Two Ways to Live, Two Ways to Build a City Text: Proverbs 29:8
Introduction: The Civic Arsonist and the Civic Fireman
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of quaint sayings for your grandmother's needlepoint. It is a divine manual on how reality is wired. And because God is the God of all reality, not just the quiet, private corners of our hearts, His wisdom applies to every square inch of the created order. This includes the rough and tumble world of civic life, of politics, of how cities are built and how they are destroyed.
Our text today presents us with a stark and absolute contrast. There are two kinds of people, and they have two very different effects on the world around them. There is no middle ground, no third way. You are either building or you are burning. You are either a civic arsonist or you are a civic fireman. You are a scoffer who sets the city aflame, or you are a wise man who turns away anger. This is the fundamental antithesis that runs through all of human history, and it is a spiritual battle for the soul of our civilization.
We live in an age of rampant, celebrated foolishness. Our culture has made an idol of the scoffer. The man who sneers at tradition, who mocks morality, who deconstructs every standard and laughs at the ashes, this is the man who gets the microphone. He is celebrated in our universities, lionized in our media, and elected to our public offices. And we are living in the downstream consequences of his work. We see our cities burning, not just literally in riots, but metaphorically in the breakdown of families, the decay of trust, and the explosion of rage. This is not an accident. It is the direct and predictable result of enthroning the scoffer and exiling wisdom from the public square.
This proverb, then, is not simply a piece of good advice. It is a diagnostic tool and a battle plan. It shows us the root cause of our civic chaos, and it shows us the only possible solution. The problem is spiritual, and therefore the solution must be spiritual. The problem is the scoffer, and the solution is the wise man, fearing God and walking in His ways.
The Text
Scoffers set a city aflame,
But wise men turn away anger.
(Proverbs 29:8 LSB)
The Civic Arsonist (v. 8a)
Let us first consider the work of the scoffer.
"Scoffers set a city aflame..." (Proverbs 29:8a)
Who is the scoffer? The Hebrew word here points to a man who is arrogant, a mocker, one who is inflated with his own conceits. The scoffer is not merely an unbeliever; he is a militant unbeliever. He does not simply disagree with God's wisdom; he holds it in contempt. He believes he is smarter than God, smarter than thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, smarter than the moral structure of the universe. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, which means the scoffer, by definition, is a fool of the highest order. He has rejected the very foundation of knowledge.
And what does this man do? He sets a city aflame. The image is potent. It speaks of destruction, chaos, and uncontrollable rage. How does he do this? He does it with his words. The scoffer's primary tool is his mouth. He breathes out sparks. He fans the flames of discontent. He tells people that their grievances are the ultimate reality. He mocks the very institutions that provide stability and order. He calls restraint oppression. He calls morality bigotry. He calls fathers patriarchs and mothers slaves. He whispers in the ear of the populace that they are victims and that the only solution is to burn it all down.
This is not just about literal riots in the streets, though it certainly includes that. The scoffer sets the city aflame by undermining the foundations of social trust. A city is not just bricks and mortar; it is a complex web of relationships, duties, and shared beliefs. The scoffer attacks this at the root. By denying any transcendent standard of truth or justice, he makes every disagreement a raw power struggle. If there is no God to appeal to, then the only thing left is might makes right. The loudest, angriest, most demanding mob wins. This is the fire. It is the heat of unrestrained human passion, pride, and envy, stoked by the mocker who tells them their rage is righteous.
We see this everywhere. We see it in the politics of resentment, where every group is taught to see itself as oppressed by another. We see it in the sexual revolution, which scoffs at God's design for the family and sets the relationship between men and women aflame. We see it in the critical race theories that pour gasoline on ethnic tensions. The scoffer is the original deconstructionist. He takes apart everything but has nothing to build in its place. He is a spiritual pyromaniac, and he loves the glow of a burning civilization.
The Civic Fireman (v. 8b)
In stark contrast to the scoffer, we have the wise man.
