possibly take.
The choice is between two objects of zeal. You can be zealous for what the sinner has, which is fleeting, or you can be zealous for the fear of Yahweh, which is forever. One is a diet of cotton candy, the other is a feast of roasted meat. The world offers a future that is a dead-end street; God offers a future that is an open country. And so, we must learn to see with eyes of faith, which means learning to do our spiritual accounting on an eternal timeline.
The Text
Do not let your heart be jealous of sinners,
But be zealous in the fear of Yahweh always.
Surely there is a future,
And your hope will not be cut off.
(Proverbs 23:17-18 LSB)
The Misdirection of the Heart (v. 17a)
The first part of our text is a negative command, a prohibition aimed directly at the heart.
"Do not let your heart be jealous of sinners..." (Proverbs 23:17a)
Notice that the command is not "do not be jealous." It is "do not let your heart be jealous." This is a call to active spiritual warfare. Envy is not a passive state we simply fall into, like a pothole. It is a result of letting the heart go where it ought not. It is a failure to discipline the affections. Your heart is the command center of your life, and if you do not post a guard, enemy propaganda will be piped in constantly. The world is always broadcasting its prosperity gospel, a gospel where the wicked are the elect.
And what is jealousy, or envy? It is a sour discontentment with what God has given you, compounded by a bitter resentment of what God has given someone else. But it is more than just wanting what they have. It is often a desire that they not have it. It is a sin that feeds on itself, a spiritual acid that dissolves the container it is in. And here, the object of the envy is particularly foolish: sinners. We are tempted to envy those who are, in the grand scheme of things, the ultimate losers. They are winning a game that is rigged to explode. They are the fat turkeys in November, gobbling happily, entirely unaware of the nearness of Thanksgiving.
To envy the sinner is to have a fundamentally disordered worldview. It is to believe that their stuff, their fleeting pleasures, their temporary power, constitutes true blessing. It is to accept the devil's accounting. Asaph, in Psalm 73, saw the wicked with their smooth lives, their bulging eyes, and their arrogant mouths, and he concluded that he had kept his heart pure in vain. This is the logic of envy. It whispers that holiness is a bad investment. It suggests that God's stock is underperforming and that you should move your portfolio over to Baal, Inc. But this is a lie from the pit, and Solomon commands us to slam the door of our hearts in its face.
The Right Direction of the Heart (v. 17b)
After the negative command comes the positive replacement. It is not enough to empty the heart of envy; it must be filled with something else. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human heart.
"But be zealous in the fear of Yahweh always." (Proverbs 23:17b LSB)
The alternative to being jealous of sinners is to be zealous for the fear of the Lord. The issue is not whether you will be zealous, but what you will be zealous for. Your passion will be directed somewhere. The command here is to channel that energy, that fire, in the right direction. Be zealous, be on fire, be passionate, but for the fear of Yahweh.
What is this "fear of Yahweh"? It is not the cowering dread of a slave before a tyrant. It is the awestruck reverence of a creature before his infinitely glorious Creator. It is the loving, trembling respect of a son for a holy and righteous Father. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because it is the proper orientation of the creature to the Creator. It is acknowledging that He is God and we are not. It is living every moment with the awareness that He is, that He is watching, and that He is the one to whom we must give an account. This fear is not opposed to love; it is the essential context for it. You cannot truly love a God whom you do not first revere.
And this zeal is to be constant: "always." Not just on Sundays. Not just when things are going well. Not just when you feel like it. Always. This is a call to a persistent, persevering, all-of-life worldview. When you wake up, when you go to work, when you read the news, when you see the sinner prosper, the settled disposition of your heart is to be one of zealous reverence for God. This is the antidote to envy. When your heart is filled with awe for God, there is no room left for envy of men. When you are captivated by the majesty of the eternal King, the trinkets of His enemies lose their luster.
The Unfailing Promise (v. 18)
Why should we undertake this spiritual battle? Why trade envy for fear? Because of the future. The command in verse 17 is grounded in the certainty of verse 18.
"Surely there is a future, And your hope will not be cut off." (Genesis 23:18 LSB)
The word "surely" is emphatic. This is not wishful thinking. This is not a "maybe." This is a rock-solid certainty. There is a future. The Hebrew word here can mean an end, a result, a hereafter. The story is not over. The curtain has not yet fallen. The prosperity of the wicked is the first chapter of a very short story that ends in disaster. But for the one who fears Yahweh, there is a future, and it is a glorious one.
This is where our eschatology becomes intensely practical. As postmillennialists, we believe that the kingdom of God is advancing in history. We believe that Christ is reigning now, and that His gospel will be victorious. This is not a retreatist faith that cedes the world to the devil and hopes to be evacuated before things get too bad. This is a conquering faith. Our hope is not just for heaven when we die, but for the progressive establishment of Christ's reign on earth as it is in heaven. The future for the Church is not one of inevitable defeat and decline, but of glorious, gospel-fueled victory.
And so, your personal hope is tied to this grand, cosmic hope. "Your hope will not be cut off." The sinner's hope is like a spider's web, easily swept away. It is a hope placed in a rising stock market, a clean bill of health, or a corrupt political party. It is a hope that will be cut off, either by death or by the final judgment. But the Christian's hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, because it is fixed not on circumstances, but on the unshakable promises of a covenant-keeping God. It is a hope in the resurrection of the dead, in the glorification of the saints, and in a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.
When the man who fears God looks at the future, he sees a harvest. When the sinner looks at the future, if he is honest, he sees a cliff. Therefore, to envy the sinner is to envy the man who is sprinting joyfully toward the edge of that cliff. It is the height of insanity.
Conclusion: The Long Game
So, the application is straightforward. We are commanded to starve one passion and feed another. We are to starve the green-eyed monster of envy by refusing to let our hearts graze in the devil's pasture. Do not meditate on the sinner's prosperity. Do not doomscroll through their Instagram feeds. When you see their success, understand it for what it is: a fattening for the day of slaughter. As Asaph finally understood when he went into the sanctuary, God has set them in slippery places.
And we are to feed our zeal for the fear of the Lord. How? By steeping our minds in the Word of God, where His majesty and holiness are on full display. By gathering with the saints for worship, where we collectively declare His worthiness. By prayer, where we humble ourselves before His throne. By obedience, where we actively demonstrate our reverence for His commands.
The Christian life is the long game. The world wants you to trade your birthright for a bowl of pottage, to exchange the hope of a glorious future for the fleeting pleasures of a sinful present. But we know that our hope is not in what we can see. Our hope is in the risen Christ, the King of kings, who is putting all His enemies under His feet. That process is happening now, and it will continue until the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. That is the future. That is our hope. And it will not be cut off.