Job says in chapter 9:

"How can a man be righteous before God?
If one wished to contend with Him,
He could not answer Him one time out of a thousand.
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength.
Who has hardened himself against Him and prospered?
He removes the mountains, and they do not know
When He overturns them in His anger;
He shakes the earth out of its place,
And its pillars tremble;
He commands the sun, and it does not rise;
He seals off the stars;
He alone spreads out the heavens,
And treads on the waves of the sea;
He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,
And the chambers of the south;
He does great things past finding out,
Yes, wonders without number.
If He goes by me, I do not see Him;
If He moves past, I do not perceive Him;
If He takes away, who can hinder Him?
Who can say to Him, "What are You doing?'
God will not withdraw His anger,
The allies of the proud lie prostrate beneath Him.

"How then can I answer Him,
And choose my words to reason with Him?
For though I were righteous, I could not answer Him;
I would beg mercy of my Judge.
If I called and He answered me,
I would not believe that He was listening to my voice.
For He crushes me with a tempest,
And multiplies my wounds without cause.
He will not allow me to catch my breath,
But fills me with bitterness.
If it is a matter of strength, indeed He is strong;
And if of justice, who will appoint my day in court?
Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me;
Though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse.
Job 9:1-20

Man cannot be just before God. In the presence of God, you cannot find one single instance of your life to justify yourself before Him. People may cry out for justice, but if truly given, we would all be in hell.

God is too wise to question. You may think you know an issue well, but you probably only know one side of the issue. At best you may know two or three sides to an issue. God is functioning with infinite wisdom on more facets to an issue than you can fathom. And He knows not only every side of every issue, every outcome of every contingency, but everything about every issue that could arise from every potential variable. You cannot judge God because you cannot begin to comprehend God.

You only know what you believe you perceive of the events you have chosen to acknowledge that are within your line of sight. You only know that your car is not defrosting the windows as quickly as you would like. But you are ignoring the blight that is killing a leaf on the tree outside your car, that will weaken that tree, that will cause it to rot, that will cause it to fall and potentially damage your house or injure or kill a precious member of your family. As you wait for your car to defrost you are ignorant of the squirrel running across the power line above you that will seek shelter in the transformer and knock out the power to your neighborhood. Which will cause certain phones in your neighborhood to not function during the power outage. Which will prevent a mother from calling emergency when her infant chokes. You see only what you want to see and you gripe that God doesn't have more concern about your defrost when He is aware of infinitely more variables than you can fathom - perhaps countless variables within your own vehicle. You're concerned about your defrost, while God is pouring grace and comfort into twenty-one house church leaders who have just been sentenced to labor camp in China. While you're turning on your windshield wipers to speed up the defrost process, the Spirit of God is breaking through the hardness of the hearts of the men who killed a pastor and injured his wife in Sri Lanka. God is directing His servants to share the grace and love of Jesus Christ with men that they do not realize are the very Muslim militants who just bombed a Christian library in Gaza. God knows all things and He knows the plans He has had in place and which He has been fulfilling since eternity past.

Do you want to judge what God is doing? The fact is: you don't know what He is doing. Nor can you or anyone else resist what He is doing. He is doing what He is doing. He is going to do what He is going to do. Neither you nor anyone else can do anything against it.

A German cartel thought they could undersell Herbert Dow in America and put him out of business, so they could continue to monopolize the market in Europe. They began selling bromine in America for about half of Dow's price. Very wisely, Dow sent his men to purchase all the bromine they were selling. He turned around and sold their bromine for about ten cents less than they could sell it in Europe, which was still a profit for him. When they tried to undersell him, they provided the means for him to undersell them and crush their hold on the market.

If a man can turn around an attack this well, how much more can God turn any attempt against His plan into the very means to fulfill His plan. Indeed, consider the ultimate attempt to thwart God's plan. What could be more effective in destroying His plan than to kill His own Son? We know how that turned out.

Do you really think your challenge can turn out any better?

"Surely you have spoken in my hearing,
And I have heard the sound of your words, saying,
"I am pure, without transgression;
I am innocent, and there is no iniquity in me.
Yet He finds occasions against me,
He counts me as His enemy;
He puts my feet in the stocks,
He watches all my paths.'

"Look, in this you are not righteous.
I will answer you,
For God is greater than man.
Why do you contend with Him?
For He does not give an accounting of any of His words.
Job 33:8-13

Is the Creator accountable to His creation? If I draw a picture and decide I didn't like the way it turned out, crumble it up and throw it away, am I accountable to that crumpled piece of paper? How ridiculous. Yet, my drawing is probably my own fault. However, God is perfectly just, perfectly wise, perfectly righteous. He alone is Good. There is no fault with Him. And what He does is always right.

If you truly grasp that God is good and right and just and holy and perfect and blameless, then why question Him at all?

God is good. He wants what is best.

He is wise, so He plans for what is best.

He is all powerful, so He can do what is best.

This is what John Piper calls the "best-of-all possible worlds." In his words:

...God governs the course of history so that, in the long run, His glory will be more fully displayed and His people more fully satisfied than would have been the case in any other world. If we look only at the way things are now in the present era of this fallen world, this is not the best-of-all-possible worlds. But if we look at the whole course of history, from creation to redemption to eternity and beyond, and see the entirety of God's plan, it is the best-of-all-possible plans and leads to the best-of-all-possible eternities. And therefore this universe (and the events that happen in it from creation into eternity, taken as a whole) is the best-of-all-possible-worlds.

This is crucial to understand this before we go further. If you look at Romans 9, and your first thought is, "That's way too much power for God. He can't be fair with that much power." You are missing this. If this much power were wielded by anyone else, you would be right. If a state had this kind of power, it would be a totalitarian monstrosity. If an individual possessed this much power, he would be a demonic tyrant. But this is our holy, good God. This is better than anything we could hope for.

So now, let's look back at the context of our question:

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

When presented with this question, Paul could have easily said that God does not reject or elect anyone, but man makes that choice himself. But he doesn't. He could have said that God only elects but never rejects. But he doesn't. He could have said that God only rejects or elects based on His foreknowledge of a man's choices. But he doesn't.

Paul is very clear that God rejects or elects based on His own good pleasure. And he shows that man has no ground to dispute with God.

But consider this: Do you believe in moral absolutes? Do you believe that if I passed you on the street and slugged you, I would be wrong? Do you believe that it is wrong to lie? to cheat? to commit adultery? How?

How do you know what is good and what is evil? Is there not a standard? What tells us that adultery is wrong? That coveting is wrong? Is it not the Law of God?

And what is the source of the Law of God? It is the will of God. Right?

That same Will, which tells you what is right and what is wrong, is the same Will that is electing or rejecting from before the foundation of the world. So, you should see the ridiculousness of judging a will when the basis of your judgment must be that same will.

To another comparison. Go to a movie or read a book. Do you find the villain hateful? Don't you detest the villain? Don't you find him evil? But wait - this villain does not really exist but in the imagination of the author. Is the author then evil? No. But the author has created the villain as the foil to show the goodness of the hero. The hero and the villain are both in the mind of the author. The author uses both to proceed the story to the ultimate triumph of good.

We are all characters in God's story.