Yet Jeremiah 10:23 says, "O LORD, I know that the way of man [is] not in himself: [it is] not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
Something so seemingly ours to control, our steps, are 'not in ourselves to direct'. Or a verse like Psalm 33:12, "Blessed [is] the nation whose God [is] the LORD; [and] the people [whom] he hath chosen for his own inheritance. (or a verse like Matthew 1:21, "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.", how is it that they are 'his people'?)
Or lastly, Psalm 65:4, "Blessed [is the man whom] thou choosest, and causest to approach [unto thee], [that] he may dwell in thy courts..."
So why did He choose them? Was it because they sought Him? Romans 3:11 says, "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.".... that seems to be a resounding 'No.'
Well how does anyone get saved? What about Deuteronomy 4:29?
"But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." Or Psalm 27:8? "when thou saidst, seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek." but then we read a verse like John 6:65, "And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father."
So why is it that David (or anyone) seeks God? In Ezekiel 36:26 the Lord says, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."
A little further on in Ezekiel 37:1-14 is a very striking image of God doing all the work to make dry human bones live.**
So is what happens with Lazarus in John 11. Verse 25 says, "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:" and boy was Lazarus dead, verse 39 says, "...Martha...saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days."
Verse 43-44: "And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go."
Surely that's a picture of God saving a sinner, but it's a stark picture. Jesus had to give him life, strength, and a will to respond, after all he's dead 4 days! A dead man cannot come forth of himself, he cannot 'choose' life, he's dead. It would seem to me that Lazarus being dead is a symbol for how all mankind is dead in sin. If we go back to Genesis 2:17, God says to Adam and Eve: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
'in the day that thou eatest thou shalt surely die'. Well Adam and Eve didn't physically die that day, so they must have died some other way; they had to have died spiritually, and we their children are all infected with sin.
Now Ephesians 2:8-10 is clear, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
If choosing God was something a sinner had done, he could boast 'i chose God', but it is 'not of yourselves that ye are saved', the saved sinner was chosen by God. As Romans 9:15-16 says, "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy."
So then it is not of him that 'willeth himself to be saved', but of God that sheweth mercy...
**(look at Luke 15:32, the prodigal son therefore was 'dead' in sin, but now he is 'alive' because he has returned in repentance to his father [Ephesians 2:1, "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;" or Ephesians 2:5; 5:14, Romans 7:9, Colossians 2:13, or 1 Peter 2:24. That has to be a spiritual death those verses are talking about; so what does 'dead in sin' mean? That you have lost any desire to not choose sin over God, Job 14:4, "who can bring a clean [thing] out of an unclean? not one."])
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