What can we count on tomorrow to bring?

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

The expectation of good in the future is a joyful feature of the Christian life, but only because the expectation is well-founded. Those who belong to Christ can confidently look forward to a bright future in glory because of who the triune God is and what He has done for our redemption. If, however, we place our confidence in the fickle things of this life, their sheer unreliability means that we are acting with the utmost folly. In just one week, the global news has included the sudden and shocking deaths of a UK politician, a pop singer, and a terrorist leader. It is rare that any of us go for long periods without some startling event upsetting some wish or expectation we had held. We are constantly being reminded of the unpredictability of life in ways that underline the immense tragedy of pinning our hopes of happiness and fulfilment on things in this life instead of on the Saviour. This is how Hugh Binning interpreted the words in Proverbs, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1). The following updated and abridged excerpt explores how cramped our vision is when we do not take eternity into account, and how precarious our happiness is when we expect to find it in temporal things instead of in God.

“Tomorrow!” This is the narrow sphere of poor man’s comprehension! All he can attain to is to make provision for the present time. These are the two great ruins and decays of the nature of man. One, he is degenerated from God to created things, and he seeks his joy and rest in them, when in them there is nothing but the opposite, i.e., vexation. And then, he is fallen from the apprehension of eternity, and the poor soul is confined within the narrow bounds of time. Now all his forethought is to lay up some perishing things for some few revolutions of the sun, for some few morrows. After this, an endless morrow ensues, yet he does not perceive it, and makes no provision for it, and all his glorying and boasting is only on some presumptuous confidence and ungrounded assurance that these things have stability for the time to come.

It is worth observing that, whatever the immediate and particular matter and occasion of our glorying in may be, yet self is the great and ultimate object of it. It is self that we glory in, whatever created thing be the reason or occasion of it. “Boast not thyself of tomorrow.” This is the crookedness and perverseness of man’s spirit since his departure from God. Self-love and pride have spread through the whole of mankind, and the whole in everyone. Every one is infected, and all in every one.

Continue here.