All of the slides used in the message are available for viewing at this link. Parenthetical numbers (1) are inserted into the manuscript to indicate which slide is being referenced.

How do you eat an elephant? The answer is… not like I eat lasagna. 

The first time I went to Italy I had just left Colorado where I had worked as a ranch hand and done some tree clearing, and was in the early days of living in Mississippi and working in construction. In between those places I’d also worked on a ranch in Missouri, so I was a fairly… rural individual. Not the refined and cultured gentleman you see standing before you today. And anybody that knows me knows I like food and if you live in Mississippi there’s a good chance you like food more than folks that live, say, anywhere else in the world. So there I was, sitting at a 50 person potluck in Italy catered by the finest italian grandmothers that country had to offer. And it was a room full of 50 native italians, the tallest of whom might have been 5’6. All of em wearing skinny black clothing. None of them have the same visible appreciation for food as myself. And I see the chief grandmother walk in the room and she scans the room and her eyes land on me, the 6’2, 300 pound construction worker wearing the husky fit jeans, and the only person in the room who stands a chance against the meal she’s got in the kitchen. And she and I didn’t speak the same language but somehow in one look we understood each other perfectly. Each of us knew exactly what the other was about. So she disappears into the back room and returns with a lasagna roughly the size of one of those little fiats they drive over there. And she walks straight over to me and carves me out a portion the size of a shoebox. (Jim plug your ears this story has too much cholesterol for you now). 

Now the other italians start giving me looks, not of admiration like an American would, but of concern. Because they understand what I do not. But I am too focused to pay them any mind and I set about my work. Couple minutes later the shoebox is put away and I’m starting to feel a little sleepy. Italians still looking concerned. Well then the grandma comes back out and this time she’s got a helper and they have two dishes and they start serving everybody. I assume this must be desert and I’m emotionally preparing myself for the second half of the game. Little halftime locker room speech going on, little Ted Lasso on my shoulder telling me not to let the Europeans win. Well the dish gets around to me and I notice that it’s not desert. It’s pasta. No, not the lasagna again. New pasta. I look over at my friend who’s a native and I said “what’s this.” She said, “it’s a what you call, ‘second course.” And she says, “be sure to eat everything or my grandmother will be very sad.” And I said “how… how many courses are we talking about here?” And she says, “well this is a Sunday lunch. Soo.. not more than 7 or 8.” I was about as unprepared for that answer as the italian uber driver that tried to pick me up in one of those little fiats.

But listen, it’s January, and some of y’all might be staring down the barrel of a one year bible reading plan. Or maybe you’re newer to Christianity, or to OGC, or to Reformed theology and you’ve seen the Equipping Hour classes, the sermons, and the resource shelf books in the lobby, all the chiasms and endless sermon slides, and it’s just a lot of information and it feels a little… chaotic. Or at least really heady. And if that’s you that is totally understandable and unlike that sweet Italian grandmother I want to tell you what we are doing and why we are doing it. Because it’s true that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time but if you get invited to somebody’s house for dinner and you don’t know up front they are planning on 8 courses of elephant at some point during the meal I don’t care how good the cookin is it’s gunna stop feeling like hospitality and starting feeling like hostility. So today, at the beginning of the year, I want to step back for a minute and all of us just look at the big picture. What are we actually trying to do here? So just like we will, from time to time, preach one sermon on a whole book of the bible, today I’m going to preach about the whole bible. But my goal in doing so isn’t just to get you to pace yourself. I want you to understand the purpose. Not just of what we do at OGC. The purpose of everything. The reason you exist. The reason it’s better that history happened than that it didn’t. And if God will help us today it will all make sense and we will be out of here in time for lunch. Hopefully a lunch with a reasonable number of courses. 

The way we are going to cover all of that is by looking at the structure of the whole bible. A structure that is made up of promises. The whole bible is structured by God making and keeping promises. And the word that the bible most often uses for these promises is the word, “covenant.” We’re going to look at 6 covenants today, and see how all of them fit and work together to support humanity’s one great purpose: multiplying the praise of the grace of Jesus. And the first covenant we will look at is God’s covenant with Adam. And since this covenant sets the stage for everything after it, we will spend just a little longer on this one and pick up speed as we go. But this is where it all starts. (2) God created the heavens and the earth and he made man and woman in his image to rule the earth, and it was all good. And he made a promise, that is a covenant with Adam, and with all of his descendants - which is every human who’s ever lived. And this Covenant had a purpose. Which meant Adam, and all of us, had a purpose. And the purpose, that is the instructions that God gave to Adam & Eve for what they should do with their life, was this: (3) be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. And if they did these things, there would be (4) blessings. They would inherit the whole earth and he would live forever. And the context of this promise was a perfect world. This was the setting, the circumstances of Adam’s promise. (5) the context is that he and his wife and all their descendants would get to live in God’s presence, they wouldn’t experience sin or death, they would have everything they needed, and they would have a glorious purpose. It was all very simple. (6) They were made, given a purpose, and shown how to reach it.

