They… cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff. — Num 13:23
God has sent over into our earthly wilderness–life many samples of the good things of the heavenly life – foretastes of the full glories there awaiting us.
The joy, peace, love, and grace we get here are very sweet, but they are just little specimens of fruits that grow everywhere in the Better–Land. The old rabbis say that when the famine began in Egypt and the storehouses were opened, Joseph threw the chaff of the grain upon the Nile, that it might float down on the river and show those who lived below that there was abundance of provision laid up for them farther up the river.
So the blessings of divine grace, which we enjoy in this world, are little more than the husks of the heavenly good things, sent down on the river of divine grace as foretastes or intimations of what is in store for us in heaven. The joy the Christian has here is deep and rich, but heaven’s joy is infinitely deeper and richer.