The Great Dilemma - The Solution

The Great Dilemma - The Solution
By Paul Mcgrade

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness and so God created man. Then man went against God's command, he sinned against God and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And so the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Now, when God flooded the earth, He destroyed absolutely everything! You see, God told Adam & Eve to be fruitful and multiply. And from the time of Adam & Eve, all the way to the time of Noah, it was about 1,000 years. So, God makes man. He tells man to be fruitful and multiply. After 1,000 years of this God looks upon the earth and what does He see? Corruption. The earth was filled with violence. Every man had corrupted his way upon the earth. So what does God do? He says, I'm going to destroy them.

Every man had corrupted his way but it says Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now, why did God keep Noah? He should have destroyed him to! Why'd He keep him? Was it because Noah was a little better than everyone else? Did Noah do something the rest didn't do and therefore God decided to spare him? Was he born with some sort of moral spark and the rest born dead? Was it because Noah was righteous? He did righteous deeds? Because he obeyed God and the rest didn't? What was it that caused God to be gracious to Noah and not to the rest?

The answer's this: Nothing. Nothing Noah did caused God to look upon Him and be gracious to him. If the flood came and Noah waved his hands to get God's attention, if he had jumped up and down on the highest mountain, if he'd yelled to God for help because the waters were up to his neck, God would not have looked if it was because of something Noah had. God was not gracious to Noah because He saw Noah had a moral spark the others didn't have. God wasn't drawn to Noah, He wasn't wooed by Noah, neither did Noah dazzle God's eyes with any gold that he lifted up. No, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord not because of anything he was or anything he had for God.

The reason why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord is because God chose to be gracious to him and not to the others. God in His infinite wisdom thought it to be the most wisest, most glorious, most gracious way; that Noah be spared and the others be destroyed. Grace is totally free. It is totally unmerited, undeserved. It is apart from anything and everything about us. You cannot understand the grace of God until you realize that God saw the wickedness of man. That every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil. How could God look at us and be gracious to us? To anyone of us? Man is a fallen, radically depraved, spiritually dead, morally corrupt, sin loving, God hating creature. In the very core of his being he is as opposed to God as the devil himself. He cannot change and has no desire to do so. He loves a lie and will do everything in his power to restrain and suppress any and every truth about God and the more he knows about God the more he hates Him because God is righteous and man is evil. Now how do you expect God to spare something like that? It is only by Gods grace.

If God was not gracious Noah would have been destroyed to. Yet God spared one man. Noah! One vile, detestable, little man and his family. The last thing written about him was that he was found drunk and naked in his tent and yet God saves this man? That my friends is the grace of God! Free and undeserved. Not of him that wills, not of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.

----Now, God is just. How is it that God could save anyone then? How could God save a people like us? How can God say to Noah, for you have I seen righteous before me in this generation? Something we need to understand is that there is none who are righteous, no not one. So then how could God say to Noah, for you have I seen righteous before me in this generation? Possibly the greatest question that ever could be asked is this: how can God look at one who is unrighteous and at the same time call them righteous, even though they're not? The answer's this:

Galatians 3:22 - The scripture has concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

How could God say to Noah, for you have I seen righteous before me? He could say it because of what Jesus Christ was going to do. You could say that God looked up the road in history and saw Christ's righteousness and declared it to be Noah's, even though Noah was undeserving and was not righteous in himself. So how can God be just and at the same time save us? By sending His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die. God set forth His only begotten Son. Jesus Christ came into the world, born of a virgin, lived a perfect righteous life. He never disobeyed His Father. He never broke a command His Father gave because He loved Him. He was one with Him. He was with His Father before the world began. Yet when He came into the world, the world hated Him. His own did not receive Him. The world condemned Him. They ridiculed Him. Said He was a liar and teaching lies. They thought He was crazy because He called God His Father. They crucified Him and all this was being done to fulfill the prophecy God would fulfill. This was being done because God loved us so much. It was the only way a people like us could be saved. It was the only way we could be reconciled to God. It was the most wisest and most glorious way. Yet at the same time it was the most bloodiest, most gruesome, most painful way.

When Christ hung on that cross, it pleased the Father to bruise His only begotten Son. It pleased God to pour out all the holy hatred, all the holy wrath and fierce anger of God upon His beloved Son. He did it because He is love. This, the Son of God coming to lay down His life, was the love of God manifested before our very eyes. It is entirely told in the Bible. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. When Christ, in agony, was on that cross, God was slaughtering His own Son. He was crushing Him with the full weight of the wrath that should fall upon you and me. He threw it down upon Jesus, His beloved, precious Son.


