The Flicker and the Flame Text: Proverbs 24:19-20
Introduction: A Case of Spiritual Vertigo
We live in an age of spectacular godlessness. And not just a quiet, private godlessness, but a loud, preening, and often very successful godlessness. The wicked do not just prosper; they build monuments to their prosperity. They own the media, they staff the universities, they write the laws, and they mock the faithful from their high places. And if we are not careful, watching this parade can give a believer a nasty case of spiritual vertigo. You look at their temporary success, and you begin to feel the ground shift under your own feet.
This is not a new problem. Asaph famously wrestled with it in Psalm 73. He saw the prosperity of the wicked, their bodies fat and their eyes bulging with abundance, and his feet almost slipped. He almost concluded that keeping a clean heart was all for nothing. This is a perennial temptation for the saints, and it comes in two flavors, both addressed in our text. The first is fretfulness, a kind of anxious agitation. The second is envy, a covetous desire for what they have. Both are sins of sight, not faith. They are the result of looking at the wicked horizontally, instead of looking at them vertically, from the high vantage point of God’s throne.
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for needlepoint pillows. It is boot-camp wisdom for spiritual warfare. It is designed to equip us to live skillfully in a fallen world, a world where the wicked often appear to be winning. And the wisdom here in chapter 24 is a direct command to recalibrate our spiritual vision. It tells us what not to do, and then it gives us the ultimate, bedrock reason why. If we get this right, it will steady our hearts in a world gone mad. If we get it wrong, we will be tossed to and fro, perpetually agitated and discontent, which is no way for a child of the King to live.
The Text
Do not fret because of evildoers
Do not be jealous of the wicked;
For there will be no future for the evil one;
The lamp of the wicked will go out.
(Proverbs 24:19-20 LSB)
The Twin Sins of Sight (v. 19)
First, the prohibition. Solomon gives us two commands here, and they are closely related.
"Do not fret because of evildoers Do not be jealous of the wicked;" (Proverbs 24:19)
To "fret" means to get heated, to become vexed and agitated. It’s the internal churning you feel when you see some godless corporate chieftain preening on television about his latest victory, a victory won through deceit and exploitation. It’s the hot frustration that rises when you see a politician who openly despises God’s law being lauded as a hero. This fretting is a sin because it is a form of practical atheism. It is to act as though God is not on the throne. It is to look at the apparent chaos and conclude that the story has no author. Fretting is a failure to trust in the perfect, and sometimes slow, justice of God.
The second command is "do not be jealous." If fretting is being agitated by the wicked, jealousy is wanting to be like them, or at least wanting the stuff they have. It’s looking at their beach house, their influence, their easy life, and thinking, "Why not me?" This is a profound spiritual blunder. It is like envying a man on death row because he has a bigger television in his cell. You are looking at the accommodations and ignoring the destination. To envy the wicked is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of reality. It is to value the trinkets of this world more than the treasures of the next. It is to forget that everything the wicked have is Monopoly money. It looks impressive on the board, but at the end of the game, it all goes back in the box.
Both fretting and jealousy stem from the same root: a short-term, earth-bound perspective. They are emotional responses based on incomplete data. You are looking at one frame of the movie and assuming it’s the final scene. But the wisdom of God, the wisdom of Proverbs, commands us to pull back and see the whole story. We are forbidden from this kind of spiritual shortsightedness because God has told us how the story ends.
The Inevitable End (v. 20)
Verse 20 gives us the reason for the prohibition. It is the great corrective, the divine reality check.
"For there will be no future for the evil one; The lamp of the wicked will go out." (Proverbs 24:20 LSB)
Here is the foundation for our peace. Here is the antidote to our agitation and envy. The reason we are not to get worked up over the wicked is because their success is a mirage and their story is a dead end. First, "there will be no future for the evil one." The Hebrew word for future here can also mean posterity or reward. The point is that their story terminates. It doesn't lead anywhere. They are on a road that looks wide and well-paved, but it ends at a cliff. They are building kingdoms, but they are building them on the beach, and the tide of God’s judgment is coming in. This is not wishful thinking; it is a divine promise. Their path has no ultimate destination. They are going nowhere, fast.
This is why a postmillennial understanding of history is so pastorally crucial. We are not hunkered down in a bunker, waiting for the world to get worse and worse until Jesus comes to rescue us from the rubble. We believe that Christ is reigning now, and that His kingdom is advancing. The future belongs to Christ, not to the wicked. History is His story, and He is writing it toward a glorious conclusion where every knee will bow. The wicked are not the protagonists of history; they are the foils. They are the temporary villains who will be decisively and publicly defeated. They have no future because the future belongs to the Son.
The second phrase drives the point home with a powerful image: "The lamp of the wicked will go out." In the ancient world, a lamp was a potent symbol of life, prosperity, and legacy. A burning lamp meant a house was inhabited, that there was life and activity. A lamp going out signified death, desolation, and the end of a family line. God is telling us that the apparent brilliance of the wicked is temporary. It is a flicker, not a flame. It is a candle burning in the wind, destined to be extinguished. Proverbs 13:9 says, "The light of the righteous shines brightly, but the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out."
Think of it this way. The righteous man has a light within him, the indwelling light of Christ. That light is eternal and cannot be put out. The wicked man has no internal light source. All his "light" is external, his money, his power, his reputation. He has a lamp, but the oil is running out, and there is no new supply. And God Himself will be the one to snuff it out. Their end is not just darkness, but blackest darkness. Their brief moment of worldly glory will only serve to make the coming eternal darkness more profound.
Living by Faith, Not by Flicker
So what is the practical takeaway? How do we live this out in a world where the lamps of the wicked seem to be blazing so brightly? The answer is that we must consciously cultivate a long-term, eschatological mindset. We must live by faith, not by flicker.
First, this means we must be diligent students of Scripture. The only way to counteract the 24/7 propaganda of the world, which screams that the wicked are winning, is to immerse ourselves in the 24/7 reality of God’s Word, which assures us of their ultimate demise. You cannot obey this proverb if your mind is shaped more by cable news than by the Psalms and Proverbs. You must constantly be recalibrating your perspective against the unchanging standard of God's truth.
Second, we must practice active trust. When you feel that fretful heat rising in your chest, you must preach this verse to yourself. You must say, "That man, for all his pomp and power, has no future. His lamp is going out. My God is on the throne, and my future is secure in Christ." This is not denial; it is defiance. It is defying the lies of the world with the truth of God.
Finally, this truth should lead us not to smugness, but to evangelism. We are not to gloat over the coming darkness of the wicked. We are to pity them. They are chasing vanity, building on sand, and their end is destruction. Our response should be to hold out the light of the gospel to them. The only way their lamp is not snuffed out is if it is replaced by the unquenchable light of Christ. We, who were once in darkness, have been brought into His marvelous light. Our task is to call others out of that same darkness. We can do this with confidence, not because we are persuasive, but because we know the end of the story. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.