2 Chronicles 9:4-6 And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cupbearers also… The Queen of Sheba was completely overwhelmed by what she saw at the court of Jerusalem. When she had seen and heard everything there was to see and hear, "there was no more spirit in her." She was "astonished with a great astonishment." She had not credited what she had been told (ver. 6); but she found that there was a great deal more to find than anything that had been described. What she realized altogether surpassed her anticipation. Her experience was very remarkable of its kind, but in this particular it was by no means exceptional. We have much to do with the unimaginable. It meets us or awaits us in - I. THE MATERIAL CREATION. What wholly unanticipated wonders have been disclosed by the advance of human science! The men of remote generations had not the faintest notion of the powers we have discovered to reside in the material universe. And what still undiscovered forces await our inquiry and investigation as we patiently plod on in the paths of knowledge! Surely one-half hath not been told us or imagined by us. II. OUR HUMAN EXPERIENCE. We have our expectation concerning the life that is before us; but it is very little like the reality, as experience will prove. Many things we may picture to ourselves which will find no fulfilment; but many other things there are, of which we have no discernment, that will find their place on the page of our biography. Of these some are unexpected sorrows - losses, disappointments, separations, struggles - of which we can form no idea; others are unanticipated blessings-comforts, relationships, joys, triumphs - exceeding and excelling our hopes. We do not anticipate, for good or evil, one-half of the bright or dark reality. III. THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD. "Eye had not seen, nor ear heard, nor had it entered into man's heart to conceive" one-half of "what God had prepared for them that love him." No man could or did imagine that such wealth of grace and goodness as that which the gospel of Christ contains would be brought to us by the Anointed of God, would be purchased for us by a Saviour's sacrifice, would be pressed upon us by a heavenly Father's urgent and persistent love. IV. THE GLORY WHICH IS TO BE REVEALED. In that "land of great distances' we are one day to traverse, in that home of love in which we are soon to dwell, what unimaginable good is in reserve! What joy and what glory; what rest and what activity; what realization and what hope; what knowledge of God and what pursuit of that knowledge; what royalty and what service; what purity and what progress; what unanticipated and inconceivable blessedness to satisfy but not satiate the soul! - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cupbearers also, and their apparel; and his ascent by which he went up into the house of the LORD; there was no more spirit in her. |
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