I should like to consider with you once more the first three verses in the ninth chapter

of the epistle to the Romans.

The epistle to the Romans, the ninth chapter in the first three verses.

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness

and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ

for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Now, we've already examined the particular statements which are made in these three verses,

and we have tried to gather their meaning and their import.

And we have also looked at the Apostle's reasons

for writing in this manner concerning his fellow countrymen, the Jews.

Now, you notice that these three verses lead on, of course,

to the next two verses in which he gives

an account of the peculiar position and privileges of his fellow countrymen.

But before we go on to consider what he says in those two verses, I feel that it is very

essential that we should draw certain deductions

and conclusions and gather to ourselves certain lessons from this most extraordinary statement

which he makes here in the first three verses.

I announced at the end last Friday night that I would do that, and I'm proposing

to do that this evening. It's a unique statement in many ways, a very personal statement,

and as I've pointed out, one of the most remarkable which the apostle has ever made concerning

himself. He repeats it, not in such fullness at the beginning of the next chapter and indeed

of the 11th chapter. But here it is in its most striking and remarkable form at the beginning

...