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.