A Promise for Everyday
Deuteronomy 33:25
Tonight for a little while I would like us to ponder the promise in the text
WHAT THIS PROMISE IS NOT.
1. It has no direct relation to the past — no power of retrieval and
recovery.
The past is the past and there is nothing you can do to change it
Negligence is negligence, and no spiritual formula that can change it
This only may be done: if lessons are learned from what has happened
2. It does not bring us into any immediate connection with the future.
Who hasn’t at some time or another looked at what was before was before them and said how am I going to make it through it
Whether is was a hard week
Starting a family
Raising children
Managing finances
Here comes to us tonight the promise of strength
The promise comes to us as we approach a new year
We look around us and see the success of those around and it seems that we are making very little progress and having very little success and we say to ourselves why not give up
What’s the use?
Why not throw in the towel
This promise comes to you today
We must first get a good idea of the depth of our own weakness, before we shall be able to comprehend the value of this rich and exceeding precious promise.
have ye not proved your own weakness in the day of duty?
The Lord has spoken to you, and He has said, “Son of man, do this or that and you have gone to do it, but as you have been upon your way, a sense of great responsibility has overcome, and you have been ready to turn back even at the beginning, and to cry, “Send by whoever you will, but not me.”
And reinforced by strength, you have gone to the duty, but while performing it, you have at times felt your hands hanging exceeding heavy, and you have
had to look up many a time and cry, “ Lord, give me more strength, for
without your strength this work wont be accomplished; I cannot do
it myself.” And when the work has been done, and you have looked back
at it, you have were filled with amazement that it was done at all by weakling as yourself
We prove our weakness, when we come into the day of suffering.
It there is that we are weak indeed.
It is one thing to talk about the furnace; it is another thing to be in it.
It is one thing to look at the surgeons knife, but quite another thing to feel it. The man has never been sick who does not know his weakness, his lack of
patience, and of endurance.
3. Again, there is another thing which will prove our weakness,
if neither duty nor suffering will do it — namely, progress.
Let any of you try to grow in grace, and seek to run the heavenly race, and make a little progress, and you will soon find, in such a slippery road as that which we have to travel, that it is very hard to go one step forward, though
remarkably easy to go a great many steps backward.
This promise comes to you to encourage you as you face daily battles
Rest assured that new struggles and new battles are going to come
There are days dark with sorrow, when a man must sit alone under
God’s hand.
And the strength is not mere endurance.
There is a kind of endurance of all the trials and ills of life, to which a man can become accustom too.
He may not die under them, but he comes out of them with no increased capacity for action, for comfort, for hope.
The strength promised will not only turn off the edge of calamities, but will make us more than conquerors over them, and turn their power into a tributary to our own enlargement.
What makes this promise significant is whose promise it is
The promise is only as good as the one who made it ability to deliver
It is the promise that God made to His friend
Many times people have made promises to us and have not kept them
Then we have to deal with the trust issue
Heart issue
And it keeps happening over and over again
But the one who makes this promise is faithful and able
One writer writes
1. This is a well-guaranteed promise.
There is enough bullion in the vaults of Omnipotence to pay off every bill that ever shall be drawn by the faith of man or the promises of God.
Now look at this one “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
God has a strong reserve with which to pay off this promise; for is He not Himself omnipotent, able to do all things?
Remember what He did in the days of old, in the former generations.
Remember how He spoke, and it was done; how He commanded, and it
stood still.
He hung the world upon nothing; He fixed the pillars of heaven in silver sockets of light, and thereon He hung the golden lamps, the sun and the moon; and shall He that did all this be unable to support His children?
Shall He be unfaithful to His word for want of power in His
arm or strength in His will?
Remember again, thy God, who has promised to be thy strength, is the God who upholds all things by the word of His hand.
Who feeds the ravens?
And how? He opened His hand and supplied the needs of every living
thing.
All He has to do is simply to open His hand.
Who is it
that restrains the tempest?
Doth not He say that He rides upon the wings of the wiled, that He makes the clouds His chariots, and holds the water in the hollow of His hand?
Shall He fail thee?
What ever your doubt duty or difficulty
What ever your sorrow or suffering
As your days so shall your strength be
There are some restrictions or limitations attached to this promise
He says as thy days not as your desires
Many times our desires or improper
Many times our desires are selfish
Many times if god gave us what we asked for we would be worse off
May times the struggle is to great and the burden is to hard
And if we had our way we would pray away the burden which may be our blessing
So when the burden comes
Say to yourself as my days so shall my strength
He does not say as thy fears
Charles Spurgeon says that every house has a trouble factory
Trouble is coming
But every where we see Jesus and trouble Jesus says fear not
Another consideration is that he does not promise annual strength monthly strength or even weekly strength
I’m glad about that because some trial or trouble my be great and I might use my monthly allowance on it and I might not be able to wait until next month for a fresh supply
The supply is according to the need
It doesn’t run out as long as I live
What ever the day and as long as they come
Monday strength
Tuesday strength
Wednesday a little more pain
Thursday a little pain
Conclusion:
Picture of trouble and the supply
Paul and his thorn…..
