What we see here is the incredible dance of sovereignty an freewill. God's sovereignty is found in that Assyria's role as Israel's punisher was all part of God's "whole work." Assyria was as an ax or saw in God's hands. On the flip side, Assyria's freewill is found in its pride, a pride that was their own choice. This is a classic example of the old saying, "God chooses what you go through, but you choose how you go through it."
Sovereignty and freewill are not at odds with each other: they go hand in hand. Anyone who says otherwise has either too small a view of God or too big a view of man. God's sovereignty is not that He planned everything, but that He planned everything through our choices.
"For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate..." (Romans 8:29a). To "foreknow" means to "know beforehand." To "predestinate" means (in a nutshell) to "plan beforehand." Foreknow is the cause to which predestinate is the effect: God can plan before hand because He knew beforehand. In other words, when God set down to create the universe, He could see in His mind (before the universe was created) the whole scope of the universe, from its beginning to its end and all that was in between. He knew beforehand what would happen, and therefore He could plan His work within that knowledge.
Look at it this way: some view God's sovereignty like He was an author or an architect, i.e., the reason He knows how it will be is because He planned it that way. The truth is more complicated. God's sovereignty is more like God was planning to set up a line of dominoes, but before He set them up He imagined them in His mind. If He set this one line that way, it would do "A". If He set it the other way, it would do "B". He knew that if He set it a certain way that it would go a certain way. Therefore, God set up the universe so that our freewill choices (and their consequences) would and will still bring about His will in the end.
If you knew how the dominoes would fall, given any specific situation or variable, then you could set up the dominoes so they could fall in such a way so as to exactly go the way you want it to go without manipulating the dominoes while they fall and allowing them to fall as they will. It is the same way with God: He planned it such-and-such a way because He knew it would be such-and-such a way.
God's sovereignty does not negate man's freewill. Likewise, man's freewill does not negate God's sovereignty. They work hand in hand, united in a singular dance. To separate them in order to understand their workings is an error. "He who breaks something to see how it works has left the path of wisdom," said Tolkien. To divorce sovereignty and freewill from each other's arms is to lose much of the depth and riches of the wisdom of God.
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