Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981), minister of Westminster Chapel in London for thirty years, was one of the foremost preachers of his day. His many books have brought profound spiritual encouragement to millions around the world.

The Gospel in Genesis

From Fig Leaves to Faith

Good News Publishers

Contents

THE MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

GENESIS 3:1

I call your attention to Genesis 3 in order that we may consider together the essential message of this book that we call the Bible. In various ways we have felt the need to do so and have felt it to be right.

We are all conscious of problems in this world — problems in our own personal lives and in the world at large. There is no such thing as complete and perfect happiness. No one is without difficulties. Everyone knows what it is to be weary, to be disappointed, and to struggle. We find conflict within ourselves. We find conflict round and about us. That is the experience of every human being. There is always a fly in the ointment. There is no such thing as unmixed pleasure. We have all discovered — and no matter how young we are, we have discovered this — that life does involve us in difficulties, in problematical situations. And we have a feeling that we were not meant for this. We do not like it; we want to be delivered from it. That is ultimately the cause of all quests in the lives of men and women. We are all searching for some solution to the problems of life. There are difficulties; there are such things as heart searchings and disappointments; we are all somehow or other seeking for some way out of some impasse.

We are face-to-face, then, with tribulation and trial, with wretchedness and unhappiness, not only in ourselves but in the world at large. We are always being reminded of this. You cannot pick up a newspaper without seeing it. You never hear the news on the radio without being conscious that life is full of perplexities. Quite apart from major world wars, there is always some misuderstanding and discord, people working at cross-purposes, pulling against one another, rivalries, jealousies, sects and parties. The whole world seems to be nothing but a repetition on a grand scale of what we all experience in our personal lives. That is why it has often been said that man is a sort of microcosm. In and of himself, he is a picture of what is true of the whole cosmos. There seems to be this clash, and as the poet has put it, we see "Nature, red in tooth and claw." There always seems to be struggle — struggle for existence, struggle for power, struggle for mastery.

That is the situation that we meet together to consider, and that in itself is important because many people still think that religion is purely intellectual. Some insist that this book called the Bible, far from being practical, is really very remote from life. They say, if you are interested in the Bible, you can take it up as you take up any other kind of study — music, for instance, or literature — as a kind of hobby. It is something that you do in a detached manner, more or less as a spectator, in your leisure time.

Now all that is a complete fallacy, and I want to try to show you what a terrible fallacy it is. Nothing in the world is as practical as the teaching of the Bible. Indeed, the whole purpose of that book is to come to us with its instruction and its enlightenment concerning the very situation in which we find ourselves. That is what it is for. That is what it is about. From that standpoint, it is in a sense the most human book in the world because from beginning to end it deals with men and women. But for that very reason the Bible is a baffling book to many people. They think of it, as I have said, as just some kind of theoretical textbook offering a certain point of view or line of thought.

Now the Bible does contain massive thought, mighty philosophy, exceptional teaching, and yet the whole time it is also a history book. You cannot get away from men and women — Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, David and other kings, Jesus of Nazareth, apostles with names, Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ. The Bible keeps on putting its truth to us in terms of these people — what they did, what they said, what happened to them, and so on. And it does that, it seems to me, just to bring home to us this very point that I am emphasizing — that it is a practical book about life. It is a textbook of the soul. It comes to us with a message about the very position in which we find ourselves.

So look at the Bible either as an individual or in terms of the world. Are you unhappy? Is that why you are thinking about what I am saying? Well, the Bible talks to you about your unhappiness. The question is, why are you unhappy? What is the cause of your unhappiness? Why should anybody be unhappy? Why should life not be a perpetual holiday? Why do we have to work by the sweat of our brow? Those are the questions with which the Bible deals. Why do things go wrong? Why is there illness and sickness? Why should there be death? These are the major problems of life.

How important it is that we should realize that this is the starting point. So often when people come to discuss religion they say, "Ah, this is going to be interesting. What about miracles?" And off they go at once. "But science says this and that." And there they are, discussing something far away from themselves, something entirely theoretical. But that is not how the Bible approaches us. The Bible comes to us exactly where we are; it speaks to us in the very position that we are in at this moment. Indeed, it always insists upon doing that. It says, "I am interested in you, and I want to talk to you about yourself."

