Now this has been a real blessing
to me to think on these verses, to think on this story that we've
had read to us this morning. The children of Israel sent twelve
men as spies into the land of Canaan, that land that was a
type of heaven. And they sent these twelve spies
into the land of Canaan, and they brought back with them the
fruit of that land, the fruit of that glorious land. They brought
back with them a bunch of grapes from Eshcol that was too heavy
to be carried by one man. Two of them carried it on a staff
between them. Now it's not my purpose to spend
a great deal of time this morning on the Israelites and on their
unbelief and the fact that they would not believe God and go
on in faith but were turned aside into a wilderness journey that
consumed the majority of them. They would not believe God. They
would not trust him in this matter. They would not believe him that
he would enable them to overcome the Canaanites and the Amalekites
and all others that inhabited that land and that he would give
it to them. God said, I'm going to give you
this land. I'm going to give it to you. And what you need
to do is believe me. Don't be discouraged. Trust me
and go on. in faith and whatever be the
obstacles I'll make you more than conquerors you will overcome
and has not the Lord made the same promise to us he said that
we're more than conquerors to him that loved us and we need
to believe God we need to trust God and press on in the way we
need to recognize it will not be an easy way to glory, but
the Lord will give us grace, and the Lord will see us through.
The Lord will give us the victory, and we'll enjoy it along the
way to heaven, and we'll have some heaven on the way to heaven. And I really believe this morning
that if we're students of the Word of God, that it will certainly
appear to us that God has been pleased to send us back from
the glory lands, some of the fruit of that rich land to which
we're going, and that we can enjoy these things here in this
life. I don't want to die ignorant,
do you? I don't want to die ignorant of the Word of God. And those
things, now if God said, the eye hath not seen, the ears not
heard of those things which God has prepared for them that love
Him, but He has revealed them by Spirit, I want them to be
revealed to me. Don't you want them to be revealed
to you? Why should we go sorrowing all
the day long? when our Father is the Eternal
God, the Eternal King, the Sovereign of the Universe, and He has great
plans for His people, and His goodness is laid up for His people,
and God's gifts, well, the Bible says every good gift and every
perfect gift comes down from the Father above, with whom there's
no variableness, neither shadow of turning. God has good things
in store for His people, and God expects to give us as we're
people of faith, as we trust God, as we rely upon Him. And
the Bible does say over and over again, we've mentioned it many
times, four times over, the Bible says the just shall live by faith. They live by faith. We walk each
day, not by what we see with our natural eye, but what we
believe with our hearts. And we must learn to live and
walk And you know the Bible says that a man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God. And we need to know what God says, and we need to live
on what God says. Because God's word is true, and
it's forever settled in heaven. And we need to believe His word
and to trust Him. Now, I want, if I can, to show
you that as the children of Israel learned something of what Canaan
was like, and you remember the Lord said, I want you to go into
that land, I want you to spy it out, I want to know how that
land, or Moses did, I want you to know how this land is, and
just all about it, see the land, what it is. See the people that
dwell therein. Will they be strong or weak,
few or many? And it seems like that they did
get a pretty good picture of the land. But they certainly
discovered that there were not only all blessings, but there
were also some obstacles there. And they said, well, we appear
to them as being, we're like grasshoppers in their sight,
and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers as we looked
up to these giants that were in the land. Well, there are
many, many obstacles that may appear to you. to be too great
to overcome in your desires and in your battle and in your effort
to try to live for the glory of God in this world and try
to live so as God would instruct you to in order that you might,
as you pass away and leave this world and go into the next, that
you'll be able to live forever with the Lord. But I believe
that there were some of these children of Israel that got something
out of looking at these grapes, looking at the fruit of the land.
They got something out of that. Surely, when you see a cluster
of grapes that one man cannot carry himself, that it takes
two men to carry it, carrying it on a pole, it ought to be
impressive. And I believe it was meant to
convey unto us a real message, and that is that that land was
indeed a land. that float with milk and honey,
and it was indeed a land that was fertile, and it was indeed
a land that the people ought to aspire with all their hearts,
and whatever necessary to do, they ought to do it in order
to live in the land of Canaan. It's kind of like I heard this
fellow talking one time about Georgia, and he was telling all
about the peaches in Georgia, and all about all the other crops
and blessings in Georgia. And I thought to myself, well,
the people here, after he got done talking about Georgia, they
won't care whether they get to heaven or not, as long as they
get to Georgia. Well, I think sometimes we look
at things in a very, very unreal way, but still I believe the
fruit that came out of the land of Canaan, that it impressed
these people, and it ought to have impressed them, and it ought
to have excited their hearts and moved them to press on to
the victory. So you and I, even while we're
here on this earth, If we'd be the Lord's chosen people, then
we can learn something of what heaven is, the state to which
we're to attain hereafter by certain blessings which are brought
to us even while we're here. And that's the thrust of what
I want to talk about this morning. Now, beloved, we who love the
Lord Jesus Christ have had, if we've been in the way, any length
of time. I mean, if we've been traveling
with the Lord in faith, we've had clusters of the grapes of
a better eshkol. We've had some of the fruits
of heaven, even while we're here, and by them we're able to judge.
