If my ol' memory serves, yesterday Cameron (I believe) brought up the fact that God sovereignly and freely chose Abraham's descendants whom God called "Israel" to be his chosen nation and yet none of the free willers [oddly] complain about this fact.
But in response to that one of the more delusional free willers chimed in to basically tell us how all the surrounding Gentile nations in the ANE knew all about Israel's God, and how blessed Israel was and how Israel influenced these nations for good...yada, yada, yada. (I think the poster was either Genez or CV5 but I could be wrong.) In other words, the poster was desperately trying to put a good spin on the fact that none of the other nations were chosen by God to participate in his covenant! He, however, conveniently forgot Israel's dark, dismal checquered history of which I will bring some of that history back to our minds with a thumbnail sketch from the Psalms. But not only did he forget Israel's history, he forgot what God commanded Israel to do to those nations they were to drive from God's land! Let's go back to the past for a little while:
Ps 106:24-33
24 Then they despised the pleasant land;
they did not believe his promise.
25 They grumbled in their tents
and did not obey the LORD.
26 So he swore to them with uplifted hand
that he would make them fall in the desert,
27 make their descendants fall among the nations
and scatter them throughout the lands.
28 They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor
and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods;
29 they provoked the LORD to anger by their wicked deeds,
and a plague broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas stood up and intervened,
and the plague was checked.
31 This was credited to him as righteousness
for endless generations to come.
32 By the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD,
and trouble came to Moses because of them;
33 for they rebelled against the Spirit of God,
and rash words came from Moses' lips.
NIV
It seems to me that Israel never lived up to its calling. They were supposed to be lights to the dark nations around them but instead they became as dark (if not worse) than those nations! So how did Israel get into all this hot water? Well...they disobeyed God. They didn't do what He commanded them from the very beginning. The Psalmist continues...
Ps 106:34-41
34 They did not destroy the peoples
as the LORD had commanded them,
35 but they mingled with the nations
and adopted their customs.
36 They worshiped their idols,
which became a snare to them.
37 They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
38 They shed innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
and the land was desecrated by their blood.
39 They defiled themselves by what they did;
by their deeds they prostituted themselves.
40 Therefore the LORD was angry with his people
and abhorred his inheritance.
41 He handed them over to the nations,
and their foes ruled over them.
NIV
So God, who supposedly intends to save all men -- who wants "all" men to be saved -- instead put a "contract" out on all the occupants of the Land; yet, Israel who was supposed to carry out the contract failed to do so. As the text says, they instead "mingled" or befriended those pagan nations and wound up becoming ensnared by their customs and gods, which proved to be their downfall -- twice over I might add! The free willer spinmeisters got it all backwards. Israel had little positive impact on the surronding nations; conversely, those nations greatly influenced Israel.
So, free willers, go spin some more this Psalm and God's election of Israel!