Welcome again to Things Unseen.

If there was some way of taking a poll of listeners to this podcast or indeed to any or all of the Ligonier programs,

a poll asking this question, what's your favorite passage in the Bible? Or what's been the most

important passage in the Bible for you? I'm fairly sure that some or all of Romans chapter 8

versus 28 through 39 would be near the top of the list and maybe actually be at the top.

And that's our theme this week.

Or more accurately, it's one specific feature of that passage that I want us to reflect on for

the next few days. By any stretch of the imagination, it's an amazing passage. When I read it,

I'm reminded of a comment my own church history professor made.

I don't think he would have called himself a conservative evangelical.

But I recall him saying one day in a lecture on the early fathers that if you want to be

convinced of the inspiration of the New Testament, what makes it different, you just need

to read the writings of the Christians who followed.

The difference is unmistakable.

And when you read this passage, Romans chapter 8, you're bound to think there's nothing

in human literature just like this.

It's a stupendously great passage. I want to read it for us in a moment,

and I encourage you just to listen and to let the glory of the words, as it were, marinate in your

soul during the day. But then I want to top and tail the reading of it with a couple of questions.

The first is this.

Do you ever read the Bible out loud to yourself?

Actually, until at least the time of St. Augustine,

...