When we plan for the future, we tend to overestimate both the stability of our circumstances and our ability to forecast accurately. The result is that we gain false optimism from the imaginary future which we have projected for ourselves. Much as we may flatter ourselves by giving ourselves the starring role in the unfolding story, the script is not ours to write. Long ago, the wise man advised, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). In the following updated extract from a sermon on this saying, Hugh Binning exposes the dangers of boasting or glorying in an unpredictable, speculative future, and outlines a better way to live.

What is the way that most people take to mitigate and sweeten their present hardships? Only what the fool did in the parable (Luke 12). They either have something laid up for many years, or else their projects and plans reach to many years ahead. The truth is, they have more pleasure in the expectation of such things, than in the real possession, but even that pleasure itself is only imaginary also. How many thoughts and designs are continually turning in the heart — how to be rich, how to get greater gain, how to get more popularity? They build castles in the air, and fancy to themselves, as it were, new worlds of mere possible things. In this work of the heart, there is some poor evading of present sorrows, but at length they recur with all the greater force.

Everyone makes romances for himself, pretty fancies of his own fortune, as if he had the power to bring it about himself. We sit down, as it were, and write a series of forecasts in our own secret thoughts. We design our own prosperity, gain, advantage, and pleasures or joys. Then, when we have ranked our hopes and expectations, we begin to take satisfaction in them, and give our self-confidence a boost as if it was all really going to turn out like that, as if there were not a supreme Lord who regulates to our affairs, as immediately as He does the winds and rains.

A double consideration

But consider. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” The concurrence of inconstancy in all things, and ignorance in us, should itself be sufficient to check our folly of confident and presumptuous expectation from mere things, and of glorying in them. Whether we look around us to the things themselves, or within us to ourselves, all things proclaim the folly and madness of that which the heart of man is set on.

This double consideration the apostle James contrasts with our vain hopes and confident undertakings (James 4:13, &c.). In a perfect commentary on this text, James gives the example of the resolutions and purposes of rich men to amass gain by merchandise. By this we may understand all the various designs and schemes which are contrived and ordered and laid out in people’s hearts, either for more gain, or more glory, or more pleasure and ease.

Now, the grand evil that is reproved here is not simply people taking care and diligence in using lawful means for their convenience and comfort in this life, or even their wise and prudent foresight in ordering their affairs towards that end. Both these are frequently recommended and commended by the wise man (e.g., Prov. 6:6; Prov. 24:27).

Here, rather, is the great iniquity — that in all these contrivings and actings, people behave as if they were absolute independents, without any consideration of the sovereign universal dominion of God. No one at all, almost, reflects on that glorious Being who alone has the veto and the final say in all the motions and affairs of the sons of men. No one considers that it is not in man that walketh to direct his paths — that when all our thoughts and designs are marshalled and ordered, and the completest preparation made for reaching our intended ends, yet the way of man is not in himself, and all these things are under the higher and more absolute dominion of the most high God.

A deep forgetfulness

Whose heart regards the fact that “a man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps”? The Lord is not bound by any rule to conform His executions to our intentions. He works all according to the counsel of His own will, and not ours. Therefore, no wonder that the product of our actions does not correspond to our intentions and devices, because the supreme rule and measure of them is above our power, and beyond our knowledge. Supposing there were never so many devices in the heart of man, never so wisely or lawfully contrived and ordered, yet the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand (Prov. 19:21; 16:9).

That higher determination may either promote our best imaginations or drown them, for “man’s goings are of the Lord; how then can a man understand his paths?” (Prov. 20:24). Yet the majority, in all these things, lose the remembrance of this fatal and invincible subordination to God. They propose their own affairs and actions, as if they themselves were to arrange them, and when their own resolutions and projects seem probable, they begin to please themselves in them, in the forethought of what they will do, or what they may have or enjoy the day after. There is a present secret complacency and self-satisfaction, without any serious minding of the absolute dependence of all things on the will of God, and the independence of these things on our counsels.

Instead of forecasting and often ruminating on the perpetual fluctuation and inconstancy of human affairs, as if we were the supreme moderators in heaven and earth, we act and transact our own business in a deep forgetfulness of Him who sits in heaven, and laughs at all our projects and practices. That is why the Holy Ghost wants this secret but serious thought to season all our other purposes and consultations, “If the Lord will …”

A series of disappointments

Then, we know not what shall be tomorrow. Our life itself is a vapour. We lay out our designs for tomorrow, for a year, for many years, and yet we do not know if we shall even be tomorrow. How many people’s projects are mapped out beyond the time that is measured out on God’s counsel! And what a ridiculous thing that must be to Him, if it is not done with submissive and humble dependence on Him!

Every day, every hour, every moment is about to bring forth something which all the world is ignorant of, till they see it. If only they understood it even then! We do not know whether the morning’s or the next hour’s birth may be a healthy child, or a grotesque monster, whether it will correspond to the figure and pattern that is in our mind, or be misshapen and deformed by our reckoning. We form an inward image and idea within ourselves, to which we labour to make the product and birth of time conformable. When it matches our preconceived form, then we rejoice, but for the most part it is a monster as to our conception, an aberration from our rule. It is either mutilated and defective relative to what we desired, or superfluous or deformed, and either way it turns our expectation into vexation, and our boasting into lamentation.

But the truth is, time brings forth no monsters as to the Lord’s decrees, which are the only just measures of all things. His eyes see all the substance of every thing under the sun, even before it transpires, and in His everlasting book all their members are written. The portraiture of every thing is drawn there to the life, and these in continuance are fashioned just as they were written and drawn, and so they exactly correspond to His preconception of them. Whatever deformity they may have in our perception, yet they are perfect works, and beautiful to Him.

A better way

Therefore, if you want your souls to be truly established, and not hanging on tomorrow uncertainly, as the majority are, get a look beyond tomorrow, to the everlasting day of eternity, which has no tomorrow after it, and see what foundation you can lay up for that time to come. That is what Paul bids Timothy counsel the rich men in the world, who think that their riches and revenues, their offices and dignities, were a foundation and well-spring of contentment to them and their children, and who are ready to say with the man in the parable, “Soul, take thy rest, thou hast enough laid up for many years.” “Charge them,” he says, “that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17–19).

Oh, that is a charge worthy to be engraved on the tables of our hearts, and written on the ports of all cities, and the gates of all palaces! “You all want to have a foundation of lasting joy,” he says, “but why are you seeking lasting joy in fading things, and certain joy in uncertain riches, and solid contentment in empty things? Why not rather in the living God, who is the unexhausted spring of all good things?”

Therefore, if you want to have a valid boast of tomorrow, or to sing a solid lullaby to your own hearts, lay up a different treasure in store against the time to come — the only time worthy to be called time, that is, eternity. Study to do good, and be rich in good works, works of piety, of mercy, of equity, of sobriety.

This is a better foundation for the time to come! In other words, receive and embrace the promise of eternal life — that free and gracious promise of life in the gospel. In that way, you may supply all the needs and indigencies of your present enjoyments with the precious hope of eternal life which cannot make ashamed.

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