Are you making plans for tomorrow?

Making Plans for Tomorrow

The Galilean worshipers whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1) were all making plans for tomorrow. They were all making plans for how they were going to spend their time once they got back from temple worship. The men in Jerusalem that the Tower of Siloam fell on and killed (Luke 13:4) were all making plans for the summer. They expected to live long enough to get married, to have kids, to see their kids get married, to grow old with their spouse, to be grandparents. To be sure, they all knew they were going to die, someday. If you asked them, “Do you realize that death is certain?” every last one of them would have said, “Yes, of course.”



But what was their problem? They all thought that death was out there, somewhere in the distance. They all flattered themselves that they had plenty of time before they had to think about that, plenty of time to make preparations, to clean up their act, to “get right with God.” And then the day came, and they found themselves in the presence of their Judge.

We were all making plans for March, April, and May of 2020. The people who have contracted the Coronavirus weren’t planning on spending their spring in a hospital bed, sequestered away from their family, gasping for their next breath.

What is God teaching us through the Coronavirus? Not just that death is certain, but that life is uncertain. Not only that death is coming, but that we don’t have any idea when it’s going to come.

Boast Not of Tomorrow




God is saying to us now in the Coronavirus what He said to Israel in Proverbs 27:1: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” Don’t flatter yourself by speaking about your future plans, even for the next day. You have no idea what tomorrow will bring! God is saying to us now in the Coronavirus what He said in James 4:13–15:

“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. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’”

You know what your life is like? It’s a mist that vanishes in a moment. Your life is like a breath of air on a winter day. You exhale, you see a puff of steam, and a moment later it’s gone. What folly it would be for that puff of steam to boast of its longevity!

The Word of God reasons with us. “Come now, you who are making plans for tomorrow, you whose life is a vapor! You don’t have any idea what tomorrow will bring! You are entirely dependent on the will of God to continue your life and to carry out your plans! You are so temporary! Don’t live your life as if you’re immortal, giving no thought to how suddenly death can come upon you!”

Unmasking the Illusion of Control



What is God doing in this crisis? For those with eyes to see, He’s stripping away the illusion of control. Do you think you are in control of your life, let alone your eternal destiny? Friend, be reasonable. Open your eyes. Has not this crisis-torn off the mask of the foolish notion that you’re in control of your life? Up until a couple weeks ago, you couldn’t even get toilet paper! We can barely get the masks and gloves by which we might seek to protect ourselves from exposure to this virus!

You can take precautions, but you can’t control whether or not you contract the Coronavirus. You might stay in your house for twelve months. You might conduct all your business electronically. You might have people do your grocery shopping for you, or do your shopping online. You might take every precaution known to man, and you know what can happen? You can contract the virus from the germs on your mail or your groceries by the asymptomatic delivery driver who doesn’t even know he has the disease.



And even if you do manage to avoid the Coronavirus, you will die someday. A short 100 years from now, each and every one of us will have passed from this life into eternity. And we’ll be in one of two places: in eternal rest and blessedness with Jesus Christ in heaven, or in eternal punishment and torment, separated from God in hell. Don’t delude yourself with the notion that you’re the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. This crisis is the loud testimony of Almighty God that you are not in control—that your life is like a breath on a cold day that vanishes in a moment.

You are not in control, friend. God is in control. As soon as He wishes, He can wipe out hundreds of thousands of people within weeks through a virus that no one had ever heard of just a few short months earlier.




What is God teaching us through the Coronavirus? He’s trying to wake you up from the fantasy-land of autonomy by painting a vivid picture right in front of your eyes: that death is certain, and that life is uncertain—that death is coming, and you don’t know when it’s coming. And so you ought to order your life as if death may come at any time, rather than by living as if death will never come at any time.

Judgment is Coming

But death is not all there is. Not only is death certain. Not only is life uncertain. But judgment is coming. And that’s the third lesson God is teaching us in this pandemic.

Where is that in Luke 13? Well, verse 1 begins with the phrase, “Now on the same occasion.” What occasion was that? It was in the same setting as He was teaching what He was teaching at the end of chapter 12. And what was that?

Luke 12:54: “And He was also saying to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “A shower is coming,” and so it turns out. And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, “It will be a hot day,” and it turns out that way. You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time?’”

Jesus is saying, You know how to predict the weather! You see a cloud, you predict rain. You see a south wind, you predict heat. But how is it that you can’t interpret “the signs of the times” (Matt 16:3)?