But if they didn’t obey there would be curses. (7) And we later found out all of what those would be, because they didn’t obey. Those included that their purpose, that is their ability to be fruitful and multiply, would be made painful and limited. Bearing children and subduing the earth would be painful and often futile endeavors. They would also be cast out of God’s presence. And as God literally said to them, when he warned them what would happen if they ate it, “dying you will die.” And that turned out to mean both physical and spiritual death would enter the world. Not only would their bodies give out, so would their souls. And they would experience spiritual deadness towards God and towards others. That deadness is what we call, “sin.” (8) And all of that came to pass when they ate the fruit and humanity fell with them. 

(9) And the deadness began to spread and people got worse and worse, and it looked like humanity was in a free fall from grace with no end in sight. So God intervened (10) and he sent a flood to wipe out everyone. To bring final judgement upon sin in everybody except for one, righteous man and his family. (11) One man named Noah. And God decided to start over with Noah. He saved Noah and his family through the flood with the ark and in Genesis 9 he made a covenant with Noah very similar to the one he had made with Adam. (12) This time, the instructions were once again to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth, but he wasn’t told to subdue it.  And the blessings weren’t nearly as good (13). Now Noah was told that the land and the creatures would be subjugated to him through fear. God was going to give the land and all the animals to him for food and they would be afraid of him - partially and unwillingly subdued through fear - which isn’t how it was meant to be but it’s better than nothing. And God also put the brakes on death. He promised that he would never again wipe everyone out with a flood, and that he would hold any animal or man who killed a person responsible for it. (14) And the context of this covenant, the circumstances for Noah’s obedience, is that he would still suffer the curses of the first covenant, but they would be reduced and limited by the blessings of this new covenant.

What do I mean by that? Well look at the list of curses from the covenant that Adam broke (15). Still true that humanity’s purpose would be painful and limited, and that the earth would resist them, but it wouldn’t just kill them. God had subdued the creation with fear. And by telling them to be fruitful and multiply he reminded them that, though bearing children would be painful, it was still possible. Small comfort, but some comfort nonetheless. Enough to make you wonder if humanity’s purpose, though painful, was still possible (16). But Noah and his sons made it less than a chapter past the promise before they sinned against God and showed that God had not wiped out all the sinners in the flood. (17) And it seemed clear that, left to their own devices, they wouldn’t be able to fill the earth with people who serve the Lord. So 400 years later God tried again with another, seemingly righteous man. A man named Abraham (18). 

And God told Abraham to walk before him and be blameless. And if he could do that, (19) God would make him fruitful and multiply him. He would make Abraham’s descendants a blessing to all the nations on the earth. And he would be their God and they would be their people. And this sounds like some real promising progress (20). God’s taking on a lot of responsibility here. (21) Remember the context of these covenants is always the curse of the covenant with Adam, minus the blessings of subsequent covenants. And this covenant introduces some significant blessings. (22) Let’s check back in with Adam’s curses. Bearing children would still be painful, but now it’s not just possible, God’s taking responsibility for the multiplication. Be fruitful and I will multiply you. That’s a serious leg up. And down towards the end, humanity is still spiritually dead towards God, but he is promising to be the God of Abraham and his descendants anyway. And listen, Abraham wasn’t perfect he did some dumb stuff, but God forgave him. And his story seemed to end well. And same with his imediate descendants, they did dumb stuff but God kept forgiving them. He didn’t make new covenants with Isaac and Jacob, he just kept reestablishing his covenant with Abraham through his descendants like he promised. And you start to get a pretty decent streak going and like everything isn’t perfect but it kinda seems to be working out until Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egypt and their descendants end up becoming slaves there. No being fruitful and subdeuing the earth, they get subdued. But God did multiply them like he promised he would. 