So we are not going to have a detached, theoretical discussion about some points of philosophy. We are going to talk about you and about me, about all of us in this world and the whole state of the world in which we live. I want to show you what the Bible has to say about all this because in the last analysis there are only two views about life and the world and why things are as they are: we either accept this biblical view, or we accept some other view. These are the classifications that the Bible recognizes — its message and all other messages. I do not care what the other message is. All other messages belong to the same category because they are not based upon the Bible. The Bible is not in a series with the others. It stands absolutely alone. It claims an utter uniqueness. It makes claims for itself that no other book in the world can.

I shall not go into that now because I want to give you the message of the Bible. But were I disposed to do so, I could give you the proofs that the Bible itself provides for its unique and divine inspiration. And on top of that I could give you further proofs that we can deduce from the subsequent course of human history. But for now I am just making the assertion that the only view of men and women and life in the world that really meets the facts, the only view that explains why we are individually as we are at this moment, why the world is as it is and why history has been as it has been, is found in the pages of the Bible. I am here to assert that this book alone has an adequate explanation. If you take up any other view, you will find that it will fail you at some point or other. The Bible, I repeat, claims to be a unique book, a book given by God through men in various ways and brought into one. And what it does, of course, is to give us an account of the things that are vital and primary and fundamental.

Now I want to put all this in general at this point. I am doing this quite deliberately. The Bible is full of a great mass of detail, and my usual custom is to take one verse perhaps, or even less than that, and try to expound it. This is right. We must do that. And yet I believe it is good at times to look at the message as a whole, for I increasingly find that many people have never really seen the whole case put forward by the Bible. They have stumbled at some particular thing; they have stopped at one point. They have missed the whole because they have been over-immersed in one part. They have looked so much at individual trees that they have not seen the forest. So I am going to put this message in terms of the forest, in terms of the general statement of the Bible as it meets us in life as it is today and as it speaks to us. And as I do so, I think we shall see that all along the line the Bible is in blank contradiction to what is so generally and so popularly believed and assumed at the present time.

Certain truths that the Bible tells us are absolute essentials if we are to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. So what does it have to tell us? Well, the whole case is put in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. We have here the complete biblical view of history and of humanity. We need not go any further; it is all here. So what is it? What am I to make of life? How am I to understand myself, my problems, my disappointments, my unhappiness? How can I face all that? That is the question, is it not? And it is a perfectly fair and right question. But what am I to say about it?

Well, the Bible, in a most extraordinary way, starts like this: "In the beginning God ..." It starts with God. And at once I have shown you the ultimate distinction with respect to the views that are held about life. Because of necessity, before I begin to ask any questions about myself and my problems, I ought to ask questions like this: Where did the world come from? Where have I come from? What is life itself? What is its origin?

The tragedy of the world today is that it starts too near to its problems. The poet says, "The world is too much with us." That, he says, is our trouble. We are right in the midst of it, and we cannot see it because we are too near it. There are times when to see a thing you must get away from it.

And what should they know of EnglandWho only England know?

Rudyard Kipling, "The English Flag"

If you want to know England truly, travel abroad. If you want to appreciate your own country, go to another. If you simply stay in and walk about the streets of London, in the end you will know very little about London. You need a larger perspective, a distant view. You need to see the thing as a whole. Similarly, do not merely concentrate at once on your problem. Go back. Put it into its context.

To me, that is of the very essence. If you consult mathematicians or chemists — analytical chemists, in particular, or anybody who is having to deal with problems in these realms — and ask them, "How do you tackle a problem?" I think you will find invariably that they will tell you they never start directly with the thing itself. They first of all put it into a group and then into a larger group.

Take a chemist trying to discover what a given substance is. How does he do it? Well, first of all he employs certain broad tests. He eliminates a number of possibilities, and he gradually narrows these down and down and down until he comes to the essential properties of the substance. A physician making a diagnosis has to do exactly the same thing. He must not immediately concentrate on the particular symptom about which the patient is talking. No; the way to discover the cause is to start on a broader base, on a bigger canvas, as it were, and gradually narrow it down. You put certain things out of court and then others.

I once heard a notable physician talking about the way in which he diagnoses a patient. First, he listens to what the patient has to say. Then he examines the patient. So now he has a number of data. He has the patient's symptoms and complaints, and in addition he has his own investigation and discoveries. Then he said, "What I do is this: I say to myself, what are the possible ailments that can include and cover all this? And I put up all the possibilities as though I were putting up a number of pins. Then I stand back and throw several bowling balls at the pins. The pin that's left standing is the right diagnosis." That was his method.

