The Poison of Petty Triumphs Text: Proverbs 24:17-18
Introduction: The Sin of Schadenfreude
We live in an age that mainlines contempt. Our political discourse, our social media feeds, and our cultural commentary are all fueled by a particular kind of perverse joy, the joy that comes from seeing your opponent slip on a banana peel. The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude. It is the secret, malicious glee that warms the heart when a rival politician is caught in a scandal, when a godless celebrity is publicly humiliated, or when that insufferable ideologue at the office gets fired. It is a poison, and it is a poison that many modern Christians drink with gusto, convincing themselves that it is the wine of righteous victory.
But the Scriptures will not allow us this cheap and tawdry thrill. We are engaged in a war, it is true. It is a war of worldviews, a war for the soul of our culture, a war against principalities and powers. And in a war, there are enemies. The Bible is unflinchingly realistic about this. But the Bible is also unflinchingly clear about the posture of heart that a soldier of Christ must maintain. We are to be warriors, yes, but we are not to be spiteful gossips. We are to hate evil, but we are not to become evil in our hatred of it. We are to long for God's justice to be done, but we are not to usurp His bench and start banging the gavel ourselves.
This passage in Proverbs is a sharp and necessary rebuke to that part of our fallen nature that loves to see the other guy get his. It is a warning that God is not a partisan spectator in our petty squabbles. He is the holy Judge of all the earth, and He is watching the watchers. He is observing not only the stumble of the wicked, but also the secret, prideful smirk of the one who claims to be righteous. And what He sees in that smirk is often more offensive to Him than the original fall. This proverb teaches us a crucial lesson in spiritual warfare: God is more interested in the state of your heart than He is in the state of your enemy's face in the mud.
If we do not understand this, we will find ourselves fighting the Lord's battles with the devil's weapons, and we will become the very thing we claim to oppose. We will be those who are glad at calamity, and as another proverb tells us, such a man will not go unpunished (Proverbs 17:5). The stakes are therefore quite high. This is not a matter of etiquette; it is a matter of righteousness.
The Text
When your enemy falls, do not be glad,
And when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice;
Lest Yahweh see it and it be evil in His eyes,
And turn His anger away from him.
(Proverbs 24:17-18 LSB)
The Inward Prohibition (v. 17)
The first verse lays down the central command, addressing both our outward expression and our inward disposition.
"When your enemy falls, do not be glad, And when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice;" (Proverbs 24:17)
Notice the comprehensive nature of this command. It begins with the outward action: "do not be glad." This is the prohibition against the public victory dance, the smug "I told you so," the triumphant post on social media. It is the refusal to spike the football when your adversary is laid out on the field. This is basic spiritual maturity. David, a man of war, modeled this perfectly. When he heard of the death of his bitter enemy, King Saul, he did not throw a party. He mourned, he wept, and he wrote a lament (2 Samuel 1). He understood that the fall of a king, even a wicked one, was a tragedy for the nation and a somber display of the judgment of God.
But the proverb immediately goes deeper, right past the lips and into the heart: "do not let your heart rejoice." This is the true battleground. God is not interested in a mere external performance of solemnity while inwardly you are throwing a ticker-tape parade. He is after the secret thoughts, the hidden attitudes. You can stand over your fallen enemy with a perfectly composed, sorrowful face, and your heart can still be screaming with delight. God sees that. He weighs the heart.
This is where we must draw a sharp distinction. This proverb is not forbidding a righteous satisfaction in the triumph of God's justice. When the wicked are judged, the righteous are indeed to see it and rejoice in the vindication of God's holy law (Psalm 58:10-11). But that is a far cry from what is being described here. The rejoicing of the righteous is in God's holiness and justice; the gladness of the gloater is in his own personal victory and the humiliation of his foe. One is God-centered; the other is self-centered. One says, "Righteous are You, O Lord"; the other says, "Ha! I won." The sin here is pride. It is the sin of taking personal, malicious pleasure in the misfortune of another human being, who, however wicked, is still made in the image of God.
