The Sin of Being Your Own God Text: Proverbs 27:1
Introduction: The Autonomous Man's Calendar
We live in an age that has declared its independence from God, and as a result, it has become enslaved to itself. Modern man, secular man, believes he is the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. He fills his calendar, makes his five-year plans, and charts his course with a confidence that would be comical if it were not so tragic. He is a little god, sitting at a little desk, planning a little future, utterly oblivious to the fact that the entire desk, the entire office, and his very next breath are all on loan from the God he ignores.
The sin condemned in our text is not the sin of planning. God is a planner. He is the one who declares the end from the beginning. The sin is not forethought, but rather, proud thought. It is the sin of practical atheism. It is the arrogance of assuming that tomorrow is a blank page in your diary that you get to write on, instead of a page in God's sovereign novel that you get to read. It is the sin of acting as though you are the landlord of your life, when you are, in fact, a tenant on a month-to-month lease, and the notice to vacate could be posted on your door at any moment.
This proverb is a direct assault on the central idol of our time, which is the autonomous self. The man who boasts about tomorrow is a man who has forgotten the Creator/creature distinction. He has forgotten that he is a creature, made of dust, and that his life is a vapor. He is playing God, and the Bible has a consistent word for men who play God: fool. As we unpack this verse, we must see that this is not simply good advice for financial planners. This is a fundamental theological orientation. It is about who is God and who is not. And getting that question right is the foundation of all wisdom.
The Text
Do not boast about tomorrow,
For you do not know what a day may bring forth.
(Proverbs 27:1 LSB)
The Prohibition: Do Not Boast (v. 1a)
The verse begins with a direct, sharp prohibition:
"Do not boast about tomorrow..." (Proverbs 27:1a)
The word for "boast" here carries the sense of glorying in something, of putting your trust and confidence in it. The object of this forbidden boast is "tomorrow." This is the proud declaration of what you will do, where you will go, what you will accomplish. It is the language of the man who believes his will is sovereign. We see this attitude fleshed out perfectly by the apostle James, who is, in many ways, the great commentator on the book of Proverbs.
James says, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away" (James 4:13-14). This is the very essence of the boast. It is the detailed, confident planning that leaves God entirely out of the equation. The problem is not the plan to go to the city, or to do business, or to make a profit. The problem is the proud assumption that the execution of these plans is entirely within your own power.
This is a sin of presumption. It is assuming upon the grace and providence of God without acknowledging Him. It is to treat God's sustaining power as a public utility that you are entitled to, instead of a moment-by-moment gift that you are dependent upon. When a man says, "Tomorrow I will do this," and there is no hint of "if the Lord wills," he is functionally declaring that he is the lord of his own tomorrow. He is claiming a divine attribute, which is sovereignty over time. This is a subtle but profound form of idolatry. You are placing your own plans and your own will in the place of God.
This kind of boasting is the native language of the fool. The rich man in Jesus's parable was fluent in it. He said to himself, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry" (Luke 12:19). He had his tomorrow, and the day after, and many years, all mapped out. But God had a different calendar. "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul is required of you'" (Luke 12:20). His boasting was not just bad planning; it was rebellion. It was the creature pretending to be the Creator.
The Reason: You Do Not Know (v. 1b)
The proverb does not leave the prohibition hanging in the air. It provides the reason, and it is a reason grounded in the stark reality of our creaturely limitations.
"For you do not know what a day may bring forth." (Proverbs 27:1b)
This is the great humbling reality check. You do not know. You think you know. You have your schedule, your investments, your insurance policies. You have done everything in your power to domesticate the future, to make it predictable and safe. But you do not know. The future is a locked room, and God holds the only key.
A single day can bring forth anything. It can bring a promotion or a pink slip. It can bring a wedding or a funeral. It can bring the birth of a child or the diagnosis of a terminal illness. A day can bring a stock market crash, a car accident, a declaration of war, or the quiet, unexpected end of your own life. The world is filled with contingencies, variables, and intersecting providences that are utterly beyond your comprehension and control. To presume upon tomorrow is to display a staggering ignorance of your own fragility and a profound disrespect for the God who holds all these variables in His hand.
This ignorance is not a defect to be overcome with better technology or more careful planning. It is a designed feature of our existence as creatures. We were created to be dependent. We were made to walk by faith, not by sight. God has deliberately veiled the future from us so that we would be compelled to trust in Him, not in our own foresight. The man who boasts in tomorrow is trying to live by sight. He is trying to peek into God's hand, and this is an act of profound unbelief.
Therefore, the proper Christian posture is not one of arrogant boasting, but of humble submission. James tells us what we ought to say: "Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'" (James 4:15). This is not some superstitious phrase to tack onto the end of our sentences. It is the orientation of a heart that has been humbled, a heart that recognizes its utter dependence on the sovereign goodness of God. It is to say, "I have my plans, and I will work diligently toward them, but I hold them loosely. My ultimate trust is not in my plan, but in my God. His will be done."
The Gospel Correction
This proverb, like all of Scripture, ultimately points us to Christ. The sin of boasting about tomorrow is the sin of Adam. It is the desire to be like God, knowing good and evil, determining our own future. We are all born Adamic braggarts, confident in our own strength and wisdom. We all think we are the masters of our own destiny. And the end of that road, as the parable of the rich fool shows, is death and judgment.
But Christ is the second Adam, the one who lived in perfect submission to the Father's will. His constant refrain was, "not My will, but Yours be done" (Luke 22:42). He never boasted about His tomorrow. He entrusted His life, His ministry, and His very breath to the Father. He walked in perfect, moment-by-moment dependence. He is the only man who ever lived who had every right to be confident in His own power, and yet He chose the path of perfect, humble trust.
And on the cross, He took upon Himself the judgment for all our arrogant boasting. He bore the wrath of God for every time we have played God, for every time we have presumed upon His grace, for every time we have lived as if He did not exist. He died the fool's death that we deserved, so that we might be clothed in the wisdom of His perfect submission.
Because of Christ, we are freed from the frantic need to control our own future. We can plan, we can work, we can build, but we can do it all with a joyful, restful confidence, not in our own abilities, but in the steadfast love of a Father who knows what we need before we ask, and who works all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). The gospel does not make us passive; it makes us productively dependent. It frees us to work hard today precisely because we are not anxious about tomorrow. Our tomorrow is secure in the hands of the one who holds the future, the one who died and rose again, and who has promised never to leave us or forsake us. Therefore, do not boast in tomorrow. Boast in the Lord of tomorrow.