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.

We are not self-reliant

Although we have this strange self-idolizing tendency, and a self-glorying disposition, yet we are such poor and beggarly creatures that we do not in reality have sufficient within ourselves to give satisfaction to our hearts. That is why we must borrow from external things. When we have any kind of ownership of them, or entitlement to them, then we glory in ourselves for them, as if they were truly in ourselves!

We are creatures by nature most indigent, yet most proud, which is unnatural. No man is satisfied within himself (except the good man, Prov. 14:14), but everyone goes outside of themselves to seek satisfaction at the door of every creature. When there are some plumes or feathers we can borrow from other birds, we begin to raise our crests, and boast ourselves, as if we had all these of our own, and were beholden to none. But just as things that are truly our own are not sufficient to feed this flame of glorying, without bringing in some outward things, so present things, and the present time, will not afford enough fuel for it, without the addition of “tomorrow.”

“Boast not thyself of tomorrow.” No man’s present possession satisfies him, without the addition of hope and expectation for the future. This makes apparent the poverty of our spirit, and the emptiness of all things we enjoy here. What we presently possess does not fill up the vacuums in the heart, without something being supplied by our imaginations about tomorrow. A prodigal and riotous waster cannot get by with his yearly income, but takes on more on his estate on the next year’s income, before it come. He begins to spend out of it before it actually comes, and then, when it comes, it cannot suffice. In the same way, the insatiable and indigent heart of man cannot feed its joy in complacency on even the whole world, even if it were now in its possession, without some addition of hopes and expectations for the time to come. The soul anticipates and forestalls the morrow, and borrows present joy and boasting from it, and yet when it comes itself, perhaps it will not so much as fill the hand of the reaper, never mind pay the debt of glorying that was taken out on in its name, or recompense the expectation which was in it (see Job 11:18, 20; 8:13).

Our circumstances are so changeable

There is such an infinite variety in the details of providence that it is folly for anyone to presume to boast of any thing. So many things fall between the cup and the lip, the chalice and the chin, as the proverb is. Nothing is certain, but that all things are uncertain.

All things are subject to perpetual motion, revolution, and change — today a city, tomorrow a heap of ruins. And there is nothing between a great city and a heap but one day, nothing between a man and no man but one hour. Our life is subject to infinite casualties. It may receive a fatal stroke from the slightest thing, and the most unexpected. It is a bubble floating on the water. So many poor, dying creatures rise up, and swim and float a while, and are tossed up and down by wind and wave, and the least puff of wind or drop of rain sends us back to nothing.

We are a vapour appearing for a very little time — a creature of no solidity — a dream — a shadow and appearance of something. This dream or apparition is but for a little time, and then it vanishes, not so much into nothing, for it was little distant from nothing before, but rather it disappears.

All human affairs are like the spokes of a wheel, in a continual circumgyration. A captive king in defeat was made to pull the chariot of Sesostris, an ancient king of Egypt, but he kept looking behind him. When Sesostris demanded the reason, he replied, “I am looking at the wheel, and musing on the vicissitudes and permutations of it, and how the highest parts are instantly the lowest.” This word repressed the king’s vainglory.

In this constant wheeling of outward things, which is the soul that enjoys true quiet and peace? The soul that is fixed, as it were, in the centre, on God. It is the soul that has its abode in God. Though the external parts are in a continual violent motion, yet the centre of the wheel is at much peace. It is not violently turned, but gently complies with the changes of the other.

We know so little

As there is no more in our power but the present hour — for to yesterday we are dead already, for it is past and cannot return, it is as it were buried in the grave of oblivion, and to tomorrow we are not yet born, for it is not come to the light, and we know not if ever it will come — so there is no more in our knowledge but the present hour.

The time past, though we remember it, yet it is without our practical knowledge, it admits of no change by it. The time to come is not born to us, which means in effect that we are not born to it.

And indeed, in the Lord’s disposing of all affairs under the sun, after this method, there is infinite wisdom and goodness both. God has made us so that we would not set our heart, nor terminate our eyes upon any thing here, but He has opened up and spread eternity before us in the Scriptures. There you may read and understand your fortune — your everlasting estate in it. He hides temporal things from us, and wills us to live implicitly, and give Him the trust of them without anxious foresight, but eternity He has unveiled and opened up to us.

Certain it is, that no one, till they are fully possessed of God, who is an all sufficient good (Psalm 4) can find any satisfaction in any present enjoyment, without the addition of some hope for the future. Great things without Him will not content. For what is it all, if you have no assurance for the time to come? Yet slight things with Him will make us content. Great things with little hope and expectation, fill us with greater vexation instead of joy, and the greater they be, this is the more increased.

If you really want to have solid reasons for glorying, and want to avoid being fooled into a golden dream of vain expectations of vain things, I would exhort you to labour to fill up the vacuums among present things with that great hope, the hope of salvation. This will be like a helmet to keep your head safe in all difficulties (1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 6:18–19; Rom. 5:5). It is true that people’s expectations of gain, credit, etc, do in some measure abate the torment and pain of the things we presently lack and need, but it is certain that such hope is not some panacea to the heart, so as to expel all grief. Instead, it leaves much vexation there.

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