At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord”
Proverbs 21:30
The short form of this is that God cannot be gamed.
The purposes of the Lord will always, of necessity, be realized. He knows the end from the beginning. He cannot be fooled, or manipulated, or deceived, or sent off in a false direction. And yet every known sin is somehow or other banking on this proverb not being true.
And this means, in its turn, that every known sin committed by an orthodox believer has to contain some significant element of self-deception in it. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22). Self-deception, by its very nature, can have multiple layers, but one of those layers is the discrepancy between what the believer acknowledges about God’s counsels intellectually, and what he is assuming in the moment of sinning.
He knows, on the one hand, that God cannot be manipulated. And yet the sin, while it is being entertained by the one sinning, has to assume that God can be manipulated.
The more intelligent a person is (that is, the more intellectual rpm his brain can exhibit), the more susceptible he is to a belief that there could be some form of his wisdom, or understanding, or counsel, that might get around the Lord’s purposes. Remember that the serpent in the garden was not the stupidest creature there, but rather the most subtle (Gen. 3:1). And that is why the most gifted are frequently guilty of the greatest follies.
Not only is this the case when we are talking about our own designs against the Lord, but it is also true when we are sometimes cowed by the bluster of unbelievers, claiming—like Rabshekah outside the walls—that they can do whatever they intend to do. In such cases, we should follow Hezekiah’s instructions and answer not a word—while we wait for the inevitable outcome.
