Chapter 15

Although it shares the free form nature of the rest of Proverbs, you can fairly divide Chapter 15 into two sections.

The first (vs 1-11) is labeled “God doesn’t miss a thing” in the Message, but I think a better title may well be “You can’t fool God.”

And really, you can’t.

Over the years one question that has been repeatedly asked of me by people objecting to the Christian faith is “But what if someone lives a sinful life and then says ‘God, you can have me now,’ when they’re on the death bed. Doesn’t God have to take them? And isn’t that unfair?”

My answer is “It depends.”

It can be unfair. And no, God doesn’t have to accept a deathbed conversion. YOU CAN’T FOOL GOD. If you’re just saying the words with no actual conviction, you might fool the others around you and you could conceivably fool yourself; but there’s one person you won’t be fooling, and that’s the person you’d really need to fool! God is not deceived.

More than that, there are other things God can always be relied on to know.

• God doesn’t miss good and evil (v3). After all, He invented Good, and He saw it corrupted into evil. So if you think you can put one over Him, forget it.
• God understands when people are posing and not being honest (v8). If you look like you’re praying, make sure you actually are!
• God can read what’s going on inside the human heart (v11).

Verses 12 – 33 depart from the formula above, instead focusing on “What gives you a good life?”

Here Solomon gives a few pointers for living a life that’s worth living. There’s a lot here, but I want to focus on a couple:

• A simple life in the fear of God is better than a rich life with tons of headaches (v16).
• Better a bread crust shared in love than a slab of prime rib served in hate (v17).
• God smashes the pretensions of the arrogant (v25).

The thing that I notice here is that the values the world espouses are once again picked up and turned on their head. The world values money, power and position; yet here (as in many places in scripture) we see God standing instead for simplicity, relationship and honesty.

This connects fairly well to yesterday’s concept – there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. Ultimately God understands what is best for us. We can try to do what comes naturally, but that’s not always the smartest idea. On the other hand, what God wants is difficult; but it’s also what will lead in the end to the best outcome.