Boast Not of Tomorrow You May Die Today

I used to go up to Northwood, Massachusetts and visit the grave of D.O. Moody. Moody did more for God than all of us put together. There is an incident in the life of Moody, which stands out in my mind.

During his first trip to England, he befriended three pastors, and they invited him to come back to England the next year to preach in their churches. Well, upon Moody's return to England the next year, he learned through his horror that each of his three friends had died within that 12-month period. They were men in good health of different ages, but they each had died quite suddenly in a year's time.

There is a passage in Scripture which warns us not to boast of tomorrow, and it's found in the book of James. You can turn in your Bibles there now. We will be in chapter 4 and verses 13 through 15, which I will read for us now.

Go to now, ye that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanish away. For ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that.

Listen, friends. God tells us not to boast of tomorrow, and the title of my message today is boast not of tomorrow. You may die today.

We do not know if we'll be here next year, yet alone if we will be here tomorrow. There may be someone now, within the sound of my voice, who before this very year is up, will enter eternity quite suddenly. You have no promise of tomorrow, friend.

You cannot take tomorrow for granted. It is the gift of God. I was speaking to a friend just the other day.

He was a young man in good health, and I waved goodbye to him. He went to bed that evening, and awoke the next morning with severe chest pain. He got out of bed, took two steps, and dropped dead to the floor.

He had no idea that day would be his last on earth when he went to bed that night. Neither do you, friend. Neither do you.

Are you doing all you can for God with the time he has allotted to you, or are you procrastinating with the belief that you have plenty of time to get around to it? Are we witnessing enough? Are we knocking on doors and telling people about Jesus who came down here so we could go up there? I was humbled the other day by a friend of mine. He's a retired medical doctor. He has every reason to spend the rest of his days in recreation because he worked so hard all his life.

He sent me an email asking me to pray for a 16-year-old boy whom he met while knocking on doors in a neighborhood while he was out sharing his faith in the evenings. Here he is, a man in his 70s, out knocking on doors and witnessing strangers. He asked me to pray for this teenager because he was going to have lunch with him and tell him more about Christ.

How about you, friend? Are you making good use of the time God has given you to advance his kingdom here on earth, or are you putting it off for another day with good intentions? That day may never come. I will never forget his face. He was a construction worker doing some work on my house.

He was part of a team of three men. For some reason, he was always early and was standing around waiting for his co-workers to show up. I had a past time with him, but I was too busy for him.

I was too preoccupied. Often, I just drove away with him standing in my driveway. About two weeks later, I was reading the Sunday paper, and this man's face stared out at me from the obituary page.

He had died quite suddenly, and he was a young man, and he had died without me ever telling him about the dying love of a Savior. I felt awful. There was a reason why this young man always showed up early at my house, but I was too out of step with God at the time to realize it.

We believe we have all the time in the world to witness to folks, but the problem is they don't have the time. They're dropping like flies all around us every day, and what are we doing about it? I want to share with us today, friends, a wonderful sermon extract from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards called The Sin and Folly of Procrastination, for it fits right into my message on this subject of do not boast of tomorrow. I want you to pay close attention to his words, for they are striking and gripping and heart-piercing, as was representative of his preaching.

Here now are the words of Jonathan Edwards. I come now to show why we ought not thus to boast ourselves of tomorrow, but on the contrary, to behave ourselves every day as though we had no dependence on another. And there is this plain and sufficient reason for it, that we have no grounds of dependence on another day.

We have neither any foundation to depend upon seeing any particular things come to pass another day, which we may hope or wish for, nor upon enjoying another day in this world. We have nothing for a foundation of dependence that we shall not be in eternity before tomorrow. As both reason and experience show, we have no promise of God that we shall ever see another day.

We are in God's hands. Our lives are in His hands. He hath set our bounds.

The number of our months and days are with Him, nor hath He told them to us. We see that the life of a man at longest is very short, and nothing is more uncertain, and it is a thing universal among mankind, that they know not the day of their death. We see that great natural abilities, and sharpness of wit, and clearness of discernment, do not help to any discovery in this matter.

