How can God be sovereign if we still have free will?
God remains sovereign and in total control, yet He gives mankind free will. People constantly face choices and decisions, and their choices are truly theirs to exercise. When they repeatedly choose wrongly, they harden their own hearts, though Scripture attributes hardening to God because He sovereignly puts them on the spot and responds to their choosing.
Les explains that the man who was told to let Israel go had his heart hardened because he made a choice, lived with it, and when he came to the next decision, he decided wrong again and became hardened. All God did was put him on the spot; he hardened his own heart, though Scripture says God did it. Les applies the same principle to mankind as a whole: when man's heart is hardened, it isn't that God fries it. Man does it to himself, but it is under the sovereign volition of God. When people became vain and their foolish heart was darkened, it was God's response to their choosing of their will. Everything mankind does under God is based on free will. We constantly face choices and decisions, and even though God is sovereign and in total control, the exercise of free will is still ours. As people choose to put God out of their thinking and think only in the realm of the human, secular humanism, their foolish heart was darkened.