Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles, this morning to Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8 for a time of study in, in the word this morning. we're doing a verse by verse study through Romans chapter 567, and 8, and as we continue in our study of this section of Romans, we come this morning back to Romans chapter 8, verse 17. And basically this morning we're going to spend all of our time in verse 17. We were able to cover all that's in verse 17, but in an overview and a rushed fashion at the end of our preaching time last week, but there were some loose ends that that we had to leave untied and we'll seek to tie those up this morning.
By the way, am I echoing? OK, can you de-echo me so that this congregation will only hear me once, which is enough. if you want to give a title to the, message this morning, it would be, suffering together with Christ, suffering together, with Christ, and basically, virtually all of the message this morning will be on the phrase that we find in verse 17, wherein Paul says, if indeed, we suffer together. If indeed we suffer with him, and we'll see that literally that is if indeed we suffer together and we'll try to unpack that and approach this with questions and try to explore what the answer to those questions might be.
Let me start with this though. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, there is a mountain, Cuercovado, that rises about 22,300 ft above the city. And at the peak of that mountain is a massive statue of Christ that is over 600 tons and rises itself 130 ft over this mountain peak that overlooks the city of Rio de Janeiro, and a number of years ago, a German writer Rolf Italiander wrote a work. In which he imagined a poverty stricken man living in the city below, making his way out of the slums where he and everyone he knew lived and beginning a laborious climb up the slope.
Of this mountain where the statue of Christ the Redeemer stands, and he painstakingly and with difficulty climbed his way the 2310 ft up this mountain until he got to the foot of this massive statue of the Christ. And when he got to this statue, he began to pray to the statue and in his prayer, he said this. He says, I have climbed up to you, Christ, from the filthy confined quarters down there to put before you these considerations. There are 900,000 of us down there in the slums of that city....
