Grace Fellowship    10/19/08    Search for Tomorrow    Proverbs 27

Let’s begin to day by reading God’s word found in Proverbs 27.

1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
2 Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.
3 A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool's provocation is heavier than both.
4 Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?
5 Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
7 One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.
8 Like a bird that strays from its nest is a man who strays from his home.
9 Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.
10 Do not forsake your friend and your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity.  Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.
11 Be wise, my son, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him who reproaches me.
12 The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.
13 Take a man's garment when he has put up security for a stranger, and hold it in pledge when he puts up security for an adulteress.
14 Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.
15 A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike;
16 to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one's right hand.
17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
18 Whoever tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who guards his master will be honored.
19 As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.
20 Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.
21 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.
22 Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his folly will not depart from him.

23 Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds,
24 for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations?
25 When the grass is gone and the new growth appears and the vegetation of the mountains is gathered,
26 the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field.
27 There will be enough goats' milk for your food, for the food of your household and maintenance for your girls.

As you and nearly everyone else in the world knows by now, financial prognostication is a less than exact science.  Apparently there is something about the future associated with staring into a crystal ball, but I don’t think it really works.  And it has always been dangerous to be a prophet in Israel, at least from a biblical perspective.  In Deuteronomy 18, God is speaking to Moses and says:

18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.  And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.' 21 And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?'— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:18-22, ESV)

So in Old Testament Israel, if you claimed to be a prophet and you spoke for any God other than Jehovah, or if you spoke presumptuously as though you were speaking for God, or if you predicted some future event that did not come to pass, “that same prophet shall die.”  Maybe Wall Street investment brokers should be held to this same standard.

We have an election coming up in a few weeks, and already we have reports from bookies in Great Britain declaring that Senator Obama has already won it and they are no longer taking bets.  The media repeatedly predicts that Senator McCain has been defeated already.  We already know what the future holds and now it is too late for him to turn it around.

A week or so ago, Ann Gale went on a missions trip to Honduras.  Had she known the future, maybe she would not have left.  Had her husband been able to know the future, Chuck might still be alive.  All of this is conjecture because no one can tell what tomorrow holds.  And even if we could, would we be able to change it?  I think not.  But it is a moot point.

Proverbs 27:1 tells us all we need to know about tomorrow: Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.  That verse is quite generous.  The fact is, we don’t know what the next moment brings.  Some of us have trouble understanding the stuff that has already happened!

A friend of mine asked me if I thought it was presumptuous to predict the weather.  Is it presumptuous for the weather man to say, “The high today will be 75 degrees”?  How does he know that?  Does he know that?  In the strictest sense, he does not know.  If some people had their way, the high this afternoon would be 5000 degrees.  Who knows what the temperature will be this afternoon at a given time, in a given place?  And if we don’t know that, I would suggest we don’t really know anything about the future with any real certainty except what God has told us.  This is why we eat dessert first.

“Do not boast about tomorrow.”  What does the word “boast” mean?  In the Hebrew it literally means “to shine”.  It is translated a number of different ways in the King James, and 117 times the word is translated “praise”.  To celebrate, to glory, to be arrogant (in the best sense of that word).  It is also sometimes translated in the New American Standard as "to go mad", or madness, or to act insanely.  Generally speaking, it is an outlandish, flagrant display, sometimes in a positive manner and sometimes not.  It is the opposite of humble, quiet, mundane.  

To boast about tomorrow is to be overly confident, to the point of some degree of madness or foolishness, that you somehow know what will happen.  It is insane to be boastful about things one knows nothing about.  None of us know anything with certainty about tomorrow.

You say, “Well Keith, you’re just being silly.  We know the sun will come up.  We know we’ll still have air to breathe and food to eat.”  Actually, we don’t know that.  It is a fairly safe assumption that the sun will rise at a particular time and the world will continue to turn, and we’ll have gravity.  But it is not a certainty.  We really don’t know what a day may bring.

Does this verse therefore mean that we should not plan for the future?  Should we lay aside funds for our children’s college tuition?  Should we set aside money in an emergency fund to replace the car that will eventually and inevitably stop moving?  Should we buy life insurance? Should we have no regard for the future?  Is planning ahead unbiblical?

The text here does not say, “Do not plan for tomorrow.”  What is forbidden is the boasting about tomorrow.  I will win this election!  I will put a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage!  Read my lips: No new taxes!  Whatever my mind can conceive, I can achieve!  I will become rich!  I will prevail!

In 1875, a man by the name of William Ernest Henley published a poem entitled Invictus which is Latin for “Unconquered.”  In 1861, at the age of 12, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone.  In spite of this, in 1867 he successfully passed the Oxford local examination as a senior student.  His diseased foot had to be amputated directly below the knee; physicians announced the only way to save his life was to amputate the other.  Henley persevered and survived with one foot intact.  He was discharged in 1875, and was able to lead an active life for nearly 30 years despite his disability.  With an artificial foot, he lived until the age of 54, dying in 1903. Invictus was written from a hospital bed.