of what heaven will really be like and what the soil of paradise
will produce for us. I want to give you a series of
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 to us. Now there are probably not
two Christians on earth who have exactly the same ideas concerning
heaven. are the same views concerning
heaven. Though we all expect to go to
the same heaven, yet the most prominent feature in heaven is
different, I suppose, to each soul. And as we've read the Word
of God, as we've studied it, as we've meditated upon it, we
surely, each one of us, would have some view. of what heaven
is really like. We've had some idea. There's
some idea been conveyed unto our hearts as to what heaven
is really like. Well, the first thing that I'd
like to point out and the most prominent feature of heaven,
judging at this present time to me, At another time, I may
find something better to think about in the first place, but
now, first of all, I love heaven because it is a place, as I view
it, a place of absolute security. a place of absolute security. Now, beloved, one of the greatest
fears that we have while we're pilgrimaging here in this earth,
if we have made a perfection of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
is that in somehow or other we might slip and fall as we're
in this body of flesh and we have a corrupt nature, a sinful
nature, and we might slip and fall and bring a reproach upon
the name of our God. Many are the faults, many are
the slips. of God's people. The Bible talks
about the just falling seven times and the Lord lifting them
up. So God's people can fall and
we have fear knowing how fickle and feeble that we are in and
of ourselves. We have fear that we might slip
and fall and bring a reproach on the name of the Lord. And
so we have learned to look up as it were to heaven as a place
where we shall never, never slip when we arrive there. Never Will
we tread a slippery place, a slippery slope? Never will we find that
we have, in some way or another, that we have fallen when we get
there. Where our feet there shall be
fixed firmly upon the rock of ages. Where there is neither
tripping nor slipping, we're false. Our faults shall always
be unknown because they shall not be there. Where we shall
have no need to keep watch, against the enemy. You know, 1 Peter
5a tells us that we're to be sober and vigilant, knowing that
our adversary, the old devil that he's going about as a roaring
lion, seeking whomever he might devour. And thank God that there
is no foe that shall be among us in heaven. The enemy will
not be there. Praise God, the enemy will not
be there. There we shall not have to be
on guard day and night as we are here. There the wicked cease
from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. Yes, we have
looked upon heaven as the land of complete security, where our
garments shall always be white, and where our faces shall always
be anointed with fresh oil. where there is no fear of our
turning away ever from our God. For there we shall be secure
forever. Having dropped this robe of flesh, we shall forever
be with the Lord, and we'll have no further fear of falling, no
further fear of bringing reproach upon our God. This, beloved,
I believe, is a true view of heaven. It's a place of security. Now, think with me a little bit.
Do not the saints on earth Have we not, in some measure, enjoyed
some of the fruits of this security already? Has not the Lord sent
us some security in our hearts, in our life, through the testimony
of His Word? Yes, we even here, we tread a
weary road, we taste many, many bitter things in this life, but
yet we taste also many of the blissful things and certainly
security is one of them that we know about, we feel in our
hearts. Now you listen to me, the doctrine
of God's Word is this, that all who are in union with the Lamb
of God are safe and that all believers will hold to their
way and that those who have committed their souls to Christ for keeping
shall find Him to be faithful and an immutable, meaning that
he's unchangeable, keeper of their souls. Those who have committed
their soul to Christ know that Christ is faithful and he will
keep them. That's security, my friend. Believe
in this doctrine, we enjoy security even here on earth. Not a security
that makes us presumptuous. but one which secures us from
ultimate ruin and renders us certain of eternal heaven. Do
you ever think of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints?
