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The sermon expounds Proverbs 27:1 as both practical and spiritual wisdom: people cannot control or guarantee tomorrow, and boasting about it damages present faithfulness. Its sharpest application is to sinners who postpone repentance, since delay may harden the heart and no future opportunity is assured. Believers are urged to watch their paths without presuming on future strength, while resting in Christ’s finished atonement and God’s providential care. Christian hope allows tomorrow to be faced without anxiety and even with joy, as each day brings the believer nearer glory.
Theological center: God’s sovereign providence and Christ’s finished atonement free believers from anxious presumption, while the uncertainty of life makes present repentance urgent.
Applications: Repent and turn today · Reject postponed resolutions · Recognize tomorrow’s uncertainty · Urgency about repentance
Primary texts: Proverbs 27:1 · Hebrews 3:15 · Matthew 24:44
On behalf of the Metropolitan Benefit Societies’ Asylum, Ball’s Pond Road, Islington “Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Proverbs 27:1 GOD’S most holy Word was principally written to inform us of the way to heaven, and to guide us in our path through this world, to the realms of eternal life and light. But as if to teach us that God is not careless concerning our doings in the present scene, and that our benevolent Father is not inattentive to our happiness, even in this state, He has furnished us with some excellent and wise maxims, which we may put into practice, not only in spiritual matters, but in temporal affairs also. I have always looked upon the book of Proverbs with pleasure, as being a book not only teaching us the highest spiritual wisdom, but as more especially speaking on the “now”—the time that is present with us—giving us maxims that will make us wise for this world and instruct us in conducting our affairs whilst we are here among our fellow men. We need some temporal wisdom as well as spiritual illumination. It need not always be that the children of the kingdom should be more foolish than the children of darkness. It is well that we should be wise to order our common affairs aright, as well as to set our house in order for the grave, and hence we find in Scripture maxims and teachings for them both. Since God has been pleased thus to instruct us in the avocations of life, I shall not, then, be out of place if I use my text, in some degree, in a merely temporal manner and endeavor to give advice to my friends concerning the business of this life. Afterwards, I shall dwell upon it more spiritually. There is, first, the abuse of tomorrow forbidden in the text. In the second place, I shall mention the right use of tomorrow. I. First, then, there is THE ABUSE OF TOMORROW mentioned in the text and we shall look upon it first in a worldly point of view, and yet, I trust, in a way of wisdom. “Boast not thyself of to-morrow.” Oh! my brethren, whosoe’er you be, whether you be Christians or no, this passage has a depth of wisdom in it for you. “Boast not thyself of to-morrow,” and this, for many very wise reasons. First of all, because it is extremely foolish to boast at all. Boasting never makes a man any the greater in the esteem of others, nor does it improve the real estate of his body or soul. Let a man brag as he will, he is none the greater for his bragging. Nay, he is the less, for men invariably think the worse of him. Let him boast as much as he pleases of anything that he possesses, he sh…