or taste of the heavenly light. This sermon was preached in the early part of 1857 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text comes from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 1, verse 25. Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, it is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.

Do you remember the occasion which caused these words to be written? The children of Israel sent twelve men as spies into the land of Canaan, who brought back with them the fruit of the land. And among that fruit was a cluster of grapes from the valley of Eshcol, too heavy to be carried by one man, and which therefore had to be carried by two of them on a pole between them.

But I will not speak about the fruit. but only say that as they learned about Canaan by the fruit of the land brought to them by the spies, so you and I, even while we are here on this earth, if we are the Lord's beloved, may learn something of what heaven is by certain blessings which are brought to us even while we are still here on earth.

" The Israelites were sure that Canaan was a fertile land. when they saw and ate the fruits which it produced, brought back by their brethren. Perhaps there was only a little for so many, and yet those who did eat of the fruit were caused immediately to understand that it must have been a superior soil that produced such fruit.

Now then, beloved, we who love the Lord Jesus Christ have had clusters of the grapes from the valley of Eshkol, We have had some fruits of heaven ever since we have been on earth, and by them we are able to judge the richness of the soil of paradise which brings forth such rare and choice delights.

I will therefore present to you some views of heaven in order to give you some idea how it is that the Christian on earth enjoys a foretaste of the blessings that are yet to be revealed. Possibly there are scarcely two Christians who have the same views of heaven, even though they all expect to go to the same heaven. Yet the most prominent features in heaven are different to each different mind according to its disposition.

I will confess what is to me the most prominent feature of heaven judging at the present moment. At another time I may love heaven better for another thing, but lately I have learned to love heaven as a place of security, a place of security. We have been greatly saddened as we have seen some prominent Christian professors turning from their profession of faith. Yes, and even worse, some of the Lord's own beloved children committing grievous sins which have brought disgrace upon their character and injury to their souls.

I have learned to look to heaven lately as a place where we will never, never sin, where our feet will be firmly fixed upon a rock, where there is neither tripping nor sliding, where faults will be unknown, where we will have no need to keep watch against an untiring enemy, because there is no foe that will annoy us, where we will not be on our guard day and night, watching against the incursion of foes, for there the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest.

I have looked upon it as a land of complete security, where our clothing will always be white, where the face will always be anointed with fresh oil, where there is no fear of slipping or turning away, but where we will stand firm forever. And I ask you, if that is a true view of heaven, and I am sure it is one feature of it. Don't the saints now on earth enjoy some fruits of paradise even in this sense? Don't we even in these huts and villages below sometimes taste the joys of this blissful security?

The doctrine of God's word is that all who are in union with the Lamb are safe. that all believers must stay on their path, that those who have committed their souls to the keeping of Christ will find Him a faithful and unchangeable Keeper.

On such a doctrine we may enjoy security even on earth, not that high and glorious security which renders us free from every slip and trip, but nevertheless as great a security because it secures us against ultimate ruin and causes us to be certain that we will attain to eternal bliss.

And Beloved, have you never sat down and reflected on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints? I am sure you have. And God has brought home to you a sense of your security in the person of Christ. He has told you that your name is engraved on His hand. He has whispered in your ear the promise, Do not fear, I am with you. You have been led to look upon him, the great security of the covenant, as faithful and true, and therefore duty-bound to present you, the weakest of the family, with all the chosen race, before the throne of God.

And in such sweet contemplation, I am sure you have been drinking some of the juices of his spiced pomegranates. You have had some of the choice fruits of paradise. You have had some of the enjoyments which the perfect saints have above in a sense of your complete and eternal security in Christ Jesus.

Oh, how I love that doctrine of the perseverance of the saints! I will at once renounce the pulpit when I cannot preach it, for any other form of teaching seems to me to be an empty desert and a howling wilderness. as unworthy of God as it would be beneath even my acceptance, frail worm as I am.

I could never ever believe or preach a gospel which saves me today and rejects me tomorrow. A gospel which puts me in Christ's family one hour and makes me a child of the devil the next. A gospel which justifies and then condemns me. A gospel which pardons me and afterwards casts me down into hell.

Such a gospel is abhorrent to reason itself and is contrary to the mind of God, whom we delight to serve.

Every true believer in Jesus can sing with toplity.

My name from the palms of his hands,
eternity will not erase.
Impressed on his heart,
it remains in marks of indelible grace.
Yes, I to the end will endure.
as sure as the promise is given,
more happy but not more secure,
the glorified spirits in heaven.

Yes, beloved, we do enjoy a sense of perfect security even as we dwell in this land of wars and conflicts. As the spies brought their brethren clusters of the grapes, so in the security we enjoy we have a foretaste and guarantee of the bliss of paradise.