Do you ever, when you're studying the Word of God, come across
verses that suggest this doctrine clearly to your heart? What do
you think about? the doctrine of eternal security. Well, I'm sure that we have,
each one of us, we found some verses that we've tried to hide
away in our hearts that gives us a measure of assurance and
a measure of security in our hearts. And they've been brought
home many times to our hearts by the Spirit of God. And He's
told us in the Word that our names are graven on the palms
of His hand. He said, fear thou not. He said,
for I am with thee. Now we've been led to look upon
the great surety of the covenant as a faithful and true surety. and therefore he is bound, he's
engaged to present us, though we're the weakest of his family,
with all the chosen race before the throne of God at last without
fault, without spot or blemish or any such thing. He's pledged
himself to do it. Now to me, that's security. To me, that gives me something
to rest my soul on right here in this world. Yes, we've had
some of the enjoyments which the perfect saints above have,
in a sense. They have a complete security,
and we're headed for that. But we've had eternal security
in Christ Jesus to feed our souls upon, and we rejoice in that
meat. Oh, how we love the doctrine
of the perseverance of the saints. I'll preach on it every opportunity
I get. Charles Pershing said, I will renounce the pulpit immediately
if I cannot preach this doctrine. I'll renounce the pulpit. For
any other form of teaching, he said, seems to me to be a black
desert and a howling wilderness as unworthy of God as it would
be beneath even my acceptance, frail worm, as I am. Well, I'm thankful that even
though we're the weakest of God's people, that we have this security. And that's one of the grapes,
the cluster of grapes that we have that assures us that in
heaven to come, we shall be eternally, eternally secure there in his
presence. Now, beloved, we could never
either believe or preach a gospel which saves us today and then
rejects us tomorrow. We could not believe a gospel
or preach a gospel that could save us now and then reject us
somewhere between here and heaven. A gospel which puts me in Christ's
family one hour and makes me a child of the devil the next,
A gospel which first justifies and then turns around and condemns
me. A gospel which pardons me and
afterwards casts me down to hell. Such a gospel is abhorrent to
reason and contrary to the mind of God as that mind is revealed
in the Word of God. Security! I'm talking about,
and that's one of the grapes, one of them clusters of grapes.
Oh, magnificent, are they not? This doctrine of the perseverance
and the security of the believer. Now, every true believer in Christ
can sing with Top Lady, Augustus Top Lady. He said, my name from
the palms of his hands, eternity will not erase. Impressed on
his heart, it remains in marks of indelible grace. Yes, to the
end shall endure, I to the end shall endure, as sure as the
earnest is given, more happy but not more secure than glorified
spirits in heaven. So we enjoy then a sense of security. security a perfect security even
as we dwell in this world according my weary soul in seas of heavenly
rest and not a wave of do follow them. And heaven, somebody
said, is the couch of repose for some of us that's got tired in
the way. And I'll tell you what, heaven who have believed, the scripture
says, we do enter into rest. We've ceased from trying to save
ourselves, and we believe that if we come to the Master, He
said, you come unto me and I'll give you rest. He said, I'll
give it to you. You can't buy it. You couldn't
work for it. There's nothing you could do
in order to obtain it. I'll give it to you. He said,
you come to me and I'll give you rest. And they who have believed
do enter into rest. They give up the business of
trying to work their way into the kingdom of God, and they
trust Christ, and they trust an accomplished salvation, and
they believe in a Redeemer, a Savior, that is all-sufficient, that
is able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by Him,
seeing that He ever liveth to make intercession for them. And
so, beloved, there remaineth therefore a rest to the people
of God. He is the Sabbath of the Lord's
people. Now we have stormy trials and
bitter troubles in the world, but we've learned to say, return
unto thy rest. O my soul, for the Lord hath
dealt bountifully with thee. Now many times we felt overwhelmed
with life and its burdens and its trials and we've come to
that place where we poured out our hearts and our souls into
God and in a little while there was a strange and wonderful and
marvelous thing that happened. There was rest. that just seemed
to be poured out upon our soul. That rest, that heavenly rest,
so placid, so serene and without disturbance, which in our deepest
trouble we were able to enjoy. Blessed, blessed rest. Now this
is one of the grapes that i'm talking about one of these heavenly
clusters of which we shall soon partake in the land of the hereafter
does that excite you that you're going to a place of heavenly
rest of eternal rest so you see again we can have a foretaste
of heaven here and realize what it is even while we're here on
this troubling and weary road now number three there's another
view of heaven that I think that I should mention to you, being
that we so often feel defeated here, that heaven is a place
of complete victory and triumph. Might I say, and I think most
of you warriors of the faith would agree with me, that this
is a battlefield. And there is over there in that
land the eternal victory. This is the land of the sword,
and it's the land of the spear. But there is the land of the
wreath and the crown. This is the land of struggle
and war and blood. There in that land, that far
off home of ours that is to come, is the land of the trumpet's
joyful sound. There is the place of the white
robe and the shout of conquest. Oh, what a thrill of joy shall
shoot through the hearts of all the blessed when their conquest
shall be complete in heaven, when death itself, which is the
last enemy, shall be slain, and when Satan shall be a captive
of Christ, when all sin shall be overthrown, when the great
song of universal victory shall rise from the hearts of all of
the redeemed. What a moment! of pleasure that
will be. Whatever defeats that we suffer
here in this world, brother or sister, in that world we shall
find complete and absolute joy in complete victory. There will
be absolute victory, no more defeats for the people of God.
