The Arsonists of the Soul: The Fuel of Strife Text: Proverbs 26:20-22
Introduction: The Devil's Bellows
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It does not float in the ethereal regions of abstract theology; it comes down into the kitchen, the marketplace, and the church fellowship hall. It tells us how the world actually works because it tells us how God made the world to work. And one of the recurring themes, a lesson our sin-addled minds are slow to learn, is the devastating power of the tongue. James tells us the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, set on fire by hell itself. And in our text today, Solomon gives us a lesson in the physics of that fire. He teaches us basic fire safety for the soul, and for the church.
We live in an age that has weaponized gossip and strife. Our entire digital world is a massive engine for it. Men and women who would never throw a punch will gladly engage in the most vicious forms of character assassination from behind a keyboard. They will pass along slander, nurse grievances, and stoke divisions with a self-righteous glee that is frankly demonic. And the church is not immune. Many a church split, many a broken friendship, many a wounded pastor can be traced back to the sins described in these three short verses. These are not minor sins. They are not peccadilloes. They are the devil's bellows, fanning the embers of discord into a raging inferno that can consume the house of God.
We must understand that strife and gossip are not neutral forces of nature. They are acts of war. They are a direct assault on the unity for which Christ prayed. When Jesus was about to go to the cross, He prayed that we would be one, so that the world would believe. Therefore, the man or woman who sows discord, who whispers and mutters in the corner, who keeps a quarrel going, is actively working against the high priestly prayer of Jesus Christ. They are doing the devil's work for him. They are arsonists of the soul, and God will not hold them guiltless.
So let us come to the Word of God to be instructed, to be rebuked, and to be corrected. Let us learn the simple, profound spiritual physics that God lays out for us here. If you want peace, there is a way to get it. If you want strife, there is a way to get that too. God has made the cause-and-effect relationship plain. The choice is ours.
The Text
With no wood the fire goes out,
And where there is no whisperer, strife quiets down.
Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire,
So is a contentious man to kindle strife.
The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels,
And they go down into the innermost parts of the stomach.
(Proverbs 26:20-22 LSB)
The Spiritual Law of Extinction (v. 20)
We begin with the foundational principle in verse 20:
"With no wood the fire goes out, And where there is no whisperer, strife quiets down." (Proverbs 26:20)
This is a spiritual law as fixed and certain as the law of gravity. Fires require fuel. This is plain enough for a child to understand. If you want a fire to stop, you stop feeding it. You don't reason with it. You don't argue with it. You don't form a committee to study it. You starve it. And the same principle applies to the fires of conflict. Strife, contention, quarrels, they all require fuel. And the primary fuel for these fires is the whisperer.
The Hebrew for "whisperer" here is ragân. It means a slanderer, a gossip, a talebearer. This is the person who traffics in secrets, who deals in rumors, who always has a juicy bit of information about someone else to share "in confidence." This is the person who comes to you and says, "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but..." which is the universal preface to a sin they are about to thoroughly enjoy committing. They are the wood for the fire. They are the fuel. Without them, the fire of strife simply cannot continue to burn. It flickers, it smolders, and it dies.
Notice the glorious passivity of it. "Strife quiets down." It ceases. It stops. You don't have to do anything heroic. You just have to stop doing the one thing that keeps it going. You have to stop whispering. You have to stop listening to whispers. You have to starve the fire of its wood. This means that if there is a persistent, ongoing strife in your family, in your friendships, or in your church, it is because someone is feeding it. It is not self-sustaining. Someone is bringing the wood. Someone is whispering. And if you are participating, if you are listening with eager ears and passing it along, then you are that someone.
This is a profound encouragement for peacemakers and a stark warning for troublemakers. The power to end most conflicts is right here. It is the discipline of godly silence. It is the refusal to pass along a report. It is the courage to say to a whisperer, "Have you spoken to our brother about this directly? Because you should not be speaking to me." That one sentence is a bucket of water on the devil's kindling.
The Arsonist Identified (v. 21)
Verse 21 builds on the metaphor, identifying the character of the one who loves to stoke the flames.
"Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, So is a contentious man to kindle strife." (Proverbs 26:21 LSB)
Here the focus shifts from the fuel (the whisperer's words) to the arsonist himself, the "contentious man." This is the man who is addicted to quarrels. He is quarrelsome by nature. He is not just someone who occasionally gets into a disagreement; he is someone who thrives on it. He is drawn to arguments like a moth to a flame, except he is the one bringing the gasoline. The text says he is like "charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire." This is an intensification. Charcoal on embers makes the fire hotter, more intense. Wood on fire makes it bigger. The contentious man does both. He escalates things. He turns disagreements into disputes, and disputes into divisions.