I am trying to tell you that the same method should be applied in the whole question of your particular personal problems and mine. You come to me and say, "I'm unhappy. I'm conscious of a conflict. I'm in a crisis. What's the matter with me?" And the Bible says, "In the beginning God ..." as if it has forgotten all about you. But it has not! The only way to understand yourself or your life is to start with God. And right at the very beginning the Bible takes us there. If you are not clear about this, you will go wrong everywhere else.

It is of vital importance to every one of us, therefore, that we know whether or not there is a God. Is everything that exists the result of the activity of God, or is there some blind, impersonal force or energy or power behind everything? Am I face-to-face with a Being and with a Person? Or am I the victim of blind chance, of some accidental meeting of atoms or powers that are without personality, without mind, without reason, without understanding? Is it all blind, or is it all purposeful?

You must come to that. The diagnosis depends essentially upon that. So the Bible, there at the very beginning, starts with that. But the modern panaceas never do that, do they? The psychologist starts with you and ends with you, and so do all the others. They suggest things to you and do certain things to you. They try to bring forces and factors to play upon you. And it is you the whole time. That is why the world is as it is. But you cannot understand life, says the Bible, unless you realize that there, at the back of everything, before everything, is God.

We cannot define God. We cannot understand God. "Canst thou by searching find out God?" (Job 11:7). "The world by wisdom knew not God" (1 Corinthians 1:21). The mightiest Greek philosophers could not attain unto him. But the Bible asserts him. It says this is the revelation that God has given of himself. Now we must agree about this before we can go any further. We either agree that this great eternal God has been pleased to tell us about himself and to reveal and manifest himself — that here is the revelation, and it is in nature and creation also — or else we do not accept it.

The Bible tells us that God is and that God is eternal. Oh, we cannot understand that. Our minds are too small. We cannot conceive of God or eternity. We are so impure that we cannot imagine a Being of whom it can be said, "[he] is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5) and that he is "a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29), that he is absolutely holy in every respect, that he knows all and sees all and is all-powerful. Such truth boggles our minds. We do not understand. We were never meant to understand. If we could, we would be bigger than God. If my mind could go around all these things and I could put them on paper in my little philosophy, I would be god, and God would merely be a subject I am handling.

But the Bible says, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). We are confronted by one who addresses us with the words, "I AM THAT I AM" (Exodus 3:14) — Jehovah, the eternal God. Now if that is true, it will make a difference all along the line. You cannot reason with blind force. You cannot pray to energy. You cannot put your case and voice your plea to some great impersonal mass. But if God is God, our whole outlook is changed at once. God is personal — "I AM." God is the Father. God is the Son. God is the Holy Spirit. Three Persons in glory. That is the beginning.

But let us go on. The Bible tells us that the world came into being because the eternal God made it. It tells us that God is the Creator. You see, we are still talking about you, are we not? Yes, but we are not just looking at you and your symptoms; we are looking at your whole context. We are asking, where have you come from? How have you come into being? What is it all about?

"Ah," you say, "but what about this pain I want to get rid of?" Yes, my dear friend, I want to get rid of your pain, but I want to make a diagnosis first. I am not trying to issue an opiate. I do not simply want to give you a drug. We do not gather in church simply to sing and to persuade ourselves that all is well and to feel a little happier. Religion is not escapism. Everything else is escapism, but this is realism. So the Bible tells you that God made the world. It asserts creation. It says that God made everything out of nothing, that he said, "Let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). He made everything there is out of nothing by his own power, and he made it perfect. He looked at it, and he saw that it was good, and it was called paradise.

Is the world God's creation, or is it the result of some impersonal, accidental, evolutionary process? I think you can see again how this is a vital matter as we consider our problems in this world. You must believe one or the other of these two ideas. There is no other possibility. Either you believe that God created the world, or you believe the talk that gases — nobody knows how or where they came from — suddenly solidified and formed some primitive slime, and though there is no mind, no understanding, no law, no order, no purpose in anything, somehow or other blind, hidden forces so worked and manipulated and reacted against one another that from a very primitive kind of undefined life they developed into human beings with their brain and power, they produced to the complexity of the flower, the extraordinary instrument that we call the eye, and all the astounding things that happen in creation.