Getting What You Fear or Getting What You Desire? (Proverbs 10:24)
Listen Here:
Proverbs 10:24
What the wicked dreads will come upon him,
but the desire of the righteous will be granted.
Have you ever noticed how fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy? The person who’s afraid of failing often makes choices that lead them straight to failure. The person who’s terrified of being alone might push people away. Fear has a way of shaping our reality.
That’s exactly what this verse is getting at. Similar to how quickly the joy and happiness fade from wicked pursuits and wicked men, so too does the very thing they fear come upon them.
We see this all over Scripture.
The Babel builders were terrified of being scattered, tried to build a tower to solve that, and guess what happened? They were scattered. (Genesis 11:4, 8.)
Ahab's sneaky war strategy was supposed to protect him from his fear of death – but it led him straight into the arrow that killed him. (1 Kings 22:28-37.)
The rebellious Jews in Jeremiah ran from disaster thinking they would avoid it, only to run straight into it. (Jeremiah 42, 43.)
This isn’t a vague proverb – it’s a pattern. From the front of the Bible to the back, and from the beginning of your life until now, God has been distributing justice. And in His divine judgment, what the wicked dreads does come upon them. They can’t run from it. They can’t build a tower tall enough to escape it. They will receive their justice. Simple as that.
But what about when it doesn’t seem that way? Maybe the wicked seem to be winning. Maybe justice feels delayed. That’s when we remember that if not in this life, there will come a day – a day the Bible calls the Day of Judgment – when what the wicked dreads will truly come upon them. The righteous God whom they have scorned and spurned will bring His justice upon them, casting them into the fiery furnace for eternity.
Now if the fear of the wicked will come to fruition, how much more the desire of the righteous. To quote theologian Charles Bridges:
‘As the one cannot fear anything so bad, so the other cannot desire anything so good, as what is really in store for them. Desires bounded by the will (1 John 5:14), and centered in the enjoyment of God (Psalm 4:6; 37:4), will be granted to their utmost extent.’
In other words? The wicked will get what they fear. But the righteous? They will get what they desire – because their desires are shaped by God.
What a wonderful truth – ‘the desire of the righteous will be granted.’
In Christ, you and I don’t have to live in fear of the first half of this verse. Instead, we get to lean into the second half. We get to trust that God wants to and will grant the desires of those who walk with Him.
But that begs the question:
What are you desiring?
I think we can apply a verse like this in numerous ways, but I want to encourage you to think of a desire you have and bring it to the Lord in confidence of what He says in His Word.
Also, who do you know that would fit the first half of the verse right now, who doesn’t know Jesus, that you could pray for today?
Let’s pray now.
