Gary North

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:10).

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:12).

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:18).

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:21).

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:25).

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day (Gen. 1:31).

There is a pattern here. The pattern is simple: step by step. One day at a time. From victory unto victory. Things add up.

God announced His own success at the end of days three through six. He was talking to Himself. He verbally pronounced judgment on work which, for the first five days, He had spoken into existence. His words were judgments on the effects of His own words.

The fact that God pronounced judgment, day by day, on the effects of His own work indicates that judgment is basic to God's work in history. He pronounced judgment on the effects of His labor even when there was no one except Himself to hear His pronouncements.

Unless we think of God as an eccentric who talks to Himself for no good reason, we should conclude that pronouncing judgment on our own labors is a rational thing to do. It does not mean that we pronounce judgment when we are alone. It does mean that we pronounce judgment in the sense of discussing results with others who have a stake in the outcome of our efforts. There is a sharing of judgment, and this sharing is in part verbal.

We say that we give an accounting of our efforts. There is a profession, called accounting, whose task is associated with evaluating past results and pronouncing judgment. This is consistent with what God did before the creation of mankind.

When God pronounced judgment, He did so in terms of a set of standards. Standards implied judgment; judgment implies standards. There is no judgment apart from standards, and there are no standards apart from judgment. We speak of standards and judgment as a package deal.

He pronounced judgment in terms of a plan. This plan had been in effect before the foundation of the world.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love (Ephesians 1:3-4).

God judged Himself by judging the outcome of His own words. This is self-judgment. Self-judgment is basic to life. This is another way of saying that self-government is basic to life. If God verbally pronounced judgment before man was created and before there is any mention of Satan, when He alone could hear this pronouncement, then we have to assume that self-judgment is basic to success in life. It was basic to God, then it is basic to us.

By pronouncing judgment verbally, meaning publicly, even though God alone was there to hear the judgment, God established a precedent. This precedent extends to what we call the final judgment. The final judgment will be public (Matt. 25). God will pronounce judgment on every one, in terms of everything that each person has ever thought, spoken, or done. This will be a comprehensive judgment.

In the creation week, there was comprehensive judgment. At the end of history, there will also be comprehensive judgment. This indicates how important the concept of judgment is.

SEQUENTIAL JUDGMENT

God pronounced judgment on His own work at the end of the week. But that was not the first time that He pronounced judgment. He pronounced it repeatedly during the week. This indicates that the plan of God, which was implemented day by day, was accompanied by evaluations day by day. God did not wait until the end of the week to evaluate the success of the parts of his plan. There was a comprehensive plan, but it was implemented on a daily basis. God pronounced judgment on this plan on a daily basis.

This should serve as a warning to us. We need a comprehensive plan, but the plan is always implemented day by day. We therefore also need planning and evaluation on a day-by-day basis. There are short-term plans, and there are long-term plans. There is evaluation at each stage of the plan.

God could have spoken the entire world into existence with one command. He did not do so. Instead, the week of creation was sequential. It was step-by-step. It was day by day. God established the difference between day and night on the first day. In His sequential plan, the division of day and night, meaning the division of days from one another, was basic.

Any attempt to deny the sequence of God's step-by-step creation of the universe is an attack on the concept of sequential planning. It is also an attack on the concept of sequential judgment. It is an attack on the idea that God pronounces judgment in history and not just at the end of history.

God pays attention to developments in history. This is why history has meaning. This is why the events of history have meaning for the overall plan of God for the ages. This is why Western civilization, which was originally Christian, rested heavily on the concept of linear time.

Things have a beginning and an end. They also have an in between. All of this are important. God's creation week began with the separation of day and night. It then extended through time. At the end of the week, He pronounced judgment on the work of each of the days, which meant that he was pronouncing judgment on the entire week. He said that it was very good.

EXECUTING A PLAN

What God did, we should do. God had a plan from the beginning. The execution of this plan should be our guide. The execution of the plan was verbal in two senses. First, He spoke the world into existence for the first five days. Second, He evaluated the effects of his words at the end of the day. It is not said that he verbally assessed the results of the first two days, but it does say that he did so with respect to the remainder of the week.

