Short answer: No. God never says anything like: "I am not God." Or, "You are not sinful." Or, "Christ is not a great Savior." Or, "If you believe in Christ, you will not be saved." Or, "It is foolish to follow my counsel." Or, "My word is unreliable."

But God does ordain that lying happen as part of his judgment on the guilty. That is why the question comes up.

• The prophet Micaiah stood against all the prophets of Ahab and said that the king would fall in battle. To explain why all the other prophets were saying the opposite, Micaiah says, “Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you” (1 Kings 22:23).

• Similarly, God says he will punish those who try to use prophets to buttress their sin. In that situation he says, “If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their punishment—the punishment of the prophet and the punishment of the inquirer shall be alike” (Ezekiel 14:9-10).

• And at the end of this age, God will ordain a “strong delusion” as part of the punishment for those who “refused to love the truth.” “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12).

When we say that God never lies, but ordains that lying happen, we do not mean that he approves of lying or that his law permits lying. We mean that God governs all things in the universe, including the sins of sinful men. Sin does not cease to be sin because God governs it and guides it for the good of his people and the glory of his name.

That is what he did in the sin of Joseph’s deceptive sale into Egypt—and Judas’ deceptive kiss of betrayal. The one led to the greatest act of salvation in the Old Testament (the Exodus from Egypt), and the other led to the greatest act of salvation in history (the death of Christ for our sins).