In the next place, most probably the greater part of you love to think of heaven under another aspect, a place of perfect rest, a place of perfect rest.

Son of toil, you love to come to church because it is there you sit to hear God's word and rest your wearied body. When you have wiped the hot sweat from your burning brow, you have often thought of heaven, where your labors will be over, and have sung with sweet emphasis, there will I bathe my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest, and not a wave of trouble roll across my peaceful breast.

Rest, rest, rest, that is what you want. And to me this idea of heaven is very beautiful. Rest I know I will never have beneath this sky. While Christ's church is as cruel as it is, for the most cruel of masters is the church of Christ, I have served it and am nearly hounded to my grave by Christian ministers perpetually requiring me to do the impossibilities that they know no mortal strength can accomplish. I am willing to labor until I drop, but I cannot do more, yet I am perpetually assailed on every side until, go where I may, there seems no rest for me until I sleep in my grave.

And I do look forward to heaven with some degree of happiness. There I will rest from labors constant and perpetual, though much loved. And you too, you have been toiling long to gain an object that you have sought after. You will be glad when you get to heaven. You have said if you could get it, you would lie down and rest. You have toiled after a certain amount of riches. You have said if you could finally gain a certain experience that you've longed after, then you could rest. Or you have been laboring long to gain a certain point of character, and then you have said you would lay down your arms and rest. Yes, but you have not reached it yet.

And you love heaven because heaven is the goal of the racer, the target of the arrow of existence. You love heaven because it will be an eternal rest for the poor, weary struggler on earth. You love it as a place of rest. And do we never enjoy a foretaste of heaven on earth in that sense? Oh, yes, beloved. Blessed be God. We who have believed enter that rest. Our peace is like a river, and our righteousness like the waves of the sea. God may give to his people rest, even the kind of rest that waits for the people of God.

We have stormy trials and bitter troubles in the world, but we have learned to say, be at rest, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you. Did you never in times of great distress go into your closet and there on your knees pour out your heart before God? Did you never feel after you had done so that you had bathed yourself in rest so that you felt? Let cares like a wild deluge come and storms of sorrow fall. You do not care the least about them. Though wars and disturbances were raging all around you, you were kept in perfect peace. For you had found a great protecting shield in Christ. Yes, you had looked on the face of God's anointed one.

Ah, Christian, that rest without a flutter of disturbance, that rest so calm and serene, which in your deepest troubles you have been enabled to enjoy by being close to Christ, is to you a cluster of the mighty fruit of heaven. one grape of the heavenly cluster which you will soon partake of in the land of the hereafter. Here again you see we can have a foretaste of heaven and realize what it is even while we are here on earth.

That idea of heaven as a place of rest will also suit some lazy professors of Christianity and therefore let me give you the very opposite of it. I do think that one of the worst sins a man can be guilty of in this world is to be idle. I can almost forgive a drunkard, but I think there is very little mercy for the lazy man. I think a man who is idle has as good a reason to be repentant before God as David did when he was an adulterer. For the most abominable thing in the world is for a man to let the grass grow up to his ankles and to do nothing about it. God never sent a man into the world to be idle. There are some who make a profession of labor, but who do nothing from year to year. The next idea of heaven is this, that it is a place of uninterrupted service, a place of uninterrupted service. It is a place where they serve God day and night in His temple and never know exhaustion and are never required to sleep

Do you know the sweetness of work? For although we must complain when people expect impossibilities of us, it is the highest enjoyment of life to be busily engaged for Christ. Tell me the day I do not preach, and I will tell you the day in which I am not happy. But the day in which it is my privilege to preach the gospel and labor for Christ is generally the day of my peaceful and quiet enjoyment.

Service is delight. Praising God is pleasure. Laboring for Him is the highest delight a mortal can know. Oh, how sweet it must be to sing His praises and never feel that the throat is dry. Oh, how blessed to flap the wing forever and never feel it to be weary. Oh, what sweet enjoyment to run His errands. ever more to circle around the throne of God in heaven while eternity will last, and never once lay the head on a pillow, never once feel the throbbings of fatigue, never once the pangs that admonish us that we need to cease, but to keep on forever like the days of eternity, a broad river rolling on with perpetual floods of labor. Oh, that must be enjoyment. That must indeed be a heaven to serve God day and night in His temple.

But you have served God on earth and have had foretaste of that. I wish some of you knew the sweetness of labor a little more. For although labor causes sweat, it brings about sweetness too, especially labor for Christ. There is a satisfaction before the work There is a satisfaction in the work, there is a satisfaction after the work, and there is a satisfaction in looking for the fruits of the work, and a great satisfaction when we get those fruits. Labor for Christ is, indeed, the dressing room of heaven, if it is not heaven itself. It is one of the most blissful foretastes of it.