We have conflicts, soul battles, struggles against unbelief and
sin in this world. And at last we overcome it. in
the Lord Jesus Christ and with joy we bless the Lord that we
have for a time been able to overcome experientially here
and then we shall overcome for all eternity as we're gathered
home with the Master and we have met with great temptation here
and live to say my feet well nigh slipped but thy mercy thy
mercy held me up there you see you had a foretaste of heaven
you had just a glimpse of what the ultimate victory will be. So God gives us partial triumph
that we may, because that's the earnest, you see, of an ultimate
and complete victory. This is to us as the grapes of
Eshcol, a foretaste of the joys of heaven. Mike, could you find a song there
and lead us in a verse of a song. Let me just kind of get my breath
here a minute. I wanted to mention about heaven
and I believe without doubt one of the best views and certainly
comes awful close to matching as far as I'm concerned the other
views that we've given of heaven is that it is a state Now, follow
me, if you will, of complete acceptance with God. It is a
state of complete acceptance with God. Now, I suppose that
a great part of the joy of the people of God above is a knowledge
that there is nothing in them. Here they are, they've arrived
on the shore of glory, and that there is nothing in them which
God will be hostile with. Now, won't that be glorious?
Now, we recognize here that there's much about us that is obnoxious. We recognize that there's many,
many faults and sins in us, but the body of sin, you see, has
been put away, and we arrive on the shore of glory, and we
know that we're accepted entirely and fully in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and that there's nothing about us that is obnoxious. There's
nothing about us that is hostile to God. That old enmity of the
heart has forever been buried and put away. It's not there. We're at peace with God and we're
accepted entirely. in the Lord Jesus Christ who
is accepted of God and is at the right hand of the Father. Now, the peace that they have
with God, there's not anything there to mar it. The people that's
in glory, they're there and they're at this place of joy and rest. And they have this acceptance.
They're so completely in union with the principles and the thoughts
of the Most High that His love is so set upon them, and their
love is set on Him. And they serve Him, the Bible
says, day and night in that place. They're one with Him in every
respect. Well, beloved, Thoughts and fears,
yet there have been moments, even here on earth, as we thought
about Ephesians 1, 6, about being accepted in the beloved one.
There have been moments when we have known ourselves as truly
accepted as we shall know ourselves to be when we stand before the
throne. Now I really believe that this
is very serious business for everybody that is a child of
God. To be able to read your title clear to mansions in the
sky. To know that you're accepted
of the Beloved One, in the Beloved One. To know that you're accepted
of God positionally in the Lord Jesus Christ. And to know that
when you leave this world and go yonder before God, that you
will be accepted before God in Christ, and that there will be
nothing, as we said earlier, about you that will turn away
a thrash-holy God from viewing and accepting you. Now there
have been days when we could set to our seal that God was
true. We believed God and we set to
our seal that God was true. We ratified, as it were, by faith
everything that God said to us. And the foundation, the scripture
says, of God stand assure having this seal, the Lord knoweth them
that are his, and in those times we know what Dr. Watt meant in
his song when he said 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. Oh, to have
such a clear view of the perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
perfection of his righteousness that we feel that God has accepted
us, this is a foretaste of heaven, to know that you've been accepted
of God. Everybody wants to be accepted,
and my friend, surely everybody that is in your family, they
delight to be accepted in your family. They delight in that,
and they want proofs and evidences of it. Well, everybody in God's
family are accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ. God accepts them
all equally the same. And somebody said, well, I come
from way up north. Another fellow says, well, I
came from down south. I come from the Bible Belt. Well,
my friend, it don't make any difference where you come from
in this world to glory, all be accepted the same in God's family,
accepted in the beloved one, accepted in the Lord Jesus. And
to know the efficacy of the blood of Christ and to feel sure that
your sins are pardoned and can never be mentioned against you
anymore, to know ourselves accepted in God's sight, to feel that
I, a guilty worm, and now accepted by Him, this is a joy that is
worth more than the world can afford. What more can they who
are in heaven know than that? Can they know anything more than
that about acceptance? Well, I tell you, if you see
that, then you have seen the grapes of Eshcol, for as I'm
concerned, and you know something about the glory land. You're
accepted in the Beloved One, Jesus Christ, by faith. Now,
heaven is a state of acceptance. We too can know and feel that
acceptance and rejoice in it. Number five, and again, heaven
is a state of great and glorious manifestations. Now as we look
forward to our experience in heaven, we can say with the poet,
then shall I see and hear and know all I desire to wish below
and every power find sweet employ in that eternal world of joy.