If you were standing at the foot of a dam and the wall broke, all that weight, all that water crashing down upon you, would be too much to bear. Christ though bore every second of His Fathers wrath. He drank every last drop of His Father's cup. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. And then Jesus cried with a loud voice, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? From eternity to eternity, the perfect, unthought of, sweetest, unfathomable communion Jesus had with His Father was torn and ripped from Him and this is why He sweat great drops of blood. The greatest of all judgments Christ has suffered, to be cut off from God. The Father broke fellowship with His Son and turned His back on Him. Christ died and was buried in a tomb for 3 days. God though raised Him from the dead; and has highly exalted Him and though Christ once was dead, He now sits at the right hand of God, in the glory He had with Him before the world ever was created. God has given Jesus a name which is above every name! That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

My friends, God shall save you by His grace through faith. You must believe though on the Lord Jesus Christ. You must trust that though you aren't righteous, yet God is able to call those things which be not as though they were. He's able to declare you to be righteous even though your not because of Jesus. Can you trust Him? Can you believe on Him that justifies the ungodly? Are you not sure if you believe? Well then, do you want to believe? Then LOOK to Him who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Oh, my friend, if you can believe God is true, if you can just simply believe on Jesus Christ, you are saved. Your feelings do not declare your salvation but Christ does! Will you look to Him? Oh, please look to Him and you will be saved.

May God command the light to shine out of darkness again. May He shine in your hearts, the light of this glorious gospel of Christ. Though I don't understand and am a blind wretch, yet may God do a work that is unexplainable and can only be done by Him to His glory. May He do it in each one of you. May His kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Spurgeon Gems - Part 1

I'm going to begin to post some of the quotes by Charles Spurgeon that I find helpful.

"Faith in the Christian, when he first gets it, is true and saving—but it is not in proportion. The man believes one doctrine, perhaps, and that is so delightful that it swallows up every other. Then he gets hold of another and he swings that way like a pendulum—no doctrine can be true but that one. Perhaps in a little time he swings back like a pendulum the other way. He is unsteady because while his faith perceives the Truth of God, it does not perceive the harmonies of the Truths of God. His faith, for instance, may perceive the Lord Jesus Christ, but as yet it has not learned the position which Christ occupies in the great economy of Divine Grace. He is half-blind, and cannot see very far. He has sight, but it is not the sight which he will yet receive. Like the blind man who, when our Lord healed him, saw men at first as trees walking, he comes, in due time, to see clearly, for Grace always goes on in its work—it will never halt half-way."

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"The last thing I have to notice about this true faith in Christ as sight is that it is at all times a very simple thing to look. Look! No one needs go to a grammar school or to a university to look. Look! The smallest child, as we have said, can look—the most illiterate and untaught can look. If there is life in a look, glory be to God for such a provision because it is available for each one of us! Sinner, if you would be saved, there is nothing for you to think upon but Christ. Do your sins trouble you? Go to Him and trust in Him—and the moment you look to Him you are saved. “Oh,” says one, “but I cannot do that! My faith is so weak.” Well, when I walk about and see a beautiful sight, very seldom do I think about my own sight—my mind is occupied with the sight—and so let it be with you. Never mind those eyes—think more about the vision to be seen. Think of Christ. It would be a pitiful thing if, when there were some great procession in the streets, all you thought about was your own eyes. You would see but very little. Think less about your faith, and more about Jesus—

“Weary Sinner! Keep your eyes
On the atoning Sacrifice.
View Him bleeding on the tree,
Pouring out His life for you.
Cast your guilty soul on Him,
Find Him mighty to redeem!
At His feet your burden lay.
Look your doubts and fears away.”

Turn over and over in your mind the great transaction on the Cross. I have sometimes said to young seekers, Go home and spend an hour deliberately reading about the death of Christ. And then picture it in your mind’s eye, for it is in that way that faith comes. Through the Holy Spirit’s power we come to believe that story by thinking upon it, seeing Jesus in it, and then following on and giving it the full acceptance of our spirit. Go to the Cross for faith if you cannot go with faith, and the Lord
grant that you may find in Jesus."

(Quotes taken from "Seeing Jesus" By C. H. Spurgeon)