The sermon focuses on the importance of making a wise improvement of time and opportunities. It emphasizes not boasting or acting as if the future is in our control. The reason given is that we do not know what a day may bring forth. The sermon warns against depending on another day and placing our happiness in earthly enjoyments. It also highlights the consequences of yielding to temptations and backsliding in the pursuit of salvation.

The following excerpt is taken from a sermon called Procrastination or Descending Folly Depending on Future Time, Proverbs 27.1. Post not yourself, but tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring forth. The design of the wise man in this book of Proverbs is to give us the precepts of true wisdom, or to teach us how to conduct ourselves wisely in the course of our lives. Wisdom very much consists of making a wise improvement of time, and of the opportunities we enjoy. This is often in scripture spoken as a great part of true wisdom.

Deuteronomy 32 29. Oh, that they were wise, did they understand this, that they would consider their latter end? In Psalm 90 verse 12, So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. So the wisdom of the wise virgins is represented as consisting much in this, that they improve the proper season to buy oil. Therefore, the wise men in these books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, agreeable to his design, insist on this part of wisdom.

He tells us the advantage of seeking Christ early, Proverbs 8 17, and advises us to do what our hand finds to do, with our might. Ecclesiastes 9 10 advises young people to remember their Creator in the days of their youth, while the evil days come not, in which they shall say, I have no pleasure." Ecclesiastes 12.1. So here he advises us to a wise improvement of the present season. In the words are two things to be particularly observed. The precept, not to boast of tomorrow, in other words not to speak or act as though it were our own.

It is absurd for men to boast of that which is not theirs. The wise man would not have us behave ourselves as though any time were ours. But the present, he did boast of tomorrow, acts as though he had tomorrow in his possession, or had something whereby he might depend on it, and call it its own. Number 2. The reason given for this precept, for you know not what a day may bring forth, it is a good reason why we should not behave ourselves as though the morrow were our own.

That indeed it is not. We are not sure of it. We have no hold of future time. We don't know whether we shall see tomorrow, or if we do know that we shall see it. We do not know what we shall see on it.

Hence, we ought to behave ourselves every day as though we had no dependence on any other. When men act as though they depend on another day, they will do so. If they set their hearts on the enjoyments of this life, I don t mean if they have any manner of affection to them. We may have some affection to the enjoyments of this world. Otherwise, they would cease to be enjoyments.

If we might have no degree of rejoicing in them, we could not be thankful for them. Persons may in a degree take delight in earthly friends and other earthly enjoyments. It is agreeable to the wise man's advice that we should do so. Ecclesiastes 5.18 It is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he takes under the sun, but by setting our hearts on these things, by placing our happiness on them, and letting out the current of our affections after them, by turning and fixing our inclination so much upon them that we cannot well enjoy ourselves without them, so that very much of the strength of the faculties of our minds is employed and taken up about these things, we show that we have our dependence on another day. The man who doth thus acts as though he depended on another day, yea, many other days in the world.

For it is most evident that if the enjoyments of this world be of such a nature that they are not to be depended on for one day more, they are not worth the setting of our hearts on them, or the placing of our happiness in them. We may rejoice in the enjoyments of the world, but not in such manners to place the rest of ourselves in them. As the apostle says, we should rejoice in them as though we rejoice not. 1 Corinthians 7.30 So that if this joy should fail, our stock may hold good. So that if this joy should fail, our stock may hold good.

And in this case we must behave ourselves only as if we had lost a small stream of joy, but still had a fountain full of possession. We should conduct ourselves with those who have not the foundation of their joy shaken, so when men hearken to temptations and yield to the solicitations of their lusts to commit any sin, de-act, it is those who depend on another day, they do what must be undone. What they then do must be undone by hardy and thorough repentance, or They are ruined and lost forever. So a person has been seeking salvation for a time and afterwards are guilty of backsliding and turn back after their hands have been put to the plow. They act as though those who depend on another day for what they now do.

They must undo some time or other. They must go back again from their backsliding and have all their work to do over again. And these things must be undone in this world. While men live, for there will be no undoing of them afterwards, they may be suffered for, but they never can be undone.