On June 11, 2001, the bomber of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, was executed by lethal injection.  His last words were the words of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus.  “I am the master of my fate.  I am the captain of my soul.”

There is a madness associated with claiming sovereignty over one’s own future.  Boasting about tomorrow is unbridled arrogance.  It is the opposite of humility.

What do the Scriptures tell us about tomorrow?  What should be our attitude about the future?  Two things at least: 1. God alone knows what tomorrow will bring because He alone has planned it.  2. Whatever my plans are for tomorrow, they are subject to God’s plans.  Listen to what has become a very familiar passage for most of us here in this church family:

13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance.  All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.  (James 4:13-17, ESV).

One thing determines whether my plans for tomorrow will be fulfilled or not: God.  I plan to leave this afternoon and drive to Roanoke, spend the night there at the Red Roof Inn, get up tomorrow morning, drive to South Carolina, visit with my parents, have dinner with about 15 of my high school friends at Chili’s in Rock Hill, spend the night at my parents’ house, and drive on to Aiken on Tuesday to spend the next 10 days or so mostly with Sharon’s family.  That’s the plan.  It is subject to change.  

Any part of it could change.  Any one of a multitude of things could happen to change my plans.  Something here in PA could happen which would require our presence and the entire trip could be canceled.  I could become sick.  Sharon could become ill.  Our car could give up the mechanical ghost.  We could have an accident.  One of you could have an accident or an illness.  Who knows what might happen that would cause me to alter our plans?  Only God knows.

I have plans for tomorrow.  But boasting about tomorrow is arrogant.  It is evil.  It is an attempt to rob God of His sovereign right to do with His own whatever He pleases.  It is the declaration that I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, NOT God.  And to know that God is sovereign over my life and still act as though I control my own destiny, is sin.  God deserves our humility and our acknowledgment that He rules over our lives, and not we ourselves. 

Psalm 100 (ESV)
A Psalm for giving thanks.
 1 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
 2 Serve the LORD with gladness!
   Come into his presence with singing!

 3 Know that the LORD, he is God!
   It is he who made us, and we are his;
   we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
   and his courts with praise!
   Give thanks to him; bless his name!

 5 For the LORD is good;
   his steadfast love endures forever,
   and his faithfulness to all generations.

We are His.  He is the Shepherd.  We are His sheep.  And it is His pasture we’re in.  We have no claim to anything except that we belong to a good Shepherd, who leads us throughout our lives by a good hand through His pastures.  Everything belongs to Him.  Our lives belong to Him.  So give thanks to Him and bless His name!

It is rather comical to think of a proud, arrogant, self-willed sheep.  What do they have to be proud of?  Their great strength?  Their hunting prowess?  The way they intimidate their predators?  Can a sheep plan out his day?  We’re talking about sheep here!  “I am the captain of my own fate!”  Yeah.  Whatever.

In recent months, you and many other people have been kind enough to often ask me how I am doing in the wake of cancer surgery.  The most honest answer I can give you is, “As far as I know, I’m fine.  But I don’t know much.”  God knows what tomorrow holds for me.  I am His sheep.  I live in His pasture.  He is my good Shepherd.  I have my plans.  But God directs my paths, and that is enough.  So, Lord willing, Sharon and I will be going to SC today and tomorrow.  But what we actually wind up doing is God’s to determine.  And that is enough for us.  God willing, we will live, and do this or that.

God willing, we will live.  If God is not willing, we won’t live.  But one thing we know for sure: God is not willing that any of His people should perish, but that every last one of them will come to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus.

 8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (1 Peter 3:8-9, ESV).

God has made a promise that He will save all of His people from their sins.  Not one sheep will be left behind.  Every one of His sheep eventually hears His voice, and follows Him.  God is not willing to allow even one person for whom His Son died to be lost.  That is a promise of future events that we can most definitely bank on.  Christ will build His church.  Not even Hell itself can prevail against that.  Every one of His plans for the future will succeed.  He cannot fail.  

The only boasting in tomorrow that is legitimate for the believer is boasting in Christ.  Someday, He will come.  Boast in that.  We can boast in the same way the apostle Paul boasted: "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (2 Cor. 10:17, ESV).

 23 Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.  For in these things I delight, declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 9:23-24, ESV).

Ps 44:8 (ESV)  In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah

Ps 34:2 (ESV)  My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad.

1 Samuel 2:1 (ESV)
And Hannah prayed and said,
  "My heart exults in the LORD;
  my strength is exalted in the LORD.
My mouth derides my enemies,
   because I rejoice in your salvation.”

Boasting is the Christian’s act of worship toward a good and kind God by speaking well of Him.  We are to celebrate Him, to glory in Him, to be arrogant about His greatness.  Don’t boast about tomorrow.  You don’t know anything about tomorrow.  Boast in God.