"...But wise men turn away anger." (Proverbs 29:8b LSB)
If the scoffer is an arsonist, the wise man is a fireman. He doesn't run toward the blaze to throw more fuel on it; he moves to extinguish it. Notice the contrast. The scoffer creates a public, widespread conflagration. The wise man deals with the root emotion that fuels it: anger. The word here is often translated as wrath or rage. It is the seething, hot fury that the scoffer loves to exploit.
How do wise men accomplish this? They do not do it by compromising with the scoffer or by validating the rage. They do it by applying wisdom, which is to say, they apply God's reality to the situation. A wise man turns away anger first by refusing to participate in it. He is slow to speak and slow to anger, because he knows that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20). He is the adult in the room full of screaming toddlers.
More than that, the wise man speaks truth, but he does so with grace. "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger" (Proverbs 15:1). He can absorb an insult without returning it. He can listen to a grievance without endorsing the sinful reaction to it. He appeals to a higher standard. He reminds men that there is a God in Heaven who judges righteously. He calls for repentance, not revolution. He points to justice, not to vengeance. He builds, he restores, he reconciles. He does this in his family, in his church, and in his community.
This is not a call for passivity. Turning away anger is an active, courageous, and often difficult work. It requires standing against the mob. It requires telling the scoffer that he is a fool. It requires telling the enraged that their anger, however justified their initial complaint might be, has become a destructive idol. The wise man is able to do this because his ultimate trust is not in political solutions or in placating the loudest voices. His trust is in the sovereign God who raises up nations and brings them down. He knows that the only foundation for a just and peaceful city is the fear of the Lord. Therefore, his solution to the fire is not a new government program, but the ancient gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Great Antithesis
This proverb places before us the great antithesis, the fundamental divide that defines the world. The world is not ultimately divided between rich and poor, black and white, or left and right. The world is divided between the wise and the foolish, between those who fear God and those who scoff at Him. These two groups are engaged in two opposite civic projects.
The project of the scoffer is the project of Babel. It is the attempt to build a city without God, founded on human pride and rebellion. And because it is built on a lie, it is inherently unstable. It is a city of envy, strife, and rage, constantly threatening to burn itself to the ground. The scoffer's work is always to accelerate this process. He is an agent of chaos because his master is the author of chaos.
The project of the wise man is the project of the New Jerusalem. It is the project of building a society under the authority of Jesus Christ. This project acknowledges that true peace, true justice, and true order can only be found in submission to the Creator. The wise man knows that you cannot have the fruit of Christianity without the root of Christ. Therefore, he works to bring every thought captive to Christ, to apply God's word to every area of life, and to call his neighbors to be reconciled to God.
Conclusion: Choose Your City
So what is the takeaway for us? It is profoundly simple. You must first decide which man you will be. You cannot be a little bit of a scoffer and a little bit of a wise man. You cannot set fires on Monday and put them out on Tuesday. You are either one or the other. Your identity is found either in your own pride or in Christ.
If you are in Christ, you are called to be a wise man. This means you must be a man of the Word. You cannot apply a wisdom you do not possess. You must steep your mind in the Scriptures, so that you think God's thoughts after Him. It means you must be a man of courage. You will be called a fool for not joining in the fashionable rage. The scoffers will turn their mockery on you. You must be willing to stand your ground, not with carnal anger, but with the settled confidence of one who knows the King.
And it means you must be a man of peace. Not the world's peace, which is just a temporary ceasefire in the war against God, but the peace of Christ. This means you are a peacemaker. You work to quell strife in your home. You work to maintain the unity of the Spirit in your church. And you work for the good of your city, praying for its peace and seeking its welfare, knowing that the only true and lasting peace for any city is found when it kisses the Son (Psalm 2).
The scoffers are busy. They are lighting their matches in every corner of our culture. The fires are burning. The question for the church is this: will we be wise? Will we be the ones who, by the grace of God and the wisdom of His Word, know how to turn away the anger and bring the healing water of the gospel to a civilization that is burning down?