"... reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
On the other hand, it is supremely important that the believer should clearly understand the reality of temptation as an evil spiritual force opposed to Divine grace. Sometimes this power of Satan will show itself as "the alien law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his members." He will be conscious that "he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed." But sometimes temptation will rather come from the outside. A man will find his "adversary" in circumstances, in evil companions, in "the sight of means to do ill deeds"; the serpent whispers in his ear, and Satan moves him to wrong-doing. Let him not imagine for a moment that he is delivered over to the powers of evil; let him realise clearly that with every temptation God provides a way of escape. Every man knows in his own conscience that speculative difficulties can neither destroy the sanctity of moral obligation nor hinder the operation of the grace of God.
Indeed, the chronicler is at one with the books of Job and Zechariah in showing us the malice of Satan overruled for man's good and God's glory. In Job the affliction of the Patriarch only serves to bring out his faith and devotion, and is eventually rewarded by renewed and increased prosperity; in Zechariah the protest of Satan against God's gracious purposes for Israel is made the occasion of a singular display of God's favour towards His people and their priest. In Chronicles the malicious intervention of Satan leads up to the building of the Temple.
Long ago Jehovah had promised to choose a place in Israel wherein to set His name; but, as the chronicler read in the history of his nation, the Israelites dwelt for centuries in Palestine, and Jehovah made no sign: the ark of God still dwelt in curtains. Those who still looked for the fulfilment of this ancient promise must often have wondered by what prophetic utterance or vision Jehovah would make known His choice. Bethel had been consecrated by the vision of Jacob, when he was a solitary fugitive from Esau, paying the penalty of his selfish craft; but the lessons of past history are not often applied practically, and probably no one ever expected that Jehovah's choice of the site for His one temple would be made known to His chosen king, the first true Messiah of Israel, in a moment of even deeper humiliation than Jacob's, or that the Divine announcement would be the climax of a series of events initiated by the successful machinations of Satan.