Does God's sovereign control cancel human free will?
No. God is sovereign over everything, yet He never removes the free will of men and nations. Before creation, the Godhead foreknew exactly what every person and nation would do, so He could plan for every contingency while still allowing people to accept or reject Him.
Les explains that this is one aspect of Scripture that is hard to comprehend: God in His sovereignty is in control of everything, and yet He never takes away the free will of men and nations. He reconciles the two by foreknowledge—before He created anything, the Godhead could look down through the eons of time and knew exactly what every person in every nation would do. Because He foreknew, He could plan for any contingency without cancelling mankind’s free will. Israel, for example, had absolute freedom to accept Him and have the kingdom, but also the free will to reject it. Their rejection did not throw God a curve, because He knew what they would do.