Then God delivers them from Egypt and makes a covenant with Moses, their representative. And this looks promising (23). God had multiplied them, he had rescued them, and now he makes another covenant with them. This time he doesn’t just vaguely say, “walk before me and be blameless,” he gets really specific with the purpose and the instructions (24). This is what that looks like to walk before me and be blameless. It means love God, love others. Aka, The 10 commandments. And if you do that, big blessings coming your way (25). I will give you a head start on multiplying and subduing the earth. I’m going to give you a part of it for your own, and subdue all your enemies for you there. I will make you prosper in the land in your work and in bearing children. In this sacred space I will give you reprieve from the effects of Adam’s curse like barenness, sickness, war, and poverty. And I will dwell with you in this land. All you have to do is love me and love others in these specific ways. But if you don’t (26), the curses will basically be the opposite of all the blessings. Barrenness, sickness, poverty, war, it’ll be like you just left Eden all over again. That’s Deuteronomy 4-9 in a nutshell. Some of you are getting stressed because we are doing the whole bible and I just did Deuteronomy about 20 minutes in but don’t panic. We are on track.

Remember the context of these covenants. (27) The continued curse of the first covenant, minus the blessings of every covenant since then. Let’s check our progress. 

(28) The earth is still resisting you, but it’s not gunna kill you and now, I will give you a home. Bearing children will be painful but I will multiply you. You were cast out of God’s presence but now he’s going to come and dwell in your midst. And he will still be your God, and now you have commandments to show you both how to love him and how to love one another. Oh man, surely we are getting close now. That purpose must be just within reach. In fact, in Deuteronomy 30, God tells the people “this commandment is not too hard for you! This isn’t unfair! This is reasonable! This is even generous! In Deuteronomy 10 he said, “Just circumcise your hearts and do it!” But oh boy did they not do it. Judges is an occasionally horrifying account of exactly how badly they did not do it. No matter how many judges God sent to give them another chance, they could not do it. 

(29) So God found another man and made another covenant with him and his descendants. God’s covenant with King David (30). Here the instructions and purpose were clear, walk before me and keep all my statutes, again meaning the 10 commandments and the law which the king was to make his own handwritten copy of, and now he (or at least his descendants) were to build a house for God in Jerusalem. And again there were blessings for David and his heirs (31), wonderful blessings! God promised to give them rest from their enemies, to establish their kingdom forever, to discipline but not to leave them when they sinned, and he told David “I will be to you a Father and you will be to me a Son.” (32) The curses for disobedience would therefore be discipline when they sinned, but not permanent exile. God would always remember them. And, as always, (33) the context of this covenant was the continued curses of the first covenant with Adam, minus the continued blessings of the covenants since. Let’s check that progress one more time (34). 

As fallen descendants of Adam, their purpose would still be painful and limited. The earth would still resist them, but it wouldn’t kill them. And God had given them a home. Bearing children would still be painful but God had multiplied them. They had been cast out of God’s presence but he had built his house among them. They were still physically and spiritually dying towards God and others, but he had promised to not only be their God, but to be their Father. And he had given them laws for how to love one another, and even now rest from their enemies who even admired and respected them. This is as good as it gets in the Old Testament. But just like the Patriarchs before them, (35) David and his descendants fell. And oh man, did they fall. The higher God’s grace raised them back towards their purpose, the farther they fell back down. Their spiritual deadness kept them at every turn from being able to attain to their purpose. Even when God’s grace brought them so painfully close. 

Something beyond everything that had been tried before would be necessary if God’s people were to ever reach their purpose. Fortunately, as we are about to see, God was prepared to make that haappen (36). But before we get there I want to point out something crazy. In terms of when the books of the bible were written, most of the bible was written here (37). In between God’s covenants with David and Jesus. Of the 611k words in the original languages of the bible, 319k of them were written in this time period compared to only 291k total words written outside of this time period. What I take from this, is that most of the bible was written in a context of reflecting on this reality (38). Now it was also hoping in something better, but that hope was born out of a context of none of this working. God’s grace was raising them higher with each new covenant, but that only meant they were falling farther and harder every time. It’s like trying to get somebody with two broken legs to stand up - I don’t care how high you lift them off the ground, when they put weight on those legs they go back down. 