This command is a precursor to what the Lord Jesus would later make explicit: "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44). Loving your enemy does not mean you must feel sentimental affection for him or approve of his wickedness. It means you must seek his ultimate good. And his ultimate good is not his humiliation, but his repentance and salvation. A heart that is truly set on loving its enemy has no room for rejoicing when that enemy falls into ruin, because that ruin is precisely what you were praying he would be saved from.
The Divine Reason (v. 18)
The second verse gives the reason for the prohibition, and it is a staggering one. It reveals the mechanics of God's holy displeasure.
"Lest Yahweh see it and it be evil in His eyes, And turn His anger away from him." (Proverbs 24:18 LSB)
The first clause is simple enough: "Lest Yahweh see it and it be evil in His eyes." Your secret gloating is not secret. The Lord sees it. And He does not see it as a minor character flaw or an understandable lapse. He sees it as "evil." The Hebrew is blunt. It is wicked in His sight. Why? Because your gloating reveals that you have forgotten your own place. You have forgotten that you are a sinner saved by grace. You have forgotten that the only reason you are not the one lying in the ditch is because of the unmerited favor of God. Your malicious joy is a form of practical atheism; you are acting as though you are the standard of righteousness and he is the one who has failed to measure up. You have placed yourself on the judge's bench, a place reserved for God alone.
And this leads to the shocking consequence: "And turn His anger away from him." This should stop us in our tracks. Let us say your enemy is genuinely wicked. He opposes the gospel, he promotes injustice, he mocks the righteous. God's holy and just anger is kindled against him, and God begins to act, causing him to stumble. This is the hand of God's providence bringing about righteous judgment. But then you see it, and you start your little internal victory dance. You puff out your chest. You savor his downfall.
And what does God do? The text says He may very well look at the whole situation, see your prideful, gloating heart, and judge it to be the more pressing, more offensive sin in that moment. Your arrogance becomes a greater stench in His nostrils than your enemy's original transgression. And so, in a stunning display of sovereignty, He might just let your enemy off the hook for a time in order to deal with you. He turns His disciplinary attention from the one who stumbled to the one who rejoiced in the stumbling.
This is a terrifying thought. Your sinful attitude can actually interrupt the course of divine justice being meted out to the wicked. God is essentially saying, "I was dealing with him, but your pride is so odious to me that I must now deal with you." This is not because God has gone soft on wickedness. It is because God hates pride above all things (Proverbs 6:16-17). He will not be used as a tool for our petty triumphs. He will not have His righteous judgments serve as a platform for our self-righteousness. He will humble the proud. If you want to see God's justice roll down like waters, then you had best make sure your heart is a vessel of humility, not a leaky cup of spite.
Conclusion: Fighting Clean
So what is the application for us? We are in a real fight. We have real enemies, both personal and cultural. The forces of secularism and paganism are arrayed against the Lord and against His Christ. We are to contend earnestly for the faith. We are to fight, and we are to fight to win.
But we must fight clean. We must fight with God's weapons, in God's way. This means we must desire the conversion of our enemies, not just their destruction. We pray the imprecatory psalms not as a way of venting our personal spleen, but as a way of aligning our hearts with God's perfect justice, asking Him to vindicate His own name against those who are in high-handed rebellion against Him. It is a prayer that He would either convert them or remove them, so that His kingdom may advance. It is a profoundly God-centered act.
Gloating, on the other hand, is profoundly man-centered. It is taking our eyes off the glory of God and placing them on our own perceived glory. It is a spiritual dead end. When you see a prominent atheist fall into public disgrace, when a pro-abortion politician is voted out of office, when a hostile movement against the church implodes because of internal corruption, the right response is not a smug tweet. The right response is a sober and humble acknowledgment: "The Lord has done this. Righteous are His judgments." It is to fear God, not to high-five your friends.
We must purge this leaven of schadenfreude from our hearts, from our churches, and from our online interactions. Our desire must be for reformation and revival, for the salvation of souls. When our enemies stumble, it should be an occasion for us to pray for their repentance, to recognize our own frailty, and to give all the glory to God, who alone is the judge. If we do this, we honor Him. But if we choose instead to rejoice in the calamity of others, we will find that God is perfectly willing to turn His disciplinary gaze from them, and to fix it squarely, and righteously, upon us.