As creatures made in the image of God, we should not expect to do better than God did. We should not expect to work smarter than God did. God started with a plan. He executed the plan sequentially. He verbally judged the success of the stages of his plan. Then, at the end, he retroactively assessed the success of the entire plan. This should be our working model.

From the point of view of personal finances, we need to have a plan. This plan should reflect our goals in life for our entire lives. We should think of our lives as God thought of His week. There was a beginning, there was a sequence, and there was an end in which God pronounced final judgment on the entire creation week. We should think of our lives in the same way. This is why Jesus warned us about the doctrine of the final judgment. This was not a clear concept in the Old Testament, but it is fundamental to the New Testament.

TIME SEQUENCES

Our plan must break our lifetime plan into time sequences. Different people have different sequences, but the common one is yearly. This is why, all over the world, people make New Year's resolutions. They generally have no plan of implementation associated with these resolutions. This is why, sometime in mid- January, they abandon their resolutions. This is common, and we know it is common. So, yearly plans are fundamental. The tax collector also assumes this.

For most people, the four seasons are convenient breaks in the year. A three-month plan is probably wise. God created the sun, moon, and stars as a means of helping us understand the sequence of the year. There are two equinoxes, and there are two solstices. We could do worse than to break our annual sequence into quarters.

We should not burden ourselves with too much detail in outlining our plans for the next 90 days. But at the end of 90 days, we should sit down and evaluate how successful our plan has been. We should, in this sense, pronounce judgment on our own work.

At that point, we should probably revise our existing 90 day plan. We find that we've been successful in some things, but we have been unsuccessful in others. Plan revision is basic to life. It was not basic to God, but God is perfect. He is also omniscient, omnipotent, and does not deal with unexpected events.

Some people select monthly plans because most bills are paid monthly. There is the old phrase, "Don't run out of money before you run out of month." That is a reasonable phrase. But I believe that for most people, month by month assessments have more to do with monthly wages than they do with effective planning. So, I recommend a quarterly plan, an annual plan, and a three-year plan.

Why a three-year plan? Because Jess' ministry extended for three years. That was the historical limit of His ministry on earth. It took three years to train the disciples to become competent leaders who would be able to exercise judgment after his departure.

There is no clear-cut standard in the Bible for setting up personal plans. The lifetime plan is obvious, and this is an implication of the doctrine of the final judgment. Anyone who does not have a lifetime plan is naive. God has a lifetime plan for us, and we had better get used to it.

Because we don't know the temporal limits of our lifetimes, we have to adopt substitutes. I suggest that you begin with moses.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10).

Seventy years is generally the limit we should accept until such time as life extension science makes a breakthrough. Moses said that we might make it for 80 years, but this is pushing it.

YOUR 70th BIRTHDAY PARTY

I tell people to think about their 70th birthday party. All of their relatives, meaning mostly descendants, are assembled at the homestead.

You stand in front of the assembled group and give about a 10- minute summary of your life. You stress your major achievements. You offer a brief assessment of how you achieved whatever it was that you achieved. If you talk much longer than 10 minutes, you are going to bore your listeners. In those 10 minutes, you may be able to help others in the room began formulating their own lifetime plans.

A person should plan from an early age to be able to give the speech that he would like to give at his 70th birthday party. His plan should reflect what he wants to say at that time.

In making plans for the future, an individual has got to ask three questions.

What do I want to achieve?
How long do I have to achieve it?
How much am I willing to pay?

These three fundamental questions should shape almost everything we do.

A person should write down these plans. At the end of each 90-day period, he should get out his written plan for that time period and evaluates his success or failure. If God did it at the end of each day, you should do it every three months. Rarely will anyone be able to say, as God said, "it was very good." At best, he will be able to say that it was pretty good.

BUDGETING

God did not have to budget at the beginning of each day. He did not have to worry about running out of resources. He spoke the resources into existence.

We are not omnipotent. We do not have God's ability to speak our resources into existence. So, we have to budget for the future.

This budget should reflect our existing assets, our hoped-for income over the period of the plan, and however much we think we will have to pay for any resources that we do not already own.

This budget must be tight. We have got to plan for unexpected events. We've got to set aside money for these unexpected events.

This budget must be monthly, to deal with paychecks. It must be quarterly to help evaluate the 90-day plan. It must be annual, to deal with taxes. If it goes for three years, that is as much as anyone can reasonably expect.