All of the history of Israel in Judges, and Kings, and Chronicles, all of the poetry in Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, every last one of the prophets, it was all reflecting on this reality. All of the wisdom books are looking at the grace of God’s covenants and saying “this should work, if you are wise you will do it” and all of the prophetic books are looking back on history and saying “but you didn’t do it. So now here’s what is going to happen.” In the Psalms you even see King David himself, at the pinnacle of God’s covenant grace in the Old Testament, still struggling and falling, and in Psalm 51 he figures it out. He says the sacrificial system won’t fix my sin or please you. I need you to uphold me. And not just externally, he says, (39)  “uphold me with a willing spirit.” Then I will worship you and you will delight in it. David understood that it was God who had lifted him up this far, but it would be God who must lift him up further still. This is the message of most of the Old Testament. And so the stage was set for Christ to come in and do all of that. And so, one last time, God made a new covenant, this time with a truly righteous man, and all of his spiritual descendants after him. And he gave them a very familiar sounding purpose: (40) “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

(41) And remember, the context for the covenants is the curse of the first covenant, minus the blessings of the subsequent covenants. Now just look at everything this new covenant accomplished (42). Your fruitfulness, that is your purpose, will be (43) restored and magnified. The earth will resist you for now (44) but Christ has overcome it and will go to prepare a place for you with him until you inherit the earth. Bearing children will be painful but (45) Jesus will multiply you through His Spirit. You were cast out of God’s presence but (46) now he has come to where you are, as you are, and will build you up as his house. Physically you will die (47) but then you will live again. Spiritually you were dead but (48) now you are alive, both to God (49) who is your God, and your Father, and your husband, and also towards others (50) as you are enabled to love not only your neighbors but your enemies as well. Do you see what has happened? (51) Adam has been erased. “Adam’s likeness now efaced, stamp thine image in its place.”

Now listen, you need to know that this isn’t just interesting, it’s amazing. Because it didn’t start with Chirst, it was finished with him. This was always the plan. God’s grace lifting people in the Old Covenant higher and higher was not a cruel exercise in futility. (52) It was the progressive building of a structure that was supported at every point by the intended grace of Jesus Christ. (53) The Old Covenant by itself was weak, and only ever produced one directional result. Down. The only people (54) who got pulled upwards were those who were also participating in what was hidden but now has been revealed: the Covenant of Grace. You put it all together (55) and that’s called Redemptive History. It’s the story of the Bible. But why, though? What’s the purpose? It’s the praise of God’s glorious grace in Jesus Christ. Hear it again from our passage today:

eBlessed be fthe God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing gin the heavenly places, 4 heven as he ichose us in him jbefore the foundation of the world, that we should be kholy and blameless before him. In love 5 lhe predestined us2 for madoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, naccording to the purpose of his will, 6 oto the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in pthe Beloved. 7 qIn him we have rredemption sthrough his blood, tthe forgiveness of our trespasses, uaccording to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 vmaking known3 to us the mystery of his will, naccording to his purpose, which he wset forth in Christ 10 as a plan for xthe fullness of time, yto unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.11 In him we have obtained zan inheritance, ahaving been predestined baccording to the purpose of him who works all things according to cthe counsel of his will, 12 so that we who… hope in Christ might be dto the praise of his glory.

As Jesus said on the road to Emaus in Luke 24 (56), “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Do you see the point? Do you see the purpose? Of all of it. Every word in the bible, every person who’s ever lived, even your very own life, do you see the purpose? It is the multiplication of the praise of God’s grace in Jesus throughout all of creation! That’s why it’s all happening. Do you see how much bigger this is than the things we naturally think about and care about and work for? Let me ask you this. If God were to answer all of your prayers right now. If he were to give you all of the things you are most hoping for in life. How many of those things would bring praise to the glory of God’s grace in Jesus? If you were to achieve everything you are working towards right now… How much praise would God get for his grace in Jesus because of it? Would it be a little bit or a lot? 

And let me also ask you, if people had been able to just pull themselves up by the bootstraps after the fall, how much praise would God’s grace through Jesus get? If humanity had never fallen, how much praise would God’s grace through Jesus get? If you were naturally capable of everything he has called you to do, how much praise would God’s grace through Jesus receive from you? The grace of God in Jesus Christ has been the purpose and the sustaining cause of every part of redemptive history from the beginning. It was hidden, but now it’s been revealed. Now we know it was always from him, and to him, and for him. That’s Romans 3. (57)

How did it all happen? Paul explains: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for fall have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. Why did it all happen? (58) This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