Thank the living God, Christian, if you can do anything for your Master. Thank Him if it is your privilege to do the least thing for Him. For remember, in doing so, He has given you a taste of the grapes of Eshcol. But you lazy people, you do not get the grapes of Eshcol because you are too lazy to carry that big cluster. You would like to eat the grapes without the trouble of gathering them, but you do not care to go forth and serve God. You sit still and look after yourselves, but what do you do for other people? You go to your place of worship, you talk about your Sunday school and your church's visitation of the sick, and so on. Yet you never teach in the Sunday school and you never visit a sick person, and yet you take a great deal of the credit to yourself while you do nothing at all.

You will never know much of the enjoyments of heavenly glory until you know a little of the work of the kingdom here on earth. Another view of heaven is that it is a place of complete victory and glorious triumph. It is a place of complete victory and glorious triumph. This is the battlefield. Heaven is the triumphant procession. This is the land of the sword and the spear. Heaven is the land of the wreath and the crown. This is the land of the garment rolled in blood and of the dust of the fight. Heaven is the land of the trumpet's joyful sound. It is the place of the white robe and the shout of conquest. Oh, what a thrill of joy will shoot through the hearts of all the blessed when their conquest will be complete in heaven, when death itself, the last of foes, will be slain, when Satan will be dragged captive to the feet of Jesus Christ, when Christ will have overthrown sin and trampled corruption as the filth of the streets. when the great shout of universal victory will rise from the hearts of all the redeemed. What a moment of pleasure that will be!

O dear brethren, you and I have foretaste of even that. We know what conquests, what souls' battles we have even heard. Did you never struggle against an evil heart and finally overcome it? Oh, with what joy did you lift up your eyes to heaven the tears flowing down your cheeks and say, Lord, I bless you that I have been able to overcome that sin. Did you ever have a strong temptation? And did you wrestle hard with it and know what it was to sing with great joy? My feet slipped, but your mercy held me up.

Have you, like Bunyan's Christian in that wonderful book, Pilgrim's Progress, fought with old Apollyon And have you seen him flap his dragon wings and fly away? There you had a foretaste of heaven. You have had just a glimmer of what the ultimate victory will be. In the death of that one Philistine, you have had the destruction of the whole army. That Goliath that fell beneath your sling and stone was only one out of the multitude who must yield their bodies to the birds of heaven.

God gives you partial triumphs that they may be the guarantee of ultimate and complete victory. Go on and conquer, and let each conquest, though difficult and strenuously contested, be to you as a grape of Eshkol, a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

Furthermore, without doubt, one of the best views we can ever give of heaven is this, that it is a state of complete acceptance with God, complete acceptance with God recognized and felt in the conscience. I suppose that a great part of the joy of the blessed saints consists in a knowledge that in heaven there will be nothing in them to which God will be hostile, that there will be nothing that can mar their peace with God, that they will be completely in union with the principles and thoughts of the Most High, that his love will be set on them, that their love will be set on him, that they will be one with God in every respect.

Well, beloved, have we not enjoyed a sense of acceptance here below? Blotted and blurred by many doubts and fears, yet there have been moments when we have known ourselves as well accepted as we will know ourselves to be, even when we stand before the throne. There have been bright days with some of us when we could be certain that God was true and when afterward, feeling that the Lord knows them that are his, we could say, and I know that I am his too.

Then have we known the meaning of Dr. Watts when he sang these words.

When I can say, my God is mine.
When I can feel thy glory shine.
I tread the world beneath my feet
and all that earth calls good or great.
While such a scene of sacred joys
our raptured eyes and souls employs,
here we could sit and gaze away
a long and everlasting day.

We had such a clear view of the perfection of Christ's righteousness that we felt that God had accepted us and we could be nothing but happy. We had such a sense of the worth of the blood of Christ, we felt sure that our sins were all pardoned and that they could never, never be mentioned again forever. And beloved, though I have spoken of other joys, let me say, this is the cream of them all, to know ourselves accepted in God's sight. Oh, to feel that I, a guilty worm, am now received in my father's arms. That I, a lost prodigal, am now feasting at his table with delight. That I, who once heard the voice of his anger, now listen to the notes of his love. This is joy, this is joy unspeakable. What more can they know up there than that? And were it not that our sense of it were so imperfect, we might bring heaven down to earth. and might at least dwell in the suburbs of that celestial city, if we were not privileged to go inside the gates.

