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 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.”

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