It happened so that God’s glorious grace through Jesus would be praised. You exist so that God’s glorious grace through Jesus will be praised. You’re made to do things you cannot do without Jesus, so that Jesus will get the glory from both your works and their fruit. And everybody gets so mad with God like, “why do you want me to do X? It’s too hard to do X. Why is the world so broken? I could do X if it wasn’t broken.” The problem is never with us, it’s with what God asks and the world that God made. We don’t want to do what God asks, and we don’t want to do it with God’s help, and it can never be our fault, because at the end of the day we want the glory for ourselves. The first lie ever heard by a human was “You can be the best version of yourself without God” and we have been buying that godforsaken lie every moment since then. Blaming the snake, and the woman, and the thorns, and the thistles, and the rules, and God and anybody but ourselves, because we refuse to acknowledge that our reason for existing is glorifying the grace of God in Jesus Christ. So what then? Are we made to continue sinning so that his grace may about? Absolutely not. We were made to walk in our purpose, but not until we learned to praise him for making us able to do it. That way he gets more glory. 

That means we have no excuse. Every ideal circumstance we can think of is a circumstance in which somebody has already tried and failed without God. I could do it, if it weren’t for all the evil people in the world. Ok, flood wiped em out. Noah couldn’t do it. I could do it if the economy wasn’t so bad. If the government wasn’t so corrupt. Neither Moses or David could do it. I could do it if God would just give me a spouse or children. Adam and Abraham couldn’t do it either. You know who did it? A poor man born to unwed parents in a donkey’s stable who grew up under the corrupt occuption of a foreign oppressive government to be a man without a home, a wife, or children who’s church hurt culminated in his crucifixion. But he did it. And he made it possible for you. He took every curse on himself, earned every blessing by keeping every promise, and then poured all of those blessings and none of those curses out on you, in order to make it possible for you to do what you were made to do. As Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians (59), “all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

There’s a whole generation of us that grew up on John Piper’s seashells sermon. Don’t waste your life. Don’t live a life aimed at retiring early so you can pick up seashells on the beach until you die. And we heard that. So we all went out and got jobs that pay enough for us to give a little to foreign missions and then lock ourselves in our bedrooms and watch clips of Desiring God, Ligonier, Tim Keller and David Platt on youtube until we die. And the sad irony is that a collection of biblical insights and knowledge, if not leveraged to make disciples of all nations and teach them everything Jesus commanded us, is not much more useful than a jar full of seashells on a shelf. I’m so glad that our chairs in equipping hour and sunday service are full but I’m so worried that our childrens and youth ministry volunteer rosters are not. And that when we held a training for formation group leaders nobody came. And please know, I’m not trying to guilt anybody into discipleship because the Old Testament repeatedly proved that doesn’t work, but I want to alert you to the gravity of the situation because if we can’t make disciples of the people in this building we will never get the ones out there. I’m not saying do it or God’s mad at you because the cross made sure that’s not true but it also made sure your purpose is possible and if you’re not living it you’re wasting a wonderful gift. 

Now obviously, many people are already volunteering a lot, and many people have legitimate reasons they can’t get involved more and I am not talking to either of those groups here. But if you’re here and you’re thinking, “who am I to disciple somebody?” Remember the great commission started with “all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go make disciples” and ended with “and I'll be with you always” and I just really really encourage you not to tell Jesus it’s not your place to do what he asked you to do and promised to help you do. And if you’re here and you’re thinking there are other people better equipped to do this well maybe but God’s plan isn’t to use the best equipped person it’s to give weak people His Spirit of power, and His Word, which is suitable for doctrine, teaching, correction, reproof, training in righteousness, that they might be lacking in nothing - fully equipped for every good work. So that when they do it, despite not having any natural reason for being able to do it, he gets glory for it. And that’s what you see in Revelation. You see Heaven full of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, and the most glorious ones there are described as having conquered not through power or competency but through martyrdom. And all of them are praising the glory and the grace of Jesus.

So throughout the rest of this year you’ll be hearing a lot about discipleship. I was talking with Jim about this a few days ago and he remarked that “discipleship is what the church does. When that’s missing, you have to find something else to fill the room with and that never goes well.” So when you see all the stuff about head/heart/hands, the books about discipleship in the resource library, the equipping hour class on discipleship, the sermon series, and the formation group relaunch this year, that’s why. And we aren’t going to do it perfectly, there will be hiccups, but let me encourage you not to let the hiccups become excuses not to participate because the story of the bible is one of God removing all the excuses to our purpose. Our purpose, our very reason for existing, is multiplying the praise of the grace of God in Jesus in all the world. And that means making disciples. We are to be fruitful and multiply. And now we know that it is possible, with His help. So now let’s ask him to help us do that.