How can you get the weather right, but you ignore the blinking neon lights of God’s providence? How can you get God’s message of the clouds and winds, but you don’t get God’s message of these extraordinary circumstances of our day?

So what’s the message? It’s that judgment is coming. The next verse says, “And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right? For while you are going with your opponent to appear before the magistrate, on your way there make an effort to settle with him, so that he may not drag you before the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I say to you, you will not get out of there until you have paid the very last cent.”

What’s the point? Someone who’s going to court to settle a matter, and who knows that he’s guilty, would be a fool not to settle out of court with his accuser. Because then he’s going to have to face the judge, and the judge is going to expose him as guilty, and hand him over to the court officer, and the court officer is going to throw him into prison until his debt is paid.

Our Court Date is Coming

Jesus is telling us that our court date is coming. In fact, our entire life is lived on the way to our appointment at the Judgment Seat of God. And each and every one of us is guilty. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all broken God’s law. We’ve all lied, we’ve all stolen, we’ve all blasphemed God’s name, we’ve all looked with lust, we’ve all been unjustly angry and committed what Jesus says is murder in our hearts. Here you are on the way to Judgment Day, and you know that you’re guilty!




Jesus is telling you: Settle out of court! Settle your case with God before you ever get to the judgment! Because when you stand before Him as your Judge, clothed in the filthy rags of your own sins—devoid of the pure robe of the righteousness that God requires of all those who would stand in His presence—He is going to cast you into the prison of hell until you’ve paid what you owe.

And the reality is, friend, that you’ll never be able to pay what you owe because every sin you and I commit is perpetrated against an infinitely holy God. And so every sin is an infinite crime. It makes you infinitely guilty, and therefore it merits an infinite punishment.

And Scripture speaks about that as eternity in hell—an eternity in a place which Jesus Himself describes as “the furnace of fire [where] there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 13:42, 50). That horrible place is the just punishment that your sins deserve, that my sins deserve. It would be right for us to go there.

And so you see, Coronavirus teaches us not only that death is certain, and not only that life is uncertain. It also reminds us that judgment is coming along with the certain death that may come at any time.




A Fate Worse than Death

Death is not the cessation of existence. It is not the peaceful escape to tranquillity and rest that so many suppose. Death is not an escape from the suffering of this life.

For those who stand before God without a Mediator, for those whose sins have not been forgiven through the atoning work of Christ, for those not united to Jesus Christ by faith, death is the beginning of a kind of suffering that you cannot begin to fathom—an intensity of torment that dwarfs all the pains of this life.

If you’re outside of Christ, death will not bring rest. Death will bring the beginning of torment. Hebrews 9:27: “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment”—a judgment ten million times worse than mandatory quarantine, and a collapsing economy, and even dying alone in a hospital bed gasping for breath.

And yet we foolishly respond to this pandemic with empty platitudes of ego-stroking arrogance. “We are strong!” “We’re going to beat this!” “The American spirit will conquer COVID!” “We will triumph so long as we can all pull together!” “We got this!” That is nothing but arrogant, self-righteous paganism. And it is the exact opposite of the purpose of God for us in this tragedy.

God has sent the Coronavirus to humble us—to show us how small we are, how powerful He is, and how able He is to make good on His promise that He will not leave the guilty unpunished. And like madmen, like senseless animals, we puff ourselves up with delusions of our own grandeur.

Settle Out of Court



God is saying—in fact, He might as well be screaming at us—“Look at the signs! Discern the signs of the times! If I can stop the world, don’t you realize that the coming judgment for sin is as bad as I promise it to be? You’re guilty. Settle out of court before you come into judgment.”

Have you done that? Are you ready? If this was the last hour of your life, would you be satisfied with the way you’ve lived your life? Would you be content to stand before God your Judge in the strength of your own righteousness? Has your life stood the test of the holy perfection God demands of His creatures?

Of course it hasn’t. That means, friend, that you need to be clothed in the righteousness of Another—the perfect obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has lived the life you were commanded to live but failed to live, and who has died the death you were required to die but couldn’t survive, and who has risen again in victory over sin and death.

On the cross, Jesus has borne the judgment of God against sinners who believe in Him. And you may wear the robe of His righteousness only by putting away all confidence in your own goodness, and by trusting in Christ alone. Do that today. It’s why God has sent the Coronavirus: that you might repent and believe in Jesus, and so not perish for eternity.