We can, listen, heaven is a place of glorious manifestations. Now you're looking at things
darkly through a glass now, but then we shall see face to face. Soon we shall look upon him and
we shall see him face to face. Expect heaven, brother, sister,
to be a place of manifestations. There's an old song that says,
I'll ask the question. He'll tell me why. We'll talk
it over in the by and by. There's going to be many manifestations
awaiting us in glory. Jesus will unveil his face to
us, and we'll see. You know, there's been so many,
many people that have been misled by the various portraits and
various pictures supposedly of Christ, but we're going to see
Him face to face. The Bible says we're going to
be like Him because we're going to see Him as He is. We're going to see Him as He
is. We're not going to see him as he was. We're not going to
see him on a cross. At that time, we're going to
see him as he is, crowned with many crowns, our Redeemer, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now then, Jesus will unveil himself. Millions of years, your wondering
eyes shall awe your Savior's beauty's rule. You're expecting,
are you not, to see his beauties? Well, there's no beauty in him.
The scripture says that we should desire. That's the way that the
unbelieving Jews looked upon him. They see no beauty in him.
But you and I expect to see the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ. You're longing to know the secrets
of his heart, are you not? Isn't there many, many things
you've read in the Bible you'd like for Him to explain to you? Well,
brother, sister, I've been traveling this way a long time, and I've
been raking and raking around to try to find the answers to
a whole lot of things. And I believe that one of these
days, our Lord's going to reveal all of those secret things that
belong to Him. And they've been secret for the
ages, but He's going to reveal them. It's going to be a time
of manifestations. Now, you believe that you shall
see Him as He is and be like Him in that your eternal home? Well, it is certain that Christ
does not at this time manifest Himself to us as He does unto
those who are already over there. I'm sure that they know things
we don't know. I'm sure they do. Those that
are already gathered home, they know things that we don't know.
Old Uncle Tom, he knows things that I don't know, but I'm going
to know them one of these days because there's going to be manifestations,
you see, to my heart. But in this world, we have had
blessed manifestations. We've had, some of us have, even
while here in this veil of tears. The Lord has appeared. The Lord
has visited us. The Lord has made the way clear.
The Lord said, I'll make the crooked way straight. This will
I do and not forsake you. And the Lord has in some measure
made the crooked way straight. And he will continue to do so
while we journey here below. But we've had some manifestations
already. Have we not seen Calvary? Have
we not seen Calvary? You know the fellow that wrote
the song, I've Been to Calvary? Well, you know what he was talking
about, don't you? He was talking about, he hadn't
been over to Jerusalem, but he had, in faith, he had been to
Calvary, and he had seen Christ crucified through faith. Our
eyes have been touched with the eye salve of faith, and we've
seen Him hanging on a cross. Do you really believe that a
man or woman by the Spirit of God is able to have Christ evidently
set before them, crucified? Do you believe that? Well, I
believe in a measure every child of God has had Christ revealed
to them on a cross. hanging on a cross, bleeding
and dying in their room and stead and place. 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'll
sit forever viewing mercy's streams in streams of blood. Precious
drops my soul be doing, plead and claim my peace with God. Beloved, we've had a manifestation. We've seen Him through the revelation
of the Word and the revelation of the Spirit of God. We've seen
Him nailed to the cross, bleeding out His life's blood for us.
We've seen Him in His risen glories on His exalted throne. We've
seen Him as the judge of the quick and the dead, that one
which our Lord said that he had raised up to be the judge whereby
he had given assurance unto all men in that he raised him from
the dead. And we've seen him as the prince
of the kings of the earth. We've seen him as lord of lord
and kings of kings. And if we've never seen him that
way, we've never bowed our knee to his lordship like we will
when we do see him. Do we know him to be our Lord?