How does he do this? He is a master of misrepresenting others' positions. He loves to take things in the worst possible light. He is quick to take offense and slow to grant grace. He is always "just asking questions" that are really accusations in disguise. He is the man who is always fighting for "the principle of the thing," when the principle is usually his own pride. He is the one who keeps old wounds open, who will not let past offenses die, who is always dragging up some grievance from five years ago to add to the present fire.
This man is a plague on any church or community. He is the opposite of a peacemaker. He does not pour oil on troubled waters; he pours fuel on smoldering embers. And the Bible says this is what he is. It is his character. He is a man of strife. We are commanded to recognize such men and to have nothing to do with them. "Drive out the mocker, and strife will go out; quarrels and insults will cease" (Proverbs 22:10). The health of the body requires that such a source of infection be removed.
The Addictive Nature of Sin (v. 22)
Finally, verse 22 explains why this sin is so pervasive and so powerful. It explains the psychology of gossip.
"The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels, And they go down into the innermost parts of the stomach." (Genesis 26:22 LSB)
This verse is nearly identical to Proverbs 18:8, which means God wants us to pay close attention. Why do people listen to gossip? Why do we entertain the whisperer? Because his words are like "dainty morsels." They are like delicious snacks, tasty little treats. There is a perverse pleasure in hearing a negative report about someone else. It appeals to the deep-seated pride and envy in our fallen hearts. It makes us feel superior. It makes us feel like we are on the inside, in the know. It gives us a little thrill, a little rush of self-importance.
And these morsels are not harmless. They "go down into the innermost parts of the stomach." This is a Hebrew idiom for the very center of a person's being, their heart, their soul. These words don't just bounce off; they are ingested. They are absorbed. They become a part of you. Once you have swallowed a piece of gossip, it is almost impossible to get it out. It lodges deep within you and begins to do its poisonous work. It changes how you view the person being slandered. It plants seeds of suspicion and bitterness. It corrupts your soul from the inside out.
This is why listening to gossip is not a passive activity. To listen to a whisperer is to eat the meal he is serving you. And it is a meal of poison. You may think you can handle it, that you won't let it affect you, but you are deceiving yourself. You are swallowing poison and hoping for the best. The only biblical response to a whisperer is to refuse to sit at his table. You must starve yourself of these dainty morsels. You must develop a holy gag reflex to the taste of slander.
Conclusion: The Gospel Fire Extinguisher
So what is the solution to this rampant sin of strife and gossip? The text gives us the practical answer: starve the fire. Stop whispering. Stop listening. Drive out the contentious man. This is the work of basic church discipline and personal holiness. But on a deeper level, the ultimate answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel extinguishes the fires of strife in three ways. First, it deals with our pride. The root of all contention is pride. I want my way. I feel disrespected. I need to be vindicated. The gospel humbles us at the foot of the cross. It tells us that we are sinners who deserve nothing but hell, and that everything we have is by grace alone. A truly humble man, a man who knows what he is in Adam and what he has been given in Christ, has no time for the petty squabbles and ego-driven conflicts that consume the contentious. He has been forgiven an infinite debt; how can he then strangle his brother over a hundred denarii?
Second, the gospel provides true fellowship. Gossip and slander create a false, fleeting intimacy based on a shared contempt for a third party. It is a fellowship of darkness. But the gospel brings us into true fellowship, the koinonia of the Spirit. We are united not by what we are against, but by Who we are for. We are one body in Christ, members of one another. When you slander a fellow Christian, you are slandering a part of your own body. You are speaking evil of a temple of the Holy Spirit. The gospel gives us a love for the brethren that makes the taste of slander turn to ash in our mouths.
Finally, the gospel gives us a new purpose for our tongues. James says that with the same mouth we bless God and curse men, who are made in His image. This ought not to be so. The gospel redeems our speech. Our mouths were not made for whispering and backbiting. They were made to praise God, to proclaim the good news, to encourage the saints, to build up the body of Christ. When your mouth is full of the praises of God, there is no room left for the dainty morsels of the devil. May God grant us the grace to starve the fires of strife and to use our tongues for what they were made for: the glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.