Tomorrow

1. Q: What’s the best day to start a diet? A: Tomorrow

2. We have a tendency to put off things, especially if they are difficult

a. “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

b. Revision: “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.”

3. Exodus 8.8-10a

8 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Plead with the LORD to take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the LORD.” 9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile.” 10 And he said, “Tomorrow.”

a. The second plague on Egypt: Frogs

b. An attack on the Egyptian goddess, Heqet, goddess of fertility and childbirth, depicted as a frog or a woman with a frog’s head

c. Moses did pray and God killed the frogs, except for at the Nile; Pharaoh hardened his heart against God and the Hebrews.

4. How often do we want one more night with an unhealthy or sinful situation?

5. We know better but just can’t let it go.

I. Too Often We Want One More Night of Delaying Our Walk with God:

A. Babying Bitterness

B. Refusing to Forgive

C. Immorality (54% of all men engage in pornography)

D. Ignoring the Scripture/Refusing to Pray

E. One More Night of Sin Can Lead to the Hardening of Our Hearts

II. Too Often We THINK We Will Act Tomorrow

A. Salvation? – Tomorrow

Felix – Acts 24.25 25 And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.”

B. Putting Off Doing Right Gets Progressively Easier – Hearts Harden

C. “Tomorrow” Never Seems to Come

1. “All the time in the world”

2. Not so, ask the Rich Fool – Luke 12.20 (POINT of STORY – COVETOUSNESS; also unpredictable life) 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

III. Too Often We Forget TODAY Is All We Have—

A. It is Crucial to Act When God Stirs Us – Hebrews 3.7, 13, (15; 4.7) cf. Psalm 95.7-8

7Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

on the day of testing in the wilderness,

13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

B. Pharaoh’s Pattern

1. God Starts Getting Through to Pharaoh – Hail – Exodus 9.18

18 Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.

2. Pharaoh Softens – 9.27-28

27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.”

3. Then Resumed His Old Ways When the Pressure Was Off – 9.34-35

34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. 35 So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the LORD had spoken through Moses.

a. How often is this us?

b. We have a problem; commit a sin; call out to God; the situation improves; and we go back to where we were. . .

1. Why Wait?

a. Sin WILL Find us out (Numbers 32.23)

b. Complacency WILL get the better of us.

c. No one in the book of Acts who heard the gospel and chose to follow Jesus ate a bite or slept a wink until they had been baptized. Not tomorrow; not later today – RIGHT NOW!

2. We don’t have tomorrow.

3. 2 Corinthians 6.2b Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.