Well, we've looked to the future and we've seen Christ as it were
with the crown of all kingdoms on his head and with the diadems
of all kings beneath his feet. and the scepters of all thrones,
we've seen them in His hand. In His hand, the hand of the
Lord Jesus. Yes, He shall reign from pole
to pole with illimitable sway. Yes, we have had some glimpses
of the Lord Jesus while here. Those glimpses are but the beginning. of what shall never end. Glory. Now, I hope that this
will quicken your heart toward glory and toward heaven. And
lastly, I give you this view. I think heaven is a place of
blissful communion with our God. Blissful communion. Now, some
people don't like to go to church now. In this world, they'd just
rather not go. There may be some of you here
this morning, you'd rather be somewhere else than here. And
I will tell you this, that you'll not be bothered in eternity about
being someplace where you don't want to be. Now you see, that's
really confusing to me, preacher. You mean tell me if I die and
go to hell that I'm going to want to be there? My friend,
you wouldn't want to be in heaven. You don't have a heart for it.
You don't have any, there's nothing in you, no principle in you that
would enjoy itself in heaven. There's no thrill in your heart
about communion with our God, being in fellowship with Him,
speaking to Him, drawing near to Him, and there's no communion
in your heart for Him and with Him. What about your secret place? Are you one who prays and seeks
the Lord and looks to the Lord? Do you have a closet of prayer?
Do you have a place? I mean, even if you're out in
the field on a tractor or wherever you are, if you're driving down
the highway, is it just in your heart every once in a while to
commune with the Lord? Do you desire communion with
the Lord? Whatever you're doing, if you're
washing dishes, whatever you're doing. I know of one woman who
had a sign up over her sink and said divine services are conducted
here three times daily. And I believe that God's people
are doing and in their hearts they're communing with the Lord
and that's in this life. You see, but it's coming to where
there'll be greater communion than that. To be in heaven is
to lean one's head upon the breast of Jesus Christ. Have we not
done this on earth in a measure? Have you ever come to the place
and, oh my soul, and all hell, as one old preacher said, was
popping on your pillow? And you just leaned your head,
as it were, upon the breast of the Lord Jesus Christ and moaned
and groaned and sorrowed out all that was in you because you
needed communion with a faithful one, with one who was dear to
your soul, to be in heaven. is to talk to Christ, to sit
at his feet, to let our heart, as it were, beat against his
heart. If in some measure you've done
this on earth, then you've already tasted, I believe, of the grapes
of heaven. Now, I want to give you just
a word of exhortation. cherish these four tastes. Whatever four tastes you've had
of heaven, the life to come, whatever you felt in your soul
about heaven, whatever you felt about it, and whatever's come
to your heart, whatever joy you've had because of what you've read
in the scriptures or heard preached about heaven, cherish these things
just as they've come to you in your individual case. Keep your
foretaste just as God has given them to you. Treasure it up and
think much of it. Think more of the Lord Jesus
Christ for it is Christ which is in you which is your hope
of glory and the land of the happy and the blessed are to
those who are in Christ and those who know him as their Redeemer,
their Lord, and their Master. Well, I wonder this morning if
there's any of these grapes you've ever tasted them. I wonder if
you have. Have you had any of these grapes? Have you looked upon them? Have
they enticed your soul? Have they drawn you toward the
Lord? drawn you toward the eternal and blessed kingdom of God. Have they drawn your soul in
that direction to where that you would say, I'm going to press
more diligently. Praise God, look at what's before
me and what the Lord has for me. Father, we're thankful this
morning that you've given grace to enable us to get through this
meeting and we pray that you'll bless, Lord, the preaching of
your word and pray that there might be joy given to your people
as they look at these grapes and as they rejoice at this great
cluster of grapes that have come out of the heavenly land and
that our souls might be so affected by them that we'll be drawn upward
upward, mightily drawn upward toward Thee. May we all fix our
eyes upon the Lord Jesus, and who is immutable, who is the
same yesterday and today and forever, and may we rejoice as
we are studying of Him now, meditating upon Him, believing in Him now,
knowing that He'll be, when we get to heaven, Be the same Jesus
we trusted here, the same Jesus that we believed on, and the
same Jesus that we fed on day by day. Have mercy upon us. Give
us a blessing now as we sing and as we leave one another's
fellowship. In Jesus' name, amen.