Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord
The folly of acting separately from God
I. THEIR POLITICS DESCRIBED (Isaiah 29:15). The consultations they had about their own safety they kept to themselves, and never asked God’s advice concerning them. See what foolish, fruitless pains sinners take in their sinful ways; they seek deep, they sink deep, to hide their counsel from the Lord, who sits in heaven and laughs at them. A practical disbelief of God’s omniscience is at the bottom both of the carnal worship and carnal confidences of the hypocrites (Psalms 94:7; Ezekiel 8:12; Ezekiel 9:9).
II. THE ABSURDITY OF THEIR POLITICS DEMONSTRATED (Isaiah 29:16). Your inverting the order of things, and thinking to make God’s providence give attendance on your projects, and that God must know no more than you think fit, which is perfectly “turning things upside down,” and beginning at the wrong end,--“it shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay”; i.e., God will turn and manage you, and all your counsels, with as much ease, and as absolute a power, as the potter forms and fashions his clay. They that think to hide their counsels from God--
1. In effect deny Him to be their Creator.
2. Or, which comes to the same thing, deny Him to be a wise
Creator. (M. Henry.)