Let me read to you once more, verses 11 and 12 in the 11th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall?

God forbid.

But rather through their fall, salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.

Now, if the fall of them be the riches of the world and the diminishing of them the riches of

the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?

Here in this 11th verse we are beginning to look at the second section in this 11th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Those of you

were here when we began considering this 11th chapter at the beginning of October. Well, remember

that we suggested that the chapter could be divided very conveniently into three sections. The first

section is in the first ten verses. The second section runs from verse 11 to verse 32.

And then in a final section, we have that extraordinary and amazing and glorious doxology.

And furthermore, we've seen this, that in the first, that the subject, if you like, of the whole chapter,

let's get this clear still in our minds,

the subject of the whole chapter is this.

What then has the apostle been teaching about the position and the condition of the Jews in chapters 10 and 11?

He's been showing that as a nation they are patently rejected,

and that speaking generally they have not believed and obeyed the gospel. So the Apostle says,

well, now then what is the position? I say then hath God cast away his people. Is that what he's been teaching?

And this is what he takes up in this chapter and considers it in two respects. In that first section,

which we've now finished, the first ten verses, he was concerned to show that the rejection of Israel was not total.

That when he says that the nation, as it were, is on one side and is rejected, he doesn't

refer to every single individual in it.

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