So you see again, we can have clusters of the grapes of the Valley of Eshkol in that sense. Seeing that heaven is a state of acceptance, we too can know and feel that acceptance and rejoice in it here on earth.

And again, my friends, Heaven is a state of great and glorious manifestations. A state of great and glorious manifestations. You look forward to your experience in heaven. You sing, then will I see and hear and know all I desired or wished below. And every power find a sweet employ in that eternal world of joy. You are now looking at heaven darkly through a glass. There you will see face to face. Christ looks down on the Bible, and the Bible is his looking glass. You look into it, and you see the face of Christ as in a dark mirror. But soon you will look on him and see him face to face. You expect heaven as a place of unique manifestations You believe that he will unveil his face to you, that millions of years your wondering eyes will over your Savior's beauty's robe. You are expecting to see his face and never, never sin. You are longing to know the secrets of his heart. You believe that in that day you will see him as he is and you will be like him.

Well, beloved, though Christ does not manifest himself to us here on earth, as he does to the angels and saints in heaven. Have you and I not had manifestations even while we have been in this valley of tears? Speak, beloved, let your heart speak. Have you not had visions of Calvary? Has it your master sometimes touched your eyes and let you see him on his cross? Have you not said,

sweet the moments, rich in blessing,
which before the cross I spend
life and health and peace possessing
from the sinner's dying friend.
Here I'd sit forever viewing,
mercy stream in streams of blood,
precious drops my soul be doing,
plead and claim my peace with God.

Haven't you wept for joy and grief when you saw him bleeding out his life from his heart for you? and gazed at him nailed to the cross for your sakes? Oh yes, I know you have had such manifestations of him. And haven't you seen him in his risen glories? Haven't you gazed at him there exalted on his throne? Haven't you by faith seen him as the judge of the living and the dead, and as the prince of the kings of the earth? Haven't you looked through the dim future and seen him with the crown of all the kingdoms on his head, with the diadems of all the monarchies beneath his feet and the scepters of all thrones in his hand? Haven't you anticipated the moment of his most glorious triumphs when he will reign over the whole earth with unlimited power? Yes, you have. And in that you have had foretaste of heaven. When Christ revealed himself to you, you have looked under the veil, and therefore you have seen what is there. You have had some glimpses of Jesus while here. Those glimpses of Jesus are but the beginning of what will never end. Those joyous melodies of praise and thanksgiving are but the preludes of the notes of paradise.

And now, lastly, The utmost idea of heaven perhaps is that it is a place of most sacred and blissful communion. I have not given you nearly half of what I might have given you of the various characteristics of heaven as described in God's Word, but communion is the best. That word so little spoken of, so seldom understood. That word communion.

Dearly beloved, you hear us often say in the church and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. But there are many of you that do not know the meaning of that sweet heaven in a word communion. It is the flower of the language. It is the honeycomb of words communion.

You like the talk of corruption best, don't you? Well, if you like that filthy word, then you are very willing to meditate on it. I only do so when I am forced to do it. But communion seems to me to be a sweeter word than that. You like to talk a great deal about affliction, don't you? Well, if you love that gloomy word, ah, you have reason to love it. But if you love to be happy dwelling on it, you may do so. but give me for my constant text and for my constant joy, communion.

And I will not choose which kind of communion it will be. Sweet master, if you give me communion with you and your sufferings, if I have to bear reproach and shame for your name's sake, I will thank you. If I may have fellowship with you in it, and if you will allow me to suffer for your sake, I will consider it an honor. that I can be a partaker of your sufferings. And if you give me sweet enjoyments, if you raise me up and make me sit in heavenly places with Christ, I will bless you. I will bless you for ascension communion, communion with Christ in his glories.

Don't you say the same, my friend? And for communion with Christ in his death? Have you died to the world as Christ died to himself? And then have you had communion with him in resurrection? Have you felt that you are raised to newness of life even as he was? And have you had communion with him in ascension so that you can know yourself to be an heir to the throne in paradise? If so, you have received the best promise you can have of the joys of paradise.

To be in heaven is to lean one's head on the chest of Jesus. Have you done it here on earth? then you know what heaven is. To be in heaven is to talk with Jesus, to sit at his feet, to let our heart beat against his heart. If you have had that on earth, you have had some of the grapes of heaven.

Cherish then these four tastes of whatever kind they may have been in your individual case. Differently constituted, you will all look at heaven in a different light. Keep your foretaste just as God has given it to you. He has given each of you some. If you love it, it is most suitable to your own condition. Treasure it up. Think much of it. Think more of your Master. For remember, it is Christ in you, the hope of glory after all. That is your only foretaste of heaven. and the more fully prepared you will be for the bliss of the joyous ones in the land of the happy. Amen.