Wise men are as uncertain of the term of their lives as others. There are so many ways and means whereby the lives of men come to an end, that no circumstances in which a man can be are any security to him from death. That is, but a little while till tomorrow, it is no good ground of dependence that we shall live till then.

We see that deaths as sudden as our dying before tomorrow morning are common in the world. We very often see or hear of sudden deaths, how very suddenly, in a few minutes, pass from a state of health to a state of death, in the daytime, by several kinds of disease which give no warning of their approach, and by many unforeseen accidents, how many go to sleep in health, and are found dead in their beds in the morning, so that our present health is no good ground of dependence that we shall live to see another day. That persons are now in youth is no good ground of dependence upon another day, for sudden unexpected deaths are common even among those who are in the bloom of youth.

Nor is it any ground of dependence in this case that a man is more than ordinary in health and strong constitution. It is found by experience that such are liable to sudden death as well as others. One dieth in his full strength, his breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow, Job says.

That person have already lived to see a great many days, and that after they've been often in times past told that they were uncertain of future time, or their persons have a strong desire to live longer, or that they are now very unprepared for death, both on temporal and spiritual accounts, it is no ground of dependence on the future. Death tarries for no man, but comes when and to whom he is sent, and strikes the deadly blow, whether the man be prepared or not. That men have been very useful in their day, and that it is great importance to their families and neighbors that they should live longer is no ground of dependence.

The most useful men are often cut down by death in the midst of their usefulness. Listen, friends, Jonathan Edwards was cut down in the prime of his usefulness, and he died at the age of 54. Our times are not in our hands, but rather, our lives should be at the disposal of God at all times, for he could call us home to himself any moment without warning.

We must ask ourselves today this vital question. Am I living in light of eternity, and doing all I can to spread the gospel of the Son of God in my lifetime? Am I guilty of procrastinating about a thing God has called me to do? Do I keep saying I'm going to do something for God and never get around to it? Do I go to bed at night knowing I was at his disposal that day to advance his kingdom, or did I live that day selfishly to myself? Let me ask another question, friend. If you knew today was your last day on earth, how would you spend it? Would it be a day of pleasing just yourself because you had no more time to do that? Or would you spend your last day watching your favorite TV shows? Or would you spend your last day out on the golf course or at the lake? Or would you spend your last day knocking on doors and handing out tracts and telling as many people as you could about the dying love of a Savior? This may be your last day.

How are you going to spend it? We should live each day as if it's our last day and do all we can to reach our generation with the gospel of the Son of God because all that matters in the end is eternity. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

But do we believe it? Some here believe in the rapture, but you're not living like you believe it. You think you have all the time in the world. The misuse of time will come back to haunt us.

God has only given us so many days to live on his earth. And what are we doing with that time? Did we spend more time watching television this week than we did in sharing our faith? Did we spend more time in watching a ball game than we did on our knees in prayer for this lost generation? People are dropping into hell all around us, but we don't seem to mind too much as long as we can laugh at our favorite reality show. It's been estimated that 80 people a minute die without Christ.

For the hour you sit in front of your TV laughing, 4,800 people just populated hell. But just hand me the remote and pass the potato chips and onion dip, honey, because as long as I'm happy, what does that to me? How many church people live their lives unto themselves and then die and enter eternity and realize their time on earth is over and they will never, ever have another opportunity to speak to a lost soul about Jesus again. I want us to take some time to go to prayer now and ask God to shine the spotlight of his Holy Spirit on our lives, to show us any area that is hindering his work through us, to show us our sin of procrastination, to reveal to us our laziness in prayer and Bible study, to show us our great failure of not reaching more people with the gospel.

If a retired doctor can spend his evenings knocking on doors and sharing his faith, how can we sit in front of our TV and be comfortable if we don't get to these people with the gospel, friend? The Mormons will, the Jehovah Witnesses will, and they'll be fed a false doctrine. Where would we be if someone had not told us about the dying love of the Savior? Are we boasting of tomorrow? Do we think we have more time to live than we really do? Let us go to prayer and ask Almighty God to grant us the grace to be more faithful to him in reaching this lost generation with the gospel of his dear son, Jesus Christ.