The Queen of the South, or the Earnest Enquirer

Spurgeon holds up the Queen of Sheba as a model of earnest spiritual inquiry, praising her for setting aside royal dignity, overcoming great distance, spending real treasure, coming without invitation, and leaving her own religion behind — all to pursue the wisdom of a mere man — and then shames his hearers by contrasting this costly effort with their own half-hearted response to the free, urgent, doorstep invitation of a far greater Savior. He traces how she conducted her inquiry as a pattern for the seeking soul: she went personally rather than sending a delegate, she went straight to Solomon himself rather than getting distracted by secondary questions, she told him everything in her heart without hiding the difficult parts, she proposed her hardest questions and patiently received his answers, and only after meeting the king did she begin to discover and wonder at everything surrounding him — his house, his table, his servants' clothing, and above all the great viaduct he had built bridging the palace to the temple, which Spurgeon reads as a type of Christ's own atonement bridging the chasm between sinful man and holy God. He closes by describing the fruits that followed her honest enquiry — a confession of faith, a confession of former unbelief, a declaration that reality far exceeded reputation, a love for Solomon's servants, a blessing of Solomon's God, and a generous gift of all she had brought — and applies each to the soul that comes truly to Christ, urging every hearer to come to Jesus first and everything else will follow, since Christ has never been outdone in generosity and will give back in eternal abundance everything that is brought to him in simple trust.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on October 4, 1863.